The Dawn of the New World

Because of last nights drinking party Hao Xuan slept till 11 the next morning. He cleaned up and went straight to the hall where Fifth was already sitting in front of a screen.

They greeted each other and Hao Xuan took another seat and logged in.

He looked up several books on cultivation and started going through them one by one. According to them after the Qi foundation realm, the next four realms were basically used to enhance the physical body along with opening more meridians according to whatever cultivation manual a person uses.

For example in Elementary realm cultivators had to use their Qi to refine all of their fleshly bodies. They would temper their tissues and refine each and every cell with their Qi and infuse it with spiritual energy so it could become stronger. Similarly, in each proceeding realm cultivators were to cultivate their bones, blood, and then finally the soul itself.

There were many dozens of ways of going about this and depended on each individual's own preferences.

Hao Xuan then read some books regarding the Beast world itself and the Mei kingdom.

He found out that the beasts also had realms, with the lowest being called the "Brute beasts". After that came the Spiritual Beasts. Once a brute had been alive for a certain period of time it would evolve into a spiritual beast on its own due to the abundant spiritual energy in the Beast world. Spiritual beasts were intelligent and some rare ones could even speak the human tongues. They could live for over a thousand years.

But the most interesting thing was that Spiritual beasts and above could be trained by cultivators in a number of ways. They could be threatened or beaten into submission to form a slave bond, or if the beast initiated the bond by itself a life bond could be made where the beast would die if it's human died.

After that were the Demonic Beasts. All beasts had to go through evolution at almost every new realm, bringing changes to their appearances and abilities. That's why there were trillions of variations among the beasts and almost no two were the exact same. Demonic beasts had the same power level as a human Profound level expert and were extremely dangerous.

After that were the Heavenly and Divine beasts but not much was known about them. Beasts of those realms were millions of years old and had incredible power. They could even traverse the abyss and the universe at those realms.

There were other realms after that but nothing concrete was recorded about them other than an old story that was told to children to make them behave.

The story said that when the beast world was just discovered by the ancients and was colonized, an unknown creature came from the abyss and threatened their very existence. The ancients fought it for hundreds of years and after great sacrifices, managed to seal it in another dimension. But even now it struggles to break free and devour them whole.

Hao Xuan tried to imagine what kind of a monster was powerful enough to fight the ancients, which were capable of moving entire planets, for hundreds of years and even then it couldn't be killed but only sealed.

He then moved on to the History of Mei Kingdom. Everyone with royal blood was from the Mei clan and had their own bloodline. Their bloodline was called the Verdant bloodline and gave those capable enough to awaken it the ability to control life energies. They had much longer lifespans than others and retained their youthful appearances for a long time, even at low cultivation levels.

When Hao Xuan was done going through all the books, the sun had already set so he just decided to go to sleep and get an early start the next day.

He got up quite early the next day and found a package on his doorstep. It was the storage ring and weapons he had ordered.

There were some instructions on the rings box. Hao Xuan had to dip a drop of his blood on to the ring and then it would be bound to him until he either choose to sever the connection or he died. Someone extremely powerful could also forcefully sever his connection but that would damage the ring and might even destroy its contents.

Nothing living could be put in the ring even if it could fit. It was several dozen cubic meter wide.

After putting on the ring he looked at the weapons. The sword was just as he had seen on the screen, it was called Zanbatō, a massive horse slaying sword like the one from earth. It had a black hilt and a red blade.

The Glaive was about 2.7 meters long and 1.2 meters of it was the blade itself. It was extremely heavy. The hilt was black with silver engravings and the blade was completely silver and dual-edged. The blade was about 6 inches wide near the front and 3 in the back. (Pic for reference in Authors note)

When a person started cultivating and entered the Qi foundation realm, their power would increase exponentially. At the first stage, they would be able to lift 250Kg easily, and in every stage after that would increase it by another 400Kg, making cultivators at Qi foundation ninth realm able to lift 3450Kg, and after breaking through to Elemental realm it would be at 4,000Kg.

Even though Hao Xuan wasn't used to his new strength of Elemental realm stage 1, he was still significantly more powerful than before. But even then he couldn't lift the Glaive in the slightest.

When he was finished checking the weapons he put them in the storage ring and went to First's place but he wasn't there. So after asking Third, Hao Xuan checked the training grounds where he finally found him sitting under a tree. He was reading something with a kind smile plastered on his face. When he saw Hao Xuan approach he put the paper away and got up.

"Come brother, let's fight! I'm in a good mood today," First said as a moved his hand outwards and a simple sword appeared.

Hao Xuan took out his own sword and took a random pose, holding it in front of him aimed at First.

"Oh my, we have some work to do don't we?" First said shaking his head looking at Hao Xuan.

First held his sword casually in front of Hao Xuan and moved it in a circle and Hao Xuan's sword fell from his grasp.

"Brother, have you never even held a sword before? You're a complete noivce it seems," First said as he looked at Hao Xuan.

"Um, I think so. I don't remember much or rather anything until a few days ago. I was in an accident and lost my memories," Hao Xuan replied because he himself wasn't sure if he had ever done any formal training.

"Alright, we'll start from the basics then. It will be tough though so prepare yourself," First said as he thought about a training regiment for him.

For the next two weeks he only taught Hao Xuan about the sword. Everything from the basics to the expert level. And amazingly Hao Xuan retained most of it. If he really focused during training Hao Xuan could see every single sword movement but it really strained his eyes and tired him out.

When his training was over, although Hao Xuan wasn't an expert swordsman he was still able to hold his own in a fight.

"I've taught you everything that can be taught in such a short period of time. You need to get some actual experience and see what it would be like in a real fight," First said after the two week period was over.

"Go and take on a quest or something," he said.

Hao Xuan did as he was told and went back to the hall and logged in. After browsing the quest board for a bit he found something he liked.

"Mission: Eliminate the pack of hyenas terrorizing a small village outside of Fortuna city."

After accepting the quest, Hao Xuan packed up some essentials and left on a normal-ish horse towards the village.

It took him 4 hours or so to find the village. It was located near a valley and the villagers there grew medicinal herbs. Its surroundings were so beautiful that they like a scene from a movie. There were flowers and tree's everywhere with little streams coming down into the valley, forming a sort of a natural irrigation system.

Hao Xuan met with the village chief, an elderly man. He told Hao Xuan that the pack would come down to the valley to prey on the cattle they were rearing. It didn't use to happen before and was very strange.. They usually stayed away from human settlements.