8 Incursio

The Next day, Alex took Hope to the sect to have her join the sect. He was not worried about the sect doing anything behind his back. For, One he foresaw the future and picked a possible one he liked. Plus, they would only lose if they tried to do something underhanded they would only have gains if Hope fully allied herself with the sect.

So, she was taken into the sect almost instantly after they found out about her physique. Hope had until she was 15 before her talent would stop growing. So, she got to work. reading all of the information on cultivation she could get her hands on, while Alex helped her with cultivation 

"Alex, remember how I told you there were 3 types of talents?" the sect master asked while looking at Alex who was cleaning his sword. it was a sword built for speed, and pinpoint attacks, a rapier.

"Yeah, body, comprehension, and cultivation," I said calmly while studying the sword. the sect tournament was only 5 days away, so I was getting ready to take the win

"Then, are you not interested in body cultivation? Since you have stepped into the Qi Gathering realm, 3 paths are before. the first path is to continue on Qi cultivation. this path you strengthen, dense, and purify your Qi." He said calmly

"On the second path, you cultivate your body. making it more durable, faster, and even awaken a new energy called lifeforce. Unlike Qi which can only be recovered by taking the outside world Qi, which you know can take a long time depending on what stage of cultivation you're at... Lifeforce recovery is like how you recover your stamina. as Lifeforce is connected to your life. you can burn your life force for a huge boost of power. at the cost of your lifespan dropping. But, Body cultivation lifespan is 10 times greater than Qi cultivators." He said calmly, making my eyebrow raise.

"Now, the 3rd path is to simply walk both paths. fuse them, but this would leave every breakthrough you take being 5 times as hard, but you would be able to draw upon lifeforce and Qi to channel a new and more powerful energy called Lifeforce Qi... some call it Physical Qi. They couldn't call it Life Qi, as there is an energy out there with such a name. energy which is life, capable of breathing life into what not living." the sect master said, sighing at the name

"Well, I will have to pick the fusion. So, what do I do?" I asked calmly, to which the sect master gave me a scroll.

"There are 3 ways to cultivate the body. the simplest way is by working out, breaking through your body's limits, and reaching new heights. but for this, you need the tools and resources. the second is a bath in herb baths which allows the body to absorb the herbs to strengthen your body. Lastly, through battle." He said while I opened the scroll.

"some rare body cultivation arts speed up the body adaption speed. if you wanted to become a tank that could withstand all types of attacks. simply take all types of attacks, and heal. once you heal, you can find that said attack does less damage, and you are stronger. but we don't have such a thing" He said making my eyebrow raise, wasn't that pretty much a Zenkai boost?

"I will go with the second one. I guess I should learn alchemy. I'm not a person who enjoys pain, and I already have a lot of stuff to deal with. so Alchemy would be for the best right now." I said with a smile, making the sect leader nod

I looked at the scroll which had ways to work out, herbs and pill ingredients, as well as body cultivation arts. he pretty much gave me everything I needed. I just needed to go buy this stuff.

"To fuse the two paths, simply break through your body cultivation realm, and Qi cultivation realm to the same level at the same time. Take hold of both of them and fuse them. your cultivation would drop, but you would become what is known as Twain Cultivator. Once they are fused, cultivating the Qi path would in return also cultivate the body path. of course, the energy to convert Qi into the energy needed is going to be a lot." He said calmly, to which I nodded while getting up to go learn about alchemy.

Throughout the Body Transformation realm, [The End] improved by +0.5%. now that I have reached the Qi gathering realm, it will be improving by 1%. currently, it's at 16%, meaning everything I see would instantly be mastered to 16%. The fact it was needed and this was the only way to improve it was a bit annoying. but what could I do?

I went on to look up alchemy on YouTube, there I found some old men who were spreading the wisdom of Alchemy to the world. although it wasn't their core teaching, I still copied it by simply watching the videos. thanks to this, my understanding of alchemy suddenly skyrocketed.

but I was looking for someone who could make pills with 100% purity. every pill had some impurities within. One should know, that nothing is truly 100%. this is why [The End] was broken as it could master anything past 100%. that made no sense. so, for a pill to even have 99%, this was considered shocking and perfect on its own. but there were those skilled enough to break logic and bring out a pill that was 100% pure, or even go above it.

Sadly, they were not on YouTube. So, I just went through all of the alchemy videos I could find and even went on to see those sect disciples who were under the sect alchemist. I used [The Almighty] On them, and through them, I saw the sect alchemist. I quickly saw all of the possible future and saw the ones where he showed off his best skills.

After which, I went shopping and returned home where sat down to begin doing some alchemy. although the sect master said one should bathe in herbs, pills could also be taken. they would have the most effect.

Pills are created by taking the effects of herbs and manipulating them in ways to show unique effects. the instinct recovery pill had such effects one could show with the right herb, but pills are not all-powerful. in the end, they are drugs. as one cultivation grew, they would take on resistance to such things. at the same time, the more pills one takes, the more the body would grow resistant to it.

the same would go for the baths, after all, you're strengthening the body. But through pills, I could better control what I was doing. I had mastered the skills of those who would be considered 3-star alchemists.

One should know, that pills are graded by stars. each star reflects what cultivation realm the pill would be most useful. A one-star pill would be useful for those body transformation realm cultivators.

The second star would be most useful towards Qi gathering realm cultivator, and the pattern went on. Alchemists are also graded by stars, if you can make a pill of 70% or above purity, you would be able to earn a star depending on what star the pill was at.

So, if you made a 2-star pill with 70% purity while being a 1-star alchemist, you would be able to rank up and become a 2-star Alchemist.

Of course, the higher the star of the pill, it meant one needed to have more control of everything happening within their pill furnace. because of this, those of high stars would be able to make pills of lower stars with high purity.

Alex had 4 things going for him right now, one was that he had [The End] second was that he had [The Almighty], third was that he had perfect control of his energy, and fourth being he had copied a 3-star alchemist.

So, he used the almighty to foresee the infinite possibilities and see a possibility where he made a pill with 100% purity. it took a few minutes to see through so many possibilities, but as I watched these possibilities, I saw how this furnace could be used by me, and my understanding began to grow at high speed. this led to those possible futures where I failed becoming less likely to happen, replaced with those where I got close to succeeding. but even then, I was learning from their mistakes improving my skills.

'sucks I can't just look at myself and use the almighty. I would instantly master every possible thing I could learn in the future. it also sucks that [the Almighty] can't be used to see my future, since having it gives me immunity to its ability.' I thought with a sigh, I had tried to look at myself in the mirror, but I couldn't see myself. but I could see the effect of my actions.

"What Are you doing?" Hope who was reading a book asked while walking up, studying the furnace in front of me. As she was behind me, I didn't stop.

"I'm about to do some alchemy," I said calmly, to which Hope blinked for a moment before her eyebrow raised. 

"So, is this why she wanted to marry you?" She asked, to which I froze for a moment and quickly nodded my head. but upon doing so, I frowned. it was a trap. I stopped using [The Almighty] and Turned to look at her, just to see Hope walking away unhappily. She wanted me to be honest with her, but I didn't Wanna.

"If you don't want to tell me, the least you can do is be honest." She said while entering her room, and closing it behind her. I clicked my tongue slightly, this was the trouble with a child too smart for her own.

'why couldn't she be more like my sister.' I thought, remembering how easy it was to fool my sister growing up. we were twins, and she by any means wasn't stupid, I was just smarter than her. 

'I should have called her...' I thought sighing softly, the fight me and my sister had was a big one. but... well, the nature of it was special. if it wasn't, I would have not been sending her money to help her live her dream of staying home watching anime all day, or playing video games.

Sighing, I returned to using [The Almighty] and after a few minutes, my hands moved, as the flames began burning under the furnace. I waited a few minutes before I began throwing herbs into the furnace. My control was perfect, my timing was perfect, and every movement I was doing made it look as if I had done this all my life.

It took a few minutes, but soon a golden light came from the furnace. reaching in, I pulled out 5 pills, which were bright Teal. there was no smell, as the pills were 100% pure. all of the pill's effects were maximized to their fullest, and none were wasted for something useless like a smell.

"Only took me 10 minutes," I said softly getting up, 10 minutes to learn how to make such high-grade pills. throwing the pills in my mouth, I began to cultivate. The pill I just created was called the Lifeforce Qi pill... I hated the name, but pretty much, it allowed one to cultivate both the body and one's Qi at the same time. it was best used to help one breakthrough both cultivation types to fuse the two.

this is what I went on to do. As soon as the two broke through to level 2 Qi gathering, I took hold of them and pushed them together. this was something extremely painful to do but endured the pain. I quickly found that this wasn't something I could force, instead, it was something I had to balance out and merge. So, I began to weaken my Qi cultivation so it couldn't overwhelm my Body cultivation which was the weaker one.

The Body cultivation art given to me wasn't as powerful as the Heavenly Thunderbird cultivation art, because of this, I had to weaken my Qi cultivation. with that done, it didn't take long for me to fuse them, causing my cultivation to drop to level 1 Qi gathering once more, even so... I was stronger than before.

Wait? how did I get the Heavenly THunderbird Cultivation art? By watching the sect master cultivate through [The Almighty] I copied the cultivation art using the [The End]. adding the countless possibilities, there were even somewhere he pulled it out to study the cultivation art. I had already mastered this cultivation art. Of course, I had to hide it using the Thunderbird Cultivation art.

I just need to see someone cultivating a Body Cultivation art of the same grade or higher, than I would be set. I wouldn't need to suppress my Qi cultivation art. I honestly didn't know how strong I was right now, but I was powerful.

{Host, try incursio. it would be able to help you and the Adapting of both Qi and Body. allowing you to not need to weaken one side to keep them balanced... at least it should.} the system said, to which I raised an eyebrow. but I nodded, and went to the basement,

"Okay, give it to me," I said calmly, after a moment, a sword appeared in front of me, which I took. In the past when I got it, I didn't take it from the system right away as I didn't have a place to store it. walking around with such a powerful item would risk others taking it away from me. 

Taking hold of the sword, I carefully studied it for a moment. it was a double-edged sword, near the hilt of the sword was a red orb. attached to the hilt was a chain.

"Incursio," I said calmly while stabbing the sword into the ground, from behind me, an armored man appeared. he was covered from head to toe in armor, with crossed arms. but the helmet suddenly began to crack, before the flesh within broke out, transforming into an ugly 4 eye dragon. its arm moved, wrapping around me.

A red aura surrounded me, the armor was evolving. but I was something it couldn't just adapt to right away. Cultivation was a new topic to this dragon, as well as with all of my abilities, it took 30 long minutes before armor began to surround me.

it was a silver, gray, and white armor that covered me from head to toe. there were no openings, even my eyes were covered by it. in the place of my eyes was something yellow which I could perfectly see through.

In my right arm was a large double-aged spear whose body was gray up to the redhead. it couldn't be said to be a spear. it was more like a halberd and spear fusion

"you feed off my Qi to increase your adaption speed? whatever, I copied your adaption and evolution power. we're even." I said with a smile, there was a reason I picked this armor. The armor was alive, knowing this I believed that [The End] should be able to copy its adaption and evolution capability. And I was right.

But this led to the bond between myself and this armor growing deeper. the armor even tried to take over me and transform me into its new host, but I for one had [Endless Nine], so long as I fully rejected this my immunity to it was 100%, I used [The Almighty] when I was scanning it, so Its ability couldn't harm me. so it was all pointless. adding the fact I was adapting to its attempts... honestly, It ended up giving up realizing just how pointless the task was.

"Where is this place? how did I get her?" A voice entered my head, causing my eyebrow to raise. the armor was alive, but it shouldn't be able to speak... I remembered it was just absorbing my Qi and even the outside world. so maybe it allowed it to not only improve its capability but also gain more intelligence. 

"This is earth, I summoned you here. this world is completely different from yours... now, mind telling me what you got from adapting to me?" I asked calmly,

"My master. after we bonded, I have gained a few new sets of abilities. the first thing is that I'm now bonded to your soul. meaning, I can rest within your soul and be summoned with a call. the boost of power I give you is not limited to speed, power, or even defense. I also boost your senses and other abilities. 

thanks to my bonding with your soul, I had gained bits of your powers as well. this would allow me to grow and adapt far faster than before. my adaptation and evolution capability had improved greatly. I could even help you break through after you adapt and evolve past a said amount." the armor said after going through my memory, I felt it doing this. I could have stopped it, but I only limited it to a few memories so it could understand what was happening. 

"Is that all?" I asked while feeling the overwhelming power I had at my fingertip. but I felt like that wasn't everything.

"My trump card to go invisible has also evolved. it would now allow you to become completely invisible. Your aura, smell, taste, and even the lightest vibration you can make would be invisible. your ability would also be stronger when used alongside me." Incursio said calmly, to which I nodded slightly. I used [The Almighty] on a wall and found I could easily see more possibilities. I could even remove some possibilities, to help me look for the one I was searching for.

"You also gained bits of my bloodline," Incursio said while I left its armored state, cracking my neck, and walked off...

Far off within the dragon emperor sect, a dragon was currently looking far off towards Pittsburg. before him was a confused red-haired man.

"I felt a dragon... a dragon whose bloodline is purer than mine. but it's weak" the dragon said softly, unease in its voice. the red-haired man, the sect master of the dragon emperor sect frowned at this dragon's words

"How? The only way for something like that to happen... well, you said it yourself. if every dragon dies along with the other heavenly beasts the world will reset." the red-haired man said while the dragon stood up.

"I know... I wish I could go and check for myself. but thousands of years' worth of slumber has weakened me. I need a few more years to recover. You should go look, head north... about 300 miles." the dragon said softly, it has been asleep for millions of thousands of years. being a dragon, it couldn't survive in a world without Qi.

so it had been sealed away, awaiting for Qi to reach a good amount before it could be free. but there was a problem with all of this. although dragons were born with the unique ability to grow stronger and break through cultivation realms with age. they were not immortal. normally, this dragon should have died long ago. but like how animals enter hibernation to sleep through winter. It used a unique technique to mimic hibernation and sleep through such a large amount of time while protecting its life force to the best of its abilities. Right now, it was extremely weak and hungry.

"I will go check around," the sect master of the dragon emperor sect said softly, since he had the dragon bloodline running through him. he should be able to sense the dragon when near it.

"Be careful... that dragon isn't normal. I never felt anything like it, one moment I felt as if it wasn't of this world. the next moment, it seemed to adapt and be a part of this world." the dragon said seriously, to which the sect leader nodded 

This wasn't the only dragon that was alerted. around the world, many dragons had unique special means to survive the disappearances of Qi millions of years ago. it had been a slow drop in Qi, Qi had never truly disappeared. bits of it remained, but so weak that for years no human could have sensed it. Although it could be used through special means, such as how witches could cast spells through sacrifices... which lead to them being hunted. but males did take it too far, as it led to a time when females couldn't even show they could read without being hunted. which led to the House of Witches forming, they were able to fight to allow females to have equal rights.