John listened to his mother's stories only half-heartedly.
He had heard most of them before. The Bloody Princess. The duel. The tie beneath the moonlight.
Still, he paid some attention.
Not because of the romance, but because every story revealed fragments of this world's power system.
And that made him hungry.
Unfortunately, hunger didn't help when you were two months old and incapable of forming full sentences and being unable to relief yourself without crying.
According to Yue Li, he had been born with a partially awakened core,making him a quasi Rank 1 within the Physical State of cultivation.
The benefits were modest.
For an infant, at least.
His body was sturdier than normal. His immune system unusually strong. His bones and muscles slightly denser. That was about it.
Still, it was abnormal.
From what he had pieced together, cultivation ranks ranged from 1 to 9 per major realm. Most humans didn't awaken their battle spirit and simultaneously their core,until around thirteen years of age.
The core was the center of everything.
The origin point of Qi.
Primordial energy from Heaven and Earth would be absorbed, refined within the core, and circulated through the meridians.
At the Physical State, the enhancement was straightforward: strength, speed, resilience, reflexes.
Useful.
But not extraordinary.
The true boon of a cultivator was their Battle Spirit.
Not every cultivator was a warrior. John had seen servants summon red- and orange-ranked battle spirits to assist in mundane tasks, strengthening their bodies to carry heavy loads, manipulating minor elements for cleaning or heating water.
Battle spirits were manifestations of talent.
The greater the talent, the rarer and more powerful the spirit.
Unique.
Symbolic.
Alive in a sense.
John, however, was far too weak to test his own, for now.
Another discovery unsettled him slightly.
He could sense the strength of those around him.
In the shape of Auras.
Most cultivators near him felt like flickering candles, thicker and deeper than his own faint spark, but still limited.
Yue Li, on the other hand…
She was a bonfire.
No.
A blazing inferno contained in human skin.
Even weakened, even with damaged meridians, her presence dwarfed everyone else's.
John had no idea what realms existed beyond the Physical State.
He filed that curiosity away.
One problem at a time.
Cultivation, as he understood it, was inefficient by nature.
A cultivator absorbed primordial energy from Heaven and Earth, refined it within the core, and allowed it to circulate through the meridians.
But only a small percentage of that refined energy actually advanced one's rank.
If someone cultivated naturally, progress could take years.
Years warriors rarely had.
Which was why alchemists existed.
They refined rare herbs and monster cores into pills that accelerated cultivation dramatically.
If natural cultivation was filling a pool with a cup…
Pills were using a bucket.
You could consume raw monster cores directly, but they were crude and impure often causing personality instability, heightened aggression, even violent tendencies.
Negligible downsides for some.
Deal-breaking for others.
Power was everything in this world.
Wealth determined cultivation speed.
The strong grew stronger.
The poor stagnated.
And from that imbalance, demonic cultivators were born — individuals who sought shortcuts. Refining humans into pills. Devouring others to increase their own strength. Slaughtering entire villages in pursuit of progress.
John glanced at Yue Li.
To think…
This gentle woman holding him might once have been a bloody butcher.
If her stories were to be believed.
(…It's possible.)
He flexed his small, pudgy fingers.
(If battle spirit strength follows a color spectrum, then red and orange are low-tier… green seems mid-range… cyan is higher…)
He internally sighed.
Still stuck in a baby's body.
Still powerless.
Still waiting, but not for long.
Because if there was one thing John understood from both lives
It was that In a world where power determined everything…
He would need far more than average talent to survive.