The images were blurry at first, like shapes seen through steam: a figure sitting cross-legged, lines of light running along the arms, a breath going in and a breath going out. They didn't stay still for even a second before the next one replaced them. Even so, my heart started pounding, because every one of them matched the page in front of me.
Holding back my excitement, I kept turning the pages. The more I read, the clearer the images became, until they stopped flashing past and began to line up one after another, like someone sorting a messy pile of papers in my head. When I finally reached the last page of Burning Heaven Art, I closed the manual and shut my eyes for a few seconds.
The whole technique played out in my mind from start to finish.
It wasn't just the words I had read. It was a guide showing me how to sit, how to breathe, where to place my attention first, which path the energy should take, and where it should stop. It felt as if someone who had already mastered the technique was standing behind me and pointing at every part I would have got wrong. Things the manual only described in one vague line were laid out in front of me step by step.
Opening my eyes, I found that my arms were covered in goosebumps.
(A golden finger. I really have a golden finger.)
In my previous life I had read about this in countless novels: the ring with an old grandpa inside, the system that hands out quests, the mysterious bottle. Every time, I had sighed and closed the book, because things like that only happen to protagonists. And now one was sitting in my own head.
I covered my mouth with one hand, because a laugh was trying very hard to escape, and laughing alone on the second floor of the Martial Library would definitely spread faster than yesterday's challenge. It took quite a bit of effort to swallow it, but I couldn't stop my shoulders from shaking or the grin from spreading under my palm.
From now on, nobody could stop me. With this, I could reach the peak of this world, free and powerful, without ever needing to bow and grovel to anyone again. In my previous life other people had decided my life and my death for me. In this life, nobody would get that chance.
After a dozen or so breaths, I calmed down and looked at Burning Heaven Art again. It was good, really good, and fire was a strong attribute for fighting. But I placed it back on the shelf anyway.
Why, you ask? It's simply because I had already decided which type of technique I wanted long before I stepped into this library.
During the days I spent reading at home, I went through every book on cultivation I could get my hands on. Those books talked a lot about martial artists: the legends, the famous battles, how strong some old monster was. But when it came to the essentials, like how techniques are graded, how realms are actually divided, and which stages lie inside each realm, they said almost nothing beyond a bare outline. That was exactly why, when Hollis sneered at me in the cafeteria and mentioned stage 1 and stage 4, I treated it as the most useful thing he said. That kind of information doesn't come out of books sold in a small town. (I will get the rest of it bit by bit, whether from people already inside or from the shelves downstairs.)
Even from those thin books, though, one thing was clear. Among all the attributes, lightning was the fastest.
And speed was what I needed most right now. I was a fourteen-year-old who hadn't even started cultivating, in a Hall full of people who resented him. There would be people and beasts I couldn't handle for a long time, and against them, the most important skill wasn't fighting. It was getting away. As long as I could run, I could live, and as long as I lived, I could come back stronger. (Cowardly? No. Cautious. There is a difference, and the dead ones usually didn't know it.)
Walking further down the shelves, I scanned the plaques one by one: water, earth, wind, wood...
And then I stopped.
Lightning.
Not one, but three lightning cultivation techniques were placed side by side. I took a deep breath and picked up the first.
The first focused entirely on power, gathering lightning into explosive strength at every stage, but it barely cared about anything else. The second was the opposite, pouring everything into speed, with power as an afterthought. As I browsed through both, the same thing happened as before: images appeared, lined up, and turned into a complete guide in my mind.
The third one was in a sorry state.
Its cover was half torn away, and its pages were yellowed with ragged edges. Only the portion for the Martial Disciple realm remained. Whatever came after it, the part that would lead someone into the Martial Warrior realm, had been lost. Yet even this broken half was strange. It didn't lean towards power or speed but progressed evenly in both, and it even contained a separate body tempering section that worked alongside the cultivation, something neither of the other two had.
I opened it and started reading, and the images came.
My eyes widened.
The images didn't stop where the pages stopped. Even after I reached the last torn page, they kept going, showing me a path that continued past the Martial Disciple realm towards the Martial Warrior realm, the very part this manual no longer had. The images of the later part were blurry, so blurry I couldn't make out a single step, but they were there.
And at the very beginning of them, where the torn cover should have been, two words stood out clearly in my mind, as if they had been carved there.
Thunder Sovereign Art.
(Simple. Domineering. I like it.)
As I concentrated harder on the blurry part, I felt something inside my body being consumed. It was a faint warmth spread through my flesh, and it drained away like water into sand. In exchange, a small part of the images became clear for just a moment before my head started to ache and I had to stop.
Feeling that warmth leave, I suddenly remembered Elder Hale's words this morning: those who ate demon meat regularly had bodies already used to a little energy. I had grown up in a butcher shop and eaten demon meat since I could chew. All those years, a little of its energy had been stored inside me, and now my golden finger was eating it.
(So it isn't free. It consumes the spirit energy stored that has been inside me from all these years of eating demon meat. But it can show me what's missing.)
That settled it. The other two were complete, but ordinary. This one was broken for everyone else, but not for me. If my golden finger could fill in its missing half, I would be cultivating a technique that progressed in everything and tempered my body on top of that, and nobody else could take it from me, because nobody else could read the pages that weren't there.
For my martial art, I didn't hesitate long. On the martial arts shelves I found a thunder-attributed leg technique called Thunderclap Leg Art. It contained both leg-based attack skills and a short-burst movement technique, perfect for closing a gap in an instant or opening one. Combined with the Ghostveil Technique for stealth and whatever other properties it held, I would have a way to hit, a way to hide, and a way to run.
Holding both manuals, I went downstairs.
...
Elder Tobber took the manuals and glanced at them through his thick glasses. When he saw the torn cover, his humming stopped.
He looked at me for a while and then said, frowning,
"Boy, this one is half torn. You know that? There is nothing in it past the Martial Disciple realm. Nobody has picked it for years, and for good reason. You shouldn't take this."
Hearing this, I bowed respectfully and replied,
"I know, Elder. I will use it for now, and when I reach the threshold of the realm, I'll transfer to another technique."
His frown deepened.
"Transfer at the threshold? Your whole foundation will be built on this one. Changing techniques right at the breakthrough will make it very tough, and you might stay stuck there your whole life without ever breaking through."
"I understand, Elder," I said calmly. "But I still want this one."
He stared at me, then looked down at my identity card and the name on it, and something seemed to click in his head. He sighed, stamped both manuals, and pushed them back to me while muttering, mostly to himself,
"Garrick's boy... Well, his dad can handle the rest."
Pretending I hadn't heard, I thanked him, bowed, and walked out. As soon as I left the library, I hurried my pace until I was practically running towards the second building.
...
The hall was empty, and the door of the left bedroom was closed as usual. I entered my room, locked the door, sat cross-legged on the bed, and called up the images of Thunder Sovereign Art.
Then I failed immediately.
The guide said to calm the mind first, but my mind was anything but calm. The golden finger, Hollis's sneer, the floating Elder, Old Tobber's muttering, my father's face — everything kept circling in my head. The harder I tried to sense spirit energy, the more restless I became, just as Elder Hale had said. After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and gnashed my teeth.
(So even with a golden finger, the first step is still on me.)
Closing my eyes again, I focused on the images, and this time they showed me the calming methods written in the technique: counting the breath in a particular rhythm, letting thoughts pass without following them, keeping my attention on the space just below the navel. On paper they had been a few dry lines, but the images showed me exactly how long each breath should be and how to let go of each stray thought.
Following them, my breathing slowed little by little, and at some point the world went quiet.
And then I felt it.
Something faint drifted around me in the air, like dust I had never noticed before, except that some of it was sharp and restless, crackling at the very edge of my senses. The guide showed me how to call only that sharp part, draw it in along a narrow path, and lead it outwards towards my skin.
The moment it reached the surface, it felt like a thousand needles stabbing at once, followed by a numb tingling that spread from my arms to my back. I clenched my teeth and kept going, guiding it again and again, exactly as the images showed, without rushing.
...
When I finally opened my eyes, the window had already turned the colour of evening.
My body felt light, and at the same time heavier, as if it had been packed tighter. Clenching my fist, I could feel strength there that hadn't existed this morning. I raised my arm to look at it, and I couldn't help but stare.
A faint, hollow light was shining on my skin.