An Adventure From Broken Adventure: Arc 1: Origin.

Adam 'Adventure' Burns has torn free a fragment of his Soul, sending it to the Abyss with specific restrictions on the destination. The biggest alteration and cost? A Cultivation Realm without a story line. One safe to venture to without instant destruction. To reach such a place and hopefully survive long enough to gain something for his Shard to report back with, he had to accept a variety of flaws and drawbacks to afford the choice.

Cultivation Story Reference: Invincible, By Author Shen Jian.

~~Broken Adventure~~

[[[Flashback]]]

This was the fourth try. The previous three were all aborted for a high cost and fairly good reasons.

Adam took a slow breath.

The first attempt? He passed out from pain. It had been SO LONG since he had actually suffered, he was completely unprepared.

The method designed by Squishy required... just a tiny bit of soul damage. Nearly invisible, a single grain of glass extracted from his 'Fishbowl', used to channel his powers to the Avatar.

The problem? He had refined his soul using the hunger of the Abyss.

His soul was solid. Beyond stable. In the end, the first attempt managed to get a tiny grain free... but it had NOT been pleasant.

The original two week downtime was judged based on how long it would take for his soul to heal. And... well. It was a bad estimate. Neither he nor Squishy took into account how much longer it took to repair a soul so hardened, so refined.

He got over it eventually.

The second attempt had to be dropped because it involved a magical object, a mystical cube that absorbed souls for refinement. The Main Character (MC) was supposed to get this thing, and it was the driving object of that whole Realm... in other words, he would BECOME the story for that Realm if he had fully committed. It would have invalidated all the damn points he had invested to make the target location safe! Seriously, the Entity that had designed this travel system was an ass.

Third attempt was in progress... when the target Realm destabilized. It was apparently 'safe' to travel to because it was about to END. Not the whole Realm, just the individual planet he was supposed to grow up on. Because in THAT Realm, once you reached a certain level of cultivation you BECAME a world. With an inner planet, where your beliefs and abilities turned into creatures and places... and the guy who you were supposed to be born within got killed in battle. He didn't even get to stay long enough to determine which Realm it was, it ended so quickly.

It was a strange place anyway. It was entirely possible for a guy to have a cosmos inside, where on a planet was a girl with a solar system in her cultivation, where on a plane there was a cat with a planet inside it, and so on and so forth. Russian nesting dolls of reality.

This time, he had invested even more energy so that the universe would have some damn time for him to visit. And that his origin point would exist long enough to grow up to some degree. But it came with a cost... He would have less energy when he arrived, and it would take longer for his powers, abilities, and memories to 'activate' for his Avatar.

Part of this trouble had to do with how the transit ability worked... the more open the request, the more wiggly it got. This time though, after some discussion and a week or two of recovery, everyone was fairly confidant it would succeed!

Adam gave a sharp nod.

"Transfer: Abyss."

Into the dark, a glint of glass vanished.

[[[Flashback Ends.]]]

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Warm.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Warm... Colors?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Something... something... worry. Fear?

FEAR!

PAIN! PAIN! PAINPAINPAinpainpain...

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Pain.

Adam's eyes blearily opened. Memories began to slowly recover.

Mom?

...Ah.

With focus, he tried to determine why everything felt so... sore. Not spikes of pain, more a constant, slow burn.

At the edge of his consciousness, he could feel something... other. Not quite here.

It wasn't like his old socket system, and it felt far more rigid... Oh. 'Research'.

Focusing it inwards, he tried to ignore the pain as he assessed his condition.

Low levels of poisoning, low levels of infection, low levels of bleeding. That was bad.

Several bones were broken and healed wrong. Mostly on the left side of his body. His left leg was... twisted a bit. But mostly stabilized, even if it was healed at a bad angle.

He winced, the shifting causing more stings of pain.

He had no left hand.

Adam felt 'Research' continue to catalogue his many, MANY issues as he focused on the uneven stump where his left hand had been. The bones near the end were fragmented, the flesh twisted but at least treated, the bandages felt mostly clean. A slow glance... ah.

And his left eye was not working.

The right eye saw enough to see his body had... many bandages. Clean ones though, so that was... that was good.

Hopefully his left ear was not working due to the heavy cloth wrapped on that side of his head.

Adam tried to activate 'Purification'... and felt 'Research' pause. Crud... one or the other? Probably the same issue with 'Growth', if the three were connected like this. Knowledge was more important right now, though 'Purification' would have to be next or his body could get worse.

With careful movements, he examined what 'Research' found as it began cataloging, sorting, and storing his memories. It was going to take multiple passes, as his body HAD been alive and thinking before his abilities 'woke up', so to speak. And that past him HAD been making decisions like Adam would have, as far as he could tell.

Observing his body for any critical issues (Well, more critical), he allowed 'Research' to work backwards from now to the past, memories being refined and sorted.

He was currently under medical care in the 'Burning Sword' Sect, one of the last survivors being treated from his village's destruction. Everyone else had either fully recovered or had died already... he had been hanging on basically with willpower alone.

Adam had (as of today) hit puberty at 14 years old, which had apparently activated his powers. Well, fully activated them. He had been held here and given moderate medical care mostly because the 'Burning Sword' Sect was considered a 'Righteous Sect', one that endeavored to push good karma and acts of justice above concerns like money or selfishness.

He felt his body twitch involuntarily as his memories moved backwards. Apparently, his poor village had been targeted by a violent Spirit Beast, a stealth based Three Eyed Panther. It had gone undetected as it consumed the various Warriors left in the village, finding those with the strongest Cultivation Levels until detected.

Adam shivered as the data continued to be collected. His body had survived because of his weakness. Not even reaching the very start of the Houtian Realm, lower than the first cultivation rank, he and many of the children were spared due to how long it took for that damn Spirit Beast to finish off the rest of the warriors.

Only the close relationship with the 'Burning Sword' Sect had caused help to arrive, even if they showed up too late to save most of the townsfolk.

He shifted again, the stings keeping him focused. These injuries weren't even from the Spirit Beast, but was caused by a glancing blow of energy from the Warriors fighting the damn thing. His weak, unreinforced body basically collapsed from the power, and the girl next to him had exploded from getting a full blow.

It... it had been horrific. Memory after memory surfaced of him trying to gather the children to relative safety, unable to do much more than cower as the black beast slowly consumed powerful fighters so close nearby.

His social status didn't help people trust him either, even while trying to bring others to what little safety existed.

In this Realm, on your seventh birthday, everyone in the various towns and villages would undergo a 'Martial Spirit Awakening' ceremony. It would unlock something inside called a martial spirit, which was similar to a soul partner and would display the talents of the child. These martial spirits would be graded into low, average, and high levels... and if the grade was above 10 then the child's creature was considered a superb talent martial spirit, or even a heaven-defying existence.

The higher one's talent, the better it was for their body to absorb the world's spiritual energy and become a strong Warrior. If the grade was higher, like the mythical 12 or beyond, whole clans would fight to supply the cultivator with rare resources, hoping to hook their futures into his or her destiny.

In this culture, your martial spirit could determine your social standing, your class, your future. It was possible to not even have one, or to have a damaged, crippled, or mutated martial spirit as well... and Adam's ceremony went badly.

While others exposed wolves, tigers, bears, snakes, and so forth... Adam's martial spirit was a fragment of what seemed to be glass. It had stumped the others, and after attempts at cultivation failed completely, his village abandoned him as a waste. Not that they had put too much effort at investigation in the first place...

After all, he had no support.

He frowned, ignoring the pull of flesh on the left side of his scarred face.

His dad had been a rapist. Avenged by his mother's family, so a dead rapist.

His mother had died from an illness near his sixth birthday. As a non-cultivator, her life hadn't been that stable to begin with.

So he had gone to his 'Martial Spirit Awakening' ceremony supported by his distant Grandfather... who had abandoned him as a waste when the results came out.

...Well then.

At least he wouldn't have to waste time avenging any of those assholes. He saved what kids he could, gotten a little injured, and as far as he was concerned was free to do as he wished at this point. Hell, even 'Grandfather' had died two years ago, there wasn't even someone to go chase down and get vengeance from.

This 'Burning Sword' Sect seemed nice though. His body had been lingering at the line of life and death for weeks now, and they still cleaned his wounds and tried to get his body to hold down medicine. Though the fragmented memories being recovered by 'Research' seemed to imply that his bastard former villagers had told everyone his name was Cánfèi, a nickname he had 'earned' which translated to 'Maimed'. Because Grandfather cast him out of his former family.

Then again, his former nickname seemed more apt now. The left side of his body was mutilated.

He waited for a while as 'Research' finished an initial pass over his memories, filtered out the useless stuff (Sleeping, eating bad food, the poor treatment, harassment, and mockery), saved the most valuable (Cultivation Techniques for using Battle Qi, martial art techniques and stances, memories of his mom and how pretty she had been), and basically focused on what to do next.

First? His body's terrible condition.

Using 'Growth' right now would be moronic. His body was devastated, his energy wasted keeping each part from failing, and his meridians needed harsh treatment.

In this Realm, cultivation techniques allowed those who wished to train to gather the atmospheric spiritual energies, condense them into strands of controllable power. This energy would then run through the body's meridians, or spiritual pathways, following specific patterns while concentrating on certain themes, concepts, or ideals.

Once the energy correctly followed that path, it would transform the body to be more efficient and aligned with certain concepts while converting the power into 'Battle Qi', used to defend, attack, and recover.

But with his spiritual pathways so damaged? His meridians lacking in flexibility and strength due to not cultivating for so long? His body's fractured state?

Yeah, 'Growth' would act like cancer.

Because without his powers waking up, his martial spirit couldn't absorb or attract ANY world spiritual energy. Reaching the lowest, First Order Warrior level was a dream, and his days had been filled with fruitless attempts and desperate martial arts training, none of which helped him progress. The constant training kept him fit, muscular, and healthy... but that was nothing without cultivation.

No, right now he needed two things: 'Research' and 'Purification'.

Focusing on his body and his memories of how to cultivate the First Order Warriors' meridian route, he pushed 'Research' into adjusting the patterns.

The first cultivation level, the Houtian Realm, was split into 10 stages. If he had an undamaged body, the first through third Order, or Early Houtian, was focusing on tempering the muscles. Fourth through Sixth refined the tendons (Middle Houtian), Seventh to Ninth Order tempered the bones (Late Houtian) and formed a Qi Sea, used for attacks and so forth. The highest Tenth Order was called being a 'Peak Houtian'.

There were harsh bottlenecks at the boundary between 3rd and 4th Order, 6th and 7th Order, and 9th to 10Th Order. And crossing from Houtian to Xiantian Realm (and accessing THOSE new 10 Orders of refinement) was a HUGE deal, a quantum leap in difference. The weakest of Warrior at the Xiantian Realm would curb stomp the strongest, most diligent and talented Houtian Warrior. Unless they had some sort of massive cheat or whatever.

But right now? A huge quantum leap to Adam would be having two damn hands.

Adam felt 'Research' simulate various attempts at recovering, before suggesting a few short (VERY PAINFUL) tests where he would gently push small amounts of energy into the scar tissues and mostly working meridians available. But eventually, his energy was running damn low... and he needed to do something to stabilize his system.

Right now? Most of his power, natural and otherwise, was subconsciously keeping him within the world of the living.

And that was it.

No actual recovery, just... clinging to life with everything he had.

Thankfully, he didn't have to say anything to use his abilities. Because he couldn't talk. Face paralysis aside, the left side of his throat was scared and torn as well. Thankfully, VERY thankfully, while he didn't have an animal Martial Spirit, he ALSO didn't have a glass fragment.

He had a Shard.

The glittering fragment faded into ghost like existence... And with absolute control, the world spiritual energy fell into order.

'Purification.'

This Shard, a part of his original soul, understood the idea of manipulating power. Of controlling energy. With precision, Adam focused on only pulling the power directly above his body... and higher. A cone of space, widening far above the rest of the Sect, fell into his Shard's domain.

Because it would take time to recover. Time to build. Time to train. Doing something stupid like 'Give me all the power' would just paint a target on his back, give him too much attention. Even as the massive free energy was controlled, the rate of attraction was deliberately throttled. Slowed. Ordered.

Outside, unless one flew directly overhead, there was no difference between the heavenly power being directed into the single floor medical recovery building and the random swirls of energy that normally occurred in this Realm.

Within his room however, a stream of energy flowed into his Shard and was directly processed by 'Purification'.

The many various energies were cleansed, the 'dross' returned to the sky as any energies too powerful or of various flavors were carefully removed from the untainted energies that existed everywhere. The strands formed were very wispy, thin hairs of pure white energy that were even further twisted and condensed by Adam.

So... so cautiously, he pulled a strand of energy into his system. Feeling his control wobble, he cut off the rest of the power for now and left it to gather in his Shard, the strand stabilizing as he swapped to 'Research' and examined his own actions carefully.

The pain was actually keeping him focused now, his weary mind able to examine his own system as the strand of energy slowly followed a modified meridian route through his damaged body.

He wasn't actually cultivating right now. His body couldn't handle it.

No, each path followed and meridian passed was slowly dissolving his only strand of energy, the power being absorbed by his body and slowly corroding the remaining venom that Spirit Beast had spewed in the air, dissolving the internal scar tissue, fighting off the low level of persistent infection, and providing nutrients to his incredibly strained organs and veins.

In the end, the strand of power had dissolved into his body before he could even complete one cycle of the modified meridian route. Which was fine, as 'Research' redesigned the whole damn thing half way through anyway, now that it had far more data to work with. And would probably continue to do so through this recovery process.

With tight focus, Adam had 'Purification' provide another wisp of white energy and started again, 'Research' ensuring he didn't accidentally kill himself.

Things could have gone better, honestly.

But he could work with this.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Side effect of cultivation: The body expels impurities.

If Adam was a healthy Warrior-to-be, following his Cultivation Technique would cause his body to extrude a thick black sludge, a horrible smelling substance full of conflicting concepts, impurities, body waste and damaged body cells.

He was NOT healthy.

The constantly shifting meridian route designed by 'Research' that he followed had ongoing effects. Yes, pain. His body was literally dissolving problematic sections and using the purified world spiritual energies to force a very slow recovery. But beyond this, he was slowly becoming more and more vile. Smells and goo were spreading from his body, building up beneath his bandages and clothing.

He had no alternative, his body was unable to move and the damage was far too great to risk waiting for assistance. Not that he could talk to anyone right now, anyway.

Thankfully, his improvement was immense. He was focusing on his core: His organs. Cycle after cycle, pure white energy wisps were being cautiously directed through his heart, lungs, liver, and so forth. Most importantly, and most carefully, he was exploring the meridian routes passing through his skull and brain.

Progress was beyond slow. He could easily triple his rate of improvement if he was willing to risk a little brain damage... but without 'Recovery', that was a stupid idea. So his hair became thick with brown, black, and thick sludge... even as his internals began to recover from such a long recovery time.

His hand, scars, and most of his damaged body would need to be addressed later. Right now, Adam was reinforcing and cleansing his blood, organs, and to a lesser extent his bone marrow, as the blood was produced there. Once those areas were stable, he planned on recovering his eye and ear. Sadly, the damage to his nose was welcomed... he KNEW this mess on his skin would smell beyond horrible.

This Cultivation Technique he was using? Near useless. Even modified as it currently was, 'Research' found dozens of improvements just through simple experimentation, it was clear that his ex-village didn't plan on wasting a high quality technique on a cripple. Didn't matter.

It would do for now.

With his Shard, the amount and purity of available energy was beyond the norm. The ability to hide his power was amazing! He had more than enough time to do some research, find more abilities and techniques, and develop something that would work well with his body as it recovered. Probably best to focus on 'Light' element techniques, those tended to be healing related from what little his memories noted.

His thoughts were disrupted when the door opened... and the healer gagged as she tried to enter.

Yeah, heal the nose last.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Well... that was embarrassing.

But at least he was clean now. Mostly. When the healer saw his body extruding impurities, she rightfully concluded he was attempting some sort of recovery technique now that he was... sort of responsive.

Not like he could talk. Or read or write. No one was willing to teach the 'Waste of Resources' how, and his so called 'family' had not stepped up either.

'Research' would help Adam figure communication out eventually, but for now the Healer just moved him to a bed with resistant sheets for easier cleaning and had an assistant wipe the new layers of filth off every few hours.

Seriously, this 'Burning Sword' Sect had earned Adam's loyalty. Even knowing that helping this one damaged child had little to no chance of reward OR payoff, they diligently worked to ensure his health and recovery ability. Even the help didn't mock him like his memories remembered... On some level Adam was surprised that a 'Righteous' Sect like this DIDN'T have back room evil everywhere.

It was a pleasant surprise.

He hid the Shard's ghostly presence by floating it above the ceiling, by the way. His control of the thing was absolute, and holding it beyond sight while working at full tilt didn't even strain his abilities, even as weakened and tired as he currently was.

Moment to moment, his recovery meridian routes changed. 'Research' not only discovered better paths, but kept discovering tricky issues that would crop up while his body shifted. The very act of healing could suddenly change the meridian route from beneficial healing to cancerous abscess or worse. Moment to moment, he had to keep his own transforming body under deep surveillance. It was required to not accidentally explode himself, or damage his spiritual organs.

The first time he fell asleep, it was a combination of mental strain and ignoring physical pain. The second time, after eating various slurry and several pills from the healers, it was more to enter a state of recovery.

Now? He was slowly developing something similar to a normal sleep schedule.

Each time that he woke up to changed and clean bandages, his feelings of appreciation and thankfulness swelled. Yes, his body was still... twisted. But at least these few people were treating him as someone worth medical attention. The memories of this body caused Adam's understanding and appreciation of the situation to be on another level at this point.

Side note, he still was not technically cultivating. But he was getting closer and closer to accomplishing a full cycle... even if the path of this energy cycle changed every moment as 'Research' kept his body on track. Once he was able to control enough purified world spiritual energy wisps, he could begin continuous healing cycles.

Right now, every time he lost a wisp as his body consumed it, he had to recover a little before trying again. This healing cycle caused physical strains on his system, even if the benefits easily outweigh the costs. And some areas with heavy scaring or even torn meridian nodes and damaged spiritual paths... well, attempting to repair those was not just soul tearing pain but slow. Damn slow.

Any progress was good progress though. The amount of energy needed to keep him alive was near nothing now, he could technically drop into a coma and stay stable for years if something went REALLY wrong while trying to fix it.

He glared with his only operational eye.

Adam had higher goals and ambitions than 'Able to live without medication'. And he would achieve those.

He winced as another pulse of black sludge squirted from his wounds.

Progress. Just focus on the progress.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Xiao Quan took a steady breath before entering the 'recovery' room again.

To be honest, everyone had been waiting for this one child to pass away. She remembered the Healer's sad listing of wounds, poison exposure... the long time where the child received insufficient treatment.

That he survived for an hour had felt like a miracle. That he struggled for days seemed impossible.

And now, through sheer desire to live, he somehow found a path to recovery.

She smiled at the mound of wounds, bandages, and filth. "Good morning!" Clean the easy areas first, save the wounds for after. "I talked with Healer Qin, he was the nice man with the bald head, and he seems positive that you can handle the stronger medication today as long as you can keep down the beef broth."

The child said nothing of course, but his eye seemed much more lucid today. "Whatever process you are feeling or experiencing, please keep up the good work! I'm sure you will be feeling much better in no time!"

Not a lie either. Half their struggle had been how fragile the commoner was... without a cultivation base, the powerful medications would act like acid and poison. Even the weakest treatments had nearly killed the little one... watching him waste away while her years of studying medical techniques and practicing pill production all became worthless... It had felt terrible.

Having used her QI to help loosen the impurities from his skin, she continued to clean. "Now I am sure you are tired of all that bone broth, so I may have secretly snuck in some orange juice... but don't snitch on me, alright?"

Hopefully it would increase his vitamin intake as well, helping him clear out his mouth from strange medical flavors was just a side effect. "This is from my personal stash too, if you tell anyone they will beg me for their own cups and we won't have any treats, you know?"

He didn't need to know it had low levels of spiritual energy. And she could handle giving up her portion of resources for a day or two, no one would care that much. "Now let me clean a bit and I'm sure you will feel loads better in no time!"

As she bustled and fussed, once again she wished someone had known the boys name. She wasn't insensitive enough to use the insult they provided, the way his own villagers had ignored his suffering had been clear enough to the Sect that they had to step up if he was to be properly cared for.

Besides, (She changed cleaning supplies, this gunk was thick!) the Sect could always find work for those in need. It wouldn't be important, or dangerous... maybe garbage collection or herb gardening... but once upon a time she too had been an orphan.

Helping others should be natural.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam watched the assistant leave, his torn face trying to smile.

Yeah, he knew how to be appreciative.

'Burning Sword' Sect, huh?

Well, he needed to start somewhere.

His mind temporarily thought about his mother... and how she would have likely loved the people he had met here.

Right.

A quick pulse to 'Research' had it focusing on the most stable, non-changing meridian route that would encourage recovery but NOT require constant attention. It would slow down his progress exponentially, but allow him to multitask a bit.

His mind focused, even as his body slowed its recovery and goo expulsion.

What could he do to return this level of assistance? This level of attention and care?

First, reconnaissance.

WAS this Sect this good? Or was it only the Healer division?

Easy enough to figure out, once he was more mobile. If anything, his horrific appearance would be a great social test. See a twisted, deformed child... how does one react with no other witnesses?

Anyone will act pure and innocent when surrounded by their peers. Will the powerful bully him? Take his resources? Abuse his trust?

His face weakly formed a smirk... probably the best he could do with the other half paralyzed.

They would find him a hard target to mess with... especially after some recovery.

Still, some time examining those at the bottom would clear up how 'good' this Sect truly was.

Second, even if they treat those at the bottom well, how do their other policies stack?

Slavery was possibly a thing in this Realm, he thought. Or at least, minions who had to do whatever you said or you could kill them with no penalties. How did the Sect handle that? And that didn't even address how ADAM should treat the issue, as social norms would clearly be different between Realms. In some stories, slavery was a transitory state used to pay off fees or debts, basically an alternative to the death penalty that you could work your way out of. In others, it was even WORSE than the terrible thoughts the word brought up.

Women's rights? The cultivation novels varied heavily on this, some had women only learn skills related to music or whatever while others were more gender neutral because a girl you hurt in the past could become a goddess and kick your ass. At the very least, the male and female staff HERE didn't treat each other in negative ways.

Rights of the weak? Are those at the bottom forced to accept the abuse of their families, rape of their women/men/kids, theft of their property? Certainly some Demonic Sects would, his research implied ALL demonic and evil Sects either became twisted due to cultivation techniques or JOINED because they were already twisted.

Anyway, some research was needed to see if the 'Burning Sword' Sect deserved his support or not.

At worst, he would recover enough to offer the Healer and Assistant (No idea what either of their names were) a way out. Set up his own area, which would be easy enough after he gathered enough abilities and power. Hell, an entire Sect dedicated to material production and healing... that didn't sound so bad.

Second, Improvements.

'Research' was WAY more useful than he had expected, and he had expected a LOT.

Cultivation modification (from his memories) was DAMN dangerous. Even with full review of his own body, he nearly killed himself a thousand times so far... how anyone EVER made a new Cultivation Technique was beyond him entirely. Genius wasn't nearly enough praise for those savants.

If he could find trustworthy people, he could easily expand his research, review their techniques and attacks, possibly find flaws and issues in the process and fix them...

And his Martial Spirit, if he could trust this Sect, would change things significantly. It was a game changing cheat, one his past memories would have been astounded by, and one he would CERTAINLY abuse in the future.

Adam didn't just control the energies called by his cultivation technique... he controlled all free energies in his Shard's domain.

Some formations built to confine world spiritual energy, and he could fill them with customized rations of PURIFIED ambient energy. Ones dedicated to specific cultivation techniques, or just raw purified untainted energy like what he was using currently to heal himself.

It would take some research to ensure he didn't just trust a helpful face or fall for some sort of honey trap, but if this 'Burning Sword' Sect turned out to be trustworthy... well.

Adam knew how to return kindness with kindness.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

GOD WHY DID HE HEAL HIS NOSE!?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam sighed as he forced his body to twitch as much as he could.

Boredom had hit him like a brick.

Again, he checked his Shard, 'Purification' humming away. Nope. Not enough.

His Shard's ability was as weak as HE was, at the moment. It was not even converting the various world spiritual energies into something usable, just filtering and sorting what was there. This being the 'Burning Sword' Sect, that mostly involved a lot of flame energies, sword spirit power, and movement ki.

All useless to him, as he had no cultivation base.

Beyond that was the various 'impurities', which... well, he had learned a lot of truth during this healing process.

First of all, most if not ALL cultivation techniques actually induced so-called 'impurities' into the body. Yeah, that sounded backwards... but the NEW impurities were much smaller, easier to work with, and were used to push out the much more dangerous and damaging impurities already within the Cultivator, from eating worldly food and drinking worldly beverages.

Just breathing the air contaminated the body, and cultivation would reduce the severity by a large margin. The higher tier cultivation techniques would generate far less contamination and impurities, would gather far more compatible energy streams, and be able to rebuild the host's body to be way more compatible with what was available.

Long story short, Adam's trick of purifying the world spiritual energy before absorption? A massive cheat.

The downside was that the pure, untainted worldly spiritual energy was minute. Now that his internals were becoming more and more healthy, the limiting factor for his recovery was not his ability to manipulate energy wisps but generating that white power in the first place.

Only by restricting his Shard to a thin vertical column of a domain could he reach high enough into the sky that the high winds could expose him to more of the good stuff. Otherwise he was stuck with the small fragments of usable stuff that swirled in the mess down here.

Forcing his slowly repairing muscles to flex and get worked in, Adam observed his translucent Shard as it filtered the various energies, finding the smallest wisps of pure power to work with. So little. And it took so long.

He reviewed the most recent data from 'Research'. His organs were not only fully recovered, but enhanced. Not quite up to First Order Warrior tier, but above peak human easily. These last few days, ESPECIALLY before running out of purified energy, had vastly improved his blood quality, organ efficiency, and even a bit of his muscle density.

And it showed. His body may be scarred, but internally Adam had recovered so much that his control over energy wisps had increased by leaps and bounds! It made each recovery cycle easier to handle, the wisps larger and more condensed before following the meridian route.

The down side? Being able to control more of that energy meant his supply ran out.

Now he had to wait three hours to gather enough energy to work with for ten minutes.

His recovery speed hadn't slowed though, because he wasn't using LESS power, just more of it more efficiently. His system was even using the new wisps with better effects, as the improvement of his body was actively improving how well 'Research' and 'Purification' could operate. And 'Growth', presumably... still too dangerous to activate that one.

It still meant he had two hours and fifty minutes of boredom between each healing session.

In this square, white walled room.

If TV existed in this Realm, he had no evidence of it. Radio didn't exist either. Books were difficult to make and didn't last long (Not even a thousand years!), so were rare. People COULD use something called 'Jade Slips' to share information, as it was similar to a three dimensional memory storage device... but those were fairly valuable and tended to be used to share battle skills, which were like martial arts and didn't require a specific talent level of Martial Spirit to use. Battle skills really only required physical dedication and the ability to comprehend advanced concepts, and people stuck in their cultivation progression focused on them heavily.

So... no trashy romance novels or whatever to distract him from the boring room and horrible smells his body would create.

Adam grinned as best he could as he twitched his unmaimed right leg. THAT was the biggest deal. Being able to move and clean himself was his personal goal today, or at least this week... everything else would come later.

Because as bad as his generated impurities were NOW, it would get worse. Much worse. Because he was expelling junk from his wounds and injuries, he hadn't even touched the natural impurities held within the flesh, tendons, bones and so forth of the civilian body.

The medical care was speeding up this process many fold, one had to note. He COULD have recovered without assistance, 'Purification' and 'Research' had amazing synergy like that... but the Healer had been providing healthy soups, very basic medicine, and clean bandages to prevent further infections. It freed up his energies by a significant margin by not having to use heavenly power to save his insides from malnutrition and necrosis.

When he regained some little movement, he eventually could begin to attempt communication. Maybe even ask for some form of entertainment or whatever. Find out how long he would be under supervision, what he would have to do to gain some form of living quarters, what his options for employment would be.

His crooked smile twitched as his right foot shifted. Pain aside, he felt he was making pretty good progress!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Xiao Quan paced. "No, I am sure it is a sign of recovery."

Healer Jin frowned. "The boy has expelled nearly twice his body weight in impurities by this stage, I am shocked he hasn't died from exhaustion or starvation by this point. Even tripling the amount of food and water we've provided him doesn't account for the sheer mass of material lost."

Quan sighed. "You heard what his people called him?"

The Healer sighed. "Cánfèi? You mean he wasn't called that due to his... most recent injuries?"

She nodded. "Asked a round a bit, and a few guys were more open to questioning." And staring at her boobs. "The boy had a rough life and unlocked a very unusual Martial Spirit."

Jin leaned back in her chair. "Unusual? I suppose it was one of the more rare ones then. Maybe a plant or weapon... something elemental? I've met a guy with an Ice martial spirit before."

Quan shook her head. "It was unknown. Looked like glass... but he was unable to cultivate and didn't show any special affinities to working in a forge or with sand or crystals. The whole village washed their hands of him."

The Healer frowned. "You think the trauma of his injury jump started his martial spirit? It has happened before... especially if no one attempted to stimulate his spirit in the past."

Xiao Quan sighed. "As you may expect, they abandoned him completely. No supplied stimulants or cultivation pills, no rare herbs or fruits... they didn't even bother to help him learn how to meditate. Gave him the most basic Cultivation Technique they had access to, just to avoid external criticism outside the village itself... And just ignored him at best. The comments from the other boys were pretty vile, even if they eventually admitted that he helped them escape from the Spirit Beast."

The Healer's wince was obvious. "Well... considering how many low level medicines we forced him to consume, it isn't much of a surprise that it would help provoke his abilities. And if his innate talents helped him extract the most from the potions, pills, and food possible... that could explain the massive amounts of impurities produced."

She nodded confidently. "I am willing to stake my cultivation quota that these most recent changes are positive and not a sign of his body catastrophically collapsing. If we could risk using our detection skills on his body without damage, I'm sure the data would back me up."

Healer Jin tapped the table... and nodded. "I'll risk it. Some outside forces are trying to pressure us to resolve this situation, but I agree that his improvement over the last few weeks is significant enough for us to attempt the use of higher level recovery pills."

Quan held back her grin as best she could. Days of argument and campaigning, and it paid off! She was SURE that the boy's improvement rate meant his body could safely use the more dangerous cultivation recovery pills. After all, he had not only easily handled her watered down cultivation orange juice but had seemed to drastically improve from the energy exposure!

With a skip in her step she went to help him clean the most recent mess. Any day now, the child would surely show stronger signs of recovery!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

TOO BORED.

Frustrated, Adam slammed on 'Research' and began manipulating the strand of world energy through the newest designed meridian route. Honestly, the meridians acted like dots and the route was a squiggly line connecting them like connect-the-dots. Some paths would enhance the materials passed through, others would erode the body to allow spiritual or conceptual changes to his system. Only the constant testing and prodding by 'Research' ensured that Adam didn't accidentally gain the ability to melt his own skin or something.

As precious time slipped by his energies followed the best theoretical route through his body. A thin river of energy that enhanced the weak routes and reinforced the strained meridians passed, the pure white power faded rapidly as Adam's torn system devoured it hungrily.

Still, it was enough for this most recent attempt... one that 'Research' only had vague suggestions to assist with.

With a harsh focus, he directed the white energy to surround one of his many damaged meridians. This one was mostly intact, but would hopefully provide information about how to repair the many far more damaged points in his system.

Adam winced as raw pain and a strange tension flooded his system. Even with the assistance of his Shard, the energy did NOT want to modify his slightly torn meridian. Seconds passed as the white spiritual energies forced a spiritual point in his body to shift even as it was devoured as a source of fuel by that same target. Enough energy to cycle dozens of times through his system was seemingly wasted as it funneled into the open wound.

His mentality was sharp and rigid as changes rapidly occurred, 'Research' carefully recording every moment even as most of the provided power leaked from his body through the spiritually damaged point exposed by his meridian. Thankfully, most of that lost energy was caught by his Shard, filtered, and sent right back in to continue the process.

Cautiously, he tried various modifications to his random actions as 'Research' took notes.

Forcing more energy than a certain rate? Damaged the meridian further.

Too little? Risked the node collapsing.

Twisting the energies seemed to help encourage stability... but only if twisted in specific patterns at specific flow rates. Something similar to a heartbeat, bursts if tight twisted energies followed by lowered rates where the meridian could 'recover' from the impact... it was slow, and very energy intensive, but it WAS improving and growing closer to a 'healthy' state.

He was distracted as he heard clapping. The assistant was back in the room. "Oh! You've managed to move your right foot! I know someone's earned a little more juice! Let me just clean up a bit and I'll tell you about the new medication we've managed to get approved. It won't taste good, but I think you will improve at an even faster rate!"

He let her cheerful monologue relax the room while he focused mainly on the slow recovery of a single meridian, hundreds more damaged waiting to see if his newly developed techniques could recover or (in a few unfortunate cases) regrow the spiritual points in his system.

Even if Adam couldn't talk, having someone this pleasant just to act as company was a lovely change of pace. As long as he ignored how embarrassing the cleaning process was. At least he had less and less filth as the healing process advanced, surely that was a sign of advancement.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Clean and alone again, he reviewed the notes gathered.

If the meridian was originally 93% undamaged, the testing brought it down to 74% or lower and the tricks and techniques developed recovered it back up to 86%. So a net loss overall, but only if one focused on the actual recovery amounts accomplished.

More important than the damage caused was the information 'Research' gained! Right now it was mostly a massive list of 'DO NOT DO THIS!' gathered, but that alone made testing more safe and the results more profound.

Burned through his available energy like a bitch, though. He was confident that if he had enough available and pure energy, eventually that meridian point would have completely recovered! Probably.

More valuable than the actual techniques for healing and manipulating meridian points though was the various sensing techniques he had to develop. Because 'Research' was very helpful and determining the effects of experimentation, but an even MORE valuable decision was to detect the state of his meridian points BEFORE trying to fix them. Once he saw how improved 'Research' became during tests, he used up the remainder of his available world spiritual energies having 'Research' develop as many methods of detection, target modeling, and environmental sensing that he could.

It cut his session short, but there was a saying of 'It doesn`t waste time to sharpen one`s ax'... in other words, preparation could save more time than attempting to skip said step. And Adam felt this would pay off highly! Already, his various sensing tricks were being used automatically by 'Research', determining and redesigning what strange shape the 'Purification' domain should take to increase the gathering rate of purified energy during cultivation.

Hopefully soon he could design a solid method for meridian repair, a vital step if he ever wanted to rebuild the lost nodes in his missing hand. At the moment, even if he somehow regrew the damn thing... well, without meridian nodes it would be unable to ever grow as strong as the rest of his body. Not to mention that his theoretically atypical meridian paths would force him to use 'Research' to modify EVERY Cultivation Technique found in the future to accommodate his deformity. Which would be annoying.

As his Shard organized the free energies, Adam began messing with the dross normally tossed out of the way of his gathering domain. It may be worthless compared to pure, untouched heavenly power... but to normal cultivators, this was the stuff they fought over. Well, parts of it. A flame cultivator would actively repel these fluid energies, for example. Except for possibly those liquid flame essences.

Out of raw boredom, he began sorting the energies on the roof above his recovery room. His Shard twisted them, having the various flavors of power filter apart, sort into energy swirls, condense into something approaching a liquid... basically Adam was drawing shapes in the world like a child marking fog on a window. Even made a smiley face!

His attention perked up though when he felt more pure energy than expected gather with his Shard. By forcing the dross to gather out of the way, it seemed the resulting vacuum was pulling more of the untouched energy fields directly into his domain's processing range! Very useful.

Adam glanced upwards at the unseen slowly swirling energy pools. Not really visible to anyone really, besides Martial Spirits. Still, he would need to get rid of these at some point.

Still lacking entertainment, he spent the rest of the evening trying to force the different power fields to stick to each other, to fuse with the material of the building, to solidify into something stable... even made a few attempts to launch them into the distance like a projectile.

He didn't make much progress, but at least it was entertaining.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

This was going to suck.

This was going to suck.

Damn damn damn damn...

With an audible pop, Adam felt his neck crack and a WAVE of agony submerge his body. Forget pins and needles, this was sledgehammers and iron spikes! He nearly lost focus on 'Research' as he forced the power in his neck meridians to continue circulating. The scars on the left side of his throat had opened, black ooze flooding out as he struggled to close the various wounds on his body.

Yeah, that sucked.

On the plus side, as each moment passed the pain was subsiding, he could actually FEEL most of his body again, and his spine was finally able to focus on recovering itself rather than having his energy spent on stopping organ failure, repairing brain oxygen deprivation, and lowering blood toxicity.

Seriously, his body was messed up.

As he continued to circulate energy... well, it got boring again. This wasn't a HARD procedure, not with 'Research' watching over his shoulder... it was just lengthy and monotonous, at least as long as he was doing things correctly and not almost killing himself.

So he focused back on the energy pools above his room.

NOW! Things Adam had learned by playing with the worlds spiritual energies, part one!

First, thought it may be obvious... energy doesn't like staying still. Like water or electricity, it was fundamentally easier to guide the power rather than grip it and manhandle the stuff. Providing paths and guidance also reduced energy waste during the process, which was a nice surprise. It was also easier to accomplish than his previous 'Grab everything and force it to be sorted' method.

The basic pattern he used was swirls. It caused the most pure energies to sink towards the middle, while lower classed energy or energy bonded to unrelated powers drifted to the edges. A sort of presort, one that was very difficult to do with pure manipulation via his Shard.

So he started making tons of swirls. Some with a single power, some with a mix of energies, some with only simple types of components, some just massive messes of random spiritual debris. Which is how he discovered a new trick!

When two swirls come in contact, there are two outcomes: If they share the same directional spin, they will eventually combine... If they swirl in opposite directions, they will attempt to extract similar powers from each other, creating two unique filtered swirls.

Pulsing power through his neck, attempting to repair the worst of the scars near his spinal tissues, Adam played with the heavenly swirls.

First thing he did was try and determine the ratios of each type of energy. It delayed his neck repair attempt by a few days... but then again, he KNEW it was going to hurt, so a delay wasn't THAT terrible. Point was, he used the pure power collected with 'Research' and expanded his detection tricks as much as possible... which made energy detection much easier.

Flame related energies were the majority. There was a swirl that had 60% of the local energies in it that was pretty much only fire up on the roof, and the swirl was so heavy that it may even be visible at this point. The next swirl only had 18% of the bulk, and it was momentum related. Sword energies mostly, though there were movement techniques and defensive related powers as well.

After finding the rest of the junk to be fractions of a percent, Adam smushed random junk together into 'trash swirls', spun them counter to his main collection swirls, and surrounded them with the things. The trash swirls would absorb and sometimes disconnect the random junk connected to the flame and momentum swirls, creating a much easier to work with material for his Shard.

Most importantly to Adam though, destroying those weak bonds between various energies released that pure, untainted heavenly spiritual energy that Adam needed! This untainted stuff was acting as a natural bond between incompatible powers in the air, and his new filtration/refinement method could free up minute amounts of it.

Based on this behavior, he decided to call it 'Binding Energy'. By its very nature, it either existed free and pure in the air or bound between two other elements, no other form was possible... so it was relatively easy to gather the stuff.

It also may be why this particular energy was so useful for healing and spiritual node repair... its essential essence was to bind and connect.

As the black pus from his neck slowed and his body stopped tingling, Adam glanced down and... with strain... yes.

He could move his right arm.

Muscles were weak, but that was fixable. He probably wouldn't be able to fix his left hand any time soon, all his repair work had taken days at the fastest so far... might even have to wait until he began cultivating.

So for now, he focused on his left eye, and then (eventually) his left ear. Fully working senses would only enhance 'Research', and at least all those damaged parts were still attached to his body, unlike his damn hand.

As his Shard took over the various swirls from his command, Adam focused 'Research' on his eye, determining the spiritual paths most likely to enhance recovery... and paused.

With his spine fully connected (And slowly recovering to peak efficiency), his control over his internal energies had... vastly improved. Almost triple the energy wisps were now controllable at once, 'Research' eagerly suggesting meridian routes that would work well if done simultaneously rather than a single circuit. People or Cultivators would likely be unwilling to risk such a trick, but since Adam had so much experience multitasking...

Even as five different circuits began cycling, Adam's focus was solid and persistent. 'Research' had all five paths modified during use, shifted in subtle ways, altered to prevent tragedy and harm.

The only down side? His ten minutes of recovery every three hours had dropped to only two minutes.

As his energy wisps vanished into his body, Adam watched the vast improvement of his recovery speed... and the two hours, 58 minutes of waiting he now had to do.

Yeah, this was terrible.

As SOON as his body felt stable enough, he was going to start cultivating. With his own internal, renewable energy source his recovery would have been vastly more simple and effective.

With a sigh, he focused on his Shard and began quadrupling the number of swirls, pushing them into three dimensional shapes while 'Research' tried to detect how to optimize the process. Once he got some testing under his belt, he would swap to 'Purification' and see what effects it had on these energy vortexes.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Xiao Quan pushed the door open with her back, the cleaning supplies a heavy load in her arms. "Good morning!" She carefully shifted the door closed, focused on her unstable load. "Sorry if I am a bit clumsy, we got a supply drop from the resources department and I knew we could use some extra cleaning materials in this... area?"

She blinked as the crippled child... was waving. And sitting up.

Oh he was covered in impurity slime and such as expected, but his neck injury required four hours of surgery. Him moving a leg had been a miracle, one that had her coworkers eagerly discussing between work shifts... "How?"

Her face broke into a smile she just couldn't hold back. "Brilliant!" The supplies were dumped in a chair as she dashed close and carefully began testing his reach, flexibility, and the state of his various stitches and bandages. "Amazing, just... this is marvelous! Stay still, don't stress anything until I can make sure nothing was injured from your movements..."

The few medical detection skills were quick to confirm that the child still wasn't a cultivator, but he WAS vastly improved! "Look left..." Yes, his left eye was slightly shifting. It had been close to dead flesh before, the improvement levels were unbelievable! "And take a deep breath..."

The surgery scars for the neck was gone, the lungs were both clear, the heartbeat was VERY strong... she quickly began the cleaning procedures, using her own Battle Qi to carefully loosen the black tar from his hairs and skin. Said skin was pure and unmarked, scars and welts vanished, even if it did make him look slightly younger now...

Her face almost hurt, she was smiling so much. "What did I say! Just a little time and some medication, I said things would get better! Just you wait, I'm sure after a bit of rehabilitation you will be up and about in no time!"

And it was true. His body was still damaged, but it was clear whatever process his Martial Spirit had accomplished had been focused on internal issues until now, which was probably why it seemed like no progress was occurring for so long... the boy must have been so damaged inside that his Spirit focused on those issues first, and only after reaching a certain level of stability was it able to work on other, more visible issues.

She rinsed her hands with water. "Right, we can't increase the amount or quality of your medications, the amounts you are taking is already a bit dangerous, but I think some non-medicinal options may help a bit. I will give some basic massages, now that your body can handle that level of strain, and hopefully it will assist your muscles in relaxing and recovering."

She tried not to hum too loudly as she moved the impurities to the collection bucket. Like other types of human wastes, low amounts of impurities were very useful when making fertilizer... the amount this boy was producing had helped lower the costs for his medical care at this point, as strange as the situation was.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam felt... good.

Clean, of course, was always awesome. And he had twenty eight minutes until able to do a recovery session, aka 'Cover myself with filth' again.

But... how long had it been since someone had even held hands with him? Forget something like a full body massage, with her being careful about his damaged leg and fractured remains of a left arm. Just human contact had felt... way too good. Especially after those years of being mocked and ostracized.

His Shard was slowly twisting inside the flame swirl, 'Purification' active and enhancing the spin. Each rotation of the swirl had purification energies encouraging the edges to decay, returning the burning powers inwards, the junk outwards, and releasing even more Bonding energy for his Shard to collect.

His collection cone still existed, by the way. At various spots along the thin tube, he now had various spinning swirls of power attracting more energy. Some clockwise, some counter, some spinning vertically, and so forth. They tugged along the Binding energy for Adam to snap up, then became stuck in his swirls which would create an absence of energy, sucking even more power inwards.

Lazy eyes watched nothing as he carefully regulated the speed of absorption. He wasn't sure what his maximum processing speed was, but it wasn't worth risking the attention of those far above his (currently nonexistent) power level. Right now he had a steady flow of power and various energies being gathered by purifying the junk power that circled the atmosphere.

Checking that he was alone... he carefully reached into his mouth and pulled out the medical pill provided.

With a clench, Adam crushed the slightly glowing medicine, his Shard forcing the energies within to be sent through the refining swirls, Binding energy being absorbed as the many individual powers were separated.

Now that he could MOVE, he didn't have to put up with the impure medication provided. A normal child couldn't handle too much of these... and honestly, neither could Adam. The impurities included in the pills were far less dangerous than normal, the pill process making them easier to take without issue... but his purification process dropped the danger down to near zero.

He watched the various dangerous elements of the pill get absorb into the trash swirls, the sorted nutrition energies and patterns being absorbed by his Shard and then introduced to his body internally. Brain, then Organs, then Blood... the powers were less effective now that they were no longer in the carefully designed pill structure, but they were far more gentle and safe to consume.

Unlike normal medication, the purification process eliminated the chance of overdose, dependency, backlash, and so forth.

With another glance at the door and a longer, more resigned look at his own left stump... Adam sighed, sat up, and got into a meditative stance.

As annoying as not having a hand would be, that could be fixed later.

As crippling as missing many meridian nodes should be, that too could be handled eventually.

As dangerous as cultivation theoretically must be, Adam had things to accomplish.

Late at night, in a medical center, covered in impurities and still wounded...

Adam's Shard faded into view before his face, his expression determined.

The energies of heaven and the earth were called.

The popular and well known First Order Warrior Cultivation Technique was, again, passed through 'Research'.

His Shard modified the technique, for one as wounded as Adam. Missing meridian nodes like Adam. Missing a limb like Adam.

The simplified route was discarded, as a much more complicated one was drafted and tested. The First Order Warrior of the Houtian Realm was denoted by his or her ability to not only wield their own Battle Qi, but to expel those energies externally and retain control of them. The First through Third Order Cultivation Technique focused on the muscles of the Cultivator.

And Adam had just spent months examining his body, his structure, and his muscles... at levels unheard of.

'Research' saw the safe, generic cultivation technique as beyond flawed. True, it would allow those starting their path a smooth and standardized method of gaining power. A stable foundation with few risks and even fewer rewards. But Adam had resources they did not.

His cultivation technique was... odd. Far too long, it hit many meridian nodes normally ignored except by esoteric abilities and strange cultivating tricks. It also required controlling ten separate energy strands on ten individual paths, allowing some damaged meridian nodes to distribute the strain of so much energy without causing a devastating collapse of the spiritual pathways.

Adam's ten meridian routes needed to be done simultaneously, with various pauses and speed variations applied in the process. Without his detection techniques and the active analysis of 'Research', he would be guaranteed to suffer cultivation deviation and serious energy backlash.

He held back twitches as his body made rapid changes. 'Research' had him making thousands of very minute adjustments, the room for error near non-existent.

Feeling the warmth of Binding energy as it forced his muscles to decay, to regrow, to realign... even his bones cracked slightly, the maladjusted shards dissolving, the badly aligned recovery sections damaged and pulled ever slightly towards a full recovery position.

Cautiously, Adam allowed the most pure Flame energies to leave its swirl and carefully enter his system according to patterns by 'Research'.

His body spasmed!

Yeah, bad idea.

Clenching his teeth, Adam adjusted the Flame energies path as it burned and consumed his pathways. The frantic 'Research' notes had him attempt to shift the lava like power in various directions, touching bits and pieces of his own system... only to feel his flesh burn into ash.

Finally a lucky mistake showed how Binding energy could flow alongside the Flame energy, letting whatever flesh didn't evaporate to grow a closer affinity with heat in general. Oh, he was still on fire... but his new flesh burned slower.

And slower.

Eventually, the Flame energy was able to use Binding energy as a bridge, while Binding energy allowed his devastated flesh to recover and regrow with added heat resistant features. The entire process was a huge boost to 'Research', the data gathered suggesting that this process would not only improve his muscles but also increase his ability to use fire related power (Considering his location, that seemed a wise investment) and reduce the damage that heat could cause his body it battle.

It was a compelling argument, and 'Research' wanted him to apply the process to his whole system after a bit of study. But.

Adam looked at his right arm... and the black ash drifting from the massive scar in his flesh. Touching it made him flinch.

Well.

Glancing at his Shard, and seeing how LITTLE Binding energy was available to work with... sigh.

At least he had worked with fire in the past.

With an unwilling determination and a slightly depressed attitude, Adam focused 'Research' as he began introducing pure Flame energy to Binding power, his eyes glaring at his flesh as it began to visibly glow... and sizzle.

So far, Cultivation sucked.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

This probably wouldn't be as painful if he was working with Water energy or something.

Adam focused on his arm, again burning the scar as fresh flesh slowly regenerated. Because it needed to be healed TONIGHT before the Healers or that Assistant came in and saw his arm covered in burns. Each wave of flames burned less material, as his reborn flesh grew more and more fire resistant.

Hurt like hell though.

The worst part? The regrown flesh thing was a side effect. He was technically conditioning his meridians to handle Flame based energies better, the regrowing meat thing was an unintentional secondary result of the process. Hopefully when he reached the muscle refinement part of Cultivation, this type of conversion process would be much less painful.

There were many positive side effects though.

He paused in his work, 'Research' reviewing his progress.

Then focused on one of his less damaged meridian nodes. This one was 97% functional, part of his upper left shoulder area. With focus, he allowed the Flame and Binding energy to consume the spiritual conceptual point.

Then, as his body reformed slightly more fire resistant material... he overwrote the healing process to mimic the meridian point on his RIGHT shoulder. These nodes were all fairly similar to each other, but he had seen so many rebuilt by the Flame tempering process that he felt this could be the answer he was looking for.

It took a long time due to how many sensing techniques he was running and how slow he was working... and the pain was unbelievable. But ever so slowly... he watched his spiritual point rebuild.

It was not aligned correctly.

It was weak.

It would require further refinement, as if it was a newborn...

But it was fully present, no damage detected.

Another Flame bath had it regrow properly aligned.

A third evaporation had it develop flexibility and slowly gain proper reinforcement.

So... it was three times slower than working on a functional meridian. It took more than three times the amount of concentration and energy. And it hurt... REALLY REALLY BAD.

But... Adam turned towards the dozens of damaged meridians on the left side of his body.

Now there was a path forward.

Well. Later. Later there was a path forward.

With a sigh, he focused back on his right arm and the burn scar still clearly visible.

If he was going to deliberately char his own body, he needed to know how to heal burns first. Really, really well.

'Research' hummed along as Adam continued to watch his flesh glow, blister, char, and regrow. The rest of his mind was technically 'Cultivating' with ten strands of power in the background, but his body was so weak it was all being consumed before a single cycle could complete. So he couldn't actually develop his own Battle Qi yet. Slightly annoying.

Ah well, a healthy body was worth slowing his own progress.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam winced as the furious healer's assistant stormed out of the room.

She had freaked out.

And that was AFTER he healed most of the burns. What was left just looked like a bad blister more than anything. Still, the burn medication cream didn't hurt anything, even if they stopped his medication to ensure it wasn't a bad reaction. And she stopped yelling as much.

Meh, lack of medication wouldn't slow him down much.

Side note, he had to be careful to clean the testing area of his skin before attempting to use his Flame refinement technique. Because until he gets better control or can internalize the generated heat entirely... well.

Burned impurity sludge turned into the WORST smelling gas ever after evaporation. He nearly vomited, and considering how he NORMALLY smelled these days that was impressive!

He had managed to convey to some extent to his healers that the burn was an expected result through some... complicated charades. And managed to request some books to assist in learning how to write, as his neck bones may be mostly recovered but his vocal cords were not. And not being able to read made following cultivation notes difficult. Eventually he got some texts to work with.

...They were children books. But it was good enough for 'Research'.

Thanks for the meal!

So despite the success of his 'meridian rebirth' technique, he didn't want to stress the healers out more by consuming half his body in fire. Also, if he took the time to do more study, Adam could eventually (hopefully) reduce or eliminate the 'burn yourself to ash' part of the process. Because that hurt.

Before he could consider his next steps the door slammed open again, the woman who had been helping him stomping towards his bed. "Right, if you are going to mess around with fire you should have SOMETHING to work off of. Your village didn't give you anything worth anything about how to work with Flame energies..." She glared at his arm. "Clearly."

With more care than her attitude would suggest, she gently placed some hand copied notes on his bedside table. "This isn't exactly the standard Cultivation Technique given to new Outer Disciples. Not really allowed to share that kind of stuff until you officially join the Burning Sword Sect." She glared at Adam, the boy holding up his hand in surrender... causing her glare to lower a few steps. "Don't share this. It is my personal cultivation notes, and although I had to leave a lot of pages back in my room unless you officially join, it should be enough to stop you from BURNING YOUR DAMN FLESH."

Huffing heavily, she paused and took... several deep breaths. "Right. I need to go cool down a little, I will help you read this after your next cleaning, please STOP INCINERATING YOUR BODY, and we will get things sorted. Alright? Alright."

And she was gone again.

...Well now Adam felt a bit guilty about self mutilation. That was a first.

He checked his memories even as 'Research' continued to examine all past classes and lessons he had in this world and matched up what it could to the already memorized children books, his eyes absently memorizing page after page of the newly provided notes. The process was slower with one hand, but with his mind so occupied things were easy enough.

So his village was under the protection of the Burning Sword Sect as was expected. It was in their territory, and his people would warn about Spirit Beast invasions while searching the local edge of the forests for cultivation resources and harvesting lumber to sell to other towns and cities. Cultivators could pretty much ignore hot or cold weather, so the non-mystical stuff was sold to the many, MANY civilians that lived closer to society.

From what he could remember about the Sect itself when mentioned in the Village, there were tiers of membership: Outer Assistant, Outer Disciple, Inner Assistant, Inner Disciple, Personal Assistant, Personal Disciple, Elder Assistant, Guest Elder, Elder, the Patriarch, and the Ancestors. Each level could give orders to those below, with the Patriarch being the leader the Sect and the setter of all rules therein.

Ancestors tend to be former Patriarchs and Elders that grew in power to the point where direct interference with the Sect was considered socially unacceptable, but would act as a social backbone to the Sect as a whole: A deterrence to outside attacks or anyone attempting to bully the Sect when in times of danger, but who would mostly spend time cultivating alone somewhere. Some even ascended to rumored higher planes of existence or other worlds, establishing new Sects for their old ones to eventually join and gain support when they reached new Realms of cultivation.

So that assistant, Miss... uh. Whatever her name was.

He frowned. Seriously, no one ever introduced themselves and he couldn't exactly talk right now. Miss Assistant then.

That woman sharing her cultivation notes was VERY trusting and beyond gracious. He wouldn't abuse this level of kindness, but SHE didn't know that... it was a heavy risk sharing this kind of information with some crippled child. He wouldn't tell anyone of course, but at this point trying to hide her actions may be too late... Sect members with higher levels of cultivation could sense people and actions miles away easily, and their enhanced brains could process that ocean of information without fault. If they cared enough to look that is... no way to tell at this point anyway.

Yeah, he would have to repay this massive gift at some point.

Adam winced as he watched his childhood again. Without the support of 'Research', he had just been a smarter than intelligent boy... with many unknown and useless languages stuffed in his head. He tried to learn what he could, but... well, again, he didn't get much support from the people other than his mother. And other people didn't matter back then anyway, he just wanted to work hard and be the best he could because SHE wanted him to be awesome! And... and he would be.

Now that he had the advantages 'Research' granted, each weak or uncertain teaching experience from his mom was carefully examined. Unmentioned social norms and 'everyone knows' data was now being extrapolated, combined with bits of text he had seen, fragments of lessons he had overheard, and conversations he had not been officially a part of.

But even as his mind rapidly gained advanced language skills and started sorted various cultivation tricks and tips from his memories... more disturbing things were also uncovered.

His mother had been tired. Very tired. Strained. And trying... oh so hard, to help Adam to grow and become his own man. For a woman raped and abused by the society around her, she passed none of that burden onto her child.

She was a good woman. And if this ended up being the only parent he could remember, at least he had an amazing example.

He sniffled a little before forcing his mind to focus on memorizing the notes Miss Assistant, that nice woman, had provided.

It was hard enough to read this thing with one eye without stupid tears getting in the way.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Third Elder Cho waved off her assistants and glared at the many reports on her to-do list.

The initial suggestions and actions she had taken about this 'Cánfèi' boy had seemed easy enough and reasonable.

Then things got complicated.

First of all, she (like most) assumed the heavily injured boy was going to just die. She mainly funded his recovery medications to ensure his death would be as peaceful and painless as possible. It was only right after all, one of her Sect accidentally caused his injuries while fighting that beast.

Then... the mess started.

The boy showed signs of recovery, as few as they were. She had been ecstatic! Her medical division had taken a few risks and could now claim a massive achievement! Her standing would shoot through the roof, and she would save a child who could and SHOULD have died weeks ago!

While forcing a serious and mature expression on her face, she had eagerly gone to visit the former leader of 'Forestend' Village to let him know that the final victim of the incident was expected to survive and possibly recover to some extent. She felt lucky to catch the man, mostly recovered from his own wounds, as he was in the process of gathering the survivors of his people to move to a new village location being sponsored by the Burning Sword Sect.

The meeting went poorly.

With a sigh, she began sorting her mess into piles.

The problem came down to superstition.

The child Cánfèi was born after a rival village attacked, his mother raped by a small time famous villain from abroad. Though justice was done to the man, that already cast a black mark on the boy's future, fair or not. This was compounded by the woman herself.

She was a beauty. The village of Forestend called her the 'Wood Fairy', and her gentle voice and kindness had charmed strangers and broke hearts for years. Having her violated by outsiders left the people angry, the rapist death left them without a target.

So they turned toward the babe.

The mother knew this of course. She immediately began to campaign for her boy, reaching out to family, repairing relationships, forgiving past slights, making many deals and agreements. Even as a bastard she convinced her father, the boy's grandfather, to allow him to carry the family name, as her family basically was the nobility supporting this outpost. Cánfèi may even eventually inherit the family head position, if he preformed well enough.

Unfortunately, the child made another strike against his future.

He was strange.

Not dangerous, not malicious, no... in fact, if he had terrified people it may have stabilized his situation and given the people an outlet for their feelings.

No, he was quiet. He watched. He listened. Anything and everything had him absorbing information like a sponge. He slept little, and if not reminded he would forget to eat for long periods of time. Thankfully his mother paid attention to his needs carefully, but it was odd.

Odd things were dangerous. They were signs of Martial Spirit attacks, of possible infiltration by demonic Sects, even of some sort of tribulation or worse!

And this child was too calm. Too smart. Too strange.

His mother worked harder. Every moment she was attempting to earn more money for food, to convince children to play with her baby, to earn or borrow learning materials so he could discover more of the world.

As Cánfèi grew, his mother had to make... more distasteful deals. A single mother with little support from her family had to do things to ensure her child could thrive. But she did it all with a smile.

When she died, according to Elder Cho's investigation after, things went bad.

The many deals she made fell apart. The people stopped sending food she had paid for, children avoided the boy despite agreements, resources she had gained were taken away without concern, and oaths that had been sworn were broken. Her unnatural child was no longer a concern now that his talented and attractive mother had passed on.

What resources the child should have had were confiscated by his Grandfather for other children with better family histories.

But the odd child survived.

The village grew... concerned. Possibly some felt guilt, knowing that if they had died the loving mother would have accepted their children with open arms and that honest smile she always wore. Others just saw a child that should have suffered badly without proper care somehow forcing himself to prosper. Either way, the people were watchful.

As the boy lost formal methods of learning, he grew cautious. Sneaky. He would spy on others taking lessons or people cultivating, attempt to mix into crowds and convince the slower children to ask questions that no one would bother to answer if it came from the strange child himself. Texts went missing before reappearing elsewhere, food supplies were somehow accessed without a culprit getting caught...

And the child would not die.

He trained, even without the support of a Martial Spirit. While such effort was considered worthless, he insisted on sculpting his body to the extent his age would allow. Without a visible source of income or food, he managed to stay healthy even as his skills at infiltration improved. Almost against their will, the people started to respect someone who could do so much with so little. A few children would spend time with him, a neighbor or two would offer him some leftovers, his Grandfather began to reluctantly send him some basic learning materials.

And then there was the infamous 'Martial Spirit Awakening' ceremony.

Cánfèi's Martial Spirit was broken glass. Trash. Literal trash.

He lost all sympathy. After a few half-hearted attempts to retest his 'talent' failed, the concerns about the child escalated. Now, bad things that happened were somehow due to the boy. The village began punishing him in small ways for things they couldn't prove. Food missing? His fault. Tools missing? Why investigate?

That he was ACTUALLY guilty of these things due to how little access to food or resources he had didn't matter.

Staying healthy became harder, staying clean even became an issue as he couldn't risk showing up at public bathing areas without being abused or hassled. His mothers things were taken away, his house was stripped of what little he had left, and even minor injuries became dangerous because getting treatment was no longer a guarantee.

But he would not die.

When the Spirit Beast attacked, even the people he saved claimed that he had drawn the thing into the village due to the bad karma he drew to the village.

When Cánfèi was heavily damaged during the fighting, apparently the village had been relieved. The stain on their people was finally facing his long deserved ending.

And Elder Cho's naïve and happy notification of the child's health started a shit storm.

She sighed again, moving another request for the boy's execution to the deny pile and two more exorcism (THEN execution!) requests to another pile.

This was the Burning Sword Sect damn it, they wouldn't slaughter an innocent child to make some traumatized assholes feel better!

What little leverage the Forestend villagers had was already spent quickly as they tried to get a paralyzed child closer to death. Thankfully unsuccessfully. At least a few of Elder Cho's current supporters were doing so ONLY to spite the annoying people who kept bothering others about the issue. Two people even donated to Cánfèi's medical bills out of pure contrariness, which was slightly humorous in a dark way.

She glanced again at the most recent medical notes. NO one had expected the child to have talent. Absolutely no one. But all the medication carefully permitted and applied, the close care, the high quality food and clean water... it had stimulated his Martial Spirit and awoken SOMETHING.

Basic Houtian Realm Warriors wouldn't notice it, and even Peak Tenth Order Xiantian Realms like her had to strain to understand the situation... but the child, not even fully at Initial First Order Houtian Warrior stage, was able to manipulate and somehow refine Flame energy for his own use. Further, he was going through something of a rebirth process similar to the legendary actions of their founder, who was able to explode into flames and reform at full health during his battles at the cost of some of his cultivation base.

This child was going to be a member of her Sect even if she had to bribe the bastard.

She snorted. 'Cánfèi' indeed. A whole village was handed raw gold and they shat on it.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Obviously the provided 'notes' were lacking. A lot. They were hand written self reminding materials, not intended for sharing or distribution... and only a subsection of the actual information at that!

But it didn't really matter. Adam was one of the few people in existence who could easily and reliably test Cultivation Techniques on his own body with little or no consequences, as long as he was careful.

No, aside from fully learning the local language (Spoken and written), Adam felt like a moron after a basic comment Miss Assistant made on page four. Well, the page was labeled something that probably made sense to the original author, but it was the fourth page in the pile.

It was a short comment about how reducing the brightness of her fire arrow technique made it go further.

Which... well, it set 'Research' off on a crazy train.

When using a technique, activating an ability, using a skill... whatever. There was a set amount of energy available. Some would be used to structure your attack. A bit more for detecting the target or directing the next few moves. More used when launching said actions. And the rest would be used to retain the attack's shape and deliver the attack load.

In other words, the more complicated the move? The less energy delivered. The brighter it was? The more power wasted that could have been used to increase attack speed or the damage on impact.

So Adam's 'Meridian Rebirth' technique was wasting energy like a boat made out of screen doors. That Flame energy consuming his flesh, burning his spiritual nodes... it was all wasted power that could be recollected and properly used.

With renewed focus and actively pausing his attempts at cultivation (The 10 streams were slowly gaining progress but were still being absorbed before completion), Adam then combined Binding power and Flame energy again... but only crafted half as much as before.

Basically doubling the amount of control over the mess, though it wasn't so simple. Doubling the amount of energy to work with took almost three times as much concentration, so his control over the spiritual conditioning process should have skyrocketed by deliberately limiting himself.

With 'Research' active, he slowly focused on a single Meridian, this one undamaged. As the heat began to affect the surrounding area, Adam used his attention to drag that lost power back into the mass of Flame energy that streamed in from his floating Shard.

...His body was still warmer than normal, but his blood wasn't boiling and his flesh was just... itching. More flesh was able to survive the process as well, even if the amount of improvement was far lower than the 'Burn it all and duplicate the survivor!' methods. It would take many more cycles to get things up to his standards, but there was almost no pain... just a faint itching.

After a few more tests, Adam redirected his focus to a 95% healthy meridian on his left hip.

The sting as the meridian evaporated was... easier to bear. The heat that previously would have begun scarring the local muscles was instead pushed back into the pattern, speeding progress up slightly. After a cautious test or two... yes, he could regrow this spiritual node without scaring his body. Repairing his meridians would now be far easier and less messy!

Adam's grin grew as he moved step by step from his healthy flesh into the twisted mess exposed to his bandages. This would be slow deliberately as he ensured each meridian was regrown and enhanced enough to handle basic energy loads. In around... a quick check to 'Research'... yeah, around eight hours or so, all his existing but damaged meridian nodes would be reborn.

Then... then he could attempt to regrow some of the destroyed spiritual connections. Maybe eventually regain his ability to flip off two people at the same time!

The black impurity sludge spurted out of his body at odd intervals and places as each individual damaged meridian point was carefully examined, destroyed, regrown, and enhanced. Without attempting to repair his whole system at once, only the left side was expelling the encountered scar tissues, rogue energies, and spiritual organ debris.

Still smelled like crap, but it was more bearable.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Xiao Quan paced in her room.

It was fine, right? It was probably fine. She had backup copies of her notes of course, some things were too important to risk loss due to damage or being stolen.

But she couldn't risk the kid accidentally suffering a catastrophic issue. Cultivators without guidance have caught their soul on fire, destroyed their meridian network, evaporated parts of their brain... the risks of taking action without proper knowledge was too high! Far too high.

She tried to calm down.

Her notes would be useful, yes, but it was only the most esoteric of data. Dense data, with her ramblings and discoveries... no actual techniques or tricks. Hopefully it would keep the child distracted long enough for her to get permission from the official Healers to try and get him accepted as an Outer Assistant at least, maybe eventually become a Outer Disciple. Then she could share the more useful stuff.

The difference between the two positions is mostly related to talent during cultivation, as the various Disciples got monthly allocations and allowances of cultivation resources, various pills and liquids designed to promote cultivation progress. Assistants on the other hand tend to focus on topics other than pure cultivation, or act like apprentices to others as she helped Healer Qin.

Surely his enhanced recovery could interest someone to sponsor him? She herself was only an Inner Assistant, lucky that an Inner Disciple Healer had found her talents and invested in her learning opportunities. She had spent a lot of her free favors and resources already supporting the Outer Sect's orphanage, her ability to act now was heavily limited.

Quan looked up as the door opened. "Healer Qin?"

The man walked in with a grin. "Good news, Assistant Quan! Healer Jin got approval from someone high in the Sect, all of the boy's medical costs are covered now. You'll even get reimbursed slightly, as we haven't used all of the medication resources you gave up."

Her face lit up in a grin. "That... that's brilliant!" She glanced at her notes. "I'm sure I can convince him to join our Sect after talking a bit, and he seems eager to cultivate... without the burden of healing fees I'm sure he will advance quickly!"

Everyone had to pay back the various costs for healing in the Sect, though some would get sponsored or donations from people attempting to show support or grow political connections. Most simply had their pay slightly garnished, so that the fees would eventually get paid without burdening weaker cultivators with heavy fees or punishing them with heavily reduced resources. Healer Jin was a bit famous for his acts of charity, just paying off debts for those with harsh circumstances... thankfully that wasn't needed here now.

Healer Qin handed over some documents. "One of the Elders has already prepared a basic admittance pass that we can offer the child, though the boy will need to choose a new name. I'm sure he doesn't desire his old one at this point."

She hummed. "Might be a bit tricky. I've been using more basic vocabulary as he had... issues following our conversations initially. And he only recently requested some literary learning materials... I do not know what literacy level he has reached."

Quan tapped her chin and nodded. "I can just read it out loud and have him confirm if he fully understands the contract. I wish we were allowed to offer him a higher initial position than Outer Assistant though... some people have pride issues."

The male healer snorted. "It is standard policy for all members of our Sect to start at the base of the mountain. Otherwise, you lose appreciation of the climb." He sighed and fondly remembered. "I met my wife all the way at the bottom back then. Nothing but Outer Disciples, her background worthless and my pride far too big for my own good."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah yeah, you tell that story all the time." She gripped the contract. "I'm going to go right now, I'm sure that he would want to join us... and if he is accepted, I can officially get the orphanage to accept him! He would have food and shelter, time to adjust to his disabilities... maybe find a friend or two there like I did..."

Healer Jin waved her off. "Meh, do what you wish... but I, on the other hand, need sleep."

She glanced at the black windows, night fully fallen, and winced. "Ah... yeah, maybe I'll wait till morning."

She missed the man chuckling as he left, already looking over her notes. If the boy accepted this opportunity then she would start by showing her old notes on the Sect's official Houtian First Order Cultivating Technique, it was more complicated than the basic generic version so popular in the outside poor villages and a bit of help could really move him along towards cultivation. Maybe even help the healing process!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Having all his existing meridians repaired really... Really felt good.

Adam carefully used his right hand to wipe more impurities off into the bucket near his bed. Eventually, he would likely have to rebirth the meat of most of his left side, his crippled leg especially, but with the support of his mostly restored Meridian nodes... well, several circulation routes that the body naturally and autonomously circulated started cycling again, ones he had been unaware of and that 'Research' found fascinating.

The work load on his body had reduced by a factor, his physical strain in general had dropped like a rock, and his mind felt... So much more relaxed.

It allowed him to triple the amount of power being guided in his body without dripping excess power. And 'Research' had basically enhanced his techniques and sensing abilities by several folds now that he wasn't accidentally overloading his own skills by trying to do too much at once.

He glanced at his missing left wrist... And winced. All the other meridian points were easy enough to repair... But he was MISSING several in his left arm.

Good news? Meridian Rebirth worked, only a few nodes meant to be in his actual hand and arm end were currently missing now that the rest had been regrown from literally nothing.

Bad news?

The 'Rebirth' technique had hurt, of course. And needed almost ALL Binding energy he gathered, preventing several healing sessions... he nearly passed out due to the massive amount of concentration needed.

By the time he finished the last meridian point in his left arm, or at least the last one that he could make until he regrew the damn thing, the mental process only made him feel like a brick was smashing his head. So... progress.

Then again, everything that broke the rules of what was 'possible' was likely due to a combination of being stupid hard and absurdly painful. Case in point, he COULD use this rebirth process to regrow his hand.

It was slow.

It was... very painful.

And it involved turning his left arm's stump tip into actual embers of flaming flesh.

God it was gross. The end of the limb looked alright to some extent, like a bed of coals. Or the tip of a cigar! And the flesh leading up to it was wriggling and squirming like maggots and worms, while making barely any progress occurring at all. Super gross. Eww.

Then again... ten minutes of healing after two hours and fifty minutes? It wasn't as bad as his earlier 'two minutes of cultivation only' liability, but yeah.

This could take months. Months... ten minutes at a time.

Best case scenario? If it took a single month to regrow his wrist and hand, that was 43,800 minutes of recovery. Which due to his constant pauses to gather energy, would take 7,446,000 minutes in total to work with if there was no delays or issues in the process... or 14 years, 57 days, 10 hours, and 37 minutes.

Thank you, overly specific 'Research' result.

Point was, Adam wasn't going to wait over fourteen years to be able to clap.

So for now, after attempting (and uh... failing) to fully heal his left arm's stump, he dropped attempts at rebuilding any further meridians and focused 'Research' BACK onto his so far difficult cultivation.

The results were... interesting.

First of all, the difference between a fragile network of damaged cultivation routes with partially missing meridian nodes when compared to his repaired system?

Unbelievable.

There was no comparison possible! He was still seeing a multiple strand Cultivation Technique route being suggested, but the pattern was FAR easier. Less interactions between routes, more energy allowed through various passages, less minute changes needed to prevent instant disaster... The change was night and day, really.

Secondly, the reorganized memories from his past about cultivation combined with the notes from Miss Assistant was amazing. This was valuable data, very useful!

Standard cultivation techniques followed a very simple pattern. The act of breaking through from First Order to Second Order Warrior (And so on) was caused by the spiritual pathways being improved SO MUCH that weaker or blocked routes become accessible.

In other words, people were not cultivating muscles, then tendons, then bones, and so forth on purpose. Nor because of simple tradition.

No, it was a side effect of how energy was being incorporated into the user.

Energy was being forced from a layer below the skin, where the Cultivator could control it easiest, THROUGH the muscles, past the tendons, and into the bones. After the innards were reinforced enough, the stored Qi rivers flowing through the users meridian points could then join together into the 'Qi Sea'. After reaching the Seventh Order Stage of the Houtian Realm, this Qi Sea was needed to penetrate and enhanced the bones of the body, the producer of blood for the cultivator.

Only after all that mess could one begin to reinforce with energies outside their basic system, such as the skin and so forth.

Adam's method was... skipping some stuff.

He was unblocking spiritual paths, enhancing meridian nodes, and (as a byproduct) reforming his flesh by directly controlling so many strands of energy that it confused things. His power was getting through areas that would normally be blocked off at various 'bottlenecks' of cultivation (Stages Third Order to Fourth, Sixth to Seventh). By having more than one strand, some energy was passing through spiritual paths too small for full power access, and some routes were opened that normally would be shut closed as power pressed against other areas.

Of course, Adam wouldn't be able to show others how to do such a thing, as it required knowing his body VERY intimately. And his cultivation rank was still zero because the Binding energy was still being absorbed by the many passages traveled before a cycle could be completed... but it was an interesting situation to observe!

He wouldn't be able to shoot up to 10th Order Peak Houtian or anything. After all, going up Stages had more requirements than simply just passing the various bottlenecks involved. Process wise... the vast majority of cultivators had to build up internal reserves of power first for LONG periods before even reaching those issues. Without enough Battle Qi, forget getting to Second Order, no matter where that power can flow.

Past memories implied that kids with HIGH talent could reach Initial First Order Houtian Warrior (The most basic of basics) after a month's hard work of cultivation and gathering heavenly power. Otherwise, three to six months wouldn't be that unusual. And some children... well, not everyone could become Cultivators.

Adam glanced up at his Shard, swirling as it slowly decayed various bonds of power to release Binding energies.

Yeah, he wouldn't take that long, probably. Aside from his very powerful energy manipulation skills due to his Martial Spirit, the energy he was using most, this 'Binding' energy, didn't feel normal. Every other energy was more... sticky. Willing to be goo like as it bumped around. This stuff felt more... clean. And in some way, similar to his Shard.

...It may be a type of Soul energy.

Either way, THIS was the stuff Adam wanted to work with. It not only enhanced his body and nourished his system, but it allowed easy manipulation of energies he bonded to it. Maybe after fully tempering his system with Flame energies he could test other combinations? After using 'Research' first, of course.

A quick glance at his body internals... Then a glance back at the Shard...

His flesh wasn't 100% fixed, his hand was missing, but his spiritual paths were stable and secured.

With concentration, he focused on the Binding energy swirling around the Shard, which would normally be pulled into his body for another attempt at cultivation.

'Growth.'

Adam felt his face split into a grin (Now that his scar covered left side of his face could move again) when the swirl of Binding power... began to swirl faster.

And grow.

Ever so slowly, the Shard was able to consume the smallest of trash energies and consume it as fuel, a replacement for magic, as Binding began to generate extra power from within its own power swirl. The rate was... not astounding. But compared to the current filtration, sorting, dismantling collection system?

Before, he could cultivate for two minutes every two hours and fifty eight minutes.

Now? One hour of 'Growth' and energy straining could fuel ten whole minutes!

Adam had 'Research' waste some energy and use techniques to test the various Cultivation routes in his newly repaired system, reveling in the lack of pain and burning as his body was now strong enough to redirect the wasted heat back into the system.

At this point it looked like his new energy absorption method would have only seven strands operating at once instead of ten, but the pattern would be a bit tricky and different.

One strand to each limb, one route passing through the heart, one through the brain, and one passing through the torso area overall.

The limbs were the least risky, the brain was the most concerning (Though tests were going well), the heart seemed to be related to a conceptual issue, and the torso path bound the other meridian routes together, enhancing various sections of his spiritual network and helping bind together the general mesh of cultivation. In a way, it simplified his issues a lot, as only his left arm's route had to be customized to handle the lack of certain nodes.

Glancing at his Shard glowing bright blue with 'Growth', instead of the white of 'Purification' or the metallic 'Research', Adam relaxed as the Binding energy replicated, the trash swirls shrinking as they were slowly being consumed by his Shard. His mind carefully studied the suggested Cultivation Routes and potential alternatives to be followed.

...Crap. He was going to have to name this Cultivation Technique at some point, wasn't he?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked at the most recent results of 'Research' reviewing the test data... And the information from his memories and the notes. And the experimental data, and his healing attempts.

Huh.

In retrospect, it should have been obvious that the number of missing meridian nodes was too high. If his body had been THAT damaged, then most of the left side of his body would be dead flesh.

Turns out, most bodies were not really symmetrical. Bones could be different shapes, skins had freckles or whatever, and of course some organs were not placed in some mythical perfect pattern inside the body. And like his organic body, his spiritual pathways had grown organically through his life. New meridian nodes had spawned over time based on energy use, his muscle development, organ operations, and so forth.

Thus Adam's assumption that his right and left vertical half should have an identical number of meridians was... flawed.

On the positive side, NOW both halves WERE symmetrical. Except for his left hand, of course.

No idea how that would effect his cultivation progress.

Pausing 'Growth' again and giving the energy swirl a pass through 'Purification' just in case, Adam enabled 'Research'. The Shard faded into a metallic hue as his Unnamed Cultivation Technique attempted to sync up the seven strands on their individual routes.

And synchronization was important. He managed to complete a cycle through his left arm a few hours ago, but the nearly collected Battle Qi leaked into the rest of his system and was completely absorbed... the seven routes NEEDED to be completed in ONE cycle or the resulting energy couldn't stabilized.

If even one power wisp was even slightly too fast or slow at the end of the pattern, that attempt was worthless. Well... not exactly worthless, the collected and refined energy would be sucked up by his body and used to repair and cleanse his system. But as far as reaching the first Order of Houtian Realm? Yeah, no.

Thankfully, Adam was running 'Research' with every attempt. The adjustments, alternate routes, and modifications suggested had drastically reduced the difficulty of his attempts with every cycle.

Which is why he felt hopeful now. Compared to his initial routine, this most recent technique was child's play. Barely any timing was required until the very end, and most of the remaining squirrelly bits were due to the weakness of his system. Thus they would improve his success chances with each attempt as his system became more robust and flexible.

Sitting cross-legged in bed, his right arm relaxed in his lap cradling the stump of his left forearm, Adam focused his breathing and pulsed his Shard.

Binding energy fused with refined Flame energy, draining into the Shard and splitting into seven equal strands of power. Slightly wild power.

This new method reduced Adam's control of the process, allowing red heat to glow through his skin as the strands burned pathways along their individual paths.

Yes painful, but more importantly it was fast. Hopefully fast enough to complete an entire cycle before any strand was fully absorbed into his system.

His eyes closed, Adam listened to the sizzling of the black impurities coating his skin. His body had thin red lights traveling in strange patterns, black ooze forced from his system as the lights traveled through his limbs and explored his insides.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Xiao Quan blinked, having just opened the boy's room to check if he was awake yet. Her excitement at him being allowed to join the Sect had her coming around earlier than the usual time.

Quietly, she closed the door again.

She had seen and experienced enough cultivation over her life to know when someone was approaching a breakthrough, although her OWN progress wasn't as impressive as causing a light show like that.

She would come back at the breakfast scheduled cleaning time and talk about things then.

Quietly she flipped the cards on the door to mark it as 'Occupied, do not disturb'. A bit of privacy wouldn't hurt anything.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam absently felt gore expelled from his left eye socket, the head meridian route having finally finished the rebuilding process.

And it felt icky. Eww.

But his mind was thankfully devoted to his cultivation process. Sacrificing control for greater speed had made a vast improvement! His very first attempt nearly succeeded when one of the strands almost overloaded his lungs and he had to slow down a bit. Didn't explode though! It only took a few more tests with 'Research' and he was confidant and ready for more attempts.

In an odd way, it felt a bit like a heartbeat. Each pulse of power would flow through his limbs, into his heart, through his skull and mind, and then get wrapped together in his chest. And as he made more and more progress, his cultivation route began... syncing up. Stabilizing.

A tune. Or a strange rhythm. Pulse, and reach, pulse, and pull, pulse, and swirl, pulse, repeat.

As the beating synchronized, he could feel something... stabilizing.

P_ulse. Pu_lse. Pul_se. Puls_e. Pulse_. Pulse.

PULSE.

With a thrum of sympathetic vibrations, all seven strands... connected. As one, they moved outward, dragging pure energy like a child behind it. As one they returned, absorbing decay and impurities and filth. As one, they forced the mess out of his system, his torso becoming a solid cyclone of new energy being brought in through his Shard... which began to glisten.

With fascination, Adam watched his power strands... continue their cycle. Without direction. Without instruction. Like a river, there was now an established path for it to flow in, and one didn't have to use paddles or sticks to force the river to flow downhill. It wasn't automatically cultivating for Adam or anything, but THIS was how the internal Battle Qi could stably be stored within the Cultivator.

His Shard, floating in his body and floating outside at the same time, was the source of power. It absorbed the required heavenly spiritual energy, sorted it, filtered it, paired it and prepared it for consumption. The Shard flooded his meridian route with new wisps and strands of power, which were then sucked up by the tide of his existing Battle Qi. Followed the flow, followed the rhythm.

And at the end of the path, the corrupted and decayed fragments were dragged by his energy strands returned to his Shard, which released some of this vile energy back into the world to be cleansed by nature. His Battle Qi, freed from its duty, then followed the river again... pulling the new energy along for the journey.

Adam's eyes flared open, his right eye stunned and his left eye glowing slightly with Flame energy.

He had become an initial First Order Warrior of the Houtian Realm.

With a growing smile, he directed his Shard to float before his eyes. Now that he had actually established a rudimentary cultivation base (No matter how pathetic and small), the changes were very visible.

His 'glass shard', so illusive and ghostly, now had a more solid feel. The edges were sharper, it had grown slightly in size, and if one watched carefully one could see swirls of energy spinning within the crystal depths.

Activating his unnamed customized Cultivation Technique again, Adam watched as his Shard glowed...

And the world was ordered.

Before his advancement, which was far smoother and issue free than his memories had suggested it would be, he had felt the energies of the world fall under his Shard's sway. As if they were listening for guidance. Now however? If the spiritual energy had any form of self will before, now it was utterly subservient to the commands his Martial Spirit directed.

Focusing on his body, Adam watched as his Shard ripped heavenly bonded powers apart and demanded the freed Binding energy from the external swirls of trash power under his control. Even the Flame energy became more pure, as his Shard directly connected and combined the most pure samples of Flame energy together after ripping the other sticky energies off and hurled them out of the way.

After the Flame and Binding energy joined, it was slammed into his Battle Qi reserves, flowing with his cultivation technique at high speeds as the 'River' of his power swelled ever so slightly from the new additions. His personal energy would then cajole, convince, corrupt, and bully the new spiritual energy being introduced to his system, reducing how long it took to absorb new energy and also imprinting his spiritual signature onto it, encouraging even faster integration into his existing Qi.

These constant cycles run while cultivating would utterly crush this new energy into more Qi, slightly filling his spiritual 'rivers' and improving the process. These rivers of spiritual power were creating a self-supporting, self-reinforcing network within his body. It strengthened his pathways, kept weak meridian routes open, forced near-blocked paths to allow movement, and basically was forming a foundation for all future cultivation routes to grow and form off of... the Pulse of energy flowing through those river paths gave a feeling of stability now.

Again, his body was handling all of these energies confusingly well. The stories of bad reactions, torn or painful changes in body... everything was a smooth progress, if one ignored the slight fire damage of his flesh. Then again, who else would regrow damaged organs and weak spiritual paths instead of working around the discovered issues? Maybe it was to be expected that Adam had few if any complications as he attempted to consume more spiritual energy.

It felt amazing, by the way.

Each cycle of power was now able to partially remove impurities by passing through his internal Shard representation directly, drastically reducing the black ooze being produced. The cleansing process felt invigorating and satisfying, like reaching an itch that you couldn't quite find before and giving it a good old scratch. Even though portions of the energy being cycled was still absorbed by his flesh, the created Battle Qi would 'overflow' his cultivation route, sink into his muscles and so forth and get absorbed like expected, improving his body... then mostly return to his system, the found impurities and damage dragged out of his flesh in the process.

As the 'river' of power flowed through his meridian routes, the Pulse of his method grew more stable. A heartbeat of progression.

...Meh, he was terrible at names anyway. Might as well call it the 'Pulse Cultivation Technique' and be done with it.

Easy to remember, and if he was ever forced to write it down he wouldn't have to be embarrassed when writing down something long and silly like the 'Heavenly Energy Devoured And Distributed Through Seven Sacred Strands Of Advancement'... or whatever. Or should he call it 'Heartbeat Technique?'

Crud. No, best stay with his first instinct, otherwise he would second guess himself and keep changing it forever.

Adam grinned as he saw a new layer of crystal, ever so thin, glowing as it covered his Shard's surface. Red Flame energy was slowly being introduced to his system as a whole, the stabilized Cultivating Technique creating a more powerful and yet more gentle method of introducing the fires to his flesh. A distribution method needing almost none of the painful concentration and hard work he had suffered under so far.

His smile froze though.

Because the red flames were turning orange.

...Yellow.

Green?

Adam's focus blanked as he watched the flames being incorporated into his body concentrate, increase in temperature... and hit a glowing, bright, FAMILIAR shade of blue. As the change completed, the amount of Flame energy being used by his body dropped through the floor, as the power being sucked into the Shard was now being refined and compressed until it reached the same high temperature and bright blue color as his Martial Spirit's fire.

He held up his right arm, watching bright blue flames pulsing as they followed his Pulse Cultivation Technique.

...Shit.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

A quick check... Good, he was up and no longer cultivating. "Good Morning!"

Xiao Quan carefully opened the door, her hands a bit full. "I have ALL KINDS of interesting and good news for you today, young man!"

Moving the pile of stuff to the side, she began his cleansing process. Much less filth today... Oh! "You made a breakthrough! Congratulations!"

She couldn't stop her smile if she wanted to, this was just perfect! She had suspected he had been trying to achieve this for weeks now. It made the self-healing situation more understandable at least. "You have SUCH good timing with this!" Better get back to work though. Cleaning time!

As the muck was removed she continued covering the main points. "First of all, your ability to recover with your personal cultivation method has impressed several people higher in the ranks. Asked a few people, and we managed to get you an invitation to join the 'Burning Sword' Sect. Now that you have reached First Order Warrior Stage, we can even have you apply as an Outer Disciple rather than Outer Assistant... it means more cultivation resources and less responsibility in general, at least until you become strong enough to handle more tasks."

She carefully cleaned his face... and blinked. "Is... is your left eye glowing blue?"

A nod.

She cautiously touched the area. "...Is that fire?"

Another nod.

Quan frowned, and ran a few tests. Now that the boy had a cultivation base, however odd it felt to her sensing techniques, she could safely do a few basic examinations. "It doesn't seem to be damaging your body, but if you feel any pain you let me know, alright?" She tilted his head slightly... and saw the liquid blue flames turn to follow her. "Can... can you see through it?"

Nod.

She blinked. "Huh. Well, my instructions won't change, you let me know IMMEDIATELY if you feel any discomfort from that area." She released his head and continued her cleaning process. "Had a friend whose feet glowed red when attacking and refused to get help because he thought they looked cool. We saved him from permanent nerve damage... but really, some cultivators truly HATE asking for help! Poor guy had apparently skipped part of his personal cultivation technique steps out of laziness, fixing the issue took him over two decades."

Cleaning his arms, Quan hummed. "Right, so there is a bit of an issue because you need to sign the contract and I am not sure how easy that will be for you." She glanced at his hands... hopefully he was right handed. "But you should know that joining up is a GREAT idea! Unlike many Sects, ours insists on every cultivator starting as an Outer Disciple, no matter how wealthy, talented, or well connected. It reduces infighting and bullying, and increases empathy and understanding since everyone has a common experience in the past. Plus, no conflict from some people getting 'special treatment' or whatever."

She grinned as she cleaned her rag. "In MY opinion, it makes your background less important. I came from the orphanage, and in some sects that can really be a negative on your future standing. Here, there are available tasks to earn merit points by helping out those lower on the social ladder than yourself. There are even repeatable jobs like 'mentoring' or training people for various jobs! It lets me support my friends and the orphanage without losing too many resources or time needed for cultivation, since the earned points help balance out any costs."

Her face lost focus. "Maybe you could donate some notes about what you felt and did during recovery? There is a policy in place where advancements like that will earn you a subsidy from the Sect, a monthly bonus depending on how useful the information turns out to be. Some of the guys in our Research division make so many advancements they could retire and cultivate forever without fear of poverty. Or at least they brag enough about the issue."

She didn't glance at his damaged leg. "Of course, the Orphanage also handles some cultivation resource harvesting tasks with their herb garden, it could easily earn a stable income for you until some muscles are built up. I know some people, they would love the help." Might cost a favor or two. Maybe he could learn some of the less main stream jobs? Like pill refinement or treasure preparation. Maybe formation work, though you had to have certain levels of talent to get far in that field. Most ingredients no matter how rare didn't require a lot of movement to handle their pre-processing before use... Yes, best to suggest an Alchemy career.

Seeing the boy's hand gestures, she blinked. "Huh? Oh, something to write with?"

A nod.

She nodded as well. "No problem, let me swap out this impurity bucket and I'll be right back." She moved the paperwork to the side table. "It may take me a half hour or so, but I will return shortly!"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Hmm.

Adam felt his Shard inside switch to 'Purification', a soft white glow showing over his heart. No idea why his Martial Spirit was hanging out there... some sort of conceptual thing? Anyway, his natural spiritual rhythm was passing his Battle Qi through the Shard, his energy slowly being refined to better reflect Adams power nature. Theoretically.

The formerly red energy (White/near translucent Binding energy plus bright red Flame power) was now fading into a bright blue. Streaks of color flowed through his meridian nodes as the energies slowly shifted. Hopefully that wouldn't become an issue. PLEASE don't let this become an issue. Adam just wanted to be able to walk and clean himself at this point, he wasn't asking for much.

Ignoring his internal situation, he checked the effects of his Martial Spirit on his environment.

As an initial First Order Warrior, Adam could now release his Battle Qi externally and control it to some extent. Supposedly.

Instead, within three or so feet of his body, ALL energy was directable. As if he was cultivating with his Shard.

Releasing some of his red/orange/yellow/green/blue streaked power, Adam felt the difference between HIS energy and the worlds power.

Unlike the unaligned, untouched power... His Battle Qi was able to pause. Shift. Retreat inside his body and return to the field. Not able to solidify or even turn into a liquid, it was still far easier to work with than the surrounding heavenly spiritual energy. If it attempted to leave his three foot radius cylinder domain, his power would stop paying attention to his commands... but it wouldn't dissipate into random energy like all the other spiritual energies under his direction did.

And if it was moving slow enough, Adam could push his domain forward and recapture it.

So... neat. It would be interesting to see how this would develop in the future.

Adam was also more than a little curious what would happen when he eventually hit Fourth Order Stage. As that was after the first bottleneck in cultivation, the process of overcoming the setback and the massive energy needed to reach that Stage at all would cause the Martial Spirit to evolve. The Cultivator would even gain an innate ability or talent from his or her spirit at that stage. Some people could teleport, or instantly recover energy during battle, or breath fire, or combine with their Martial Spirit and become a type of hybrid monster... all kinds of stuff.

He glanced inwardly at his Shard. Not sure what a crystal would evolve into... could be interesting.

As it was, he would be stuck at First Order for a while. His body was still being refined and enhanced, but if his spiritual paths were riverbanks for his power to flow through... well, his 'river' was more a 'trickle' at the moment.

Didn't help that a good portion of the cultivated energy kept being absorbed by his body to repair and enhance it. He wasn't going to complain too much about the situation, but if all this raw and pure power was being shoved into a more NORMAL cultivator, they would be rocketing up the power charts by now. Probably scare people too, no doubt.

Meh, it would probably work out. And who knew, maybe Adam was doing something wrong and getting more cultivation notes could show him how to fix it?

With some eager intentions Adam carefully began reviewing the legal documents left by Miss Assistant, his right hand showing each side of the documents to be memorized before making a secondary stack on his bed covers.

It was... well. Dull.

Legalese, if not as complex as what he saw in other Realms. A review, a run through 'Research', and it boiled down to a basic set of tenets.

Follow Sect Rules. If you don't, you can appeal or argue your case.

Attempt to be 'Righteous and Honorable' in actions outside the Sect. Probably because if you try anything INSIDE the Sect, you would get caught.

In general, don't be a douche.

The uh. The contract said that in a more polite a socially acceptable way... But 'Research' got the idea across.

And the main point, there was a minimum amount of time or number of achievements to be made in the Sect before being allowed to leave or change organizations. Because joining up, taking all their resources, and leaving... well, goes back to the 'Don`t be a douche' rule.

All in all, surprisingly reasonable. The rules didn't look that onerous either, though that may differ once Adam got to see how things were implemented in the real world rather than the theoretical one described in the documents.

His attention was pulled back as Miss Assistant bustled back into the room, a black square and some chalk in hand. Very useful!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam grinned as he continued to use his now even MORE powerful Martial Spirit to rip spiritual energy apart and gather that delicious, delicious Binding energy for 'Growth' to work with. Hitting First Order Warrior had granted his Martial Spirit and cultivation speed a significant boost, and it clearly showed.

Also: Miss Assistant was apparently called 'Quan Xiao', although this Realm gave the family name first and your personal name second... so she introduced herself as 'Xiao Quan' and immediately permitted him to call her Quan.

Her happiness at his ability to write legible text with ease was almost over the top, and Adam honestly felt refreshed having the capability to 'talk' with someone else. It made filling out the paperwork (There was more than expected, that initial contract Adam was provided was basically a summary) much easier.

Side note, his name was now officially Chongsheng Adam, which was ALMOST but NOT QUITE Chinese for 'Adam Reborn' locally. If this Realm did a one to one thing with the language he had in his head, his last name should be 'Chóngshēng'... but those accented characters didn't exist here.

Neither did a normal alphabet, to be honest. The text was a series of complicated squiggles, no sharp edges... not sure why. And the meaning of those curves was HEAVILY modified based on the surrounding text, the previous letters, the topic under discussion...

Needless to say, it was clear why even Cultivation Techniques provided by a Master required careful study and meditation. And this odd language complexity and density was NEEDED, because a simple technique 'written down' could be interpreted a dozen different ways... and NEEDED to be processed like that for you to properly understand and recreate the technique. Otherwise the most complicated abilities would never have enough paper to document them.

Those damn children books looked like swirly squiggles, dozens of lines per paragraph and so small it almost looked like a single line in a technical repair manual.

Didn't matter. Point is, Adam Chongsheng was officially a member of the Burning Sword Sect, was technically applying for residence at the Outer Sect's Orphanage, and potentially hired as a low level trash collector... at least until his medical review gave his body a better passing grade. A safe job, almost always available without competition, and easy to quit when he got better with no large responsibilities.

His meridians were basically beyond healed at this point... but not his body.

Forget his left hand, his left LEG was a damn issue. Combined with his weakened muscles and low endurance, Adam nearly fell over when he reached for his Soul cane... and remembered that his rod weapon was back with his full body.

He had a nice looking crutch for now, provided by Miss Quan, along with more documents and stuff to work with.

The scars were not an issue, especially now that he could see with both eyes (ignoring how freaky his left one looked right now), no... the second big problem was his throat.

Turns out he wasn't just having issues because of scar tissue... the surgery to repair his spine enough to keep him alive required removing most of his damaged vocal cords. Even then, the surgery had been risky and the actual success was considered to be a near-miracle.

So uh. No talking for now.

Adam sighed and focused back on cultivation, his Shard swirling a dozen whirlpools of energy in the air.

'Growth' was devouring the random trash energies, his Martial Spirit forcing the filtering process to work at maximum speed. His 'external reserves' of gathered Flame and Binding energy was nearly large enough for a good, mindless healing session. At this point, even with the resulting smell it sounded relaxing.

Because at some point he would have to incinerate his leg and throat, once he had access to a room with some level of privacy. And that would require testing, some painful failures, and developing some sort of non-spiritual flesh-only burning/regrowth technique. His 'Meridian Rebirth' technique was great, but it only healed his body as a side note... not good enough.

With a glance at the closed door, Adam sighed. Probably better to get some Sect techniques first, see if he can improve his attempts before going straight to flesh mutilation. Miss Quan hadn't appreciated the previous attempts, no matter how successful they had been.

Meh, he wasn't in a hurry at the moment. No reason to suffer needlessly if he could potentially find a new way to progress in a day or so.