'Argh, my head nearly split open. Just how much does he know? He's a walking library' Aaron said in his head as he held onto it while sitting up.
"You are extraordinary Li. Li?" Aaron asked as he franticly looked around, he couldn't find Li in the open cave. There was no other compartment within the cave, it was just an open space. If Li wasn't here, that meant…
"You are finally awake." A voice said from behind, as Aaron turned to see Li coming from the entrance.
"Thought you had died or something. Stop playing tricks." Aaron grumbled.
"Sorry, it wasn't intentional this time. I just went to the entrance to take a peak outside, you know? See the beautiful scenery before Idisappear."
"You really want to die." Aaron said just before he paused for a bit.
"…"
"You are already dead aren't ya?" He grumbled again as he lifted himself off the ground.
"Too bad you possessed extremely bad talent, you would have been a total monster. With this knowledge, uff, let's not even go there." Aaron was so impressed with Li's ability to learn so much that it showed on his usually plain face.
Since Li was utterly weak, he spent most of his time reading variety of books, finding ways to get his hands on different techniques in hopes of improving himself. He even became best friends with a high-ranking official of the Beggars Sect that specialized in information control.
Basically, they knew almost everything about everybody, even the most secretive information.
He would get discounts on information and cultivation techniques of other sects, eventually having an enormous stack of knowledge that he couldn't even use. Fortunately for him, he found Aaron to take on this knowledge. He was a little pained knowing that he would take so much to his grave. To him, each piece of information represented the money he spent to get it. If he were to count everyone, he would end up heartbroken.
Now, he could die in peace, knowing his precious knowledge would not go to waste.
Now, at this point, Aaron's' body was strong enough to maximize the effect of his cultivation by at least two and a half times more than it was. For example, he could only leave a crack on a boulder before, but with his current body, he could now shatter a boulder the size of a chair. With this, he sat back on the ground, ready to begin cultivating.
He spent some days solidifying his base, and not long after, he broke through.
"Nice. Hmm, the best technique to continue with would be…" he thought to himself as he ran through the information that popped in to his head, as he found himself remembering things he had never studied before.
"Ah, this one seems to be the best option according to Li." As he said that, the turned to look at Li, as though requesting for confirmation on his judgment. Li nodded slightly with a smile on his face.
Li's translucent body had become almost transparent now, with the orb of smoke that acted like his core reducing in thickness as time went by. Aaron continued cultivating, and within a week he broke through, into Qi gathering stage, in another one and a halve week, he broke into the Qi refining realm and entered the second stage directly.
Such fast progress was possible because of the quality of mana in the forest which was close to the River of Ends. Right now, he was still very close to the river because he couldn't leave this area that had the most and the purest mana.
From where he was at the moment, going out of the forest, the beasts range from the strongest to the weakest. Trying to leave would only be suicide.
As Aaron opened his eyes after the successful breakthrough, he had and empty feeling loom over him. The familiar feeling he always got within the cave was gone. He looked around the cave worriedly, but sadly Li's soul had already decimated.
"You finally died, didn't you? And when I wasn't looking to." He said as he squeezed his eyes shot for a moment.
This wasn't the first time losing someone. The emotions couldn't be seen on his face as his head fell to his chest. "Farewell my friend." He said in a quiet voice. It didn't bring tears to his eyes, but he was pained.
He was determined to continue his cultivation journey, until he felt strong enough to leave the forest.
Aaron continued, and as time went by he achieved some breakthroughs into major realms.
Cultivation, just like magic was divided into many stages.
Qi gathering
Qi refining
Bone forging
Core formation
Spirit lake formation
Nascent soul
Heavenly saint
Ancient saint
Tribulation Immortal
With each realm having 9 minor realms under them, while from Nascent soul onward had 3. The power difference between was like heaven and earth, and it grew even larger the more one climbed. It was a part to cultivate Immortality, and it is rumored that the road of cultivation only begins after one broke through the Tribulation Immortal to become a true immortal.
To know just how much talent Aaron possessed, a breathrough from the Qi gathering to Qi refining would take 6-12 years each to gothrough, but he did it in a matter of weeks and months. The fact that he was in a place with dense pure mana which he used as qi also helped speed things up.
Following that, Aaron invested more time into his cultivation, till he broke into the Bone Forging realm first stage, which took longer than the previous realms.
After a little practice outside the cave, he figured out a way to utilize the mana in his body more efficiently by structuring his mana veins in a way that they could both take mana in and out. This made the flow of mana within his body even faster and smothers
One of the things he worried about, after receiving Li's memories was that the dantians were not completely open after the initial opening, so one would need to take special pills that help in opening up the dantians. There were also pills that helped strengthen them by making them more rigid and flexible. Initially this worried him, but he was soon put at ease.
Within Li's memories, there were some techniques he could to achieve what he wanted.
Using an acupuncture technique, he fully opened his dantians, and with some meditation and spirit tempering techniques, he was able to strengthen them, and with that he resolved that problem.