7 Happy Birthday!

The realm felt like usual. Brown space, green plants, white pagoda etc. When Ryan opened his eyes, he excitedly looked around, to see if something magical had happened because of his achievement, but was disappointed to find nothing special taking place in front of him. 'Now, what am I supposed to do? I don't have anything to use in here yet. Even the spirit pagoda and the ascension platform in it is currently useless to me. Ugh, I guess I should go back to sleep as usual now'. Thinking this, Ryan turned his back on the tower. As he was about to close his eyes again, he heard a faint hum behind him and felt the whole floor vibrating. Confused, he turned his head back.

What he saw on the floor in front of him was a crack about two inches wide and six inches long, in the shape of Harry Potter's scar. The hum got louder and louder, and suddenly stopped, as two golden lights emerged from the crack, which closed up instantly after that happened. 'What in the world?', thought Ryan. But, all the questions in his mind were answered as the light subsided and two books floated parallelly and vertically, at the points where the lights were before. The book on the left looked a hundred pages thick, with golden linings on the leather cover. But, it still looked old. Really really old. The one on the right looked a bit thinner and more normal, except for the fact that its cover was made of hardwood and had three black lines on it. 'Well, this book sure as hell isn't a paperback', Ryan laughed inwardly at his bad joke. The books floated towards him after staying still for a moment. As he took the first book from the air, Ryan read the name of the book; True God physique cultivation manual. "Hmm. That sounds OP. This must be my body cultivation technique. Now, lets see what it has in store for me", He said as he opened the book from its centre. What he saw shocked him. The page was empty. "What? Why is it empty? My hard earned cultivation technique!!", He yelled like a mad man as he started checking the pages thoroughly to see what this was all about.

He soon found that only the first 13 pages had any sort of markings on them. The rest were all empty. Ryan then curiously checked out those pages, and was confused to see that they were about certain body parts of his. The first page had the title; "PART I- CLEANSING" on it. So, he understood that this part had the method to internally cleanse the 12 given parts. And at the end of instructions on each of the pages was the same command, which was to repeat the process for a month. "Wait a minute, these are exactly the twelve major meridians I have read about in a martial arts book. Now I think I understand why the book is empty. The next parts will only appear after I finish this one. And, as there are 12 meridians and each takes one month, this is basically a foundation establishment year for me. This makes a lot of sense", he said to himself with a satisfying smile, as if he had just solved a criminal case. He laid the book on the floor.

As soon as he stood up, the other book flew to his hand quickly, as if craving for his attention. 'This must be the weapon cultivation manual. I guess this will help with my archery', Ryan thought as he took a look at the wooden cover and his face immediately had an ugly expression after reading the title, as if he was insulted. He looked up towards the sky (or space or whatever) and yelled to noone, "Just cause I know shit about archery and you are a god doesnt meen you can keep on insulting me you old loser!". As he threw away the book in anger, its name became visible. It was "Archery 101 for a loser pervert NEET who had a funny death and got reincarnated, but thinks he is so awesome" and was written by "Yo Mama". No wonder he got angry and embarassed. But this god really did know cool names for authors. After stomping the ground hard twice, Ryan slowly walked towards it and picked the book up. As he opened it, he saw the picture of a wooden bow and touched it. It appeared in his hands as soon as he touched it. A normal bow. The wood it was made of wasnt as fancy as the one that covered the book. But still, it came out from the book! That wasn't an ordinary occurrence. Amazed, Ryan turned the pages of the book to find out that its first part had information on different parts of bows and how they matter when taking a shot. The next part showed some optimal positions to hold the bow when shooting. He imitated those poses and also tried to learn about the parts of the bow for about two hours. Then he set aside as he took the body cultivation manual and started reading the first page. The first part was lungs. As he followed the method mentioned, he felt like his breathing got a lot easier and was a able to take a lot more air and energy into his body. He kept on repeating this process for four hours, till it was time for him to leave. Then, he exited the mental realm and slept like a log.

Ryan opened his eyes to the smiling face of his parents and the curious (and cute) little baby Jin, who looked around like, "What's up? Why am I up this early?". both his dad and mom gave a kiss on his right cheek while Jin touched her little face to his. "Happy birthday son", both of them said in unison. Ryan felt so happy that he cried. This was the first time after his brother was born (in the previous life) that his parents had wished him on his birthday.He got up quickly and hugged his parents. Then, he went to the bathroom and took a bath, got dressed and went to the dining hall with them to have breakfast. Yeah, he did all of those by himself as his growthrate was much higher than a normal kid and he was embarassed to seek his parents' help for it.

After breakfast, his father said, "Son, I will give you fifteen minutes to get ready, we are going somewhere today". His mom looked concerned after hearing this, as it reminded her of Bibi Dong's words. Ryan, although his father didnt say why, had understood exactly what they were gonna do today. He was gonna start his physical training. He was super excited. He had started tempering his body today. With this training's help, the effect of that cultivation is going to improve a lot. "Ok dad", he said with a smile on his face and went to his room to get ready. And after the said 15 minutes, the duo left the wooden house.

Around half an hour later, they reached an open field, full of nothing but beautiful looking blue silver grass. "Son, I brought you here to start your training. Eventhough you are only a year old today, you must understand that success isn't something that you wake up to on a fine morning. It is something you work hard to achieve. So, the earlier you start working, the faster you can succeed. Do you understand?", Said Shan in a serious tone. "En" replied Ryan, nodding his head. "We will test your endurance first", Shan said. Then he ran one lap in a circle and came back to the original point in a second. All the grass in his path had been burned and a track was created instantaneously. The circumference of that circle was about a 100 metres. "Now, run as many laps as you can in this path", Shan said to Ryan pointing at the circle. Ryan quickly started running, constantly replenishing his energy by breathing faster. As he had previously started cleansing his lungs, his breaths became more deep and helped increase his stamina. However, he was still only a year old. He couldn't count on it for too long. He fell down on the ground after his tenth lap. He looked disappointed. But, Shan was amazed, as an average one year old's stamina wasn't even barely enough to finish five such laps, let alone ten! His son was a monster! However, he masked his shock and said to Ryan "Hmm. Not bad. You can greatly improve in the future with more training". Then he tested his son's speed by asking him to run a lap as fast as he can and strength by asking him to punch a wood log. Shan was surprised by both of those results too, as they were far superior to those an average one-year-old should have. Just like the endurance test, Ryan gave his all for both of the other tests as well, thus furiously draining him of his energy. After the tests, he went to his father and told him "Father, I are the tests done for today?". Shan nodded with a curious expression. Ryan continued, "Then I would also like to learn archery from you cause I heard from mom that your spirit was related to bows (liar. He already knew it) and it would be great if i knew how to use a weapon". Shan was so surprised that he could have a heart attack at that moment. Then his face filled with a bright light and he said, "I will, little Yan. From tomorrow onwards, we will train both your body and archery ok?". Ryan replied with an excited hum and moved forward to hug his father, who was kneeling on the ground to talk to him. But, as he moved forward, his heavy eyelids dropped and he fell into his father's arms. "It was about time", said Xiao Shan with a sigh, as he was expecting for this to happen. He stood up with Ryan in his arms and started running towards the direction of their house.

When Ryan woke up, he was in his room, on his bed, and it was. As he tried to get up, he felt extreme pain all over his body. 'Yeah. I wore myself to the bones today. This is to be expected' Ryan thought to himself as he stopped his struggle. Although it was hurting like hell, he wasn't sad, but quite satisfied instead, as he had taken his first step to winning 'the bet'.