Refining the Heavens 2 (炼天二)

Chapter 74: Lightning Pillar

When Kairos unlocked the method to use mana, he became silent with a frown etched on his brow. The others seeing this went back to their training leaving him with his thoughts. And, for a moment, Kairos did not notice what is happening before his eyes. He is thrilled with his success, but in his excitement, he did not forget what his disciple, Ah Pui, told him.

In the whole of Saint Empire, only the Emperor is rumoured to have both mana and Ki. The method to use magic is a highly guarded secret of the southern countries, and all others that discovered mana had mysteriously disappeared. Most assumed they are kidnapped by the South.

If Kairos teaches the way to unlock mana to his friends, it would only risk them all. The more of them that knows this skill, the easier it is to be found.

He assumes that the mage guilds must have a device to find those who have mana in them outside of the southern countries. If not, there wouldn't be so many sightings of strange occurrences happening around, like bright flashes of light and mysterious floating objects, just before someone alleged to have discovered mana disappeared.

Kairos contemplated for a while, weighing the risk of getting caught by the mage guilds versus their chances to survive right now.

After a while, he decided, that there is no need for them to take up this risk. He alone being is enough. The usage of the mana core could help him fight against even Syriong alone, and it would significantly improve their chances of escape.

Seeing everyone had already gone back to focus on their training, he wrote a message and left it on the grass, before he started as well.

"Change of plans, we will train here for 7 days and then break through the checkpoint."

Forcefully waking someone up from their cultivation-trance could be very dangerous to the person, especially if the individual reached a critical juncture during training.

Kairos' objective in training is to achieve B rank. He ate a few kinds of cultivation pills that supplement each order.

The Heavenly Scent pill, to enable to him increase Heavenly Energy absorption speed by 40%.

The whirlwind pill, an enhancement pill that helps quicken a practitioner's Ki rotation within their body, and thus speeding up cultivation process. Though it helps speed up a mere 10%, it requires expensive and rare spiritual herbs to concoct its pill.

To be able to improve Ki cycle within oneself, even by a little, is extremely hard to do and not many Pill Masters could do so. Among the supplements, a 10% increase is already considered at the top-tier, but in this circle which increases cultivation by 7 times would actually make the overall benefit more than 70%!

The 3rd and last pill he took, is the Demon Body pill which allows the user to withstand a greater amount of energy intake to help the person have a better chance of breaking through his rank.

It is an expensive pill, more than a hundred times the cost of a Heavenly Scent pill. Most people would only use it to get past a bottleneck that is too difficult. For Kairos' 15 disciples, it is likely that most of them would have crossed into A rank if they were given the demon body pill. But because they could not get past B rank after they already reached 40 years old, the Devilheart family judged them as inferior cultivation talents, and they were all trained to be death warriors.

However, in Kairos' eyes, they are far from discardable tools as they were made out to be. Trained with the Sealing martial arts of the Devilheart family that is not suitable for them, how could they display their real potentials?

Kairos' purpose when he took the demon body pill is not for breaking through bottlenecks. The pill's effect to withstand a higher amount of energy within oneself would also help speed up cultivation, though not many are willing to use it for this person.