Reading takes up a lot of your time. It eats away your boredom and replaces it with intense passion and curiosity.
The others, myself included, were once part of a book club back on Olympus, many deities and immortals attended, whether they be minor or major ones.
Far stranger was the fact that Zeus, the current King of Gods even attended a few.
Anyways, it was exactly that book club that allowed me to have the endurance and patience to read a book with zeal and not cease during the first few pages as many do.
The book I was reading now was barely interesting, but it was still great knowledge to learn.
It spoke of the basics of cultivation in a simplified way, so that it was easily understood to those that weren't very well read.
The methods, however, were unnecessary and the process bought up a whole set of problems, for example, "Let your body instinctively collect energy. Once you feel a warm tingling in your dantian; let it spread all over your body to stimulate your acupoints and meridians."
This particular line brought me great pain, and had wrought a migraine that made my head split.
It was a feeling even worse than the time I thought I lost my hair comb, only to find it was on my head the entire time.
I sighed and flipped through the pages once more, this time addressing to myself the issues and solutions to the problems.
First of all; one needed to adapt to the specific wavelengths of spiritual energy, everyone was different and needed different amounts of energy to take in.
Absorbing as much as they could was foolish as one could overload and die of over saturation.
Secondly; a vague tingling feeling is an incorrect expression for this part of the process. After the adaptation and absorption process they then condense it into a storm-like core.
That storm would then automatically release constant gentle vitality that would heal and unblock meridians.
This was the so called cleansing stage. And of course meridians and acupoints are the same thing, I have no idea why others would believe that they were different.
Thirdly; to stimulate the meridians, one needed to first allow them to open in an orderly manner.
There are around four hundred of them, but one merely needed to open the primary meridians.
There are 12 in total: lungs, large intestine, spleen, stomach, heart, small intestine, kidney, bladder, pericardium, San Jiao,* liver and gallbladder.
After all that they would finally go onto the Body Reconstruction Stage
Then after opening those, one needed to remodel the Seven Apertures; two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and one mouth.
You must be meticulous with this stage as it will prove to be extremely useful in the future.
As I read on I found many more troublesome factors that would give others barely a 23% chance of becoming an Emperor Realm Cultivator.
Honestly I feel so sad for those that actually tried this out. I mean seriously, it is a gross underestimate to just say that this was oversimplified.
All the author did was just take out what he thought was unnecessary and called it a day. I shall not stand for this! Humans may not be perfect, but I sure can try to make sure their cultivation isn't flawed.
'Minerva! Activate Finalisation Mode: Flawless Creation, Lawless Perfection!' I shouted inwardly at the system in a hurry, I could not stand facing such a troublesome and flawed creation.
I took out a pen and notepad from my pouch and fastidiously jotted down a new method.
The manual contained a few correct methods, but most were errors that were indistinguishable to others unless one was an expert.
My mind was overflowing with knowledge with the manual as its base and with the power of Athena at my side I could create an entirely new set of cultivation techniques.
"The meridians should be opened from the lowest to highest placement. For every single small realm breakthrough one needs to open around 3 major meridians and over a hundred minor ones, slowly but surely."
After a while, I then eventually stopped. Looking over it and proof reading it for an entire 5 minutes I placed it in my pouch satisfied with my work.
Now all I needed to do was to serialise it and have someone spread the manual all over the city.
This would be my ticket to fame. But first I needed to transcribe more manuals. This time, in the magic department.
Walking down the aisles I soon realised that many boys were still taking furtive glances at me, despite Agnostos all ready warning them to stay away.
I sighed, feeling bad that my beauty had probably made them go insane. It was however, good to know that my womanly charm still works.
"Let's see, I'll take {The Existence Of Abilities: How They Came To Be}, {Theory On How A Magic Style Is Created And The Meaning Of Affinities}, {Correlation Between Qi And Mana}."
I was intrigued by the refreshing knowledge and unique power systems placed in this world.
The rules set by the deity that ruled this universe showed that they had clearly done extensive research resulting in the creation of a full and complete heritage for the two main methodologies.
Due to my long experience as a deity I quickly figured out the origins of both energies. Qi and Mana were intrinsically a concept given a basic form.
The two energies then dispersed and converged into the universe and remained as a source of vitality and power.
They then created many races to form their own ideologies and power systems which led to the rise and fall of many methodologies, leaving only Cultivation and Magic as the last ones remaining.
I theorised that it may have been intentionally their side as it was extremely troublesome to have so many systems all at once, so he just picked the two most likely to survive and favoured them.
This may be because the deity was previously a human born in the modern era; they must have had used popular culture and trends as a reference to create the foundation for Cultivation and Magic.
In a sense I was able to see the crux of the situation and realised that the humans and many other races were born with an inherent knowledge of modern culture as well as the idealism towards Magic and Cultivation.
This led to the birth of so called 'geniuses,' who were revered as the inventors and saviours of mankind, when in fact the concept had already been invented and then implanted into their minds.
"This must be why there are beliefs common in Buddhism existing here, despite the fact that the religion itself does not exist." I was stunned to see how deep the rabbit hole went and soon found myself contemplating whether or not I should investigate further.
I shook my head violently, this was a dangerous topic and had to be discussed with the others.
Eventually they would find out for themselves. I knew that this flawed and imperfect reality would instantly come to destroy me for trying to discover the truth of the Great Path.
This discovery was still useful though and I knew that I had to report this to the others, after all this may be our chance to reconstruct an entire power system if we dig deep enough.
If others were to never know what our true abilities were and how we gained them, we'd be able to have an incredible advantage over them.
The downside was that we may not be able to restore a single system at all. Leaving only one choice, "If the perfect fit does not exist, then I'll have to make it myself."
I clenched my fists and started to jot down as many notes as I could, searching through many books for what seemed to be a useful part.
I froze and a memory of me watching a muscular God hammering in his smith near the foundry came to light, "Haha, despite being divorced from a mechanic God I am still somewhat influenced by him to the point I call even pieces of information as scraps and spare parts."
I carried on once more reminiscing of much happier eras. "Just you wait Agnostos, with this methodology of mine I shall make you rue the day you ever bought me here!"