As Will tried to cultivate, he instantly noticed that something was wrong. It was not that there was something wrong with him or his cultivation, but with his heart. He needed to use his heart to form the ruby layer around the helix of qi for it to enter his body, but it now seemed harder to get his heart to do that and seemed to take more effort, even though it was a minimal difference. This was why Will did not notice it earlier; he had not been actively using his heart and it had just been ambiently beating, but now he could clearly sense that it was harder for it to beat, and it was quite a bit harder at that. He figured that if he put his all into it, it would only beat at one hundredth of its previous power, which was enough to boom over an entire kingdom. However, now, it would at most sound like a pounding that would resound through the house.
Instantly, he tried to use his inner breath and direct it around the room, only to see that it was drastically slower than it was back in the scorching sun kingdom and the surrounding areas. It was so slow in comparison that it would at most be one hundredth of the speed. These two things together showed that he should be one hundred times weaker in every aspect, but why was that? He was baffled and could not figure it out. If he were to go at full speed now, it would take him many months to travel one thousand miles, whereas he used to be able to do it in only three days. Of course, this was not including his wings. With his wings, he could cut the time in half, but it was still ridiculously slow compared to before.
However, just as he was confused beyond belief, a clear cold knock could be heard from his door. Putting his thoughts aside, he went to open the door, and the moment he did, he once again saw Eissa, who was just as cold as ever.
"I forgot to tell you something. May I come in?"
Hearing what she said, Will of course invited her in, after which he prepared her some tea. He had been a slave all his life, so he knew very well how to make tea.
Then, he sat down across from her after giving her the tea. At this moment, she still had a cold look on her face as she sipped the tea. Then, she spoke.
"The thing that I forgot to tell you about is the suppression. You should have noticed by now that you seem to be one hundred times weaker than you were before, right?"
Will responded with a nod, after which she continued. "The suppression is something that everyone here experiences from birth, but I forgot that you were not born here and would not have ever experienced it before. The suppression is from the heaven and earth, and it is a simple thing. The cultivation environment is better here, so there is more qi in everything. As such, you seem weaker by comparison because there is pressure from the environment. The place where you grew up had so little qi in the heaven that it had no effect at all on the cultivators there. However, here, there is enough qi for there to be a suppression on abilities. This suppression gets stronger in better cultivation environments, but the change will never be as drastic as it has been for you. As such, the power which you are able to use here will not change much in terms of how much it suppressed even after you go to places with more qi than this. In other words, you have not gotten weaker; the suppression on you has gotten stronger and the strength you can exert here is your new normal."
This instantly cleared up all of Will's doubts and confusion as she perfectly explained it. The place where he had come from was so weak that the qi in the environment could not suppress anyone at all, and as such, he thought that that had been his normal power. But in reality, this place was where his level of power would be considered normal, and the level of suppression would not get much stronger than this even if there was many times more qi in the environment. This brought Will into perspective on just how much he was a frog at the bottom of a well.
After saying this, Eissa continued. "The place you come from is so weak that none of the techniques you may have gathered will work here, and they will at most be able to use one thousandth of their power, much less than the requirement for them to work at all, much less be considered to be powerful. As such, only those at the silver core realm can start to use martial arts techniques and nothing that would use any elements such as fire or snow. However, you may be an exception as I have seen how powerful your qi and inner breath is. As such, you may be able to use those martial arts at the peak of the spirit realm instead."
"This is all I have to say. Do you have any questions about this or anything else?"
As Will shook his head no, she quickly stood up and left the room without saying goodbye. However, he was not mad at her as he knew that it was just her nature and not that she was being rude to him.
With his questions answered, he quickly went back to the cultivation room and continued to cultivate. However, with the suppression from the qi in the environment, his ruby heart was suppressed and he knew that he would have to take breaks from cultivating to restore his heart's energy. He could not help but be annoyed about this, but he quickly recovered to his calm state as he thought about the fact that this was just how it was now. There was nothing he could do to change it, so why would he get mad about something that could not be changed?
Instead, he decided to look at the bright side. As there was much more qi here, although he was suppressed, he figured that his cultivation speed would be almost the same as it was before, be it a little bit slower. After all, he could no longer cultivate all around the day and night like he could before as he now would need to take breaks, but he could almost make up for this with the abundance of qi in the heaven and earth. He even knew that after his heart grew strong enough to cultivate all day and night again, he would only be faster in cultivation compared to before. He could not help but look forward to when that day would come.
As such, he instantly went into the cultivation room and started to cultivate quietly with his wings spread through the room.
Now that he clearly had a chance to sense the amount of qi in the environment, he could clearly tell that this place was much more abundant in qi than where he had come from, and that it was a much better place to raise geniuses. Taking into account the suppression, this place was roughly twenty times better to cultivate in compared to the place where he had come from, which was much better than even the Shadow Devil kingdom. As such, there were six elders here above the silver core realm as opposed to the single one at the Shadow Devil kingdom, which obviously could not be compared to the Snow Mountain sect.
Four hours later, Will stopped cultivating as his heart slowed down its beating and lowered in volume until it was no longer audible. He had made a small amount of progress, but Will could tell that he had used most of his heart's power at this point and that he should start to recover it. As he needed the power of his heart to cultivate, he would obviously no longer stay here where he could do nothing but sit still and recover his heart's power. He could do this while doing other things, so he obviously would not stay here. As such, he got up and put on his cloak before walking outside.
However, the moment that he opened his door, an unexpected scene awaited him. There was a small crowd of people waiting outside of his house. Most of those people were also wearing a outer disciple badge on their clothes, the same as him. He could sense that they were all curious, and the moment he stepped outside, they noticed him.
"Is that the new outer disciple brought back by Miss Eissa personally?" someone yelled out, grabbing the attention of all the others which had been chatting casually to pass the time. A lot of them had been waiting there for a couple hours and they wanted to see who Eissa had brought back.
"He is so weak?" one of them could not help but question. After all, they knew that someone brought back by the sect's number one genius must be great, but when they saw that he was the same age as them but still at the spirit realm, they could not help but be confused. After all, only a piece of trash could possibly be at the first thread of the spirit realm at their age. Such a weak person would not be able to become a disciple at all, even an outer disciple.
"I heard that his name was Will and that his hometown was entirely destroyed. Maybe she brought him back here out of pity to give him a chance at revenge for those who destroyed his home?" one of them quickly came up with a theory, and those around the kid quickly agreed with him, as this seemed to be the most likely reason to such a weak person being a disciple. After all, it was something that would rarely occur; an elder of a sect would take pity on someone who's family or home was destroyed, and use that grief and hate as a fuel to bring them to power, but it rarely worked so it was not a common practice.
After they saw Will, they could not help being disappointed and quickly started to disperse. Will did not mind them and walked right past them, but they thought that it was because he could not see them as he was blind. They had already known that he was blind and that was why they were so curious as to who he was, but they had not known that he was only a weakling at the first thread of the spirit realm. The moment that Will had become an outer disciple, the whole sect knew of it, but only a few outer disciples cared enough to see him in person and the rest just ignored him entirely.
As he made his way through the group, he did nor pay attention to him nor did he care to as they were simply curious as to who he was and were obviously not willing to interact with him considering how weak he was compared to them. As such, he would obviously make no effort to interact with them and continued to walk past them.
However, the one thing that no one noticed was that he perfectly made his way through the group of cultivators without even coming close to any of them. If any of them had noticed this, they would have been curious as to how he did this as he was blind and should not have been able to do this.
However, since no one noticed, it was impossible to bring it up and everyone continued on their way.
As the crowd had finally dispersed, Will was already long gone and was now out of the outer disciples area and in the main area of the sect where people would set up shops as well as restaurants and other things which were essential to daily life, as well as some pleasantry shops as well. All around were bustling people, and there were all sorts of emotions everywhere. Most of it was happy, but it was at this moment which Will noticed that he could only sense the strongest emotions, and he could not sense all of them as he had been able to before.
However, the only difference was that aside from only being able to sense the most common or strongest emotions, he could more clearly sense the people's calmness and hope, but less so for the calmness as very few of these people had any semblance of calmness as it was a shopping area meant to rile you up with every object you looked at. This only left him sensing everyone's hope and very little of the most powerful emotions which people emitted.
He had figured out long ago that he would be able to more clearly sense the hope and calmness which people contained as he had already unlocked the inner breath of calmness and the qi of hope, but it was at this moment in which he had for the first time used a lot of his heart's power being blind that he noticed that he could only barely sense the other emotions aside from the ones which he had unlocked. He had not noticed before as before this, he could always see at the times when he had used some of his heart's power, and he had not solely used his sensitivity towards emotions to sense the area around him, and hade hence not noticed this detail.
Now that he knew this, he knew what his plan would be. He had to cultivate as fast as he could to reach the second thread of the spirit realm, after which he would be able to sense the emotion of anger, which was very common in a market and would help him to recover the power of his heart quicker. He was using the emotions of the market to restore the power that his heart lost while cultivating.
Finally, for the first time ever, he had a plan!