Even seeing it in person, Arthur still found the residence they'd picked out a little hard to believe. Knowing from the Administrator that the platforms moved a little, he wondered how long this one was going to last, what with it being half-built into a cave. He wondered if the cave was attached to the platform, or if they had just lucked out. When he asked, Casey could only shrug.
"Don't know. Maybe they bought it from the Tower?" she said. It was a possibility, though the kind of farming that would have been needed to make a permanent change like that in the Tower was outside the range and possibility for ordinary individuals. It would take thousands of points, literal years of work.
And what cultivator would do that, just to get a place they'd literally leave behind the next time they progressed? Especially when they couldn't even take it with them, or ever visit it again? Unless they were stuck and unable or unwilling to go further, it would make no sense.
"Where you get wood, ah?" Jan asked, staring at the structure. Even if most of it was in the cave, a large awning and opening was made of wood, with gaps covered by cloth and plastic tarps.
"Again, I don't know," Casey said, exasperated. "It's not something I studied." She paused, then looked at Lam. "Do you?"
He shrugged and waved the others in. With the wide opening, there was no way to stop mushrooms from coming in. "We're going to need a guard."
Arthur stepped in under the wide awning and received the usual notification.
He grunted, glancing to the side where a Tower Guard was forming. Then he pointed. "Don't think that’s gonna be good enough."
Lam scratched his head. "Let's see how they do against the mushrooms first, eh? If they get overwhelmed..."
"Tower Guard beaten?" Eric snorted. "You dumb or what?" He strolled right past the man, even as Arthur busied himself with giving both Casey and Lam guest rights. Once that was done, he surveyed his new domain. No need to poke at the wireframe design, what with it being a single room, albeit gigantic. The cave itself was lost to darkness further ahead, such that he was forced to squint and the others to pull out various lamps.
"Anyone got wood? I start a fire, okay?" Yao Jing called out from within.
"Oy! You nak mati?" Jan raged. "We choke to death, you idiot."
In the meantime, others who actually wanted sleep or rest had headed deeper in. This included Mel and Uswah, and Arthur soon joined them. The darkness didn't bother him, though the lack of fresh air probably would become a problem as the accumulated stink arrived.
But that was a problem for future Arthur.
Present Arthur had a cultivation technique to study.
Arthur sighed at the name. Old person's storage pocket. Someone up in the Tower had a sense of humour. Not a good one, but at least a sense of humour. More importantly, the scroll allowed him to understand how to use the dantian, how to store things within it, how to push and separate energy within. He just had a few questions.
Would there be other energy forms in there when he stored it? If he did store this technique in his dantian, would the additional storage amounts mentioned when he first opened the dantian go away? Was he somehow cramming this in there as well or was it a replacement? He could already feel his body mixing the energies together, making use of the extra space he'd created. If he had to shove it all out, he had a feeling it'd hurt again.
On top of that, he also wanted to know how this Poket managed to keep an entire technique stored in a dantian. The Tower specified this would be a “discrete technique,” so he needed to test that out a lot more. He figured the Refined Energy Dart would be something similar to that, or perhaps even Focused Strike. However, it was possible that full-body techniques might not work, but that was his guess. Unfortunately, there wasn't any handy wiki on hand to consult nor was the technique something he'd ever studied. There was, after all, only so much he could learn, and opening a dantian had not been high on his list of skills.
"You keep sighing," Uswah said.
"I'm wondering why I didn't just bring a tablet with a full download of the wiki with me," Arthur said, grumpily. "I bet we could make some good money just offering access to it."
"Tried. The electronics break down," Uswah said. "Lasts about six months, sometimes less. The bigger players keep some, and people occasionally buy access but it's not worth it."
"Oh?" Arthur said.
"Other more advanced Towers possibly, but we're a Beginner Tower. How many techniques do you have?" she said.
Arthur paused, considered, and then nodded. He saw the point. There was only so much time you could spend learning techniques, never mind there being an upper limit when the study of such techniques got in the way of one another. It took a long time before things became unconscious habits, and unlearning old techniques were a pain. It was why most beginners tried not to purchase too many techniques. Even if you weren't pushing to ascend, having just a few techniques that you knew how to use well and could pull out at a moment's notice was generally the best way.
Still, he did wish he had access to one right now. Perhaps he might have been able to find the perfect technique, though “perfect” was always going to be subjective. And dependent on what the floor had to offer.
"Okay, okay. Time to cultivate." He pushed aside the thoughts, squinting as he read over the cultivation technique once again. He needed it memorised before he could really begin practise. Luckily, he could see well enough between his traits, his Yin Body, the flames that Yao Jing had started near the entrance, and a nearby lamp.
After scanning through the document and then carefully reading it over twice more, Arthur could not help but break out into a wide grin. This was even more perfect than he could have imagined. The process of storing a cultivation technique required him to pull it apart, shelter it in a separate bubble of energy and intent, and then keep it stored away until it was ready to be unleashed. The actual usage of the stored technique was quite simple, barely even a fifth of the document itself.
However, the majority of the work was teaching the climber how to separate and store this cultivation technique. Which made sense, of course, but what had Arthur grinning like a loon—and what, exactly, was a loon and why was the bird grinning so much, he had no idea—was the way the document taught how to store a technique.
Specifically, it began the process by teaching the climber to break apart a small portion of energy—generally, refined energy—and use it as a “bundle” that could then be contained. The basic principle was to learn to contain this bubble of energy in his upper or middle dantian for the full seven-day period before he placed a full cultivation technique within.
It was an incredibly safe method, since the backlash from losing a bundle of refined energy in the wrong location was minimal. However, it also meant that, for Arthur's purpose, he could not only learn how to store and prise apart energy; eventually, he should be able to focus his dantian and cultivate using separate processes. Or at least, that was the idea.
After all, while all this training would let him understand how to use his energy, how to store and separate it, and even gave him some idea about why the energy conflicted when he tried to channel and cultivate them at the same time, it still didn't mean he could do it.
He would have to just try, but at least, this new technique was a way forward. One that he delved into immediately, beginning the laborious process of teasing refined energy from his system into his middle dantian.
And hey, worst case scenario, in the long run, he might even have a new technique he could use.