Desperate battle and new realm

Pushing his soul power through his feet, Cain made his way to the rampaging beast. The bear was fighting some kind of tiger, which was already injured by something that looked like sword marks. Even though Cain was questioning who could leave such injures, he decided to fight first and investigate about it afterwards.

In one large movement, Cain arrived next to bear and gave it a powerful punch to its torso. Unfortunately, its body was extremely durable, having some sort of natural defence. Pushing soul power through his fist, Cain willed a stream of soul power to course freely and used it to impact the rapidly approaching arms of the bear. Due to it being a stronger variant, its speed was nothing to scoff at, so Cain was pushing his senses to the limit as to keep up with his overwhelming foe.

--Whoosh--

Suddenly Cain´s instincts screamed danger so he leaned downwards right when a giant paw was about to crush his head. Using his momentum Cain gave the feline kick and rapidly took distance from the bloodthirsty opponents. He noticed that those specimen had a bit of intelligence since their way of fighting was a lot less wasteful compared to other beasts in the area.

Waiting for an opportunity attack, Cain silently mobilized his remaining soul force to try out a technique he developed while experimenting with the energy. Cloaking his hands with the white-blackish force, Cain took the basic stance of a particular martial style which took its base from a tiger´s physique. Forming a paw with his hands he rushed at the exact moment when the bear started roaring violently and the tiger jumped on him. He rapidly dodged to the side and used his hands to execute 5 consecutive punches through the tiger´s body and chest area, successfully making it gasp painfully and dropping faint with blood leaking from its maw. Unfortunately, Cain was struck rather forcefully with the bear´s, making him fly and spurt some blood from his mouth. Feeling his organs throbbing and having nearly depleted his soul force, Cain was starting furiously thinking about how to escape this dangerous situation.

Looking around he saw a rock. Thinking for a second his eyes shone dangerously. Using the last of his strength, Cain threw the rock at a speed comparable to a baseball pitcher, he managed to hit the bear´s eye, making it howl painfully. Not losing this opportunity, Cain unsheathed his sword and used all his strength to rapidly hit the beast on its head. After a dozen of cuts, the bear made its last struggle and died.

Feeling exceptionally tired Cain not even caring about the state of the bear´s meat started devouring it rapidly. Like a starved man finding his first food, he bit onto the juicy flesh which strangely had a great flavour, not unlike a greatly cooked steak. Suddenly he started feeling intense heat from his body, which made Cain instinctually proceed to practice his external manual. Feeling his heart beating furiously he almost started to think that he would die when suddenly something like a shackle on his flesh had been broken. Unfortunately, Cain couldn´t observe his body´s condition since he fainted dead on the ground.

"Awakening" in his soul, or so Cain thought after observing his body, he noticed that the Muscle Tendon Changing and Marrow Cleansing Subsidiary External Cultivation Collection had a new chapter with seemingly a body drawn on it. The most unique feature of this drawing is that it had something called eight great meridians which contributed to a cultivator´s energy pool and his durability against calamities. Those calamities were in the form of heavenly lighting or fire phoenixes which were drawn as a test of heaven´s will against cultivators. From this, it could be deduced that cultivators were existences who went against the natural order of things.

Back to the meridians, Cain understood that a perfect foundation for the cultivation of the soul force could be considered when you have unlocked all eight great meridians, and got the ninth false meridian of the soul. It was usually bestowed in the form of a Spiritual Eye, having many variations depending on the talent of the user. There were more than 100 eye types, legendary being considered the top 10.

Mulling on this new information Cain started feeling his body awakening so without further thought, he opened his eyes...