Brax and Anna rent themselves a room in the Inn. It's a luxury inn, so the room they receive is fully furnished and comes with a massive bed and a bath.
Brax paid in gold, as he has a lot of it with him right now. Brax wouldn't know where he would be if not for those bandits. Their existence gave Brax a huge boost in his cultivation, from money to spirit stones, and, of course, Anna, his biggest gain.
Brax sits down at the study table and takes out the artifact manual but he notices Anna just standing there feeling clueless about what to do.
'I can't have her sitting ideally waiting for me,' he thinks as he looks up at her.
"Anna, come here," Brax calls her. Anna approaches him wondering what her master needs.
"Now that you are a 7th-stage Qi condensation cultivator, you need to learn some martial art techniques," Brax says.
"But master... I don't have any technique to learn from," she answers.
Brax chuckles, hearing Anna's answer. In the end, she is just a mortal who has just stepped onto the cultivation path. She doesn't know the ins and outs of this word, so it is Brax's responsibility to teach her everything.
"Silly, I have many martial arts techniques. I will teach them to you." Hearing him makes a bright smile appear on Anna's face.
Brax soon begins teaching Anna some fist and movement techniques. Though she is not as smart as Brax when it comes to learning and understanding, she is still picking them up very fast.
"Practice them as I have thought you. Once I am satisfied with your progress, we will continue," Brax says.
"Thank you, master, for teaching me," Anna bows down to Brax.
"You are my responsibility and I promised you that you will not regret your choice," Brax says.
Anna blushes in response.
Anna then begins practicing what she is taught while Brax brings his focus back to the artifact manual he got from Bendon, the shop owner.
Brax opens the artifact manual once again and starts going through the designs of every artifact in the book.
Brax loses himself in the book. He reads every little note that the owner of the book has left behind.
'Artifacts can be anything, from weapons to armor, storage items to conventional tools. For it to be considered an artifact, the item should be able to channel and amplify the user's Qi energy to be used in multiple different ways. It can be offensive, defensive, or provide support,'
Brax starts understanding the theory behind artifact crafting.
As he gets towards the end of the book, he stumbles upon the thing he bought this book for. The storage ring.
Brax's eyes light up as he looks at the storage ring design and instructions noted down on the pages.
'The design of this storage ring is much better than the one I have in my possession,' Brax thinks, as he gets a deeper understanding of the functions of a storage ring.
'Using engravings to invert and compress space within the ring. The patterns inscribed into the ring is the key,'
Brax concludes and continues reading the artifact manual until he reaches the end of the book.
'The designs in this manual are limited. This Roxenberg guy definitely has better designs that are not in this book,' Brax thinks as he did find some theoretical writings and ideas about artifacts whose designs are absent from this book.
'He must have become a higher-ranked artifact crafter with his ideas. I wonder if I can find more of his work.' Brax thinks, closes the manual, and places it inside his robe. He then brings his attention to the ring on his finger.
'I need to completely deconstruct this ring,' Brax thinks after he realizes what type of storage ring he has in his possession.
The ring on his finger is much simpler than the one in the book. And because of its simplicity, it doesn't come with complex engravings that allow higher-tier storage rings to switch owners.
Brax stops the chaos in his mind and brings all his stream of thoughts to focus on this singular task.
He removes the storage ring from his finger and inserts his QI into it. Immediately, he encounters resistance from the ring's safety features.
If Brax didn't know how storage rings are made, he would be stuck here, but not anymore. Brax pinpoints the engraving and starts tracing its start and endpoints.
When he finds the endpoint, he immediately begins deconstructing the engraving. Doing this will make the ring useless.
It will go from a storage ring to a normal ring because Brax is destroying the very foundation of what makes this ring a storage ring.
But he is not concerned about this. He is more interested in the contents of the ring than the ring itself.
Since this is a basic level storage ring, not much thought went into it when creating it. It just has a small storage space and a lock function.
Higher-level storage rings come with much larger space and the option to switch owners, but this doesn't make these rings less secure. In fact, the security is much stronger and the ownership can only be switched with the owner's consent.
The storage ring in Brax's hand is of a simple design, so it is very easy to deconstruct, making the contents easily accessible to someone who understands how to create one.
Higher-level storage rings are much more complex as the engravings are harder to recreate and trace. They also provide far more resistance.
As Brax finishes deconstructing the engraving, the subspace within the ring collapses, and everything that was within it falls in front of Brax.
"Finally, I get to know who you are," Brax says as he looks at the content in front of him.