Chapter 65: First Time Cultivating
The powerful collision between Mark and the skull ape was too much for Mark’s body to handle, sending him flying several meters away.
Mark struggled to stand up, but the aura covering his body seemed to have reached its limit. It quickly faded and disappeared completely, causing all the pain in Mark’s body to return at once.
"Cough cough cough..."
Helplessly dropping to both knees and supporting himself with his hands on the ground, Mark kept dry heaving blood. He used the little strength he had left to force his head up and look toward the skull ape.
If the skull ape hadn’t been defeated, Mark was definitely dead. He didn’t even have the strength to stand up now, so what else could he do.
After the spear was driven deep into its ’brain’, the skull ape’s entire body began convulsing. It collapsed onto the ground, lying there helplessly.
Mark found it incredibly hard to believe that a monster could be fine even after he stabbed straight through its chest, yet getting stabbed in the butt could easily take it down like this.
"I did it..."
His body was in excruciating pain, and his vision was so blurry that he couldn’t see anything clearly anymore, but the corners of Mark’s mouth still curled up slightly with pride.
An F-rank hunter like him, someone who hadn’t even taken a single step on the path of cultivation, had actually managed to take down an E-rank monster all by himself.
Mark slowly lay down and closed his eyes. A powerful wave of sleepiness washed over him, making it impossible for Mark to resist.
"Mark, cultivating can help you speed up your recovery."
Nexus’s voice rang out inside Mark’s head, but Mark was already too exhausted to remember what he needed to do to cultivate.
This sleep would probably be his last...
[Stupid mortal, wake up for me!]
The system’s voice rang out inside Mark’s head. Unlike Nexus, who only had a voice and nothing else, the system gave Mark a small buff to his alertness.
Atop that mountain, the corners of Nexus’s mouth curled up slightly as he looked at the system.
"After going this far, you still say you don’t care too much about him?"
[Stupid master, if you don’t know how to talk, then shut up. I have to save him simply because you only have one disciple. Take in more disciples. That way, I can leave him to his fate.]
The system did all this simply because Mark was its first disciple. If he were the tenth, hundredth, or thousandth disciple, it would already be difficult for the system to even spare him a glance.
"I want to do that too, but someone locked the position of the second disciple. How am I supposed to recruit disciples like this?"
Nexus was becoming more and more human, so he also knew how to say provocative things like this. If he had known how to talk this annoyingly in his plane, perhaps quite a few people who wanted to kill him would have killed themselves because they couldn’t handle the psychological damage.
[You shortsighted fool, what else useful can you do besides recruiting a bunch of trashy mortals? You recruited a total of three people, and all of them are weaklings. Ron’s innate talent and abilities aren’t anything special, but at least his attitude is acceptable. Mark is trash, and as for Bell... That damn Bell isn’t even as good as trash. When the time is right, I’ll naturally unlock the position of the second disciple again.]
Just thinking about Bell made the system furious again. The most insolent mortal the system had ever met was him. Even if Mark and Ron were added together, they wouldn’t be one-tenth as insolent as Bell.
"Alright. You’re the best, so I’ll leave it all to you."
Seeing the system lose its temper, Nexus didn’t want to continue and make it even angrier.
While the two of them watched and talked nonsense, Mark was struggling with the last bit of consciousness he had left. Mark’s consciousness, which was about to disappear, seemed to have been given a boost to maintain his alertness, but it was only at the bare minimum.
System... Thank you.
Relying on this tiny bit of consciousness, Mark tried to remember every single step of the cultivation technique Nexus had given him and began practicing.
Although the cultivation technique recorded that ordinary cultivators usually sat cross-legged to cultivate, Mark’s current body was completely helpless.
Lying flat on the ground, cultivating became even harder for a beginner like Mark because it affected his concentration.
Stay calm, I have to stay really calm. The cultivation technique says that no matter what position the body is in, I can still cultivate.
Mark’s weak breathing gradually became more stable, but Mark still had plenty of problems. The pain spreading throughout his body from his severe injuries made Mark grimace, making it impossible for him to calm down.
The pain made Mark want to give up, but when that thought appeared, Mark quickly recalled his entire life once again.
I’ve worked this hard, so how can I give up now? As long as I’m still alive, I absolutely can’t give up!
Mark grimaced as he endured the pain, but his mind was trying to stay calm. Mark’s current state was so chaotic that even he didn’t know how to describe it anymore. But Mark knew one thing: it hadn’t reached the minimum requirement for cultivation mentioned in Nexus’s cultivation technique.
Mark’s own efforts were clearly not enough... That was if he were still an ordinary person like before.
With the help of a supreme-grade spiritual root, sensing cosmic energy was much easier than for other people.
Even though the pain distracted him somewhat, Mark gradually began to faintly sense the existence of cosmic energy.
Mark felt like he was surrounded by an ocean formed from countless streams of energy.
These energies seemed completely different from any matter Mark had ever known. They couldn’t be seen or touched, and could only be transformed into spiritual power and absorbed through a cultivation technique and spiritual root.
Mark circulated the cultivation technique. Those invisible energies gradually became tangible and began revolving around his body. With an earth spiritual root, the spiritual power Mark produced was a rather light brown color.
The spiritual power seeped into every corner of his body. Since Mark’s body was injured, the spiritual power prioritized healing rather than increasing his cultivation realm.