The next day,
Vast woke up groggily, the hard ground was not a comfortable place to sleep on. There were bugs that bit him, and that made his whole boy itchy. The cold air made him shiver every now and then. These reasons made sleeping outside not an ideal place, but none of these mattered to him if it meant that he could see the night sky.
The beauty of it, the glistening dots in the sky, and how each of these were a place of their own.
He told himself that one day, he'll one day explore each and every place the sky has to offer. To see the very things up close that made him wonder for days on end.
Then, he remembered he had a lesson with the old man. He hurriedly fixed himself up, then went inside of the cabin.
Over the years, the cabin was fixed up by Vast, he fixed the roof so that it wouldn't have any cracks anymore. The walls on the outside were cleaned of mold, and the insects of killed by Vast. It now looked much better than when the old man first brought Vast when he was just a child.
When Vast entered the cabin, he saw the old man sitting on a chair waiting for him. The old main said with a smirk, "You sleeping outside again?" with a gruff tone. "Yes," Vast replied, not wanting to rebuke the old man.
The old man just went straight to the point and said, "Now you said, what's that energy that those animals have? Well its called stellar energy." Vast went into a deep state of thought, then asked, "Why don't I or the plants have it?"
"Well, there are certain requirements on whether one can obtain stellar energy, and use it," the old man said. "What is that threshold?" Vast asked, hoping for an answer. "One can only start when they are 12 years old, and you have to live in a place that has stellar energy in it. This planet does not have any stellar energy."
"Then, how come the beasts have stellar energy?" Vast responded. "There is no need for you to know why Child, just now that beasts follow the same system as humans,"
The old man responded, so Vast kept his mind away from this topic.
"So you can only cultivate if you have luck, isn't that unfair for everyone?" Vast asked. "Life is unfair, people will turn on you if they get any gains from it," the old man responded, with a slight change in tone.
Vast noticed this, and asked "Have you experienced this?" It's not your burden to bear child," the old man responded, so Vast kept his mouth shut.
"There are 7 stages that one can achieve in attaining power," the old man said, "these stages are,"
1) Human 0%
2) Shatterer 1%-10%
3) Cleanser 11%-30%
4) Void Traveler 31%-50%
5) Configurator 51%- 75%
6) Marker 76%-90%
7) Disposer 91%-99%
He asked, "What are these percentages?" "These are the amounts of stellar energy that your soul can contain." Vast, then understood, people can only start cultivation at 12 years old because that's when their soul is ready to take in stellar energy.
"How about 100%," Vast asked curiously because he wondered why there wasn't one. The old man responded, "That's the stage no one has reached, It's called Elemental." Then the old pulled out a book from the shelf, it was dusty as though it hasn't been touched in a very long time.
Vast remembers seeing that book when he came to get books from the shelf, it was called, "Talent and Elemental affinity." The old man said to Vast, "Read that, and after you finish that book, I'll teach you about skills," then he slowly drifted off to sleep. Vast, walking to the table while the old man snoring in the background started to read the book.