章 5: The first step

The idea was simple.

A Qi-condensation array gathered the Qi from the air before using special crystals to enrich… No, to condense it before releasing it back out into the air.

As long as this process happened in a confined space, the density of the Qi in the air would increase over time. And while quite a lot of this denser Qi would disperse outside… The rate at which the fresh Qi would come from elsewhere more than just compensated for that.

Back at the institution, this array was engraved into every inch of the walls surrounding the training hall.

But…

No matter how hard I looked at it and how closely it resembled what I saw back on the walls of the institution…

Wasn't there a better, more modern way to go about things?

'If I grabbed… how were they called…'

I turned back to somewhere in the middle of the second chapter of the manual in my hand.

Spricur crystals, a simple product all the way from ancient times that only recently on the historical scale started to gain popularity.

For the ancients, it was a stone etched with the force of thunder.

In the restorationist era, it was widely used as a source of light for street lamps.

But its true ability was much more interesting.

"A spiritual-current crystal, when infused into a circuit, can serve as an adapter transforming spiritual energy into electrical current," I've read out loud the passage hidden as early as in the middle of the second chapter.

Taking a moment, I could picture several ways in which those crystals would find their use in modern-day technology…

But most definitely, I didn't see them back at the institution!

I squinted my eyes and turned the pages all the way back to the fourth chapter and another inconspicuous passage.

While great at conversing one type of energy to the other, they themselves made for a pretty bad circuit material.

Why else would they be used to turn spiritual power in the air into an electric current that would concurrently make them heat up so much that they would produce their own light?

'Thinking about it, wouldn't this quality apply to… all the cultivation materials and procedures?'

I raised my right hand up to my eyes.

Although distant, I could still sense the very same resistance whenever my fingers would move.

Its nature was definitely much more tangible than something as abstract as electricity!

And yet, it was this other type of force that humanity learned how to control with extreme precision instead!

"And that means…"

With a smile slowly forming on my face, I threw the manual back on the bed before standing up and getting myself ready.

Mere minute of dressing up later, I pushed the doors open and rushed down several flights of stairs to the small bike parking located at the back of the whole apartment building.

Before five minutes could pass, I jumped off my bike at the doorstep of a nearby electric shop.

Despite how close it was, this wasn't the place I would visit frequently. And save for when my light bulb went out and required replacement or something like that, I treated this place as merely part of the background on the streets.

But not today.

Entering the shop, I moved directly to the counter… Only to then wait as two old men concluded their lengthy discussion of some issue over… some actual tea.

Rolling my eyes at the wait, I ultimately had no better choice but to just… patiently wait as I sorted my thoughts to get all my plans organized.

"Hello, how can I help on this beautiful day?"

The young cashier offered a slightly awkward and clearly forced smile with deep spots under his eyes only putting an emphasis on how tired he was.

Likely, he thought of nothing else but finishing his shift at this kind of dead-end job and going back home to waste the rest of the day mindlessly playing. I saw this look on the faces of my classmates back in the school. And now, even without really catching up with them, I had the feeling this is exactly how quite a lot of them would end up.

But such was the fate of those who allowed the life to lead them. And I was determined to do whatever it was in my power to change it.

Shopping at this place was merely the first step to this change.

"Hello," I politely nodded my head before pulling out a short memo I'd written while on the way down the stairs and on the few straight and empty roads I took to get to the shop. "I'm going to need a bunch of standard, empty circuit boards, capacitors, resistors…" I pulled the note away before opening my arms and spreading them out only to shake them up a bit. "Basically, a budget set for playing around with circuits of all kinds."

At first, the clerk looked up at me, slightly taken aback by the request. And yet… This request somehow managed to pull the clerk out of his boring routine.

"Eh… sure? What budget are we talking about?"

The entire interaction took merely about ten minutes.

From picking out the basics, through selecting the range of all the basic elements, and at the additional purchase of the soldering kit ending, when I left the shop, I filled my backpack with pretty much everything I could mold electricity with.

But this was merely the first step.

'Now, how should I get to that other place…?'

After scouring my memory for a short moment and then double-checking through the online map service, I remounted my bike before pressing on to the next objective.

This time, it wasn't just some small, mostly hobbyist-targeted shop.

This time, I was going to the part of town where people with a mortal-level of money and interest would rarely visit.

The marketplace.

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