Episode 1: There is No Hiding the Truth

“Yes. You over there,” said the teacher. She pointed at seven-year-old Arson, who blushed as a large part of the much older class looked his way. He focused both on what he wanted to ask while also attempting to invoke a mature presence even though he was still a kid.

“So, are we to say that it is our direct understanding of ourselves as much as Cultivation that determines our direct progress? Can that really be the only factor that limits us beside our body and soul?” asked Arson. The teacher sighed once more and turned back to the diagram she’d drawn on the smart board for the class.

“Always return to your most basic fundamental,” said the elderly teacher. Arson had pushed the curriculum much further than the teacher had wanted for the first day of class and Arson knew it. He didn’t care, but he at least tried to make his passion for knowledge seem to be for the benefit of the entire class. Arson cut her off before she could once again repeat herself.

“Of course, Mind, Body, and Soul, but how does our own understanding of those aspects of Cultivation lead to the manifestation of our internal and external cores of power?”

The teacher rolled her eyes. “The way you speak, young man, is as if you believe that all who understand can become Cultivators, some with the largest understanding of Cultivation in the world have never manifested cores. Others don’t understand themselves enough or have enough extra soul energy to develop natural matter and element manipulation.”

Arson opened his mouth to cut in and she raised her hand to stop him before she continued.

“I will give you an example, for my brother, his body naturally ran hotter than most, his eyes seemed to be naturally backlit with a flickering light, and his mind jumped from thought to thought only to capture everything it touched, any guesses?” Nearly the entire class yelled different variations of names for flame Cultivators, and the teacher nodded along.

“The problem for most of us is how we convolute the use of mana, while the actual use is truly instinctual at its base. Cultivation isn’t being smart, healthy, or powerful by themselves, but all at once. To the best of your own abilities, you are a very intelligent young man. But I can tell you may never manifest your own cores if you continue to let your head get in the way. This is something for you to feel out, as well as think about and grow into.” The words sparked something and Arson closed his mouth for what the teacher felt to be the first time in the class. To her relief he stayed that way and had even closed his eyes in meditation; which allowed for her to return the class to a much more mundane topic.

Meanwhile, Arson’s mind raced. He felt it—not exactly how the teacher described it to him—in his own way.

“You are a Cultivator Arson,” mumbled Arson to himself. The heat of the sun struck his face and his skin warmed. He smiled as the room’s air conditioner blew a cool breeze on his face. The air further centered him and allowed him to deepen his concentration.

While others would see these external stimuli as distractions, they only helped train Arson’s focus. It wasn’t hard for Arson to meditate while in the light of the sun or moon; he actually found it to be much more difficult to concentrate in dark places.

So, where do I begin? Mind, right? Might as well go in order, I guess.

Arson thought about his mind. He felt normal, but many proclaimed him to be intelligent. He also assumed his mind worked like everyone else’s did, but he’d begun to believe maybe that was his issue.

A Cultivator’s journey was never shared, mirrored, or even mimicked. iIt was a person’s thumbprint to godhood. It was meant to be personal, not even your own twin would be able to walk your path, or fit in the shoes you wore in your journey to immortality.

Arson’s mind was like a vault. He imagined his mind to be a night’s sky, filled with stars. The more he learned, the more stars he felt were added to the limitless canvas.

He’d felt this way about his mind for as long as he could remember. Many would say that at the age of seven his memory wouldn’t be very long, but Arson was mature for multiple reasons.

Not only did he remember everything down to the way his doctor pulled him from his mother’s body at birth, and the odd look on his mother’s face when the woman showed him to her, but even his mother’s raised hand was captured in film-like quality by his mind as she declined to hold him.

Every waking moment had been stored in his mind for his own viewing ever since, and it was something Arson worried would change as he got older if he didn’t become a Cultivator by puberty.

There was no way a normal brain could continue to fill with everything it saw, heard, or experienced at maximum capacity for very long before the brain would either shut down or slow.

Even still, Arson felt there was no limit to his mind’s abilities. His mind was that star-filled sky that he imagined inside, so intimately in fact, that stars could literally be seen visibly projected in his irises.

This was one of many reasons why he was accepted into a Cultivation school at the tender age of seven. Arson would have thought his near endless energy when in sun or moonlight would have been what attracted Cultivation schools, but that trait was almost normal.

Apparently, many could go without sleep if they were physically close to a potentially aligned element, or directly connected element to the Cultivator’s soul… after a core set was manifested.

The only thing Arson was unsure of was his soul. His foundation of power. The light within. The canvas of a Cultivator’s path in which they were to paint reality in their own image.

Arson felt his soul was powerful, but how to define the sensation was odd for Arson. He mentally entered his soul space and took in the empty area. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a soul, but that it remained invisible to even a Cultivator until they manifested their core set.

Even still, the energy within the space could be felt and made Arson smile. Inside his Soul Realm was the sun hitting your face on a winter day in the middle of a storm.

The chill of freezing water ran down his spine, his skin prickled and the feeling extended further. He thought he heard someone speak his name momentarily, but ignored it as he felt different within his Soul Realm in that moment.

It was as if the teacher’s words had unlocked a barrier that had separated Arson from something rather simple. He needed to balance how much he felt, and thought, instead of his previous singular focus, or tunnel vision.

His breath evened out further, and his entire environment changed, as if Arson had somehow gained the ability to see in a pitch black room instantaneously.

The feeling of the sun struck him first, and Arson watched as a swirl of golden white light swirled in a violent vortex in the center of the space, until a sun appeared around the vortex. Arson almost gasped, but knew that whatever process he’d just initiated, needed his entire focus.

He then concentrated on the storm of chaotic energies he often felt. The tingle of sparks, the sensation of uncontrolled water, and even the frozen chill consumed him temporarily. Only for his Soul Realm to change again.

A ring of frozen particles wrapped a perfect circle around the sun and glimmered as it emitted a rolling fog filled with energy outward into Arson’s Soul Realm.

Arson was unaware of what he was doing, but he’d stumbled across a technique for core manifestation so old it had never been given a name. Nor was it seen as a realm of possible core creation in the modern era of technology and sciences.

When the ring stopped its outward expansion, the sun at its center began to interact with the cloud of frozen energy particles. The sun shot light from its own tendrils as they twirled in constant motion around the sun, only for the light to twist through the cloud at alarming speeds.

Then the energy formed some sort of golden white ball of lightning within the sun’s ring before it expelled it to orbit around the outside of the cloud of particles. The ball of lightning was somehow frozen, yet still managed to flicker like sparks, which confused Arson. But the sun continued to spit light and more and more of the balls of frozen lightning were formed and seemingly stored, just outside the ring to orbit the sun as well.

The process stopped after three balls had formed and Arson felt there was nothing more he could do. So he took another deep breath and finally opened his eyes.

When he looked around he found his entire classroom was staring. Staring, as a collective group, huddled in a corner, across the room.

Desks had turned over. Some of the ceiling lights exploded, and the teacher’s smart board had detached entirely from the wall and now sat folded in half over the teacher’s desk.

Arson looked around in confusion until he found the eyes of the teacher. “What happened?” She’d ducked behind her desk during whatever had occurred, and now only stared just above Arson’s head.

When Arson looked up to see what the teacher was looking at, he saw it. A golden white crown made out of light, sparks, and frozen particles that floated above his head like a halo. It wasn’t until he looked at the crown that the red frame popped up in his vision, which he read aloud in a daze.

“Welcome to the system of creation and destruction, or the world of mana, magic, and energy Cultivation, Arson Omni.” Arson didn’t finish reading but looked at the teacher instead.

“Hey thanks. Guess you were right! I do think too much.”