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Author's note: This is the first chapter of the double release published today.
I kindly request all the readers to support the novel by giving your suggestions and reviews for improving the quality of the novel as well suggestions for a better story plot if needed.
Please vote for this novel 'Devouring Phoenix Technique' so that I can contribute more and do my very best.
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Chapter 8
On the continent and the sea regions of the Sky Fortune world, martial strength based hierarchy reigns.
Rules, Law and Order were meant for the weaker section of the society. A powerful person with higher cultivation strength can change the law and order of the society as per his wish.
The people who suffer are always the weak or those with lower status in the society whereas those with power and strength do as they wish.
A person of lower status can only change his or her fate through cultivation.
Cultivation provides them strength and as strength rises, they can deter others more.
They can change their status in society with cultivation and strength. A person with powerful cultivation can even deter a king of a kingdom.
Thus Martial strength follows martial cultivation by absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into the body.
Humans, demons, beasts and many other myriad races of the Universe cultivate by absorbing spiritual energy of heaven and earth into the body.
On this big piece of land, the training of spiritual energy had become commonplace after the hard work of countless individuals who continued to train beyond generations, expanding the knowledge about spiritual energy all the way to the top.
Knowledge and practice of spiritual energy were related to the development of Cultivation techniques and Martial techniques.
Cultivation techniques help in absorbing and practising the spiritual energy in the body but the rate of absorption depends on the grade of technique.
Martial techniques constitute an attack, defence and movement techniques with each of them divided into grades based on the respective strength provided by them.
The Martial and Cultivation techniques are graded as Red grade, Orange grade, Yellow grade, Green grade, Blue grade, Indigo grade, Violet grade, Golden grade and Celestial grade.
It is graded such that the red grade is the weakest and Celestial grade being the strongest technique in the Celestial Universe.
But the Sky Fortune world being a moderate lower world of the Celestial plane only has techniques of Green grade and lower whereas the grades above green grade are a mystery to the people of Sky Fortune since these graded techniques were never seen before.
It is said that there was a world destroying war that happened in the Sky fortune world that caused destruction and chaos throughout the world millions of years back.
That world destroying war even caused the death of Gods.
The techniques above the green grade were either lost or destroyed from the Sky fortune world during the period of that war.
In Sky Fortune world, the Green grade attack technique has the strongest attacking strength and the Green grade defence technique has the strongest defence whereas the Green grade cultivation technique being the strongest cultivation technique.
Cultivation and martial techniques can also be classified on the basis of elemental energy such as fire, wood, metal, earth, water, wind, lightning etc.
Techniques with elemental affinity are more powerful than the other techniques with no elemental affinity within the same grade.
Humans cannot absorb and store spiritual energy from heaven and earth just because they can practice cultivation techniques.
In this world, in order to absorb and store the spiritual energy in the body, the human body must have an existence termed as martial spirits in its body.
The human cultivator's strength was closely related to the talents of these martial spirits.
They were graded into low, mid, high and peak within each grade rated from one to ten in Sky fortune world but there was no history on the appearance of grade ten martial spirits in Sky fortune world for the past hundred thousand years.
One hundred thousand years before, there was a renowned venerable who had a grade ten martial spirit who later ruled the entire Sky fortune world.
It is said that he later ascended to the Great Celestial plane.
Martial spirits graded five and above were considered as superb talent martial spirits, a prodigy existence.
The higher the talent the better the body absorbs the world's spiritual energy and become a strong cultivator.
Thus grade eight and grade nine martial spirits were considered the exalted peak existences in the Sky Fortune World and grade ten were only myths.
Similarly, the martial spirits may have an elemental affinity.
Talents of martial spirits are more exhibited when they are executed along with the martial techniques of the same elemental affinity as that of the spirits.
Nevertheless, there were also people born without martial spirits or crippled martial spirits and were unable to train. In Sky fortune World, these people were labelled as wastes.
Ron was walking across the room for some time pondering about something.
Looking at Ron pondering, Phoenix thought to himself and nodded happily "Maybe, this kid is thinking about how to cultivate. I should give him a good cultivation technique".
Ron after a period of time while pondering asked "This Sky Fortune world is a flat plane and not a spheroid whereas the previous Earth planet was a spheroid; but how is this possible?"
"Science says planets should be spherical or spheroid, so is it possible for Flat Earth theory to be true? Maybe worlds can exist in both forms, spheroid and planar".
Phoenix was stunned. He thought Ron was thinking about cultivation all this time.
Sigh.....
Phoenix's confused voice sounded " I don't know what you are talking about kiddo, and what is this Science? But your guess is right; there are billions of worlds which are either Plane or Spheroid."
After listening to the phoenix, he nodded, moved out from the house and started looking around. He breathed in fresh air containing spiritual energy. He felt refreshed.
This was the first time Ron breathed in such air because the air on planet earth did not contain such pure spiritual energy.
He then according to the memories started walking in the direction of the Boris clan library.
He saw some youths lead by an elder walking past him but they only took a glimpse of him and continued walking away.
After walking for a while, he saw a white building with a signboard "Library".
Just as he was getting into the building, he saw a group of youngsters leaving. The Nine year old youngster leading the group was not an unknown face.
He was Louis Boris, the same person who invited Ron for the drink in the past and Ron got poisoned.
He is the second son of Grand elder of the Boris clan and is two years older than Ron.
Ron could hear the group laughing as they approached him. Louis upon seeing a figure in front of him took a peek.
Suddenly, he froze upon seeing that it was Ron ahead of him and there was murder intent in his eyes for an instant.
Ron saw the expression and the killing intent of Louis and his gaze sharpened. He was now sure that Louis was involved in the poisoning.
Even though the killing intent was only for an instant, as an assassin in his previous life, Ron was very sensitive to such things and his senses never betrayed him.
"Ron, I heard you got injured somehow; I was planning to visit you. You are a good friend of mine, so take this grade one recovery pill and try to recover as soon as possible. " Louis laughed.
The edge of Ron's mouth curled and he lifted his hand to take the recovery pill. There was no need to restrain himself from taking such a good thing.
He was sure that Louis would not make a move openly or provide a poison pill in front of so many people because of clan rules.
He cannot break the rules even if his father is a Grand elder. If it was found, not even his father can save him from severe punishment.
"Thank you Louis for your good will. I shall never forget the kindness and generosity you showed. Now, I need to leave" Ron sneered and entered the Library hallway.
"How dare he taunt our brother Louis" a boy among the group spoke angrily.
A girl moved closer to Louis and embraced Louis's hand "Brother Louis, why do you care about a bastard? You don't have to be kind to such trash who does not even respect you. We all know you are considerate about the clansmen which is why you are the best."
Another girl upon seeing this, said lustfully "Brother Louis, I heard you have completely learnt the first move of Black Swamp Sword technique even before the Martial Spirit Testing Ceremony. You really are a genius of the Boris clan in the way of swords. Would you help me improve my sword way when I visit your residence tonight?"
Louis with lecherous eyes replied "Sure sister Rina, we younger generation of Boris clan need to help each other to improve strength. I will be waiting for you tonight."
The other boys had lust flicker in their eyes whereas the girls had disgust and jealousy when they looked at that girl.
"Brother Louis will most probably awaken Martial spirits of grade four and above since he can already completely train in the first move of Black swamp sword technique."
"Yes... yes.... Brother Louis is a genius of our Boris clan and the rising star of our Green plum city."
" Brother Louis will awaken a fifth grade Martial spirit and shock the entire Seven Cranes kingdom."
Each and every one of them were singing praises of Louis making him feel happy.
Martial Spirit testing ceremony is conducted every three years in the Boris clan and only children of seven years and above can participate.
The Martial spirit test is conducted to find, detect and awaken the Martial spirit of a person taking the test.
There is a special Martial spirit testing stone that can bring out the Martial spirit from the body and exhibit it. The martial spirit is then graded accordingly.
Body strength of Seven years old is the minimum requirement to use the stone and since the stone is valuable and cannot be used unconditionally, the test takes place every three years.
Boris clan Library.....
Ron walked through the hallway and finally entered a large hall full of books, talismans, scrolls and manuscripts.
He loved the smell of books and scrolls and he was even fascinated to see so many books and scrolls within the library of a clan of a small kingdom.
He walked through one section after another but he did not stop.
History... Geography... Cultivation Techniques.... Attack martial techniques.... Defence Martial techniques... Martial spirits Classification.... Elements.... Treasures... Weapon Forging... Arrays.....
He walked towards the Medical section and started browsing through the books, ordinary scrolls and scripts.
He can access neither the magical scrolls and magic scripts nor the reading talismans because they are made of special materials and the stored information can only be accessed by sending the soul power into it.
But Ron has never cultivated before and thus his soul strength is too weak to access these things.
It is a known fact that soul strength increases with cultivation but there are other ways to increase soul strength and that is, either by consuming the magical herbs and medicinal pills or by cultivating a soul technique.
A stronger soul strength is the basic requirement for many professions such as Alchemy, Weapon forging, Arrays etc.
Soul techniques are techniques to improve the soul strength and are classified into four types as per the strength of soul improvement: Bronze grade, Silver grade, Gold grade and Celestial grade.
Each grade is again divided into Early, mid, high and peak levels.
Soul techniques are very difficult to find and are extremely rare.
There are no Gold and Celestial grade soul techniques available throughout the Sky fortune world.
Even the Silver graded soul techniques are very rare and are privately owned by the powerful forces of the Sky fortune world.
The Boris clan, a mighty clan of the Green plum city only has one Early Bronze grade soul cultivation technique.
This shows the scarcity of Soul cultivation techniques.