While they waited for the duke to join them for dinner, the three wives started to gossip with each other, as such the children did to. At the same time Marissa and Elissa both said "How have your studies been?" "Hey, what the little monster been up to?" Marissa as alwase was polite and reserved while Elissa was anything but. 'I swear, their aperance is the only thing simaler about them'
"I've been studing diffrent languages. Not all the books are in common and as such I can't read them. So far I have become fluent in Eltan and Amoris and have started to study the basic runic language." Their was a small pause befor, in perfect sync, both systems said "what?", their was another pause, and Elissa began to mumble under her breath about something like 'it took me three years just to learm Eltan, he learnt that and Amoris in a couple months?'
Meanwhile Malissa looked at him and asked "you said your fluent in both? And your learning basic runic as well? Forgive me if I sound incredulous, but you only where given acsess to the library 2 months ago where you not?"
Alex understood that Melissa was reasonably questionable about his new found knowledge, so in Eltian, the language that the isolated barbarians in the Northam mountains used, he said "it's understandable that you don't beleave me." He then switched to Amoris, which was the language used by the royal family in the central continent "but I am a rather fast learner, sadly I am not yet able to speak in basic runic so I cannot prove my proficiency in that."
All this was rather comical considering Alex curently had the body of a five year old and sitting in a booster seat. Suddenly, from the head of the table there was the voice if a man. "Haha, it seems my second son is a talented one. I hope my third continues the trend. And Elissa, how many times have I told you to ware something more covering?"
Turning towards the head of the table while his order sister argued with his father, he studied the man. Firstly, he could see where Davin got his build, his father was almost as wide as he was tall, and he was anything but fat. He had a long but well groomed beard and short cut black hair. He was also wareing a mix of cultivation robes and battle armour, with thick padded shoulders and a fur cape at the back. And as alex already knew, his father was at the third stage of foundation building. If Alex was the little monster, then duke Fredrick, the beastly fighter, was the big monster.
"Ah my boy, you've grown even more. I'm sure in just a couple more months you'll be able to start body forging. I can't wait to see how far you'll go. And the timing couldn't be more perfect, in two years the purple dawn sect will be holding its bi-annual requests, although you will have a lower cultivation level then you siblings, I'm sure you will be able to enter. Sadly I am just above the 100 year age cap, sigh. Oh well, nothing to fret about now. I'm sure you and your sibling will be plenty capable of passing the tests. Now, enough talk. It's time to eat!"
Filling his plate with food, Alex began to eat, he still wasemt used to the fact that although it was a cultivation world, it had a mostly western culture, the food, the names, even the monarchy. The only eastern parts where the cultivation, the sects, and the social beliefs. Like how a dainty jade beauty that looked more like a stick figure drawing was more beautiful then someone more, amazoness like. Don't get him wrong, he understood the appeal, but it must be uncomfortable to be that slim.
Focusing back onto the wonderfully food he happily dug in, and just like that another 4 months went by and it was now summer, or it would be, it seemed like each contenent had a respective season, north had winter. East, where he was, had spring. South had summer. And west had autumn. The seas also had there respective seasons, the central continent was the only one with actual seasons, andwhich ever one it was in, the respective continent would have its season 'enhanced', but getting back on topic. Alex now had the body of an 8 year old, and had been deemed worthy of starting body forging.
In front of him was the family's trainer, his second mother. While his father was at 90% marrow refinement, his mother was at 20% bone refinement. While it may seem like just a 30% difrence, that '30%' was the difrent between one major realm and one almost one minor realm. In body forging each 30% mark and the last 10% where considerd minor realms.
His second mother was curently in training clothes and the both of thw, where standing in the mannor training ground "Alright Alex, you've been fed some of the best medicines you could have, and seem to be incredably talented. So, I'll skip the introductions, not like you don't know everything anyway, and go strait to the training. First things first. You need to sense your 'inner qi', basicly your bodies special energy. Once you've senced that we can move on. I'll give you 3 days."
"Done."
"...What? Done? Did you say done? Are you sure it's inner qi? It shoukd be a warmish energy flowing through your blood. Without prior experience senceing it or spending a long time focusing on finding it, It shouldn't be that easy to find."
"It starts at my heart, splits in to five diifrent streams, two go down my arms to my hands, through my fingers, mack to my hands, up my arms and back to my heart. two go down my abdomin, to my hips, down my legs, to my toes, and back up to my heart. And the last one goes up my neck and cycles around y head before going back to my heart." In reality he had two streams for each blood vessel but he knew that five was considerd 'increadably talented' so he didn't overdo it.
"Well I'll be damned, that's your inner qi. You realy did sence it, with five streams at that. You really are a little monster. Alright then, time for step two, I guess." She pulled out a brown booklet that had the image of a tiger on the front. "This is the family's exclusive body forging technique made by your ancestors. It's called the [black tiger breathing method], the way it works is by exiting your inner qi and useing it to temper your body and it goes all the way up to first stage organ refinement but you don't need to worry about that. For now, try to memorise it in a week, I'll guide you in starting it once you have." With that she handed him the book and walked away.
Going back to his room Alex opened his system window to see his progress over the last few months.
[Name: Alex
Titles: [transcendent physique holder]
Cultivation: basic mortal
Body forging: basic mortal
Stats:
Strength: 7
Speed: 7
Dexterity: 7
Constitution: 7
Intelligence: 7
Vitality: 7
Spirit: 6
Resistance: 6
Traits: [fetus] [untainted] [pure heart and clean mind] [Parasite] [being nurtured by mother] [qi guidence(foundation building stage 3)] [boiling blood] [enhanced amnioticcycle] [blessed by the earth] [child of heaven] [transcendent phisque] [jade bones] [perfect marrow] [perfect neural network] [marble skin] [steel muscles] [five beast organs] [dragon tendons] [earthly blood]
Status effects: [biomass storage] [satiated] [Fed by mother] [good medicine][eaten clean demon meat] [eaten Qi fruit]
Spells: none
Techniques: [fetal breath] [foundation creation] [base building] [soul visualisation] forge of 108 divine meridians] [earth's blessing] [Adonis] [chrysalis]
System skills: [Beast taming]
Equipment: none
Exchange points: 20,000]
Starting with the obvious, his stats had gone from 5 across the bored to 8 for basic stats and vitality, and 6 for spirit and resistance. This was just from his natural growth. his true stats,the ones before the bonus from [transcendent phisque holder] had gone up to five, so the 50% bonus was 2.5, rounded up to 3 for 8. While his spirit and resistance had gone to 4, with plus 2 for the bonus for 6. He had gained the traits [marble skin], [steel muscles], [five beats organs], [dragon tendons] and [earthly blood]. All of which where just massive bonuses to there respective body part with the unique bonuses of, high resistance to all bladed damage, higher durabilty and recovery rate, a unique bonus for each organ for their respective beats, high tensile strangth and elasticity, and high energy conductivity and general regeneration for each respective trait. [And perfect neural network] was just an upgrade of [perfect nervous system].
[Form of the cloud imortal] was also upgraded to [Adonis] and was just a much stronger aesthetic booster and [earths blessing] was an upgraded [Accelerated plant growth]. As for the statuses, [eaten cleaned demon meat] and [eaten Qi fruit] where from the feasts and both gave enhanced regeneration for phisical and mysical states respectively. Other then that, he had saved up a total of 20,000 exchange points, the rest had been used to turn his already high phisical talents in to traits, make his statuses permenent, or some minor modifications to his techniques.
Now, on to the body forging technique. Looking through it, from what he could tell it was based off the innate breathing patterns that a black tiger would use during bloodline refining and body forging. Theses patterns where then adjusted for human use to stimulate a person's inner qi so they could refine their body. The prossess of refinement itself was universal for all techniques, remove impurities and enhance existing qualities. The difrence of a techniques level was based off of how many impurities it could remove, and how much it could enhance.
The [Black tiger breathing method] was a [tier 3 man technique]. Each level had three tiers and the levels he knew where [man], [earth], [sky] and [heaven] but even his own fathers cultivation method was only a [tier 2 earth technique] so anything above that was far out of his reach.