Tao went back to bed. For others it would appear as he is resting.
He closed his eyes to think about getting into LoHP space and there he is, inside his consciousness space, standing in-front of a golden door that has 'Library of heaven's Path' written on top of it.
As he opens the door with seemingly no pressure. Inside, he sees rows upon rows of bookshelf stacked on one another, farther than the eyes can see. When he came over an pick one; it was empty. But some of them had contents of his previous knowledge including those of his own education and skills in past life.
'Wow, I wonder is there any limit to the amount of books I can place in here… '
The 350 books are just neatly arranged in the shelf in one corner. First of all, I should look myself for Flaws. A book appears with my name on it and on the next page I could see,
[Name: Chi Tao
Race: Human (Evolved human)
Sex: Male
Age: 7
Soul Realm: Red
Soul Attribute: Neutral/ Attributeless
Soul Form: None
Soul Cultivation: None
Body Cultivation: None
Demon Spirit: None
Skills: None]
[Flaws 1: No training
Flaws 2…]
Underneath the flaws are two simple biographies about his life up till now. One on his past life and one on this life.
I could create a technique with help of 350 books I have but I need more books for flawless techniques.
'Red soul realm, ha this is the reason why I postponed revealing my soul realm to my family. I need to do some effort and practice soul force control for my body to feel the need to deepen soul realm.'
'Compile everything about human body meridian pathways and exercise techniques.' He requested to the empty space.
Instead of expected chaos, what he observed was information flowing from each of those books to compile in-front of him.
Soon two books formed in front of me.
Human meridian knowledge 31 flaws.
Mortal exercise techniques 2 flaws.
I named them. But even though I know the flaws I can't optimize them by myself since it involves unknown knowledge beyond my ability.
I began to read them and it went for 2 hours inside and somehow something about this space make it very enjoyable process. May be because of that total silence surrounding him or his increased attention span.
Time skip 2 months..
"I practiced exercise techniques then on with some minor weights lying around and now I am comparable to a peak human in strength and flexibility. The knowledge definitely helped."
I received permission to venture outside from father but a silver soul guardian is provided around me for safety. I can venture freely outside for the first time in this new life.
---
At just seven years old, Chi Tao still gained some attention in the public even though it's from commoners and aristocratic family people's moving around. He acted like a shy child for the most part, avoiding unwanted attention.
He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge since supreme techniques can be obtained by using his gold finger. So he was really in a balancing act of maintaining his innocent child behavior and the need to gather more advanced knowledge.
'Unlike most children his age, he preferred reading ancient scrolls to playing.' This is the conclusion he wishes others to have about him but not to an extend of extraordinary along the way.
His small figure blended into the crowd, making it easy to avoid drawing attention.
The market was alive with the hum of traders bartering for spirit herbs, rare beast parts, and exotic materials.
Tao observed everything with wide, curious eyes. Stall keepers shouted to draw customers, cultivators boasted of their conquests, and commoners exchanged gossip. He noted the structure of bartering, quietly filing it away as important information for later.
His eyes flickered toward a corner stall selling ancient texts. Without hesitation, he meandered through the crowd toward it, with excitement, only to see that was garbage, with the help of LoHP. Yet, he acted subtly, making sure not to catch the attention of any unsavory figures lurking around, especially the members of the dark guild if any, you never can be too careful around here.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a few hooded figures watching the market, their gazes lingering on higher-profile individuals coming in and out of some store.
May be Snow wind family elders or policing departments or maybe even dark guild since recently there was increased reports of demon beasts attacks outside.
Chi Tao knew he couldn't afford to attract such attention. With practiced ease, he lowered his head, mimicking the posture of a shy child. No one would suspect that behind his innocent facade lay a mature mind. Well it mostly his own fear and paranoia of his weakness that make him does it. Even if he create a scene here, nothing much would happen immediately.
He admired the bound books and scrolls from afar, taking mental notes of their content by filling it into LoHP when found worthwhile before stepping away. The world was vast, and he was determined to learn all of its secrets—quietly, patiently, without drawing the eyes of those who might seek to control or harm him.
---
After a few days, he started visiting the fighters guild and demon spiritualists guild to quietly take in some books while outwardly showing a sight seeing attitude.
Reading some while mentally compiling the new found sources into reduce the flaws of the techniques he already deduced.
Days passed by and he was able to compile a flawless bronze level and silver level cultivation techniques. The books obtained also helped in creating a body refining techniques using soul force circulation.
MC POV:
I will start training soul force when I hit 10.
But I had already started body refining techniques. After a week of circulation in my free time my body was able to enter Bronze level body cultivation.
If my soul force cultivation started this would have been exponentially faster. But I will keep it steady making the foundations solid and all. With my evolving body facilitating easier refining as time passes by I would be able to get this body refining to a very high level.
Time skip 3 years.
Just yesterday the body cultivation reached silver 4th level. This is accomplished without me taking any active effort. Even the soul force has reached 90 levels. If he train this way he will reach bronze level without any effort and his family will know about the bronze level soul force fluctuations.
I have already enjoyed whatever it is I can do. Now I could tap into soul force cultivation. I have already included the books available from nearby friendly families and alchemy guild and public bookstores to an extent.
From being frowned upon to excitement he sensed many emotions from others of status when he requested such visits. It didn't affect him.
I have already got flawless black gold rank cultivation techniques for some people but I do lack knowledge about the soul forms and other stuff since most untranslated books are kept in the academy library and it is only available to exceptional children of noble families and even aristocratic families willing to pay lavishly.
I have also given my family a lot of small contributions. As a reincarnate coming from modern day situation it was very easy to introduce 'new' concepts like business management ideas, projection of various family income and expenditure sources, vertical farming, green house for medicinal plants, fast growing crops and new dishes like pizza and ice cream which got so many attention; Family even moved into restaurant business recently and was making lot of money as visible from reports I hear.
I am known as a genius person in the family for these ideas, but people actually respects cultivation strength more often so these praises would not get me any trouble. Kidnappings among commoner children are known recently and I won't know if there are any traitors placed by sacred family is lurking here just like what happened with winged dragon family.
But hey, as much importance I am giving myself, in the realm of glory city, Tian Kui family is a small aristocratic society, simply not so profitable to Dark guild.
Speaking about cultivation, just the repeated usage of soul force control techniques for body refining also increased depth of my soul realm. It has reached minor green. As patriarch asked me to showcase soul realm attainment among younger generations. I got the opportunity to reveal that talent.
I got a chance to request visiting academy library and was approved due to my green soul realm which by no means a genius level but many of my peers also has similar or below soul realm grade.
I was able to include about 5000 books out of nearly 75000, before the end of the day meanwhile I needed to rest since I got major headache from expending mental power for so long to copy each book inside.
But the results were promising some of them were untranslated and my LoHP was able to conveniently translate every book inside. The compilation resulted in a broader body refining techniques that included skin,muscle, marrow and bone refining chapter of flawless quality so I need to increase my physique.
I also got translation of language of previous empires era from the known attempts. So for a week I was cooped up inside my room conveniently pulling everything I needed into my brain from LoHP even with time dilation inside the library as it is inside astral plane. Since my need for having all knowledge in my brain, the adaptive body did it's work, rewired the brain and now I have absolute memory and increased learning ability.
...
I requested some alchemy materials from family and they were enthusiastic in providing me because of my wealth and contributions to family and since we are not like our neighbor heavenly marks family who even went so far as to sell artifacts from family treasury. We also extended a helping hand to them in need sometimes though only in limited means.
Preparing a flawless medicinal bath went easy as ingredients are not too expensive and I was able to attain 50 percent of skin refining in one go and rest was done next day. My evolving body progressively promotes any evolutionary direction which is advantageous to me and the medicinal bath was refined to extreme in my skin.
Impurities were expelled and I have what cultivators call jade skin. Muscle refining however went for a month since it involves practicing some special movement techniques to facilitates the muscle tension and relaxing and including the medicinal bath. It may all sound simple, but it was more of a torture and healing. It balances out the joy of promotion.
I have broken through bronze level without cultivation techniques and reached soul force of 120 at the end purely by the medical power of soul force for the completion of muscle refining. My soul fluctuations were felt by others and was called upon officially to meet my family council. No hiding now.
Everyone on council was surprised to see my new look which, saying it was handsome is an understatement, what? Jealous? yes you must be jealous. I worked hard for this, I got the right to act smug...
I got some scolding for practicing without supervision but it was quickly forgotten when I showcased my perfect memory and comprehension ability with family cultivation techniques.
I went a bit overboard and explained some flaws which they got hooked and asked me to clarify it for clan betterment which I did and when they asked me about source I told them about my 5 year reading and training attainments compounded with my comprehension abilities.
The elders in my family council are genuine as I have searched with LoHP myself.
So I mentioned keeping my cultivation attainments to themselves and be it strictly followed due to current predicament the family is in.
Everyone of them understood this, currently family is still an aristocratic family and having a child with green soul realm attain bronze rank before noble family children with better talent, better cultivation support, techniques and family background will lead way to many uncounted surprises, may be jealousy attacks aimed at business or direct confrontations to seek out answers or even forceful attacks from dark guild.
No one wants that to happen so they shared their experiences in explaining hiding soul force fluctuations and I also put up a flawless techniques from everything and once again shocked the elders when they felt the soul fluctuations disappeared to nothing.
My reputation went up a lot due to this tactic.
Later I went back to my training on bone and marrow cleansing which initially was OK but the pain was really overwhelming at one point, since strengthening them took a lot of strain to my body.
This required some of the more expensive medicinal items which my father Chi Feng conveniently provided after I gifted my parents flawless cultivation to black gold rank peak. He initially got very excited and planned to share with family but was scolded by my mother Li Yue after I convinced her about importance of secrecy and selfishness in cultivation world from my vast experiences coming from web novels just the previous night. Like ' presence of spies among maids and even elders, self serving, opportunistic and callous peoples stories, Protagonists difficult life stories since showcasing arrogance their life went into killing and more killing all packaged as ancient information from academy library. I even went on to give some subtle hints on the loss of business of Winged dragon family and other families involvements'. If only you can understand my troubles. Sigh...
She was thoroughly brain wash...Ahem sorry convinced about the importance so I left them to their devices after obtaining the alchemy items.