In the quiet morning where even the bird hadn't risen yet to chirped, Li Kong woke up from his sleep, feeling more energized than usual except for the still stinging pain from his bum.
He stared blankly at nothingness for a while before something hit him suddenly and he checked the top of his table on the side of his bed and there he found the smooth white bead placed on top of some kind of clothing, preventing it from rolling to the ground.
'It's real...' Li Kong muttered to himself half-believing.
Yesterday felt like a wild fever dream to him. From the near-death encounter with White, the fact that he was someone fated to met White, the lingering feelings left behind by White's memories and most importantly, he would soon be a cultivator.
All of that was happened in one single day which made Li Kong further questioned about what happened yesterday but the reality was displayed clearly right before his eyes.
The weird-looking white ball with weird patterns on top of his shelf.
After staring blankly at the roof, he immediately jumped up from his bed and washed his face before doing his morning routines.
On his way while jogging, he met with his neighbors and they all asked about the state of his bum after being spanked by Zheng Liyang which Li Kong responded in an awkward smile before continuing his jog.
He slumped on the chair on his terrace after done jogging and cooled himself by the breeze of the morning wind.
After that, he took a bath but because it was still early in the morning, the water was cold and Li Kong shivered as he poured down the water down his body.
After cleaning himself, he dressed up and had a breakfast where he gulped down the food as fast as possible then went to the field and chatting with another villager before the time to work came and they worked on the field together.
Soon, noon befell and all of the workers had seek protection from the burning white ball in the sky but fortunately for these workers, the women finally arrived and they distributed the drink evenly throughout the group.
Li Kong, who was in his usual spot, found that Yu Mei was coming and after a few friendly banters, they sat besides each other and talked.
"What's going on? Is there something good recently happened?" Yu Mei asked after she observed the differences in Li Kong's complexion.
"Oh, about that..." Li Kong formed the biggest grin he possibly could. "You won't believe this but I-"
As Li Kong tried to told Yu Mei about his recent experience, he suddenly stopped and realized something.
'I don't know yet if I can tell other people about White...' Li Kong was torn about this and fell into deep contemplation as he pondered if it was okay to tell it to Yu Mei.
Li Kong's internal struggle was evident to the naked eyes as when he thought deeply, he unconsciously pursed his lips and creased his eyebrows, habits that Yu Mei was fully aware,
After a few moments trying to ransacked for every ideas to escaped this predicament, Li Kong had concocted a brilliant plan as he looked at the glaring Yu Mei.
"You know what? It's nothing."
"What do you mean by it's nothing? You grin like there was no tomorrow and you dare to tell me it's nothing" Yu Mei's blood pressure went up to the roof as she showed the example of Li Kong's smiling with her fingers lifting up her lips and cheeks upwards.
"..." Li Kong exercised his right to remain silent and refrained from answering any further questions.
"Oh, you're doing that? Then take this!" Yu Mei reached out her fingers to the side of Li Kong's ribs and tickled it.
Li Kong remained steadfast even in front of the constant tickling like a rock unfazed by the hit of the rain's droplets.
Seeing the expressionless Li Kong, Yu Mei realized that her effort was futile but she didn't lose hope and rather redirecting her area of tickling to somewhere else, to the sole of Li Kong's feet.
She moved her fingers in the most soft possible motions and with a precision of a hunter, she made sure that she only tickled the very outer layer of Li Kong's sole.
The moment the fingers touched the sole, Li Kong immediately broke out laughing and was wriggling on the ground like worm that had just touched the salt as he desperately trying to got out from Yu Mei's reach but unfortunately, seemingly anticipating this move, Yu Mei had already locked down Li Kong's feet in place.
"Ahaha... Hahah! Stop! Stop! Plwease! Stawp!" Li Kong's words was unclear because of the laughing and tears started to coming from the corner of his eyes.
"Hah! You dare to left me in silent again! Do you still dare to left me in silent again" Yu Mei repeated those words to Li Kong's ears to listen as she pinned down Li Kong's feet and mercilessly tickled the sole.
Although Yu Mei was smaller than Li Kong but somehow Li Kong found himself pinned down to the ground with ease. Li Kong struggled between holding his laugh and trying to control his strength to not kick Yu Mei's face which would worsen the situation while still desperately trying to broke the lock on his feet.
After few seconds, Yu Mei finally feeling satisfied and let the exhausted Li Kong lied on the ground tiredly. She cleared up the surroundings and went back to the women side. Before she departed, she took a last glance at Li Kong and let out a "Hmph" sound.
"You better tell me what it is later." Yu Mei left out a last note to the dying Li Kong before going to the distance.
Li Kong still hadn't recovered yet from the tickling torture he had experienced. His chest heaved up and down and the traces of tears still evident on the corner of his eyes.
"That crazy woman..." His breath still shaky. "She's trying to kill me for real!" Li Kong looked at the direction where the girl disappeared to with resentments.
"Hah... I'm dying right now..." He leaned his body to the tree.
Li Kong rested for a bit under the shades before going back home.
...
After Li Kong arrived at his home safely, he grabbed a broom and cleaned up his house.
As he was sweeping the floor, he blew out a whistle and the notes weaved together, making a melody in the air.
"Here. Then here. After that here. And don't forget about the top of the shelves." Li Kong muttered to himself while walking around the house.
"Fuh... And it's finally over." Li Kong proudly put both of his hand on his sides while observing his surroundings.
Not a single speck of dust was left behind, matter of fact the room looked like it was sparkling brightly.
After watching his good works, Li Kong nodded in place and then he took a quick bath before going to his bedroom.
He wore his clothes and then plunged directly to the sweet embrace of his bed. He snuggled on his pillows while struggling to not sleep as he directed his gaze blankly to the top of the room.
"Man... I feel so tired today. I want to sleep so bad."
Li Kong's eyelid was on verge of giving up as his vision blinked for a few times.
"Oh, right! I should continue sensing Qi." Li Kong exclaimed.
He immediately jumped out of the sweet embrace of his bed and reached out for the shelf nearby and took out a ordinary-looking book from shelf.
After that, he took a seat on the bed's frame and calmly shifted his eyes through the book's content.
"Mhm... Mhm... Mhm..." Li Kong mumbled in a low voice.
Done reading, he closed his book and placed it on top of the shelf beside his bed and pulled his buttocks backwards to the soft side of the bed.
There he cross-legged and placed both of his hands on his thighs. With a closed eyes, he relaxed his entire body and did a set of breathing patterns and entering a meditative state.
He arrived again at the lake but this time, he had done it much faster than before. He focused his mind to sense the tiny ripples.
After a few minute searching, he finally able to sense a tiny ripple on the surface of his lake and after that, the job had turned easier.
Li Kong memorized and etched the feeling of that one tiny ripple in his consciousness and following that feeling, he began noticing the same feeling almost everywhere on the surface of his lake.
The numbers grew quickly from twenty to fifty and then hundreds and finally, innumerable. But this time, Li Kong was prepared and didn't wavered like the last time he done it. He kept his breathing steady and willed his mind to stay focused.
After the number of ripples stop growing, Li Kong unconsciously knew that he already on the verge of success and at this moment, the content of the book that he had read earlier flashed through his mind.
'Guide the Qi to the lower abdomen area...' He muttered the content of the book quietly in his mind.
'But how do I guide it?' He asked himself.
'Although the Qi was touching the lake and manifested itself in ripples, I never actually felt it directly on my skin...' Li Kong pondered deeply in his meditation.
'Then what is the lake?'
'The lake is not my body. I don't feel the sensation of Qi touching my body and if so, what is it then?'
He tried recalling his memories of "A Basic Cultivation Manual and Qi Methods" book.
'Then is the lake a part of my heart?'
'No... The heart couldn't sense Qi...'
'Then is it my consciousness?'
'You're not even a cultivator yet... How could you already utilize your consciousness outside of your body?'
'Then what is it?'
'...' Li Kong was stuck at roadblock.
He racked his entire brain for a long time but still couldn't mustered a single satisfactory answer.
Feeling frustrated at the situation, his concentration crumbled slowly and the countless ripples started to overwhelmed his brain but fortunately, Li Kong succeed in maintaining his concentration and only a hair breadth away from breaking his meditation state.
'Huff, Li Kong. Huff. Calm down. There must something in your mind.'
Li Kong dwelled deeper to his mind.
'Xiao Jia crying? No... Then what about this? Yu Mei embarrassed after burping and immediately rushed in her room? Haha, that face of her was so funny but no. Uncle Zheng spanking me when I replaced his water with vinegar? Damn, that's too far.'
Li Kong was feeling more and more frustrated as he dived deeper into his memories. Many unnecessary and unrelated memories suddenly surging his mind with tiny detail of his life.
'Where is it actually?'
'Hoh, not a bad reaction.' Suddenly that flashed through his memories.
'Reaction?' Li Kong felt something ticked in his brain.
'What's related to reaction? Instinct or maybe, intuition? Intuition, hmm... Wait. Could it be the lake is my senses?'
Suddenly, Li Kong's mind was cleared up as he came to the realization.
'It makes sense now why I know there is Qi but I can feel it.'
'But the question remains... How do I guide the Qi to my body?' Li Kong once again fell into deep contemplation.
'Although I know the ripples were Qi, but I never exactly feel what it feels like. The ripples felt more like I sense the aftermath of the Qi passing the boundary... Wait a minute!'
Li Kong suddenly had a moment of enlightenment but it broke his concentration in the process and forcing him out from his meditation.
"What I feel is just the sensation of Qi touching the boundary of my heighten senses caused by meditation. But the boundary feels so distant from me, I think it was around 1 chi away from my skin? Hmm..." Li Kong started swaying from left to right and pinched his chin in attempt to squeezed out an idea.
After a few moments of thinking, Li Kong rose from the bed and grabbed an empty book and an ink with its pen. On top of the book, he drew a sitting figure with its legs-crossed.
"This is my body." He pointed the brush.
After that, he put down his brush on somewhere not far from the sitting figure and proceed to move his brush according to the outline of the sitting figure, forming a kind of protective bubble around the sitting figure.
Li Kong then put back his brush to the ink bottle and calmly observed the paper and with an obvious voice, he stated matter-of-factly.
"And this is my senses.
"Although my senses could sense Qi but they incapable of absorbing Qi and based on my thoughts process, to absorbs Qi I need to guide it to my body and I'm incapable of moving the Qi...'
Li Kong couldn't hold it anymore and scratched his head in frustration.
"Argh!!! This is hopeless!" He let out all of his budding frustration by ruffling his hairs.
"Could you please shut up for a second? I'm trying to sleep here." Suddenly an annoyed light voice was heard in Li Kong's ears which made him ejected himself out from the chair.
"Ghost!" Li Kong screamed.
"Who are you calling a ghost? Do you want to die?" Not only did this brat interrupted his sleep, but he also calling him a ghost now? This kid really didn't fear death.
Hearing the light voice he was familiar with, Li Kong heaved a sigh of relief.
"You don't have to scare me like that White!" Said Li Kong while caressing his chest in an up and down motion.
White was too mad to think about anything and threatening to explode at any moment notice but before he could done that, a drawing brushed across his vision and he levitated from the shelf beside Li Kong's bed to the set of table and chair not too far away from the door's entrance, directly on Li Kong's ears which invited Li Kong to let out a small sound and his mouth gaping.
"What is this? It's ugly." The volume of the voice had considerably dropped.
"I got stuck a bit when trying to absorbed Qi and failed many times so I think I would approach it with a different methods, like drawing my understanding of the process." Li Kong explained to White while scratching the back of his head, completely unfazed by the former remark.
After that, White asked a few questions about the drawing which Li Kong promptly replied to all.
"Now I get why are you so struggling so much." White said aloofly after hearing his explanation.
Li Kong's eyes sparkled a little bit on White's aloof reply.
'As expected from the great cultivator rename. Ah, was it remains or reminiscence? Damn...' Li Kong thoughts went a bit of track but he quickly gained control of his mind and asked a question to White.
"What is it?"
"It's because you're too talented." White calmly stated.
Hearing the reason, Li Kong's existence had been flung out the physical world as his mind wandered off to somewhere else for vacation.
It was because he was too talented? What kind of answer was that? If he was really that talented then shouldn't he capable of absorbing Qi now?
'I swear White was deliberately messing with me each time he answered my questions.'
Since the very start Li Kong met with White, White had done nothing but tried to bamboozled by the series of answers he given to him.
As he thought like that, Li Kong sent a doubting eyes to the bead that had placed itself on the center of the open book.
"This is another funny case where I recalled that one of my friend was also encountered the same problem as you and coincidentally, he came from a some-sort of hunter upbringing too. Huh? Why are you looking me like that? I warn you stop that and don't you think you were being greedy now? Others usually need several weeks or even months to able to sense Qi and you did it in just one night after you knew about the existence of Qi."
Hearing White's logical explanation, Li Kong stopped to stare and decided to take a moment to think about it clearly and he found himself pondering about was it true he was being to greedy.
But even after that, Li Kong still adamant and refused to change the look on his eyes.
"Sigh... You wouldn't stop looking at me like that, right?" White sounded so exhausted with this declaration while Li Kong just silently sent his silent approval.
"You encountered this problem because your senses were excellent. Too excellent even. I think your senses wouldn't lose even if we compared it to a person who had cultivated to high Spiritual Sea cultivator. That's how absurd your senses are.
"After all it's already an absurd occasion for anyone to able to sense Qi just in one sitting, but not too mention you just learn about the existence of cultivator just a few hours before."
Li Kong was taken aback a little by the explanation as he thought to himself.
'Is my senses really that good? Well, I've been told since I was children that I have good senses. Some of my friends even say that I have an eye behind my back when they try to scare me.'
"And that bring us to the main problem." White's light voice exploded in his ears causing him to waken up from his thoughts.
"The problem with yours body now is that you only can sense Qi outside of the boundary. For some reasons, it seems that your senses are the most sensitive here. I think this happens because your upbringing as a hunter.
"For a hunter, they must keep a careful eyes on their surroundings at all times and because of the habit ingrained to your body, your senses also subconsciously shaped like that which resulted in the creation of this circle around your body."
Li Kong was enlightened by White's detailed explanation and sent a gaze of admiration while clapping and his mouth agape.
"You really know about so many things, White."
"Well, if you travelled in the future and gained wisdom as big as mine, you could do it too." White was feeling a little bit proud at the moment and decided to share a few stories of his past adventures with Li Kong.
Before White began to tell his stories, he and Li Kong had switched place to the topside of the bed.
"It all started with the call of the City Lord..." White slowly immersed to his storyteller persona.
Watching the bead glowed and then dimmed as each words woven out, Li Kong focused all of his attentions on the stories and asked about a few questions as the story went on.
The sky turned darker and darker as White continued telling his stories and before long, the sun had done its job for the day and was replaced by the moon.
"Woah! Time sure flies fast!" Li Kong exclaimed.
"I need to take a bath now." As he said that, his figure suddenly disappeared from White's view, leaving the white bead alone in the room.
For a very long time, the inside of the room was filled with silence before suddenly a blurry white figure emerged out of thin air and took a seat on the window's frame while watching the moon with deep melancholy.
"I wonder what's wrong with me... I never been this distracted before." The blurry figure mumbled.
For some reasons, the blurry figure couldn't concentrate at all when he was with the young boy and when they needed to discussed something important, they always ended up having a conversation with an entirely different topic.
"But it's not necessarily a bad thing." A hazy curve appeared on the figure's almost transparent lips.
How long was it since the last time he ever had conversation with other people like this?
For a hundreds of years, he had roamed aimlessly and crossed through a thousand worlds all for the purpose of fulfilling the task that was given to him and the years before he was separated by his "real" weren't a good thing too especially towards the end of his life.
But was it really centuries of isolation that lead him to the state he was now?
"No." The blurry figure firmly shook his head.
Before he was a remnants, he once was a great cultivator, what a thousand years for someone with an almost infinite lifespan? It would be lucky that those thousand years were worth even a grain of sand.
"That child was different from the others had met." The blurry figure declared in a low voice as he recalled the child's unwavering eyes.
On those big round eyes reflected only pure curiosity and compassion for others while bearing the resolute gaze of greatness.
"Or maybe because the other disappeared immediately after giving White's inheritances that they never felt this way." The blurry figure let out a little chuckle.
"Well, whatever it is, for now I will be guiding this child the best of my capability." The blurry figure curved the corner of its lips.
Suddenly a sound was heard from the outside of the bedroom and as the door opened, the blurry figure promptly disappeared leaving the white bead glowed under the moonlight and revealed the figure of the naked Li Kong with towels tied to his waist.
"How come you take so long to take a bath? Are you a woman?"
"I have my mighty rod with me. How can I be a woman? It's because the water got too cold so I have to boiled it first." Li Kong wasn't at all happy with the accusation as he replied grumpily while putting on his clothes.
White blew out air from his mouth.
"Hah! Sure you do." He snickered.
Li Kong was feeling indignant and refuted White's claim furiously while White calmly countered it all with his lifelong wisdoms.
'But it's not a bad thing. Isn't it?' A smile formed deep inside of White's heart