After dinner, Leo returned straight to his room, his mind set on a single goal—starting his meditation practice.
Now that he had regained his knowledge of how to circulate mana within his body, Leo was eager to dive into meditation. He understood that it was one of the most crucial aspects of a warrior’s path and a key to unlocking the next stage of his power.
Before dinner today, he had no idea as to how important meditation was versus learning new skills, however, after listening to Mu Shen and Su Yang talk about their plans for the rest of the day after dinner, Leo got a pretty good idea about its importance.
Mu Shen and Su Yang, mentioned over dinner that they intended to meditate until midnight, followed by an hour dedicated to learning the perception skill-scroll they’d been given earlier.
And only then would they call it a night.
It was currently 7 p.m., meaning that the two of them planned to spend at least five hours meditating versus only one to learn a new skill. Which was an eye-opener for Leo.
Having friends—or at least, fellow cadets with more general knowledge in the academy—gave Leo some much-needed context about how he should manage his time, which came as a significant relief considering how clueless he felt without his memories.
Hence, after returning to his dorm, the first thing that Leo did was to grab his holographic copy of the meditation manual, sitting cross legged on the floor, before diving right in.
[Please condense a ball of mana in the centre of your left palm]
The manual instructed, as it began floating automatically into the air, hovering right before Leo’s eyes, with the text written within beginning to glow with a faint light.
"Oh? Okay—" Leo muttered, feeling surprised, as he did as instructed and condensed a ball of mana in the center of his left palm.
[Insufficient mana density detected— please pack more mana into the current ball]
The text inside the book shifted, as it seemed to track Leo’s progress in real-time.
"Oh? A live book? That’s Interesting—" Leo mused, as he condensed even more mana into the same spot, until the insufficient mana density warning dispersed, shifting into an anatomical diagram of his body and the mana circuits within his body.
[Please circulate the condensed ball of mana exactly as displayed in the path in front of you—]
The book instructed, as it showed the exact path Leo was meant to follow, whereby he would circulate the ball of mana from his left palm up to his heart, and then down towards his navel, where the diagram wanted him to stop.
As a whole, it looked simple, however, in reality it was anything but simple.
The road-map of the mana circuits in his body looked exactly like the map of the various nerves distributed in his body, or the circulatory system that delivered blood and nutrients to every cell.
There were millions of small mana pathways fracturing into individual cell blocks within his body, which eventually merged to form a larger mana path, and eventually several of these small pathways merged to form a proper major mana pathway that Leo usually used to activate skills.
Hence, to move a large block of mana, along a specific micro-mana pathway within his body was easier said than done, as at every slight-mistake, the text before his eyes turned from blue to red, reading:-
[Wrong Path Taken, Please Retrace All Steps]
Overall, it was an extremely tedious and time consuming process to just transport a concentrated mana ball from his left palm to navel, and it took Leo a good twenty minutes of focusing his full attention to it, to do it correctly once.
[Please break the single large ball of mana into two equal parts, and control both balls of mana to reach the femur bone of your body as shown in the diagram]
The book instructed, as the simulation it displayed now changed to showing how Leo must split the single mana ball into two and then control it down a specific pathway to reach both the femur bones of his body.
"The hell—"
He cursed, as he understood that the difficulty of this step of the meditation process was twice as hard as the first one.
As although the distance was shorter, controlling two balls of mana at once was significantly more difficult than controlling just one.
However, with no other options, Leo began focusing on doing it correctly, however, always messed it up somehow, as he remained impossibly stuck on this step for the next full hour.
*Pant–*
*Pant–*
By the one and a half hour mark into starting his meditation, Leo found his brain throbbing in over-exertion and pain, as he quickly approached his limits.
He had been using all his brain capacity non-stop for the past 90 minutes, focusing on an incredibly narrow and tedious process, and it took a significant toll on his mental health.
"Fuck it, I need a break!" He said, as he dispersed both balls of mana and laid back on his back, closing his eyes, as the glowing meditation manual dimmed and lowered to the ground automatically.
*Throb*
*Throb*
Every vein in his brain hurt from the overexertion, as even with his eyes closed he could see the mana diagram floating before his eyes, asking him to guide it correctly again.
"Meditation sucks. I would rather run a hundred laps twice a day than do this shit–" Leo cursed, as he realized that meditation was a much harder process to undergo rather than physical training.
However, while he cursed verbally, internally he did not feel frustrated at all.
If anything, he was excited, as he had never felt his brain challenged to such limits before.
’If meditation is this tough, and I do it daily, my brain is going to improve by leaps and bounds in the days to come.
It’s like exercise, but for my brain, and I’m sure the benefits it will bring will be massive—’ Leo thought, as he let a soft grin spread on his face.
*Deep breaths–*
Inhaling and exhaling sharply, he waited until the throbbing sensation in his brain subsided before slowly getting back to his meditation position again with the crossed legs.
Then, he opened the meditation manual again, which immediately floated back into the air, asking him to form a concentrated ball of mana in his left palm.
This time, Leo got it right on the first try, before quickly guiding it to his navel in just 5 minutes, as he then proceeded to split them into equal parts as guided.
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Then—
He once again found himself trying to guide both balls down towards his femur bone as instructed, which he began doing unsuccessfully for about half an hour, until he finally got the path memorized just right to precisely guide both balls down at a simultaneous pace, succeeding with this step of the training.
[Using the mana balls as a power core, charge-up all the 121,776 micro-mana pathways leading to your bone marrow, to begin the production of new blood cells–]
The manual instructed, as reading that text, Leo let out a sharp breath of disbelief.