Ezio woke up with a jolt in his mind. He went to the mysterious room and saw the same pillar at the center of the room, shining brightly. Another side of it was unlocking. He went closer to see something bewildering on the pillar.
There, on another surface, a new scroll with strange letters appeared out of nowhere. He looked at the scroll and was taken aback.
"Achieve Seamless Body and Mana Ocean.
Rewards: The Azure Wolf King's Eternal Fang Qi Cultivation Manual, Seventh Wind of Golden Roc."
Ezio was surprised to see the quest and the rewards, but he wasn't excited at all, even though the rewards sounded good, their names were anything but good. Even in this humble Buddhist Sect, all of the Cultivation manuals had fascinating or elegant names. The one he was using to gather Qi was named "Thousand Purge Buddha." It was Sect's core Cultivation technique. Because Abbot saw a lot of potential in him, he let Ezio use it. There was only one, tens of thousands of years old copy of the manual, and it could not, under any circumstances, be brought outside of the core array, the safest place in the sect.
Now when he saw the plain name of the Cultivation manual, he felt like he was swindled.
After looking around a little bit, Ezio walked outside from his humble hut. It was the wee hours, the darkest time of the day. Most of the residents were asleep. He already tried to sneak out a few times, before executing his plan. Nothing unexpected happened so far.
There was a hidden cave at the top of the mountain. At the entrance of this cave, there was a strong formation sealing all prying eyes, and it was the core of the mountain, also a natural spring of Heaven and Earth Qi and Mana. It was also the place where he would achieve his Qi Vortex Creation in the morning.
Not anyone could enter the cave to break through the Qi Vortex Creation Realm. Only the selected few could use it. Not because Sect was keeping it from its residents, but because it had Qi so dense, it could break apart all meridians if one wasn't strong enough.
Because it was protected by powerful formations, there was no guard inside and only one guard on the outside. It was a fat man. He was named Huang Pang. It was easy to pass through him because he was sleeping all the time. Firstly, because no one could overcome this formation and walk into the cave. Second, if there was a crazy senior like that, he could not hinder him anyway, so why bother.
What he didn't know, Ezio could pass through the formation with the artifact he was keeping secret.
When his mother sent him away with her slave Elanor, she had planned to use Ezio to sneak into a strong organization. That is why she ordered her slave to take Ezio to one of those places. But Elanor didn't obey her master and had pity on Ezio. She never felt anything like this, but she had the instinct to protect this child. But she knew she could not keep this boy safe by keeping him with herself, except by dropping it somewhere he could grow up without worry.
After traversing for months she arrived far, too far away from her master's eyes. Before she dropped Ezio into the sect, she removed a ring from her finger and placed it on Ezio's neck via an iron chain.
"Be safe, child. I am afraid you will have a dolorous life if you ever land in her hands. This treasure was gifted to me by my royal father before he was killed by that witch. I hope it can give you strength. Even though it is a dead artifact." Elanor shed tears on Ezio's face before she left. But she didn't notice the ring she just left started to shake as if it was excited and it was afraid.
As Ezio was wondering what was happening to the ring, it vanished. He discovered it long after when he grew up, he had a tattoo over his chest in the shape of a ring with ancient characters he couldn't understand. But he knew it was the ring Elanor gave him that turned into this.
Eizo walked into the cave as he reminisced that day. He discovered Ring's abilities long after he discovered the existence of the tattoo. When he was 5 years old, one of the spoiled descendants of the Supreme Elder picked a fight with him. With his otherworldly strength and grown-up brain, he could easily beat those kids black and blue, but most of the time those Silkpants Young Masters would call their seniors to avenge their misfortune.
One of those times, Ezio was cornered with nowhere to run, no one to hide behind. When he turned around the corner he crouched beside the mountain slope and waited for the whacking he was able to evade for too long. To his surprise, four 11 years old kids approached the slope but couldn't see him.
When he thought he had escaped once again, a spiritual perception approached the slope. For a second his heart missed a beat, but to his surprise, even the perception of those four kids couldn't locate him. But when they turned around and left, Ezio noticed that his Qi, Mana, and all other energies had dried out.
With this ring, he could vanish. From eyes, from the nose, from ears, from spiritual perception. As soon as he used this ring, he would be undetectable by all means. With this ring, he could easily sneak into the cave by ignoring the snoring guard and formations, as long as his Qi and Mana could fuel the ring.
As soon as he stepped into the formation, he felt his body was weakening. The ring was otherworldly but also had a burdensome cost. He barely stepped into the cave when he was about to run out of all of his Qi and Mana.
Sitting at the entrance he first sat to replenish his energy. But when he stepped into the cave, he was hit in the face by the dense Heaven and Earth Qi and Mana. His pores were breathing in and out by themselves. He became addicted to this feeling immediately. He wanted to live there, but he had the stuff to do, so he snapped out of this zest.
He walked deeper into the cave and at the end of it, there was an opening where the white fog and blue fog mixed, blocking all vision. The white fog was Qi in Heaven and Earth and only the Qi Cultivators could see it. And vice versa for the blue fog.
For now, he came for the blue fog, so he found a place where blue was thickest and sat in the lotus position. He was really loved by mana, maybe because he had Mana Force when he was born or for other reasons, but he had a very strong connection with mana.
He closed his eyes and started to gather mana from the cave. Even though one could see it floating, it was as heavy as a mountain. To gather just a wisp of it, one had to cultivate it for days. Luckily Ezio was loved by mana, and he was accumulating oh-for-all-his-life, he didn't need much to break through.
The only reason why he was here was that the cave had a formation to expel mental demons, not that he had any, and mostly because it had a concealing formation to keep all the clamor going to happen, when he would achieve Mana Ocean, inside the cave.
After a few hours of breathing in and out, he felt he was ready, and he condensed all of the mana to his right side of the chest. The Mana pool would take the shape of the heart on the right side of the chest, like a reflection of the real heart. All the mana he was accumulating in his body for 11 years condensed into a star. It was as big as a skyscraper in his inner world. It got condensed to the size of a building, the size of a house, the size of a car, the size of a human, and then the size of a heart and landed on the right side of his chest.
It was a deep blue color, almost black. The color itself was the grade of his pool. The wind started to blow and a pillar of light rose from where he was sitting, the cave started to shake, but after a few seconds, all subsided like it never happened.
Ezio's vision faded and in the next second, he was gliding in the endless universe. He could see celestial bodies and stars in the distance. But as he approached closer, he felt unexplainable pressure, bending his soul and will. For a split second Ezio was able to peek behind the curtain hiding the stars and saw endless shapes and colors in the endless black. He saw a sun burning with endless fire, a star freezing the space, a world raining endlessly, a moon with a strong storm, and many more, before he was kicked out.
His consciousness jolted to the Mysterious Room and he looked at the Quest Scroll. There was a tick on one of the missions. There was golden light on the part it was completed. Ezio touched it and a golden light shone even more brightly before it disappeared. A gust fluttered his hair as a golden air current went inside his body. There, it found his new blue heart on the right side of his chest and slumbered there. But part of it started to circulate the pillar slowly and calmly.
***
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