He can only learn the technique for now because he needs to acquire the power needed for him to do well in the performance tests and earn the right to use the better accommodations above his on the mountain.
So he plans to master the cultivation technique quickly. When he does that, he will begin to master the fighting techniques and spells too.
Currently, he only has one spell, which is Wood Control. It is also a spell that is dependent on the wood element.
The other rank 2 fighting techniques he has are for the body forging. They are Savage Sword Weapon Technique, Chasing Wind Palm Technique, Five Stars Claw Technique, Unification of Hearts, Mind, and Body Weapon Techniques.
He plans to get more spells to increase his repertoire and versatility. That's in the future after he has mastered the Everlasting Wood Art.
For now, he began to seriously practice and analyze the Everlasting Wood Art himself. He also gave this technique to the two foundations he has around his mountain.
As soon as he willed it and assigned the Everlasting Wood Art to the two colorful rings around his mountain, the rings began to change.
The colorful dusts that made up the rings used the knowledge that he wanted to analyze as the core and clumped around it. They combined and formed a phantom figure.
The two rings each formed one phantom figure made of light of various colors. So there were two phantom figures revolving around the mountain along the two rings.
Arthur knew that the two phantom figures were identical to him in body and mind. Now that he had assigned the Everlasting Wood Intent to them, they could practice it for him.
Because they were given the Everlasting Wood Art to practice, the green part of their body became the bigger and brightest.
The green light was also the most active. It shuttled around their bodies as the two phantoms simulated the practice of the Everlasting Wood Art.
The two phantom figures aren't real and can't interact with the world. So all of their cultivation won't earn him any progress in raw power and transformation. The only thing he will earn from them is mastery of the technique that he has given them.
In this way, if he also practices the Everlasting Wood Art, it would be as if three of him are practicing it. His body will be the only one who can help him refine energy, but thanks to the phantoms, he will be able to gain mastery of the skill three times as fast as normal.
This made him excited to practice. He closed his eyes and settled his mind. Then he focused his spirit senses on his environment.
In the cultivation room, the concentration of mana is high. Mana is being pulled into the room and forced to stay in the form of a thick ball with him at its center. So it is easier for him to pull the mana into his body to refine it than it would be if he were outside the cultivation room.
The mana entered his body and finally reached his life seed, where it was cleaned of other elements and information. Then it was converted into his internal energy and compressed for his use.
From there, his internal energy can be used to cast spells or used to refine his life force. It all depends on him.
If he chooses to keep the energy for energy refinement, the energy within him will transform faster and make his internal energy cultivation higher than that of his body.
He can also choose to use the energy to refine his life force. This will cost extra mental energy and let him tire quickly. But if he doesn't do this, the life seed within him won't grow stronger, which will make it unhappy.
His life seed has to be happy, so he has to make his life force as strong as his internal energy. If he doesn't do that, his life seed will devour his internal energy and the vitality in his body. Then it will take over his body and turn him into a tree in an attempt to bypass him and get mana directly from the environment by itself.
This is not a mental side effect, so his high-density soul can't resist it. At best, he will remain conscious when his body is turned into a tree and he becomes rooted into the ground.
He chuckled and said, "Or maybe I can keep control of my body and walk around as a tree."
He joked about it, but he doesn't want to see it happen.
The good news is that he doesn't need to expend much energy to refine his life force as his life seed does part of it automatically. He only needs to expend mental energy to speed up. the process once in a while.
Unless he neglects the quality of his life force for a long time and lets the difference between his body and energy transformation widen too much, he won't have to worry about being turned into a tree.
While he was cultivating, insights were coming from the two phantoms in his mind. He was gaining more understanding than he worked for personally.
This feeling of doing less work to achieve more made him laugh.
He said, "My good deeds have a long-lasting impact on their lives. It is just right that I am rewarded with long-lasting benefits too."
He was in a good mood because of how fast he was making progress.
This good mood remained even when he ran out of mental energy and became too tired to cultivate because even when he couldn't cultivate, the phantom figures made of various lights were still practicing and were still increasing his understanding of the Everlasting Wood Art.
So he was still making progress and would be able to cultivate faster when he recovers his mental energy. There was just no way he wasn't going to be happy about it.