The sun was slowly climbing toward the middle of the sky. Two figures stood by the lake. Earlier that day Kai had already finished his training and spent some time sitting in the icy waters. Now, full of anticipation, he looked at the old man.
"Master Mo, well? Can we start?" Kai asked impatiently.
Today he would finally begin learning a cultivation technique!
"Yes, boy, we can. But I have to go over this one more time. This technique is incredibly difficult! If you can't cultivate it, I can still teach you my own," the old man warned seriously.
"For a whole year we've been training and developing your body. Now the Body Training stage is complete! A year ago you already began to sense energy, so now you can rightfully be considered a Warrior of the initial stage! But ahead lies a difficult road to the next realm—the Cultivator stage!" Mo said solemnly. "At that stage you'll be able to control more energy and even manipulate it. How much and how well—depends entirely on how you pass through the Warrior stage!" he explained.
"The Warrior stage is characterized by tempering the body, but no longer just physically. You'll have to absorb energy and guide it in accordance with a cultivation technique, carefully following every nuance described in it. Gradually, you'll feel the energy gathering bit by bit in the area of your abdomen. This point is called the Energy Center," Master Mo continued.
"After that, you'll have to force that energy into every part of your body, tempering yourself as a whole. The Torture of Invisible Kings Technique is very strange in this regard…" He paused. "It uses a unique method of tempering. That's also one of the reasons I couldn't cultivate it. My body and energy have already been trained in a different way. I'm ashamed to say it… but I don't meet this technique's requirements…" Mo smiled at himself with a hint of self-mockery. "But you, little demon—you might pull it off!" he added with a smile.
He reached out, and a black scroll with red characters suddenly appeared in his hand.
"From here on, everything depends on you. I won't be able to give you any advice, because I don't know anything about it myself," Master Mo said, handing the scroll to Kai.
"We'll only start on the movement technique once you can control energy. For now, I'll leave you alone. Good luck, boy!" Mo called out, lingering on Kai for a moment with his gaze before turning around and walking away.
"I'll give it everything I've got, Master!" Kai shouted after him.
He quickly sat down in the lotus position, calmed his mind, and slowly opened the scroll. To his surprise, he could hardly understand anything at all! The technique consisted of five stages, but only the first one was currently open. Whenever he tried to look at the higher stages, the characters seemed to turn into meaningless squiggles drifting aimlessly across the scroll…
Cultivating a technique was like building a house. Without a foundation, there's nothing to set walls on. Without walls, there's nothing to hold a roof. It was as if the cultivation method itself enforced the need to comprehend each level step by step. Kai had the feeling that even the scroll itself was some kind of miraculous item.
He forced himself not to get distracted and carefully read through the first level. He memorized the mantra and the methods for moving energy through the meridians. He began to understand what exactly was going to happen next…
The system of energy channels was a closed circuit. The energy he absorbed would be drawn in and refined in the Energy Center first. Then it would begin circulating through the channels, looping again and again throughout the body. It was somewhat like the circulatory system.
Kai had to circulate his energy along a strict route, passing it through all eight hundred meridians in a precise order and rhythm. The scroll also described specific manipulations that had to be carried out in certain meridians.
Once he fully mastered this process, he would gradually begin tempering his entire body with energy. But the Torture of Invisible Kings Technique was very unusual in that regard. According to what Master Mo had described, Warriors normally absorbed energy through their cultivation technique and then forced it throughout their bodies, trying to temper every last cell. The problem was that doing this perfectly, for the entire body and every last corner of it, was almost impossible! The stronger and more gifted a master had been in their youth, the better they had tempered their body at the Warrior stage. Naturally, this influenced all of their future cultivation!
The scroll stated that when cultivating this strange technique, Five Invisible Kings would begin to form—each born from the symbiosis of the energy accumulated in the master's body and the energy of nature.
Each King would be responsible for his own "torture," during which he would temper a specific part of the flesh, until the entire body was tempered.
Kai realized that reproducing something like this through his own will alone would be nearly impossible.
"This technique is downright divine!" Kai exclaimed, and continued reading.
The tempering process here is different from what Master told me… First I have to temper my heart, and only then spread the energy through my body, he thought as he read the scroll. Gradual tempering of the skin, muscles and tendons, as well as the organs… The next stage will be tempering the bones and bone marrow… Then I'll strengthen the eyes and all the senses, and after that—the brain itself, Kai recited in his mind.
It says here that the brain also has its own system. It's similar to the circulatory system, and also to the energy channels throughout the body… It says that this system is what controls the whole body and even our thoughts. I've never heard of anything like that… I'll have to temper it thoroughly too… Kai thought, astonished. Everything he was reading now was completely new to him!
Reading further, Kai whispered:
"Alright, so that's how it is… Their names are:
"The King of Lust, who tempers the heart.
"The King of Pain, who tempers the flesh. He begins with the skin, muscles, and tendons and finishes with the internal organs.
"The King of Envy, who tempers the skeleton and the interior of the bones.
"The King of Rage, who tempers all the senses.
"And lastly, the King of Terror, who will temper my brain and this strange brain system."
"Wait for me—we'll be meeting soon," Kai said with a smile and slowly closed his eyes.
He began focusing on absorbing energy. During his physical training, he had forgotten about this process for an entire year! All this time he had suppressed his perception, but now it was open again. The moment he decided to feel the energy, he realized just how much of it there was!
In that instant, a strange thought flashed through him and his eyes darkened… Kai felt as if he could see incredibly tiny characters within the energy—so small that he couldn't even make them out.
Strange… When Old Man Mo talked about energy, he never mentioned anything like this. He described it as flows of different densities and attributes… But characters? And they don't look like any hieroglyphs I know. They don't look like anything I've seen in the books at all… Kai thought, then suddenly realized something. The sphere! That's it! That definitely wasn't a dream—it has to be connected to it! he shouted in his mind.
I wasn't wrong. The sphere is still inside me, even if I can't sense it… Someday I'll figure it out, but I feel I need to become much stronger first. Maybe the stronger I get, the clearer what's happening to me will become, Kai reasoned, intrigued.
For now, though, I can't tell anyone about this—not even Old Man Mo. If I can't learn more, I'll take this secret with me into oblivion. Otherwise, one day they'll just tear me apart like a test animal, he decided.
After thinking it over a bit more, Kai continued cultivating the Torture of Invisible Kings Technique.
After a quarter of an hour, Kai felt more and more energy permeating and circulating through his body. Suddenly, he saw a figure forming beside him out of black light.
It was a completely black silhouette of a woman with an exceptionally beautiful figure. She had no face, just a smooth surface and two curved horns. Kai was a little scared at first, but then he realized this had to be a consequence of the technique… He had never seen or heard of such beings before.
Simply incredible… he thought, quickly calming down and continuing to spin the energy within himself.
Suddenly, the silhouette turned toward him and shot into Kai's body. He felt something pierce straight into his heart! The turn of events was so abrupt he hadn't even had time to react. The next moment, his heart clenched with unbelievable force! Kai almost lost control of himself, but at the last second he barely managed to steady his mind.
"King of Lust…" he hissed through his teeth.
An unimaginable torrent of energy assaulted Kai's heart. It felt like it was being destroyed and restored in an instant, slowly devouring and rebirthing the entire organ!
Kai was breathing heavily, struggling to pull air into his lungs. It seemed to him that another moment of this and he would simply die. In that state, his mind began desperately searching for a way to survive, and his gaze accidentally fell on the waters of the lake…
It can stabilize my body… I need… I need… Kai thought frantically, starting to crawl toward the lake.
After several minutes of agony and sheer willpower, he finally fell into the icy water! The pain was still unbearable, but under the influence of the cold, it felt like he was recovering faster!
Kai didn't know it, but he was very lucky that he was still a child… The King of Lust's torture normally tears at the mind with depraved visions, distracting from cultivation and driving one mad. At a critical moment, those illusions can interfere and cause the master's heart to simply rupture. Fortunately, Kai's mind was still pure enough to escape that fate…
Several days later, Kai was sitting motionless in the lake… He could feel his heart was almost completely reborn. Even the blood being pumped through it was beginning to saturate with energy.
Right now he was incredibly happy, because the pain was finally starting to subside. The last few days had been absolute hell…
And at last, after one more day, he exhaled and stood up. Kai was starving and exhausted, but joy shone in his eyes!
He had completed the initial tempering of his heart! In the future, he would still have to finish the process fully—but the most crucial first step had already been taken.