//\\ //\\ Several moments earlier //\\ //\\
"Second step, huh?" Theo stared at the question that lingered before his eyes even after he opened them up.
A part of him wanted to just push ahead right away, using the sense of focus he maintained throughout the first step.
The much bigger part of his mind, however, pushed his eyes to open and his body to move.
'I've spent way too much just sitting and eating. No matter what, I need to move around a bit!'
Standing up from the ground, Theo stretched his arms out before leaning first to the left and then to the right, pushing his upper body to the side as far as the elasticity of his hips and waist allowed.
"Woah…" an involuntary gasp of amazement escaped Theo's mouth as he noticed the difference between his body right now and the body he already got used to over the last two days.
Curious, he then continued with a full stretching routine, replicating whatever steps of it Hive AI produced for him after a quick request, testing the limits of his remade body.
This slight exercise, although nowhere near enough to push Theo even close to his new limits, was still enough to sweat out some of the stillness from the long period of time he spent pretty much motionless.
His sweat, however, wasn't like what he expected, appearing not like watery, see-through drops designed to cool his skin but like dark-gray drops, too sticky and stinky to even be called sweat!
"Is this what I've read in all those cultivation novels?" Theo muttered as he raised his arm up to inspect the sweat on his forearm more closely. "The cultivation removing the bodily impurities, huh?"
Theo squinted his eyes.
This made little to no sense.
How could cultivation help remove filth and imperfections from his body, when his nanites should've long since done so on a much deeper, scientific level?
'Hive, any ideas?'
Theo took in a deep breath before slowly letting out a long sigh.
'A scientific explanation behind a magic trick, huh?' he thought, shaking his head with a mix of amazement and helplessness on his face.
For someone born into a world of peaked technology, the very concept of magic was nothing more but a product of creativity of all those who dabbled into storymaking. That, or but a convenient explanation for things people of the past had no scientific basis to understand.
In this world, however?
Theo heaved another sigh before taking his shirt off and using it to wipe the sticky grime off his skin. He then tossed it into the furthest corner of his room, hoping to get rid of the now concentrated source of the odor before sitting back down by his stand and reaching out to lift the cover of the pot.
By now, several hours of cultivation deep, Theo managed to consume most of the meat that he didn't throw in the pot in the very first place. And by now, after hours upon hours of slowly cooking from both above and below, the insides of the pot turned into a delicious-smelling, thick broth.
"Finally," Theo muttered, using an alchemy ladle to scoop up just enough of the hot soup, only to then roll the small bit of soup within the ladle's bowl, letting it cool down a bit before raising it up to his mouth and taking a careful sip.
The instant the thick liquid touched Theo's mouth, the unpleasant smell of his rotten sweat vanished. The aftertaste of the grilled meat that Theo has grown to hate with all of his soul finally disappeared from his taste buds, replaced by a much richer mix of the umami taste mixed with the refreshing herbal tones and slightly sweet hints brought forth by the few vegetables he added to the pot.
"Delicious…" Theo muttered as he pulled the ladle away, only for his face to then twist in an ugly grimace as his abused stomach came to realize its torture was not yet over.
Still, after hours upon hours of munching on the freshly grilled meat, just the idea of simply drinking his next form of nutrition was enough for his teeth to nearly gain spiritual consciousness and scream out in relief and for his jaws to nearly faint out from gratitude.
"Okay, okay…" shaking his head at his body's excessive reaction to the soup, Theo rolled his eyes before grabbing a nearby bowl and then directly using it to scoop out half the bowl's load worth of soup along with several chunks of overboiled veggies and some naturally-torn, tasteless chunks of meat.
Theo moved the bowl back and forth, swirling the soup inside to help it cool off even a tiny little bit before bracing himself as he raised it up to his mouth and then opened up his throat, allowing all that he scooped out from the pot to just drop down his throat, saving his mouth the pain of getting burned off.
It was a pain that still came anyway, just from his digestive tract rather than his mouth, filling Theo's chest with a burning sensation while he already moved to scoop out another bowl of the meaty soup.
"Okay then, Hive," Theo muttered, breathing out all the heat that he could before closing his eyes and then freezing in on the spot with the bowl still firmly sitting within the hold of his left hand. "Hit me."
<
With the natural flow now established, accelerate it to the point where natural //Unspecified\\ shall gravitate towards you
Use the ingrained //Unspecified\\ within the boundary of your path to refine the absorbed //Unspecified\\
Add up the refined //Unspecified\\ to your flow until your path reaches its max capacity
The new set of instructions appeared before Theo's eyes, near instantly putting a small smirk on his lips.
'So I'm supposed to conquer two realms of cultivation at once?' he thought, mildly amused. 'At this point, I'm not sure whether to complain about your expectations, be amazed by your efficiency, or be annoyed it's just two stages at once.'
Shaking his head a bit, Theo took a breath to calm down before raising the bowl up to his mouth and taking a careful, long sip. And as the first gulp of the soup quickly dissolved into raw nutrients in his stomach, he exhaled, removing all the mental distractions that could pull his focus away from the task.
'I wonder how far I will be able to go with just one bag of meat,' Theo thought as he started to push the newfound energy hidden within his body around the established path. 'And I just can't help but wonder…'
The smirk flashed on Theo's lips again.
'What kind of face would the locals make upon learning I can cultivate so quickly, with nothing but a bag of meat to keep going?'
Theo shook his head as he wiped the smirk off his face and pulled himself together, restraining his own amusement as he focused on the task ahead.
'Oh, and Hive, if you wouldn't mind,' Theo thought as he took a deep breath, ready to tackle this new challenge, 'feel free to substitute that "unspecified part" with something else. As for the creative choice...'
By the time Theo nearly finished his thoughts, nearly all of his attention moved to just manipulating the energy within his flesh, sparing little to no thought to something as inconsequential as a name for the local power he was about to cultivate.
'Let's just go with Qi.'