Joren, now freshly bathed headed to his room to relax. After a long day of training, the feeling of his bed soothed his strained muscles and calmed his mind. Relaxation washed over his body as he got comfortable, preparing to go to sleep.
"How is it? The feeling of becoming a first circle cultivator?" Grace asked as she too got ready for bed.
"It feels surreal. I can feel so much power sourcing through me, making me feel unstoppable. And this is only the first circle. I can't even imagine how it will feel when I form my third or fourth circle."
"Yeah, I felt the same way. I already felt powerful when I awakened my mana, and after forming my circle, I felt like no one could beat me, but that's far from the truth. Even though we feel this way, we are still weak. So don't let this feeling get to your head, okay?" Grace's tone turned serious when she spoke her last sentence. She didn't want her brother to become arrogant simply because he became slightly more powerful than the average mana user.
"Don't worry. As powerful as I feel, I know that I still have a long way to go. But once I beat you, don't be surprised if I rub it in your face from time to time." He teased
"Oh, you little!" Grace pounced on Joren and the two of them wrestled playfully for the next 10 minutes.
"Goodnight Joren."
"Night Grace."
...
It had been two hours since Joren entered his room and he couldn't sleep at all. Why? It was because he was too excited. How could he go to sleep when he had just formed a circle? He wanted to test out the limits of his abilities and see how far he could push himself physically and mentally. But alas, he knew that overworking oneself would only lead to one's downfall, so he decided to meditate.
[A/N: From now on, meditation will always mean circulating mana in the body. If It says cultivate, then they are attempting to break through to the next level whether it's going from mid to late stage or from 3rd circle to 4th circle.]
Getting into the lotus position, Joren circulated the mana, reaching every corner of his body. He could feel the energy in his lungs, in his legs, arms, and many more places. He could even feel the energy of his mana circle around his heart or at least where the circle should be.
'Wait a minute! My mana circle! Shouldn't it be around my heart? I can feel that it's in the area of my heart but I don't feel it around it.' Confused, Joren focused more on his heart, plunging his focus more and more into that area until finally, he found the reason why he couldn't feel the circle around his heart.
'Th-This isn't around my heart! It's around the point that's located in my heart! What's it called again?" Racking his brain for a good 10 minutes, he finally remembered what it was called. 'The heart meridian! My mana circle is around my heart meridian! But why is it there? I never heard anything about meridians in my studies nor did I read anything that said the mana circle is formed around the meridian instead of the actual heart.'
Joren tried to come up with many reasons why his mana would concentrate around his meridian. No, not just his meridian, he wondered why mana concentrated around the heart in general. Logically speaking, the brain would be the perfect place to circulate energy because, without the brain, the entire body shuts down.
'Wait a minute! Brain? Heart? There's no way, right?' Joren again circulated mana throughout his body, but this time, he focused on areas that felt similar to his heart, areas with high mana concentration. He already had an idea of what he was looking for, but he still wanted to try and see if it was there.
After thirty minutes of intricately scanning his entire body, he found what he was looking for. Joren managed to uncover twenty-two areas in the body that had concentrated mana higher than normal, and to his surprise but also expecting it, his findings aligned with things he had learned in his past life. These areas were the twelve main meridians, seven chakras, and three dantians.
'Holy shit, holy shit, holy fucking shit! Th-This is a game-changer! I've heard nothing about chakras or dantians in anything that I read or what Uncle Glenn told me. The fact that they exist probably means that other races use them but still, the fact that Uncle Glenn mentioned that the way to get stronger is by increasing the number of circles you have, maybe just maybe I can cultivate these areas and become stronger than normal.'
Excited by the unexpected discovery, Joren spent the next few hours trying to understand how to utilize these areas to boost his strength until he fell asleep from mental exhaustion, accomplishing nothing.
...
After waking up, Joren had dark circles under his eyes. He had stayed up all night trying to figure out ways to cultivate his chakras, dantians, and other meridians but he found nothing.
This didn't bother him though. He still had a long way to go in his journey and he could afford to put what he discovered last night in the back of his head, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try to find answers.
Finishing breakfast quickly, he ran to Glenn's house to ask some questions. He wasn't going to ask him about the chakras or dantians because the selfish side of him wanted to keep that to himself, but he did plan on asking if there were other methods of cultivation.
Opening the door, he was greeted by Lauren's voluptuous figure in the kitchen cooking breakfast for her and Glenn, who was sitting at the table reading a book.
Joren walked over to her and started groping her ass with one hand and her breast with another. One thing he found out over the past two years is that Glenn doesn't care what he does sexually to Lauren. In some cases, he even asks if Joren wants to spend "quality" time with her.
He had no idea why they acted that way around him, so he asked his sister if it was normal for a person to be sexually involved with their friends or family. Grace looked at him like he was crazy and flat-out said no. But when he asked why they acted that way around him, she looked at him and asked "Why wouldn't we?". That conversation solidified Joren's assumption that something about him makes the women in his life do practically what he wants which also makes their partners go along with it.
So ever since that discovery, Joren had been taking advantage of that. One time, he told Glenn not to sleep in his room because he wanted to fuck Lauren. Instead of getting mad, he simply agreed like it was a normal thing.
Lauren soon finished cooking breakfast and put it on the table to eat. They said grace and they started eating.
"Uncle Glenn, can I ask you a question?"
"Yeah sure, what's up?"
"Are there other forms of cultivation? Like, a different way to become strong other than forming circles around the heart?" The question prompted Glenn to put his book down, contemplating his questions.
"As far as I know, there aren't any other cultivation methods practiced in the kingdom. In fact, I haven't heard of another method in all the lands of each race. So no, I don't think there are other cultivation methods. I do know that there are practices to enhance one's strength or mana, but most of them are by using illegal drugs that have side effects, and the others are Noble family treasures." Glenn explained
Joren unraveled the information he was given. He pondered why the body had chakras and dantians, yet there was no cultivation method centered around it. It could be that Glenn simply doesn't know any other method, but Joren assumed that something like this would be widespread knowledge.
"Then, do you know the reason why we cultivate this circle method? Did people who discovered mana always use it, or was it learned later?" Joren thought that maybe if he could understand the history and origins of mana, he could find his answer.
"That's a good question. This is actually a topic you will learn in the Royal Academy. In the early days, around 50 thousand years ago, when people first discovered mana, they used it the way people do if they don't have a circle, but even then, it was far underdeveloped compared to what it is now. Eventually, they came to the realization that storing mana in their body would eventually cause them to overload so they researched ways to stop overloading, but increase power."
Joren listened intently, his fingers intertwined while he rested his chin on them.
"They started circulating mana in the brain. They devised that since the brain is the main source of the body's function, cultivating mana in the brain would solve their problem, but they were wrong. Many, many people died from this method. So much so that it was banned even until this day.
At their lowest point, one scholar journeyed throughout the world asking many races for their opinion, but these races were in the same predicament as his own. So he went to the most knowledgeable race of them all, the Dragons. After studying with the dragons for a few years, he learned that Dragons have a body that is naturally built for mana. You can say that they are blessed by mana.
Dragons have strong bodies and can regenerate from almost any injury no matter how severe. The scholar learned that Dragons are born with a heart that cultivates mana for them naturally and that is also the reason why their vitality is so strong. When asked why mana circulates around their heart, they said that the heart is the source of life since it pumps blood. Realizing this, the scholar created a method to mimic the Dragons, and that method is called the Circle method, the one we use today."
Glenn finished his little history lesson and Joren was left speechless at the revolution he just discovered.