It didn't take long for Orin to find an arm full of books to take to one of the reading rooms in the back of the library. Most were books that Orin should have been reading for the past several months but didn't because he already heard most what was in these books. Every year, the moment a child turns ten, they head to the library. Once here they have their spiritual root checked, then they are shown around the library by an attendant who explains how to use the library to its fullest before sending them to a reading room with a copy of the Imperial Cultivation Technique and warning them to never pass on the cultivation technique or spells to anyone or they will be punished. Other than those two things, everything else is passed on to anyone who will listen by the new and very overexcited young cultivators.
It's only when people reach the fourth layer that the enthusiasm is gone, as it is replaced with desperate rush to reach the sixth layer as soon as possible. Without pills, elixirs, or teas, it takes around six months to reach the first layer, another year to reach the second layer, and another year and a half to reach the third layer, by the time an average cultivator reaches the sixth layer they are twenty years old or so. To even have a shot at reaching the sixth layer by their sixteenth birthday, they will cultivate over twelve hours a day, every day. Even though, the recommended amount of time a child between the age of ten through sixteen should cultivate a day is two hours and increasing to four hours towards the end.
Most people fail to achieve this all but impossible task. This is due to the fact that test is rigged. It is designed for those whose cultivation talent is above normal. While everyone can cultivate, everyone has their own talent for cultivating: inferior, low, normal, superior, supreme, these are the rankings of cultivation talent. Sects use this test to find those with a far better chance of reaching foundation establishment, so they don't waste resources on just anybody.
Orin read more about things he already knew till he got to the last two books he barrowed. One discussed rumors of certain cultivators having mystical abilities far beyond those of other cultivators. Powers like being able to return someone that was dead to life or having an almost endless supply of qi to power their spells, and even those who with little cultivation become undying, instantly healing from any would including decapitation. But there were problems with the accounts of this book. First, the stories range from being able to resurrect people to a three-year-old with no cultivation being able to change the color of her eyes a will. Two, the stories are rumors and tales overheard from others to just plain guessing it might be possible. And lastly, there was nothing that explained how these powers worked, how they were created, or why someone might get one.
Not finding anything that was similar to what he had experienced, he put that book to the side and began to read the last book, cultivation of blood and body. This book was something that Orin was always going to read, because it affected him. Five or six generations before he was born existed a powerful sect that trained a certain body art that altered their bodies. These alterations included great strength and speed, increased healing abilities but also caused the persons skin to turn red, their hair to turn silver, and grow horns. About a third of the people in the city were similar to Orin, ranging from simple colored skin, eyes, and hair to more extreme cases with extra limbs. Not too far from Orin's house lived a man with characteristics of a shark with blue skin, sharp triangle teeth, and gills on his neck.
There are many of these cultivation techniques, but Orin was locked into using the same one his ancestors trained, unless he wanted to damage his body. And while he knew the library had a copy of this technique, he had no idea what it was called or how much it would cost to be able to study it because it was on the fourth floor. Unless he could become a foundation establishment realm cultivator, he would never be able to be in the same room as it. If it weren't for the occasional person that was able to get their hands on those techniques, no one would have a clue they were there.
It wasn't hard to find the information, his ancestors were members of the Crimson Devil Sect. They all had skin of various shades of red, with silver hair, with between two and five horns growing out of there head. What information little the book told of the Crimson Devil Sect said the sect was very powerful and lasted a long time and wasn't evil as the name suggested. But it didn't mention the names of the techniques they trained or the how and why the sect fell.
It didn't take long to get bored and toss this last book to the side. It was time to take a look at the second floor. There were no guards preventing anyone from going the second floor, no one checking for certain cultivation levels before entry, other than a few looks from some of the newer cultivators, there was no one that cared where Orin went. The only thing that kept people on the first floor was the simple fact that learning things before you should, will cause more harm than good. And that the order you learn things helps to strengthen your foundation as a cultivator.
The second floor had similar layout as the first floor but was far more cramped with four time the bookshelves. There was a part of Orin that didn't like being on this floor, because every book here cost spirit stones to read. Different books cost different amounts; a spell book was one spirit stone an hour, but half a dozen history books could be read for several hours for a spirit stone. Orin wanted to learn a few spells from the five elements that would be far more useful than the spells he knew and used for housework.
Orin began to look for books he wanted to study and read the first page. The first page gave a brief description of the book's contents, the required cultivation to use the spell, and for a few spells it listed any items necessary to be used to cast the spell. Orin would have liked to read more of the book, but each book had a small formation array that sealed the book until it was released by one of the library's attendants.
Unfortunately for Orin, all the spells he wished to learn required him to be at the fourth or fifth layer to learn and use. It would still take around a month of hard cultivating to breakthrough to the fourth layer. This greatly deflated his enthusiasm, so he decided to look for anything that would help understand what happened to him last night and leave learning those spells till next month. But this wasn't as helpful as he had wanted. Orin could eliminate most of the books just by the title, and those he couldn't, he read the first page. After an hour of looking at every book he could, he still didn't find anything that would be useful. This left him with no choice but to give up and go home.