He immersed himself into the core further. No, it was resonating. Something. Somewhere… He let the feeling guide him as he traveled through his Energy Space. He arrived at something that seemed like a membrane. He touched the membrane. It was thin but sturdy. Yet, he knew that he could pass through it easily if he willed it, which he did.
As he passed through, he came to another space. He was surprised, this Energy Space was similar to the one before, and yet… different. It was like a mirror world between each other. He sensed a similar existence here, he went over and as he had expected, he found similar grains of dust.
Another Energy Core? He was baffled. All the books that he read only described that each person possessed one Energy Core, there was never any that mentioned a person to have two. Despite the inconsistency in the information he learned from the books, he still proceeded to repeat the same process he did just before.
He absorbed the little amount of Aether from the environment and used it to form this other core. Everything went smoothly since he had done it before, this second Energy Core soon formed into another tiny ball. However, there was one distinct difference. It was pitch black, another feature that puzzled Amon.
All the books describe the starting Energy Core to have a color between light grey to white. Light grey symbolized low-quality core, while dazzling white was the highest grade. Amon's first energy core which was silvery in color could be considered a bit just below the perfect grade. While for this second black energy core, he did not know what to make of it.
He experimented by feeding it a few rounds of the Aether he could absorb. The response was the same as his silver core. Since he had no idea and did not know where to find out more information about this second energy core, he could only leave it for the time.
One thing he did note though, he could feel the two cores influencing one another. As if they were pulling and pushing at the same time.
When he came out of his energy space and opened his eyes, he could feel a clear change in his body. He felt it getting much stronger, his muscle was denser, and his skin harder. His senses also getting sharper, he could see with much more clarity, his sense of smell was sharper and he could hear whispers from outside his room.
These changes were also described in the books, but reading them and experiencing them were two completely different things. So this was what it meant of being a cultivator? He felt that even with his current three-year-old body, he could probably rival the peak condition of his past life. This discovery caused him to truly become excited. His pursuit of power in his past life was nothing compared to his pursuit of power here. Here, he could reach a height completely unimaginable in the past.
Despite the ecstasy, he quickly calmed himself down. Getting emotional would just ruin things most of the time, he needed to plot his best course of action in this pursuit of power. The first order of business was to search for a cultivation method.
In the following days, he kept his routine of reading books and loitering around the mansion. He was also getting more chatty with the other occupants, trying to coax some information from them. When nobody was around, he performed the meditation and breathing method to absorb the aether into his two cores, but the result was too scant. It was as if they didn't grow at all.
Although there were no mother or father figures from the occupants here, there was however one who treated him as if family. It was a young girl who had just become an adult. She was the one that spent the most time taking care of him, she also often talked to him when he was still pretending that he could yet speak.
He was regularly being given medicine baths. They said the medicine bath was meant to improve his physique and foundation for his future cultivation road. This young woman was the one who helped him with this bath when he was unable to do it himself. Even when Amon showed that he could take the bath by himself now, she still made sure to look after him to make sure nothing bad happened.
Although Amon was skeptical of the bath, he did feel his body feeling refreshed after each bath. He later studied the ingredients that were used in this bath from the old woman's notebook, since she was the one who concocted the medicinal bath. The ingredients used were genuine to promote his health.
The young woman who took good care of him was named Hei Xilia. She had a pretty face and an attractive body. Amon could see the eyes of the other men in this mansion occasionally lingered on her. Amon had no such interest however, he allowed her to get close to him so that he could get more information.
Most of the time, it was Hei Xilia who was talking and Amon was just listening. From the talks, Amon knew that something was bothering this woman. She said that the family was planning to marry her off to be a concubine of a young master of a clan. She was afraid of the day that this will happen, which was one year from now.
She told him that the young master often treated women badly, he was even known to physically hurt them if he was dissatisfied. But she knew she had no choice. This family had no status and needed to do this to survive. The young master had expressed interest in Hei Xilia when he saw her unintentionally on the street and hence expressed his desire to take her as a concubine. The family dared not reject. They could only stall until next year and had been receiving sufficient gifts from the young master's clan.
"Tell me, Hei Mo. What should I do?" Hei Xilia asked Amon.
Hei Mo was the name that this family had given him. While Amon had no interest in this young woman's story and fate, he acted as if a child pretending to care for his sister.
"Do not worry, sister Xilia. I will become a powerful cultivator and will not let anyone take you away," Amon replied.
Hei Xilia giggled. She was amused by Amon's response. "Thank you," she said affectionately. "But even grandpa Hei Gong who has reached the Martial realm cannot do anything against their clan."
Martial realm, that was the second realm in the path of cultivation. The books Amon had read described the beginning realm for every practitioner was called the Human realm. The Human realm was divided into three stages. Mortal stage, Strength stage, and Transformation stage. The books he read only had details on the Human realm and a few mentions of the Martial realm. There were supposed to be more realms above but none of the books he read had information on them.
It was said that the difference in each stage was huge. For a Mortal stage cultivator to go up against a Strength stage cultivator would be akin to a newborn baby against a fully grown adult. The difference in realm was even vaster, it would be as if the difference between heaven and earth.
So the caretaker had such a high cultivation level? Amon thought. Hei Gong was the name of the old man who he saw as his caretaker.
Amon continued to pry, to which Hei Xilia happily answered. She was always happy to chat with him. Even more now after he could talk. From their chats, Amon found out that out of the fourteen occupants of the mansion, only two were cultivators. Hei Gong and Hei Pho. Hei Pho was the old woman who made the medicine for selling. Hei Xilia told him that Hei Pho was still at the Human realm Strength stage. She focused her expertise more on the art of medicine, or poison.
In other words, if there was a cultivation method in this mansion, it was in the hands of these two individuals. Amon was contemplating if he should come clean about him being able to cultivate. The occupants in this mansion seemed to care a great deal about his well-being and his development, so if they knew he could cultivate, perhaps Hei Gong might give him a cultivation method.
However, he first tried to look by himself. Since he was staying in the same bedroom as the caretaker Hei Gong, he had been searching around the room, but he did not find anything that described a cultivation method. For Hei Pho's medicine room, he had also been searching around but found none as well. The two might have noticed Amon searching around their belongings, but they probably only credited him for being a curious little kid.