Alex easily found a restaurant in the sect valley using his map. Dozens of disciples were going in and out of the restaurant. Almost all of them from the outer sect.

‘Do you require less food, the higher your cultivation?’ he wondered.

He walked in and found a board on top with words on it. He wondered if that was a formation as well, but no. It was just a normal board someone had written in.

He looked at the cheapest dish in the whole restaurant. A meat stew with some vegetables in it. Most of the outer sect disciples were ordering it, so he ordered it too.

While it was the cheapest dish, the restaurant was very generous about the food and gave a lot. The stew was delicious, and he ate a stomach full.

He slowly ate it, taking in all the different flavors, and it took him fifteen minutes to finish the dish. After finishing it, he paid the 2 contribution points and got out of the restaurant.

Sun had already gone down, and darkness was approaching. This only meant, the light of the lantern shined brighter than ever. Alex walked along the festival-like road, thinking what to do next.

He looked at the time and realized it was nearly 7 pm. It was about time to log out. He decided he would practice some more fire controlling after he returned, so he went back to his cottage and logged out.

There was still a few minutes before the other guys logged out, so he decided to call his parents. He talked for a while, told him about his first day in college, talked about the friends he made, etc.

His roommates were out of the game by the time he had hung up the phone. They went to the cafeteria together and talked about a few different things.

He had wanted to ask something for a while, so he did. “Hey guys, why does time slow down sometimes when you are fighting or training?” he asked.

“I think that’s called the ‘Focus Mode’. Since every player has different strengths or cultivation, it’s difficult to speed up the things in the game so that it matches the players. So, instead of speeding up the game as a whole, they just speed up the thought process of a player who has higher cultivation.”

“In the end, the player with higher cultivation does stuff faster than the player with the lower one, and it achieves the same result. Since they don’t want the higher cultivation players to constantly suffer from everything around them slowing down, the developers just turned it into a mode that activates sometimes”

Eric gave a full and proper explanation that satisfied Alex very much. After they ate their dinner, they went back to their room. Alex was more than happy to get back into the game.

He opened his eyes in his room, with a lantern-lit bright, hanging from the ceiling. He almost went to grab the lantern when he thought, “Wait. I should probably try moving all kinds of stuff with Qi, instead of wasting it all on flame mastery.”

He looked around his room to see if there was anything there. His barren room had nothing. So he walked outside and brought back a few small pebbles.

He put down the tiny stones in front of him and took a deep breath. He instinctively activated focus mode. Everything around him slowed down once more. He could feel the heat from the lantern on his skin and see the stones brighter than he would in the daytime.

He turned his senses from the outside world to inside his body. He tried to feel his Qi spread throughout his body. For a second there, he thought he saw something different inside of him.

If he were to attribute what he saw to colors, then he saw about 7 different colors all over his entire body. But it only lasted for a single second and disappeared the moment he found his Qi.

Unlike yesterday, his Qi was different now. There was a sense of vigor and heat to them. Since he wasn’t following any technique, there wasn’t any specified path for the Qi this time.

So, he just brought it all to his palms and let his qi bleed out of them. As if they were an extension of his own hand, he was still in control of his Qi even after they left his body.

He slowly pushed them forward until they reached the stones. He let the shapeless Qi envelope one of the stones as if he were catching them in his own palm. The Qi followed his command and fully covered the stone.

‘Up’ he thought. The Qi slowly started moving upwards, while at the same time picking the stone up as well. He watched as the stone hovered in midair.

‘I did it he thought. He was still concentrating on the stone, keeping it in the air. Next, he split his attention. While still keeping the stone midair, he tried to bring out more Qi from his body.

He did it very slowly. The Qi had collected on his palm and were starting to bleed out of it. He watched as the formless Qi once again escaped out of his hands.

“Okay. Now all I have to do is put the Qi over the stone and -”

Clink

The stone in midair dropped. “Haaa- alright, once more.” He did that a few more times and was easily hovering the tiny stone in mid-air, but when he had to multitask with it, he failed.

“Once more,” but he didn’t give up.

After a few more tries, he finally managed to hover 2 stones at once. That was when he thought of something.

“What if I think of both objects as a single one?” he brought out some more Qi, and instead of individually wrapping the stones, he wrapped them all at once.

The stones stuck to each other but were easily moved using Qi.