Invincible Earth! : Volume 1
Chapter 8: Breaking through!

As the manual said, cultivation was all about energy. For the past one month, Lance had been meditating from 8 in the night to 8 in the morning.

Darius had told him that all of the mountainous area was specially made for training. Special technology gathered energy from the sun and released it into the atmosphere here after making it easier to absorb for all. This was one of the boons of IE.

In ancient times, people were required to go to places on earth almost untouched by man to absorb energy like this. Now, through the united hard work of generations of engineers and personnel, this haven was made possible.

All Lance needed to do was sit down and imagine himself absorbing energy through his pores. He had to first relax his mind, throwing all errant thoughts out. This itself took 2 days to achieve. Next, he had to imagine that his body was a sponge which was submerged in the water that was energy. He almost had to hypnotize himself that all he needed to do was breathe in, and energy would flow into him.

Strangely, this part went forward smoothly enough. From the 3rd day, he had been absorbing energy nonstop from dusk till dawn. Each morning when he ended his meditation, he felt refreshed, as if he had had a full nights sleep in the most comfortable way possible. Even the time spent meditating didn’t feel laborious, as it almost as if he had been in a trance throughout the session, albeit being mildly aware of his surroundings.

The one month had passed in a flash, and Lance had patiently followed the instructions on the manual.

He was instructed to direct the energy that he absorbed through his pores into his dantian, or the area around 3 inches below his belly button. Visualization was key, and Lance had always been good at stuff that concerned creativity and imagination.

So, each day, Lance visualized the energy as streams of water which entered through the numerous pores in his body before entering his dantian. Then, as the streams of water entered into a round space at the dantian, he visualized them coalescing into a 10-foot square slab of shiny energy.

The goal was to build a house, or a storage place to store energy for usage. Lance decided to take this literally, as many others did, and aimed to build the ground slab of the house.

Whatever structure one imagined, the end result was the same: a two-dimensional structure of energy present in the dantian signaled one becoming a stage one initiate.

As each day passed, the slab of energy had been becoming more and more solid. What had started out as a sheet of dotted particles was slowly turning into a solid sheet.

The dantian was the part of the body that had the special ability to store energy safely and stably without causing any harm. Although energy passing through the cells of the body in tiny amounts benefited the initiates, if it accumulated or if too much was absorbed at once and happened to be stored in a location other than the dantian at this stage, it would cause damage to the tissue around it resulting in mutilation through explosion due to instability.

Thus, the rooms of each initiate was specialized to their level.

Seeing the slab almost becoming completely solid, Lance got excited but calmed himself as this was the most crucial moment. At the moment the slab became solid, he had to stop absorbing energy to let the slab stabilize.

All of a sudden, he heard a “CLINK” sound. The slab, which had been murky with particles swirling inside it, suddenly radiated a blinding flash as he visualized it. It shone a sparkling silver as the light slowly retreated into the slab.

Lance immediately stopped absorbing. He had always imagined his dantian as an empty space, and now in this empty space was a square, shining block of pure power.

He shook as he felt a force of repulsion throughout his body. A stinky, black material oozed out of his pores as Lance got a hacking cough which made him spit out black blood. He had read about this in the manual. Energy constructs had their own gravitational fields which ejected some impurities out of the body when first formed.

Lance stood up, feeling as if his whole body was now a well-oiled machine. Each and every moment required lesser energy than before, and he felt as strong and healthy as an ox.

“WOOHOOOO!“, he screamed, jumping up and punching the air in jubilation.

Lance, beginning stage-1 initiate. The title that he had been looking forward to for so long was finally his.

…

Lance hurried to wash off the stinky impurities as soon as possible. When looking at himself in the mirror afterwards, he was amazed to see that his skin was a shade lighter as the tan he had developed in his years on earth was starting to fade away.

Not just the tan, even the stretch marks that had appeared to new muscle growth had started to fade away. Lance was overjoyed as he touched the relatively smooth skin along his biceps.

The only vestiges of his former self could be seen in the minimal amount of fat he still retained in various places, but these would also disappear in a few months of training.

It was still an hour from training time, so the cafeteria was mostly empty as he gobbled down a quick breakfast. He ran at full sprint to the training ground, reveling in the feeling of lightness. Even his endurance had improved by leaps and bounds.

On one side of the huge open field were placed conventional gym equipment, but the weights started from 50 kg, going up all the way to 10,000 kg. These were numbers that one would not be able to see in any gym on earth.

The strength test comprised of 2 numbers: punch power(or PP) and kick power(or KP). These were the main indicators of the raw power of an initiate, but this only held true when the intrinsic nature(or IN) wasn’t taken into the equation. Other than these, the squat, deadlift and bench press were 3 numbers that initiates also compared strength with.

Lance started with the three exercises first. His present record was 220, 200 and 180 kilos(squat, deadlift and bench press). This was an impressive improvement from his previous self, but it was still not even the highest in earth standards.

He started with his record weights, but they almost felt weightless. Excited, he hurried to add more and more weights that he hadn’t been able to touch till now.

Finally, although he was expecting such a result, it still shocked him: 600 kg squat, 500 kg deadlift and 500 kg bench press!

It must be noted that the world records on earth were all lower than these numbers, albeit only a bit lower. Still, such an improvement in one day was astonishing.

“This is the power of a breakthrough!“, said Lance as he talked to himself in awe.

The initial field of the energy construct in his dantian had strengthened his body overall, resulting in this improvement. Almost all stage-1 initiates had more or less the same strength, unless amplified by external factors.

“Finally broken through, have we?“. A grating voice sounded in his ears as he turned around to see an old man in white robes walking towards. He had typical Chinese features, with a fair face, a striking nose and a flowing beard that seemed to hide a weak chin. His eyes made him stand out. They radiated might, and it felt as a single glance into them could make one lose all strength as they gave the feeling that standing up to such might was just futile.

The old man had a mocking look on his face. It seemed as if he was strolling idly along the pain, but he was in face moving at a speed many times faster than an average humans running speed. In a few moments, he was in front of Lance.

This was Xuan Long, head instructor of the initiates and due to Lance being the descendant of Attok, the King of Torture, with the sole purpose of putting Lance through as many difficulties as he possibly could within his authority.

…

Xuan Long was only a stage-1 Master as opposed to his ancestor who was a Legend, but to the present Lance this was as far away as the stars. Due to having almost no free time in the past month, Lance hadn’t managed to replace a way to contact Attok and replace out how the hell he could get this geezer to back off of him.

Lance was not usually one to go running for help to the grown ups, but in this case he was just at his wit’s end. He had gone through a training which was at least 10 times more difficult than what the other bottom level group had gone through.

Each and every bout of sparring, Lance almost always found himself paired with a sneering Asian youth who would beat him within an inch of his life. Lance had felt the pain of his ribs being broken, his bones being fractured and once even his skin being peeled off due to a peculiar martial art of one teen.

Each time he lay on the ground, bleeding and broken, Xuan Long would press his face to the ground parallel to Lance with a manic look on his face.

“Do you give up?“, he would ask.

Each and every time, Lance would shake his head. Once, he hadn’t even had the energy to shake his head, so he had to whimper a “No” out unless this crazy old geezer took that as a yes.

He branded each and every face of the youths who had beaten him up into his memory. Xuan Long’s face in particular was branded so deeply that he even dreamt of taking revenge on him.

The worst part was the healing. When he was hurt this badly, Darius would give him an extra portion of enidra. All night when he meditated, it would get harder and harder to concentrate as there was a constant itching in his body which was the enidra healing him.

No, actually, the worst part was knowing that this wouldn’t be the last time this would happen.

This was also one of the major reasons for Lance wanting to break through as soon as possible. As a stage-1 Initiate, he would more or less be on the same stage as them and would at least manage to stand his ground.

The only information he could pierce together was that there were multiple factions in IE, and Attok’s faction clashed often with Xuan Long’s. As a descendant of Attok, Lance belonged by default to his faction, unless he changed factions later.

The pain and Xuan Long’s gloating only served to strengthen Lance’s will. He added “taking revenge” to the list of reasons why he could not give up and could not die no matter what he faced.

If he was really being honest with himself, Lance’s personality was such that when an insult was taken, he could not rest and would not forget unless he paid it back, except in special cases. So, Xuan Long’s had actually constantly “encouraged” him to not give up. If he knew this, he would definitely be spitting mad.

“Yes, Master Xuan Long.“, answered Lance, bowing to Xuan Long while secretly gritting his teeth.

“Thats too bad. If you hadn’t broken through, maybe Attok could have argued in front of the high martial and tried to save you from going on the mission. Now that you have, there is no chance.”

Lance didn’t answer. He wordlessly walked to the PP and KP testing machines, his joyous mood dampening due to this black raven.