I wake up just as early and just as well-rested as I did the nights before. I yawn before checking my aperture, finding about 18% primeval essence inside of it. Since Primeval essence regenerates at a fixed rate it does make for a pretty accurate way to measure time. I sit cross legged in my bed, lean on the headboard and cross my arms. The time has come for a pretty important decision.
Do I just go full-blast with my cultivation and go at the maximum speed possible or do I purposefully slow it down so that I don't stand out?
I lean my back on the headboard of my bed. The pros for going full blast are that I would be much better prepared for any eventual conflict and danger. The con would be that it would make me stand out. A 44% C-Rank aptitude mute being the first in his age-group to reach rank 2 would put an enormous amount of suspicion on me. The best case scenario would be everyone thinking I'm being backed by another power-block inside of the clan. The worst case scenario would involve everyone thinking that I'm being sponsored by an enemy of the clan.
Cultivating slower would fix that problem, since I wouldn't have to worry about getting offed for treason. On the other hand it becomes more likely for me to just get killed by the first hostile encounter that I find myself in. Thanks to my brother guaranteeing that I'll almost always have someone gunning for my head this option is much less appealing to me.
I still don't know how much my luck factors exactly in any of this either. Was Fang Zheng dying a lucky stroke or was it just the butterfly effect? I'll either buy or make a coin today, flipping it should get me some results. That boar from yesterday was almost surely there because of my luck.
In summation:
Speedrun Cultivation : Better prepared for fights but will be very sus.
Cautious Cultivation : Not sus but won't be prepared for fights.
What makes me lean even more towards cultivating as fast as possible is that after a certain point any suspicion put on me won't matter anymore. Can't really investigate someone forcefully if they can just kill you and your entire family for even daring to consider making an attempt at doing so.
I rise from my bed and head to the kitchens, once I get there I steal another clay pot and head back to my room. If the liquor worm and boar get found I have some excuses, if I manifest any of my other gu then I can't really explain how they have arrived in my possession. I know that my aperture will get inspected occasionally at the academy, so I can't just hold them there permanently just yet.
It's honestly probably not even safe to hold the gu in my room. My uncle is almost certainly still looking for ways to fuck me over. The only thing that holds him back from being somewhat more proactive is that he'll look pretty bad in front of the clan if he kicks me out right after my brother died.
Once I get back to my room I close the door, sit on the bed and begin skimming through the physical secret manual. I want to check how fast this manual works, since if it's too slow then it won't be worth using it. Thankfully the process of physical cultivation itself is not slow. The problem is that I just need to find a supernaturally strong beast, kill it, eat it's flesh and bones raw and then infuse my flesh and bones with the strength still lingering inside the eaten remains of said beast.
With that having proven itself to be impractical at this moment in time I simply switch over to searching the inheritance for any of my other Gu. Once the sun rises I put the phone gu back in my aperture, not wanting for anyone to see me with it. I ended up finding one other gu of mine described in the inheritance. The slavery gu. It allows a gu master to impose their will onto another living being. Turning them into a slave of the user. The good news is that it relies on the user's soul, meaning that for me it's really strong, the bad news is that it's a single time use. The other good news is that the inheritance has a unique recipe for its advancement, where the gu can be used as many times as desired. The other bad news is that the recipe is for a rank 4 gu.
It does not take long for Shen Cui to arrive. After she helps me get myself cleaned and dressed I head for the academy once again, taking the newly stolen clay pot with me. I'm assuming that I'm stealing them, in reality I don't think that it's much of an issue. My uncle and his wife are almost certainly too distanced from the affairs of servants to notice missing wine and pots, and if the servants noticed they would still be too afraid of offending a gu master to tattle.
I've started understanding some words spoken around me. Even if I don't understand an entire sentence I can at least somewhat deduce the meaning of both the rest of the sentence, and of the remaining words. Eidetic memory is proving it's worth pretty heavily right now.
When I arrive I find everyone in the courtyard once again. Since I arrived early I have enough time to leave the clay pot inside of my room in the academy. Thank god that my brother was enough of a nerd to forcibly show me how Fang Yuan is written in chinese. I manage to reach the courtyard again before the martial arts instructor arrives. I kill the time until his arrival by listening to the people around me, trying to learn as many words as possible. Instead of the expected martial arts instructor it's the academy elder that arrives instead.
Today the academy elder is doing a demonstration on the moonlight gu, which thankfully leads to me learning the more obscure words and terms regarding Gu. The academy elder manifests a crystalline quartz in the shape of a crescent moon inside of his palm, extending his palm towards as afterwards, making sure that all of us can see it. From the moment that he pulled it out I started feeling a faint, weird aura coming from it. "This is the rank 1 Moonlight Gu! The moonlight gu series is the signature gu of our clan. At the end of today's class every single one of you will receive one, the first one of you that successfully refines it shall receive twenty primeval essence stones."
The academy guards bring three straw training dummies. The Academy Elder raises his hand, showing the moonlight gu to everyone again. "The first step into using the moonlight gu is turning it into a tattoo on your hand. This will make its use much simpler. Simply will for it to do so and it will."
The moonlight gu then turns into a cyan crescent moon on the elder's hand. "When you push your primeval essence into the moonlight gu, it will begin glowing. This means that it is ready to be used. Simply activate the gu and flick your hand at your target whilst activating it in order to use it."
The elder's tattoo begins glowing blue. He points his hand at the dummy before flicking it, releasing a blue wave of light in the shape of a crescent moon at it. The wave lands on the dummy's neck, decapitating it. Since the dummies are rank 1 straw dummy gu the head of the dummy begins to slowly grow back. The academy elder's hand is now no longer glowing after firing off the wave. "If you flick your hand too early or too late you will miss the target. If you do not flick your hand at all the gu will not activate. We will go in depth on this after most of you have refined your moonlight gu. The maximum range of the moonlight gu is ten meters, any further and the wave will dissipate."
After this he ushers all of us to the classroom, beginning a lecture as soon as all of us are seated. "Today I will teach you how to manipulate your primeval essence sea in order to cultivate, refine and use gu. To control your primeval essence all you must do is will it to move. If you have difficulties doing so simply concentrate on the exact movement that you wish for it to make, starting with small waves. Manipulating your primeval essence will slowly become second nature with practice."
The elder now pulls out a small jar from his pocket. Inside of the jar is a yellow beetle that I don't recognize, probably a gu of some kind. "This is a wild rank 1 yellow longhorn beetle gu, it is currently weak and underfed. Some of you may have felt a small aura coming from the moonlight gu, that was the aura of a rank 1 gu. Because it is underfed the aura of this yellow longhorn beetle gu is extremely faint, barely even capable of piercing this jar. Pass it between each other, try to feel the aura coming from it."
He passes the jar to the student in the rightmost seat on the front row. "In order to refine a gu a gu master must overwhelm the will of the gu. Pushing your primeval essence into the gu will slowly accomplish this, allowing you to impose your own will onto the gu. The will of a weakened gu is significantly easier to overwhelm."
By now the jar has reached me. I grab it from the student in front of me and give it a good look. I honestly can't tell just from looking at it whether or not the gu is underfed, but I can recognize a very faint aura coming from the gu now that it is closer to me. It feels much fainter than the earlier moonlight gu. I pass the jar to the student on my right.
The elder now brings out another moonlight gu, this one is larger ,shinier and has an aura twice as strong compared to the moonlight gu that he had shown us previously. . "This is the rank 2 moonglow gu. It is the rank 2 advancement of the moonlight gu. Its recipe is one moonglow gu and two little light gu. I will teach you refining through combination near the end of the year."
The moonglow gu disappears from the hand of the elder, having been pulled into his aperture. "Each of you will now begin cultivating for the rest of the class. Begin by making small ripples in your primeval sea. Once you become more proficient in manipulating your primeval essence, begin creating waves, as large as you are able to, in your primeval essence sea. Once that becomes simple all that remains is directing the waves at the walls of your aperture. If you have any questions make sure to ask."
This guy is honestly not that bad of a teacher. Straight and to the point. I close my eyes and begin cultivating, making sure to pay some attention to what is around me this time. From time to time someone will ask a question. One such person is Mo Bei, the boy in front of me. "Elder, I am able to make movement in my primeval sea, but I have failed to create large waves. No matter how much I concentrate, the waves almost always seem to disperse on their own."
The elder walks to Mo Bei and touches his back. "Begin cultivating once again."
After about thirty seconds I hear the elder's voice again. "You are creating too many waves, making them uselessly crash into each other and disperse. Move the primeval essence in the center of your aperture up, then move it down. The moment that the primeval essence reaches the top of its movement move it down, the moment it reaches the bottom of its movement move it up. That will allow you to create much stronger waves."
I immediately follow said advice and the elder turns out to be correct. The waves are much stronger and smash much more strongly into the aperture walls, speeding up both the consumption of primeval essence and the speed of cultivation.
The rest of the class is spent cultivating in this fashion. Whenever someone has a question they would address the elder, who would then inspect their aperture and help them. Once class is over I go home and put the liquor worm gu and the white boar gu into my aperture. It's time to hunt.
I go to the waterfall again both because it's pretty easy to clean myself of blood there and because I have no idea where else to search for boars at this moment. Once there I strip and begin searching for a boar. Finding one does not take long. It would be more accurate to say that the boar found me. It charged towards me from my back, the only reason that I realized that it was behind me was how loud the thing was. It squealed loudly, each step it took caused slight tremors in the earth.
I sidestepped its charge, using the same move that the martial arts instructor taught us to do so. Its head then smashes right into a tree, breaking its neck from the force of the impact. I let out the white boar gu and watch mesmerized as it devours the boar. I don't think this sight is ever going to get old.
With that chore complete I manifest the blood qi gu and the blood step gu into my aperture. The blood qi gu looks like a solid blood clot, floating atop the primeval essence sea. The blood step gu is a red praying mantis. It slowly swims towards the blood qi gu, rising and sitting atop of it once it reaches it.
I activate the blood step gu and nothing happens. The next thing that I try is turning it into a tattoo on my feet, mimicking what the elder did with the moonlight gu. After doing so I then take a step and activate it in the apex of that step, quickly leaping forward about five meters. Primeval essence consumption for this gu is not that bad, about 5%. The next thing that I try is doing an upwards jump. This should serve both as a strength test and as a test of the gu.
I crouch and then jump upwards with as much force as I can. That ends up lifting me about thirty meters into the air. The landing thankfully does not hurt at all, which indicates that I'm probably also supernaturally tough as well. I wisely decide not to test this jump with the blood step gu.
Next on the list is searching for a round, flat rock. Which I find right underneath me the instant that I look down. Another plus towards my luck being ridiculous. I take another rock and use it to carve a '-' on one side of the flat rock. On the other side I carve a '+'. It's time to head back to the waterfall and get myself cleaned up.
I don't hurry towards the waterfall, on the way there I continuously flip the newly created rock coin, just so that I can test its balance. From the first 100 flips about 56 were pluses, the other 44 were minuses. It's time for the real luck test now.
I only want to get minuses. I will not actively attempt to schew or manipulate the flip in any way, I flip the coin 785 times until I reach the waterfall. All of the flips landed on the minus.
I go under the waterfall and rinse off the dirt and blood from my body and hair. Once I'm done with that I dress myself and begin heading back to the village.
I've started forming a small theory regarding how exactly my luck functions. I don't think that what it is doing is making the impossible possible. Instead It seems to be turning any event that has a non-zero chance of happening into having an 100% chance of happening. In theory it is mathematically possible to flip a coin heads 785 times in a row. Physically speaking that's impossible, the chance for that to happen would be 2^785, or about 10^190. What this means is that if I end up putting myself in a spot where I have a 0% chance of survival I would die. So long as there is even the tiniest fraction of a chance that I will survive my survival becomes almost guaranteed. That's only if my conjecture is correct however.
Once I reach the village and enter my room I take the pouch with primeval stones with me and head to the market. I want to see if there's anything interesting.
I recognize most of the fruits and vegetables on display, some of them I don't. There's some form of crossbreed between a banana and a pineapple, purple strawberries the size of apples, pears that are the size of a fingernail and more. It doesn't take long for me to find something interesting. Green, fresh poppy seeds. This gives me an interesting idea.
I buy about a hundred grams of poppy seeds, costing me a tenth of a primeval stone. I just split a stone in halves until I have enough pieces broken off to count as a tenth before handing them to the old lady selling them. The next few stops get me the other ingredients that I need. My total expenditure today was about half a primeval stone. With my shopping done I head on home.
Once I arrive I go and meet up with Shen Cui. She thankfully does not question me when I have her follow me to the academy apartments. Since I've both gotten some basic understanding of the grammar and the commonly used words in chinese, we spend most of the night talking, practicing conversations. Thankfully the bed is large enough for the both of us. Despite sleeping in the same bed we end up not doing anything tonight, I'm pretty sure that she is waiting for me to make the first move since that's what I think the local custom is.
While she's sleeping I cultivate. The first thing that I do is manifest the lotus gu inside of my aperture. It looks like a pink lotus, calmly floating atop the primeval essence sea. This gu has two functions. It speeds up primeval essence recovery and creates primeval stones once a day. At rank 1 it makes five primeval stones every day and speeds up my recovery by about 20%. Since I normally regenerate 4.4% of my primeval essence per hour that means that I regenerate 5.28% per hour instead with the aid of the lotus gu.
Once I've used all of my primeval essence I just drop on the bed and begin sleeping.