Chapter 9: First Level of Body Tempering
After selling the deer skin both Sreesh and Bali went back home. All that time the shopkeeper, Garfell kept looking at Sreesh like he was some kind of monster. He even gave a few extra coins for the skin. The two boys were extremely happy to have received more money than they had expected.
"It pays to be strong", they thought.
After reaching home Sreesh entered his room to cultivate. Bali went to the backyard to exercise. After the day's incident he was extremely shocked by how strong Sreesh was. He had learned today that if one is strong enough he could stop the villagers from being bullied. His father would not be hurt by anyone else anymore. The village would be peaceful, just as before and everything would go back to normal. The only required was strength.
Even though this was a naive way of thinking, Bali was determined to work hard to pursue strength. He was convinced that this was the right answer to solve all the problems in the village. In the house's backyard Bali started doing push ups and lifting rocks to exercise his body. The only thing in his mind was that he wanted to become stronger.
Meanwhile Sreesh was sitting on his bed cross legged with his hands on his knees. He was breathing in and out slowly trying to sense the energy in between heaven and earth which was also known as spiritual energy according to the book in his possession. He had sensed spiritual energy before but he had not mastered it. It took him a few tries to get the hang of it.
As soon as Sreesh got good at sensing spiritual energy he started absorb the energy into his body according to the Kundalini Chakra manual. His breathing became steady. With every breath he took he absorbed more and more energy. He had to breathe in the spiritual energy through his nose and absorb it into his body. He exhaled out the impurities in the air through his mouth.
The Kundalini Chakra manual stated that absorbed energy would nourish his skin, bones, muscles and blood to make them stronger and more vigorous. Only once his body was sufficiently strong would he break through to the first level of Body Tempering. After breaking through he had to pay attention to specific parts of the body and make them absorb spiritual energy step by step.
Soon he was lost in a wonderful state where he kept breathing in spiritual energy and breathing out the foul air. This went on for about an hour. All this time he felt like there were hundreds of ants crawling through his body. There were times when he wanted to stop so that the feeling would go away, but then he would remind himself about what happened earlier in the day. If he hadn't been strong enough Bali would probably be beaten up by the soldier for no reason at all. He wanted to grow stronger because he never wanted anything bad to happen to his family.
Ever since he was a child he had only known his cousin Bali and his uncle Roran as his family. He didn't know who his father was and he didn't even know where he was from. As for his mother, she had left after a few months after giving birth to him. He felt extremely protective of the family he had known ever since he was a child and never wanted anything to happen to them.
"This feeling just means that I'm getting stronger.", he thought.
He endured the itch that he felt all over his body and continued with his cultivation. If one looked closely they would see that all this time his body was oozing out filth from all the pores in his body. It was a colourless sticky liquid with a bad smell.
Soon Sreesh had a feeling that his body was brimming with energy and he could feel that his body could only absorb so much energy. Any more and he felt like he would explode.
The Kundalini Chakra manual had explained about such a situation and what he should do at such a time. This feeling was called reaching a bottleneck in cultivation. There were many ways to break through a bottleneck by using medicines or by forcefully breaking through. The term forcefully breaking through meant to assimilate the energy into in his body by forcefully injecting more energy into his body. If done properly it was the most inexpensive method but if done poorly it could cause severe injuries. Sreesh did not have extra money for buying medicine so he decided to use the second method.
He breathed in a huge gasp of air and started absorbing the energy in it. It was a painful process but Sreesh kept enduring it.
Boom!
He heard a loud sound inside his head. He joyfully opened his eyes and smiled. He knew what the sound meant
"First Level of Body Tempering."
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone