22 Archipelago

"Why didn't you say something till now?" Kai was angry.

"....." Rudra could just be silent as he didn't want to anger her further.

After giving a long lecture to Rudra on how irresponsible his actions were, she ended up giving him both the Water-based Body Refining Manual and the Water Qi Condensation Manual.

Rudra sat done on the boat and flipped through both the manuals, Elementary stage water body refining manual, and the Raging River Qi manual.

'It's a mediocre Qi.' Rudra thought to himself but he had no other choice, he started the body refining stage of cultivation for the Water Qi. Still, he made no progress even after 4 days letting him aware of his lack of talent for Water Qi Arts.

He could only thicken his skin and shamelessly ask elder Kia for help who surprisingly agreed to help him.

He was quite happy until he realized her method of helping him.

"Bleurgh... I almost drowned there." Rudra gritted his teeth at Kia.

"Oops, I forgot about you." Kia laughed it off.

Her way of helping him refine his body faster was drowning him headfirst in the ocean while she tied one of his feet to the boat and then pull him over at regular intervals.

Rudra could only indignantly follow her suggested method as it had brought him benefits in his cultivation.

He was now almost close to completing his body refinement and could start accumulating Water Qi in his Dantian.

After about 10 days of such torture, he could now finally cultivate Raging River Qi but he realized there were not in a river but on an ocean so his rate of absorbing Raging River Qi was very minuscule but he could only cultivate headstrongly.

One day as he was cultivating he was shocked to find more boats in the ocean colored in all of the different shades of blue.

"We are at Spirit Ocean Sect," Kia told him, then she steered the boat to pass by many islands still they reached a central island which was comparatively very larger than all the other islands till now.

Along the way, Kia told him that this whole Archipelago was apart of Sect territory thousands of disciples lived on thousands of varied size islands controlled the Sect the larger islands were used as a residence by the sect elders and core disciples, larger the size of the island higher the hierarchy in the Sect. The largest islands of the archipelago were used for Spirit fields and various Martial Halls.

"Flying over the sect is forbidden so everyone must use our sect's boats," Kia told him.

He could see all the people were using boats to travel from one island to another.

They passed by all the islands until they reached the mouth of a river then Kia made the boat enter into the river where it started moving with greater speed.

Rudra felt a sudden urge to cultivate his Raging River Qi and he sat down in lotus position on the boat and started to absorb the Raging River Qi, he felt that though the rate of him absorbing Raging River Qi was faster than when they were in the ocean it was still very slow compared to when he cultivated his Verdant Mountain Qi.

After two days of the journey, they reached the Spirit River Sect. In this time Rudra had broken through to the 1st stage of Qi Condensation in Raging River Qi.

"Follow Me," Kia ordered him with authority making him doubt her as the same playful person when she had been on the boat.

'It seems Land makes her grumpy' Rudra joked while following after Kia and taking a look around the Spirit River Sect.

Different from the Spirit Ocean Sect which had its territory made of thousands of islands, Spirit River Sect was all concentrated on the bank of the Raging River and few Oxbow lakes surrounding the river. The Buildings were all White in color with wavy blue lines on them appearing as if waves were moving on the buildings.

An oxbow lake is a U-shaped lake that forms when a wide meander of a river is cut off, creating a free-standing body of water. He had learned about them in his geography classes but it was his first time seeing so many of them.

Almost all of these lakes were populated by Kettuvallam style Houseboats or Float houses.

Kia's next words interrupted his train of thoughts.

"Wait here, someone will come to take you to your quarters."

"Ok" Rudra nodded slowly and then continued to soak in the beauty of the river banks