Chapter 20 - Clear Mind Pill

Yesterday, after enjoying his long, relaxing bath and his spoils of bloodbath, he slept comfortably in his futon for only 10 hours, barely enough, but it will do.

His sleep was cut short due to Xing Lao arriving earlier than Long Ren expected. It is currently still 6 in the morning.

Although other people would have already woken up by now, Long Ren is not like other people.

Long Ren let Xing Lao in, did basic courtesy, and let him sit in his usual place. No more comparing cups as Long Ren will naturally lose.

Unlike other people, Long Ren does not care about his cup, at least not yet as he had only ever shown it to his teacher…That doesn't sound right.

Anyway, after talking for a while about his mission and how it all went well, Xing Lao gave Long Ren a bottle of pills. It contained several small pure white pills as big as a normal marble ball Long Ren played with as a child before.

"This is the [Clear Mind] pill. I know this is your first time killing and although you look okay up front, I could sense the turmoil in your heart. This will help calm you down, try one now." Xing Lao said, as he poured one pill out and gave it to Long Ren.

Long Ren followed his master's order, oblivious to the underlying schemes of the clan, and ate the pill.

As the pill went down into his throat and into his stomach, it dissolves and spread towards all parts of his body, but mainly, his head.

He immediately felt a sense of clarity gushing into his mind as if something had reset his thoughts.

It feels like clearing a browser's history, everything dark he had seen before is cleared with but a single click, ready to be filled once more, hopefully with something less dark.

Though 5 seconds later, after that clarity rushed in, his mind went blank for but a split second, and he felt something wrong, but he can't quite put his finger on it, and just dismissed it as an afterthought.

Xing Lao, seeing Long Ren's expression of ease, smiled. The pill had indeed successfully helped him in clearing his mind of those dark thoughts.

Long Ren sat there, motionless for a while, and gathered his thoughts. His state of mind is now way less chaotic than it was before the reset.

He now realizes the two sides that he had subconsciously formed in his mind.

On one side is the humanity and morality he still holds on to, the one he had held on to for 17 years of his previous life.

On the other side is his acceptance of the norms of this world. On this side, his moral compass did a 180 and is completely fine with slaughtering, with a caveat of them being somewhat guilty.

Previously, they were clashing with each other, wanting to be the one in control over the other, but now, they coexist, sort of.

In short, Long Ren had successfully made another personality from inside of him. He knew this may cause a problem and he needs to address it as soon as possible but…after thinking about it, maybe letting it stay is fine as well.

This way, he could go about his days with his more humane personality, while only showing his twisted personality on special occasions.

Anyway, his other personality had already formed subconsciously and he couldn't get rid of it, might as well let it be. He had some control over its appearances after all.

Seeing Long Ren already got his thoughts arranged, Xing Lao proceeded to advise Long Ren on how this pill is something he should consume every day to help him improve his mental strength.

Long Ren listened to Xing Lao's explanation and nodded, taking his word inside his mind.

After doing their usual study session and waving his goodbyes to his teacher, Long Ren started thinking about his plans for the future.

He is now already almost a rank 3 cultivator. This cultivation speed is way above the rest as he had received a lot of help from Xing Lao, the cultivation manual, the high-rank artifacts, pills, etc, etc.

Considering all that, if his progress stays mediocre, then he should just quit as a cultivator.

But, what other people do not know, is that Long Ren had not been focusing on improving his cultivation rank. Instead, he focused on following the instructions of the [Space Clickbait Manual] to lay out a proper foundation for his space element.

It says in it that cultivation ranks, lower levels are easier to increase, therefore, one should not overly focus on increasing their ranks, rather, one should build a proper foundation.

In the book, it explains that there are two ways to go about his future, a more elemental approach, or a more body-type approach.

A more elemental approach means he will lay out a foundation for his spatial skills and develop them to be used outside of his body, such as his [Elemental Bullet: Space]

A more body-type approach means he will train his entire body as a foundation to accommodate spatial elements inside of it, enhancing it with spatial properties.

For Long Ren, it was like picking a class.

A mage, or A warrior.

At first, Long Ren thought of training his body since he got [Space body cultivation technique Part 1 (Incomplete 1/2)] from his pull a long time ago, but decided against it.

For one, fighting with his body sounds like it will hurt a lot, so, opting for a more mage-like build where he just stands back and pokes his enemy until they die seems perfect for him.

And herein lies the "problem", his body is unusually strong. And ever since he cultivated, his body only seems to grow stronger, much stronger.

As of now, he could probably one-shot a cultivator of the same rank with just a normal punch.

But then again, he could also do the same with his elemental bullet. It's not like he had tried it on anyone or anything, but he had sparred with Xing Lao and that's what his Master's assessment resulted in.

In the end, after considering his options, He decided to just cultivate both of them and lay the foundation for both mage and warrior-like build so he can choose a path along the line.

A hybrid build, so to say.

There is only one downside to it though, and that is his cultivation rank will be increasing at an even slower rate, but even then, it is still much better than the average,

This shows how absurdly overpowered the clickbait manual is, and also Long Ren's innate cultivation talent.

Currently, he had successfully trained in 2 spatial side skills that he got from the clickbait manual, and he liked both of them a lot.

The first one is [Space Step] which is basically a watered-down version of a Blink, while the other one is [Elemental Bullet: Space], which is an ability to create a hollow bullet made of qi, which will be injected with unique properties, depending on the elements injected into it.

His spatial element allows him to control the spot where the bullet goes.

As seen before, when his bullet suddenly appeared before the bandit's forehead, that is him controlling the bullet to go through space and appear at the designated location.

It is definitely an overpowered ability, considering the target won't be able to dodge it as Long Ren could just mark their body parts as target and it will almost never miss.

The hard part isn't transferring the bullet to the mark, it's marking the targe. The first time he tried this ability, he missed the mark so much, that it almost grazed his futon. From then on, no more trying out new abilities while on the futon.

But after a year of continuous training, he now can mark close enough to the target that it will always hit. He had tried marking inside the target once, but it didn't work, which is a shame.

Imagine a bullet piercing you from the inside…Brrrr.

Now, he is trying to search for other skills he could learn. His cultivation rank is increasing at a steady pace, so no need to focus on it. He develops his body and mind to accommodate spatial elements every single day as well, that's also going well.

Learning new skills would be the only other thing that can increase his power in the short run.

His repertoire consists of [Space Step] for movements, [Spatial Bullet] (A/N: imma call it that now, too long xD) for long-range attacks, and his casual punch for CQC (Close Quarter Combat).

Long Ren feels lost on what to improve next. He could learn more offensive-based skills, but most of them, either from the clan's library or Xing Lao's inventory, are sub-par as compared to his fist and bullet. The same could be said for his [Space Step].

This leaves defensive-oriented skills. He did not find anything that could boost his survivability in the clickbait manual, and he did not like all the options from the clan.

One of them cultivates the body to be as hard as silver iron…but his natural body is already sturdier than that material.

Another one causes a magical beast's carapace to appear when activated, but it also seems weaker than his natural defenses.

So what now? This question has been popping in and out of Long Ren's mind for a few days now, and to find some inspiration, for the first time in forever, Long Ren decided it is time to finally touch grass.

While wandering around the clan's area and thinking about his future plans, Long Ren heard some shouts coming from his left side.

Curious, he went there and found a big training area with dozens of cultivators training. Some of them are cultivating out in the open, some discussed with each other, and some of them sparred against one another.

Seeing so many young cultivators gathering in one place, he realized where he had arrived to—the Academy's training area.

Some people were staring at Long Ren due to his status, but he just doesn't care about that right now, as after seeing the cultivators sparring against each other, he now knows what he needed to learn next.

'How could I forget! Martial arts!'