Long Tian woke up and felt completely different.
Last night, he returned to his apartment very tired, so he just did everything on automatic, wanting to sleep.
But now, being calmer and rested, he could feel the difference.
His mind was much sharper, his senses much stronger, and his memory had also improved.
It was clearly caused by that transformation due to the Supreme Beast Soul.
He had been thinking what had been that transformation and could only reach one answer.
His Spiritual Sea had improved.
The spiritual sea is a special location in the brain that only humans have.
From centuries of research, the current understanding is that it is the condensation of someone's soul, and it is caused by the sanctuary, as species that can't enter the sanctuary do not have it.
It is where the beast souls are stored, and one can only actively use and improve it once they reach the fifth sanctuary.
However, even a newborn has it. It's just that those beneath the fifth sanctuary cannot use it, in the sense that it is locked, with the Soul Power being locked inside it.
And while one also can't actively improve it before that point where it is unlocked, it is not unheard of for it to gradually expand and even pass through some stages before unlocking.
That is achieved by having as many beast souls in the spiritual sea as possible. They generate a pressure that improves the spiritual sea and can serve as a passive form of training overtime.
However, this normally happens when one is ascending to the third sanctuary, it is basically unheard of to advance it in the first sanctuary.
The Supreme Beast Soul clearly put a much larger pressure on his spiritual sea and had caused it to transform due to it.
That could be a huge problem.
Back in the Long Clan, almost everyone in the Long Mountain had their Spiritual Sea unlocked, capable of sensing things that those who don't have it can't.
One thing they can sense pretty easily is the Spiritual Sea of others.
So, if he returned right now, he would have to answer some questions that he would rather not.
It's not that he truly feared the Long Clan would do something to harm him, but he would not feel secure under the scrutiny of so many strong people.
What if one of them realized he was not the original Long Tian, that could end up bad for him. Although they had not realized it until now, that was a secret he planned to take with him to the grave.
So he started to brainstorm ideas on how to solve this problem.
After some time thinking, the only solution he could reach was the system. More specifically, the shop.
'Shop.'
*Ding*
[Shop]
[First Sanctuary]
[Second Sanctuary (Locked)]
'Always show me the shop for the sanctuary I'm in from now, system.'
The system had never answered him, but it did follow such simple orders on how he wanted the interface to be.
[First Sanctuary Shop]
[Beast Souls]
[Gene Arts]
[Elixirs]
[Gene Treasures]
'Hmmm... I think what I want can only be under Gene Arts or Treasures. Gene Treasures of the first sanctuary will probably not work, normally can't be taken out of the sanctuary and can be lost.'
'Gene Arts it is.'
[Gene Arts Shop]
[Minor]
[Low]
[Medium]
...
[Supreme]
'So many levels, but again, for what I want, only a Supreme Grade gene art would work.'
[Supreme Gene Arts Shop]
[Input the requirements.]
The shop for Gene Arts doesn't show all of them in a list. The reason for it, as Long Tian had discovered, was that there are too many.
At first, he searched for something generic like 'Battle', and there were more than a million results. Just from the Supreme Grade alone.
So he would have to be specific in his search.
'Something to hide the level of the spiritual sea from those that have unlocked it.'
*Ding*
[Results that matched the criteria: 13.]
'There are more than 10? Truly impressive, I thought I would be lucky if there was even one.'
Hiding from people at that level while still being in the first sanctuary is nothing short of a miracle, so having more than ten results that could do it is already impressive.
Long Tian then began to go through the options.
He ended up discarding 10 of them, they were either too weak and would only work on those from the fifth sanctuary or would only allow for it in their levels that would unlock in the next sanctuary.
The three that were left were:
[Supreme Spiritual Control Gene Art]
[Supreme Deception Gene Art]
[Supreme Spiritual Fortress Gene Art]
The first one would grant him the ability to actually control his Spiritual Sea even without unlocking it. But he would only be capable of using his Soul Power inside it, without externalizing it.
He would be able to hide it and use it to improve his senses and thought speed, while also not feeling so tired mentally.
The second one had a broader concept. It's objective was to deceive everyone, including oneself. It could mask things on such a level that reality would actually become the illusion.
It sounded extremely powerful, and could even change his perceived fitness, but it was the most expensive.
The third one was all about making the Spiritual Sea impenetrable. It even said in the description of the art that it was perfect for those that won't use their spiritual sea, only needing for it not to be a weakness.
It would not hide his spiritual sea level from others. Instead, it would create a barrier around it that would stop detection of the spiritual sea itself.
But the barrier could still be detected, and someone stronger than him could still break it.
So, between the first art and the second one, Long Tian decided on the Supreme Deception Gene Art.
[Supreme Deception Gene Art (First Level)- 1000 SEP]
But its price was a bit absurd. 20 Super Beasts, just for the first level.
And the effect on the Spiritual Sea would only appear on the last level of the art in the first sanctuary, the tenth level. Costing a whopping 10 thousand SEP.
Looking at the price of the other Supreme Gene Arts, Long Tian also realized that the Supreme Refinement Gene Art that he bought before was a little too cheap.
He suspected it was the system's own doing, just so he would be able to accumulate enough SEP without spending years in the first sanctuary.
After deciding on the art and also finding a solution to the fitness problem he had not even realized he would have, Long Tian continued browsing the shop.
He found many good things, such as a Supreme Elixir that could increase his fitness by 10 points, but it cost 10000 SEP too.
Aside from that, he thought that maybe he could just start accumulating low grade gene arts to improve his fitness, but then he remembered something.
There is a rule about Gene Arts. They can never increase your fitness more than double its basal value.
What it means is. If your fitness without Gene Arts is 10, which is the fitness from Gene Points, Elixirs and own training, then Gene Arts will only be capable of increasing it to 20, and progress beyond that point will be impossible.
So Long Tian was limited by what he could achieve.
'System, what is my basal fitness?'
*Ding*
[Showing Basal Fitness Value in status from now on.]
[Fitness: 44.5 (40)]
'Hmm, wait, did it count the first five levels of the Dragon Foundation Art?'
Long Tian had calculated in his head before but had reached 35 and not 40.
'It might be because of those Pure Supreme Innate Genes that the system granted me on the first day.'
'Either way, with that elixir, I can reach 100 Fitness before ascending, which would be incredible.'
The limit for the first sanctuary is 50.0 of fitness. Ascending with double that would put him far above everyone else. He would be relatively strong in the second sanctuary even just after ascension.
At that moment, Long Tian's stomach growled, making him realize that he had not eaten anything since that squirrel. Normally, eating that much would make one satisfied for a few days, if they survived, but his body was not normal, so he was hungry again.
So Long Tian did his morning routine, got dressed and left the apartment.
Outside it, he could already feel Long Rue's presence.
He felt kind of bad for making her have to wake up much earlier than him just to accompany him.
'I should probably arrange a time with her for when I wake up, so that she can show up just before I leave the room.'
Thinking about it, Long Tian ignored her presence and headed outside the building. After all, he was inside the shelter and could feel another presence on the corridor.
He was not supposed to interact with Long Rue, so he would only interact with her when no one was around.
In the shelter street, Long Tian looked towards the center of the shelter, where the tower that existed before had disappeared.
The new owner of this shelter was someone called Hua Ran, an agent of the clan.
He probably did not know that the young master of the Long Clan was in this shelter, and he would prefer it continued that way.
So he raised his hood, covering his face, and turned to leave the shelter.
Today was a little hot in the sanctuary, but he did not feel bothered by the heat even with the hoodie.
After leaving the shelter, Long Tian started running at a moderate speed. Something someone around 20 in fitness would be capable of.
Having got a wakeup call from Long Rue, he decided to start policing himself.
After getting far enough from other people, he summoned his armor and wing.
After 25 minutes, he was back in the first ring.
It had already become full of beasts.
He had flown over the Dragon's corpse and saw that many beasts were eating it.
Although it would not help with their evolution, for these beasts, food was food.
He landed atop a tree and turned towards where he could sense Long Rue.
A second later, she appeared, removing her helmet.
"Good morning."
He said, greeting her with a smile.
"Hm. Good morning."
She nodded back and then started.
"So, as I said before, I will train you, and that will start today."
"First, you probably want to hunt some beasts for whatever reason you have. So the first order of business will be hunting sacred blood beasts with primitive weapons."
Long Tian had no problems with that. Now that his fitness was so high, he felt confident in hunting them even with his bare hands.
"Alright."
He said and summoned a primitive sword he got from an ordinary white lion he had killed while entering the ten rings the last time.
Long Tian had been confident, but just after his first fight, he discovered that it would not be so easy.
He had found a sacred blood Small Green Bear. The creature was three meters tall and five long, small for a sacred blood.
But what caused him trouble was not the small size of the beast; it was the weapon.
He had tried slashing its face, but the sword broke and did not leave even a mark on the bear.
After that, he was forced to disengage and go around the entire ring searching for ordinary white lions, as that had been his only sword at that level.
He ended up having to go to the third ring, with Long Rue telling him to go and use his absurd drop rate for something useful.
So, an hour later, and with almost 50 primitive swords added to his spiritual sea, Long Tian returned to the same bear to continue the fight.
He went through more ten swords before stopping and thinking about it.
Long Rue would not tell him to do something useless, she clearly wanted him to become stronger. So he thought back to everything she said and realized the issue.
'Martial Arts!'
He had a martial art from the Long Clan called Martial Arts Essentials. It was a collection of the most basic and fundamental ways to fight, with dozens of weapons and different styles for each one.
It was the art that Long Tian had trained the longest and hardest to master.
But after taking over, the new Long Tian had not truly understood these memories, sometimes he could barely make use of them due to muscle memory, but he was not truly adept at using them as his predecessor in this body was.
So Long Tian put some distance between him and the bear, summoned another sword and closed his eyes, focusing on the memories from that martial art.
The bear took 10 seconds to reach him, and just when it was about to attack him, Long Tian opened his eyes, his aura completely different.
There was a look in his eyes, a ferocity that was not there before.
If Long Tian's trainer had been here, he would recognize that look, it was the look that Long Tian made whenever he fought, embodying a ferocity that at his age could match.
He sidestepped the attack from the beast and slashed at its neck. His attack was graceful but also forceful, going much faster than before, even thought he did not use more force.
He cut the neck of the beast but could not cut pass the muscles.
The beast roared and he retrieved the sword, it was intact.
'I can do this!'
Long Tian thought with a smile, feeling confident.