As soon as the thought crossed Kranos' mind, he acted on it without hesitation. He contemplated the process while attempting to practice the technique, following the pattern outlined in the Time Condensation Manual I just have to condense orbs of mana—but that's far from easy, he thought.
Kranos knew that the first step was learning to sense mana. Fortunately, he had already achieved this through the knight's breathing technique. The next step was to absorb mana from his surroundings and form a core within his sea of consciousness.
Sitting cross-legged, Kranos began absorbing wisps of mana. Normally, one would absorb these wisps of mana to condense a dantian in their abdomen, but Kranos guided the mana along a different path—straight to his sea of consciousness—where he began shaping it.
Before long, he noticed an orb of mana starting to take form. At first, he was stunned, then filled with joy. The method works! he realized. Without pause, he continued absorbing mana from the surroundings. Several hours passed quietly through the night, and Kranos soon realized he had made significant progress.
The orb of mana was nearly complete. Compared to the wisps of time, mana was far more abundant in the surroundings, allowing Kranos to cultivate quickly to the first stage of Qi Condensation.
The moment he reached the first stage, he felt miraculous changes within his body. The pale blue orb of mana began rotating slowly, then released a strange energy from his sea of consciousness into his body.
Kranos didn't know whether this change was good or bad, but with no way to stop it, he could only watch. The instant the energy surged through him, he felt a sharp, piercing pain that nearly made him scream. It seemed to come from deep within his bones.
Clenching his teeth tightly to avoid making noise, he endured the pain, not wanting to alert his parents. After all, he didn't know if there would be any consequences for the cultivation path he was taking. After what felt like an eternity, a foul stench reached his nose. Looking down, he realized his body was covered in a thick, black liquid.
He was stunned for a moment before he could hardly bear the stench, not wanting to alert his parents. Kranos immediately dashed into his bathroom and dipped into the medicinal bath. Thankfully, the medicinal bath hadn't been thrown out by his mother. He then began scrubbing himself clean.
Once he was sure the black filth was gone, he stood up. Under the moonlight, he noticed his skin looked fairer, smoother, and even flawless, like jade.
Upon closer inspection, he realized that this breakthrough had brought remarkable changes. Can this be considered creating a path of cultivation unique to me? He muttered inwardly and then walked out of the bathroom after drying off his body.
In the meantime, he also noticed that his physical strength had increased significantly once more. He studied his body once more, and since he couldn't discover any peculiar aspect of his body, he decided to get some rest while he still had time.
The next day, he planned to recall and comprehend common time-based abilities from his past life's memories, right after practicing his sword techniques. Since his teacher was away, Kranos had more time to focus on cultivating space and time elemental techniques.
…
The next morning, after finishing his solo sword training, Kranos sat in the training yard. His parents were out, leaving him alone in the house. He looked around thoughtfully. He had already tried communicating with the system to see if it would provide him with any time-related abilities, but it remained unresponsive—just like before. He didn't think too much about it, he had never truly depended on the system anyway.
Left to his own devices, Kranos began recalling various time-related movies and books he'd encountered in his previous life. As his thoughts wandered deeper into the past, he decided to try mastering the first time-based ability that came to mind.
Sitting cross-legged, he fixed his gaze on the surroundings. He had no clear idea where to begin, so he simply observed everything around him. Insects buzzed about in the courtyard, and the wind caused the trees and grass to sway gently.
Kranos had the thought to slow them down. Since they can move freely, unaffected by time, how do I interfere with the time relative to their bodies? Kranos pondered this deeply, watching the scene unfold.
He thought about how cultivators channel energy from their dantian to their meridians to display martial art techniques. Why don't I try something similar? But… I don't have time meridians, he realized with frustration. The thought alone made his head ache. He didn't have time meridians, so he couldn't display the time-related abilities despite having the corresponding time points.
Wait… time points? Meridians? An idea struck him. If time points serve as my mana, can't my time orb act as the meridian? I could use the time orb as a bridge to the time flow of the outside world and then manipulate it!
Kranos' eyes lit up as soon as he thought of this, it was such a brilliant idea! Without wasting another second, he initiated the process. In his sea of consciousness, the time orb began to revolve gently as he focused on a blade of grass in front of him.
He tried forming a connection between the flow of time in his orb and that of the grass. Once connected, he would attempt to influence and slow it down. To his surprise, forming the bridge was smoother than expected. That made sense—his orb had been condensed from the surrounding time, so they were already inherently linked.
The difficult part was altering the other's time flow. In his mind, Kranos could faintly perceive the grass swaying. He locked his focus and repeatedly commanded it to slow down. Hours passed, yet nothing changed.
Kranos felt fatigued. His time orb couldn't last much longer, because of the constant usage even though he still had a lot of time points, he felt drained. He was just about to stop when he saw something through the corner of his eyes, although it was just for an instant kranos still felt it, a particular blade of grass had slowed down slightly…