I had no idea of when I finally gave up and passed out but I didn't stir until I felt someone vigorously slapping my face the next morning.
Even before I opened my eyes, I instantly knew that it was my sister.
"WHAT! WHAT!" I yelled in a clearly frustrates manner even with my eyes closed.
"Look…I'm not usually this nice but I figures it would look bad on the family is you starved to death,"
I couldn't help it. At the mere mention of food and recalling the feeling of my starving belly the night before, I eyes snapped wide open and I grudgingly slid off the bed.
"You look like a ghost," I heard her comment as I slowly trudged to the bathroom.
"I feel like one…" I muttered back under my breath, shocked at how heavy my body felt but slightly delighted at the progress I must have made.
I barely spent a few seconds in the bathroom before I made my way out, quickly to the dinning where I wasn't surprised to see my family already seated with a plate of food in front of them.
"Good morning Caen…"
"Good morning Caen…its nice that you could join us this morning," Moey said right after Kern had spoken.
"Nami mentioned you were too busy cultivating to eat yesterday,"
I couldn'y help but send a quick glare at Nami before I dug into my food, nodding at Moey as I did so and making sure to swallow my food before I went ahead to speak.
"Yeah,"
"How…
"How is it going?" surprised to hear Kern ask me beating Moey to it, even as I noticed the slightly hopeless look in his eye as he did.
"It's going surprisingly well actually," I responded with a big and satisfied smile on my face.
"Really?" Nami asked with a clearly disbelieving expression on her face, half way to taking another spoon from her food.
"Really…" I clearly responded with a confident look on my face, even as I continued eating the rest of my food with glee, completely ignoring the curious expressions the rest of the family sent my way for the duration of breakfast.
The moment they were all done, they all instantly left the house and went about their daily business, while I simply concentrated on staying inside and cultivating as much as I could, no matter how frustratingly difficult it was.
The second day went by pretty slowly and the third day was just the same.
The fourth day came and I still continued but by the fifth day, I could already tell that something was wrong when I noticed that no matter how long I cultivated, the difficulty of it didn't in any way reduce.
Every single time I began, simply trying to find my mana core was a hassle nit to mention going ahead to finishing the rest of the steps.
Little by little, the specks in my mana core increased but I still didn't feel any qualitative change in my body, which was why I began to wonder when I would be able to enter the beginning stage, and get the so called status window they all could see.
Moreover, Nami wouldn't talk about the sect test coming up in the upcoming week where sects from the city would come over to pick the most eligible people to join them.
I also wanted to go, but with the amount of progress I was making I was starting to think it was an impossible task.
Moey was the first to get back in the evening and I was there to hurriedly welcome her in especially since I had been low key waiting for her.
"You look anxious…"
"Really? I just had something I wanted to ask you,"
"I'm listening…" and I instantly went ahead to ask her the question that had been troubling me.
I could have checked one of the magical books I still had with me but I figured it would take too long especially since apparently the brain of the former owner of my current body was a terrible reader.
"How do I know that I've gotten to the beginner stage?" I slowly asked, glad that Nami was no where around to tease me to death.
"Oh that's easy and I've probably mentioned it before. The moment you do, you'll see a status window belonging solely to you appear in front of you,"
But the moment she finished explaining was when I realized that that wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for.
"What about before? How do I know that I'm almost there?" I asked as I watched her begin to prepare ingredients for dinner, even as I stood directly behind her all my attention on the answer she was going to give.
"That too is pretty easy and I thought you already knew since you said your cultivation was going well…"
"I know…I know..just tell me," I grumbled in my mind right before I heard her continue to speak.
"Once your current Blue mana core is filled to the brim with mana then you'll know you're almost there. It would then crystalize and then get bigger, that's when you'll step into the beginner stage but before then all you need to do is…" but she already lost me right after the first sentence and everything else she said right after that flew directly over my head.
"To the brim?? The fucking brim…" I mentally gasped in my head even if the expression on my face was completely blank, compared to how I actually felt.
"Do you understand?" I heard her ask as she turned to look at me when she realized how quiet I was being.
"Yes…yes," I quickly said right before I hurriedly left instantly making my way back to my room in a slight daze.
"To the brim?? THE BRIM…" I muttered under my breath and I finally realized why the original Caen realized that for him, cultivation was utterly useless.
The mana core in my body was actually not that big but at the same time it wasn't small either. It was about the size of a two big oranges especially when I sank my consciousness into it to check.
Last night, I recalled the amount of mana specks ai had seen in my mana core and again sank into depression, jumping on my bed and lying face down without moving.
"I'm fucked…its hopeless," I grumbled, as the image of my five day work of gathering mana appeared in my mind over and over again, and I recalled the tiny special that dotted the corners of the core and nothing more.
At this rate I would probably be forty years old before I actually get to the beginner stage.