Back within the village, Dan was seated in a meditative position as streams of Edict invisible to the naked eye continuously rushed into his body. He sat in that position for several hours, and soon popping sounds rang from within his body and filled the house. The sounds were akin to loud explosions that could shake a roof off a house, but because Dan was the only one here there was no one to witness this moment. When the popping sounds stopped Dan opened his eyes and exhaled. His eyes shone brightly within the darkness, and the power contained in them was obvious.
"I've gotten stronger," Dan mumbled as he clenched his fists. When Mane gave him the Wielding Manual, he said that Dan was the only person qualified to use it. When he asked why, Mane informed him that it was a manual with high requirements, and one of those requirements was for one to reach the Above-Mortal Realm without any wielding manual. This was next to impossible to achieve. For even Mane had to use a manual to get to where he was. In fact when Mane first read through the manual he knew it was impossible for anyone to be able to use it. And his masters agreed. 6th was the one who passed this manual to him, and even he said that no one in his world had been able to use it. Apparently there were some geniuses who studied other manuals and used the knowledge they gained from those manuals to grow to the peak of the Mortal Realm without relying on a specific manual per se. But even they couldn't break through to the Above-Mortal Realm after trying everything. Eventually, some Scholars and Spiritualists came together and studied the manual. And in doing so, they were able to create a new Wielding Manual similar to it, but slightly weaker. However this new version didn't have such stringent requirements.
Why were even geniuses willing to do so much just to be able to use this manual? Because of what it could do. Regeneration. Of course there were manuals that also provided users with regenerative abilities, and some were even able to mend broken bones and stitch destroyed ligaments and tendons back together and make them even stronger than they were. But this manual was different. And the difference was in its name.
True Art of Restoration!
It wasn't just restoration, but true restoration! This meant that injuries to the soul could be mended as well! And that was why geniuses scrambled for this technique. After all, who wouldn't want to have a manual that is capable of mending injuries of the soul? The soul was so important that without it the physical body was but a shell, incapable of anything human or beastly. It was complex and difficult to understand, and it was even more difficult to heal when one sustained injuries to the soul. That was why the True Art of Restoration was so important. Even Mane was moved to study this manual and discard the manual for Supremes. It was only after 1st assured him that although the Supreme Manual couldn't heal souls, it had strong protective mechanisms that protected the soul from harm, that Mane took his eyes off the True Art of Restoration.
But this world had people who had broken past the Above-Mortal Realm without any manuals. Unfortunately, most of them did so by following the path of Outer Energy. This was unfortunate because True Art of Restoration was an Inner Energy Wielding Manual. So far Mane had met only two people with vast reserves of inner energy: Dan and Ivor. Mane didn't know Ivor well, nor did he trust him. But he had faith in Dan. And that was why he passed the Wielding Manual to Dan.
Dan's injuries were of the soul, and that was why his strength kept decreasing even though he wasn't physically injured. His soul injuries were so grave that they affected his Internal Star Map, and had slowly caused defects in his blood vessels. So Mane gave him the True Art of Restoration, hoping that the injuries he sustained on his soul would be healed. Luckily, the manual was every bit as good as it was described, and Dan could already feel his gradually declining strength begin to rise again.
"It's only been a day since I started following the instructions on the manual, yet my strength has increased several folds! What a magical script"
Dan marveled at the awesomeness of the True Art of Restoration and wondered if everyone else would experience such a surge in strength if they used it. What Dan didn't know was that he was an anomaly. In just a span of several hours, he had been able to accumulate what others would need a month to gather! True Art of Restoration was restoring his injury as well as nourishing his body, hence he was recovering at an extremely fast pace. Given another week or two of diligent meditation, he would be able to recover his former power, and maybe even go beyond it.
"Who would have thought that just sitting and doing nothing could increase one's strength?" Dan thought with a wry smile on his face.
This world was focused on training the body to grow stronger. After Mane had explained some matters to him last night, he understood a few things. Edict was a source of energy that had two branches: Inner and Outer Energy. Inner Energy was calmer and more delicate and could be easily stored in the body. Outer Energy wasn't easy to handle and it was difficult to keep it stored in the body, but it wasn't impossible. The pre-requisite was to gain excellent control of Outer Energy so that it wouldn't run riot when stored in the body. And once that level of control was achieved, the Body Wielder could have been said to have reached the Above-Mortal Realm. From what Mane told him, many of the warriors were Body Wielders. But he, Dan, was an Energy and Body Dual Wielder. However, his Body Wielding was only at the peak of the Profound Realm, which was a far cry from his abilities as an Energy Wielder. As an Energy Wielder he was at the 5th Stage of the Heaven Realm until recently. For he had just broken into the 6th Stage of the Heaven Realm.
"I still have much to do," Unclenching his fists, Dan closed his eyes and entered into a state of meditation once again. Although he had grown stronger, he wasn't infatuated with the strength he had just received. There were two reasons for that.
The first was the fact that he wanted to get even stronger. Mane said Ivor was at the peak of the Heaven Realm, so he was three stages behind Ivor in terms of power. If he wanted to have the power to protect Mane from Ivor, he needed to grow stronger. And that was his motivation right now. He wanted Mane to be able to come to him for shelter when things go south, and although he knew that with Mane's personality it was highly unlikely for him to come running for help, he wanted to have the power to protect him even without Mane's permission to do so.
The second reason he didn't grow infatuated with the growth of his power was because he felt dissatisfied. As the years wore on after his soul injury, he grew weaker. Although he couldn't tell which part of his body was injured, for he had seen many specialists in the first class cities but received no diagnosis of an illness or injury, he could feel his strength slowly seeping away as the years went by. He knew that if that had continued, a time would have come when he would have lost all his strength. But things were different now. He could feel his strength recovering, and the discomfort he didn't quite understand which turned out to be a Soul Injury was healing at a rapid pace. So it was true that he was getting stronger, but when he recalled how much power he wielded in his prime, he wasn't satisfied with just this much. He didn't look like it, but he was a proud man. And there was no way he would be satisfied with just this.
"I wonder how he's doing," Dan whispered to himself with his eyes closed and sank into meditation. Moonlight shone through his window and fell onto his robust frame. His darkened skin complimented the silver light of the moon so well that one would assume they were wed. As Dan meditated, he was unaware of the strange happenings in Mane's room.
A few rooms away there was something strange happening. A red light flickered occasionally through the gaps of the door to one of the rooms. This room was Mane's room. The red light came from underneath Mane's bed, and even shone brighter than the noonday sun when it appeared. And if anyone was here, they would be blinded by the red light. As for those who would have been able to handle such brightness, they would have no doubt been eager to see what was under the bed. And if they did look, they would see the source of the red light.
The source of the red light was a rusty old dagger. It didn't look impressive in any way, but the red light it produced was full of power and the majesty of a high grade weapon. Suddenly it stopped producing the red light, and everything grew calm once again. However, nothing is ever as it seems. For although it was no longer producing any light, it now hovered over the ground. It was only by a few centimeters, but it was definitely off the ground. It shook a few times, as if someone was beckoning it to draw near, and then it fell back to the ground. It seemed that whatever triggered it had disappeared. So what did trigger it?
It was the powerful aura that exploded south to the village, in the very direction Mane and the others had left in. And the aura that caused such a disturbance to the dagger belonged to none other than…
Mane!