Seeing these five white rays, everyone in the hall was dumbfounded, even the elders who activated the array were dumbfounded, and kind of disappointed as well. Everyone thought that this was the birth of an unparalleled genius, not a 5th tier human-ranked martial spirit. A 5th tier human-ranked martial spirit wasn't bad, it was actually not that far from being considered a genius, but since there had been a natural phenomenon during the awakening, everyone assumed it would be a lot better than that, maybe even a profound-ranked martial spirit, even though that was unprecedented in the city of Idirie.
Feeling his martial spirit behind him, Edward felt a little satisfied, even though the 5th tier wasn't the best, it was still pretty good, and he felt like his martial spirit wasn't what it looked like. Seeing how everyone was looking at him with a weird look, Edward felt a little uncomfortable. He didn't know why everyone was looking at him weirdly, but he decided to leave this place as quickly as possible, and head toward his residence. And whilst traversing the crowd of family members, he actually didn't need to squeeze through that much, most family members actually moved out of the way for him, since he had a bright future even if his martial spirit was just a normal 5th tier, but almost everyone in the main hall thought that something was up and that Edwards martial spirit was better than normal 5th tiers.
Noticing this also made Edward a little puzzled, but he quickly shrugged it off as him getting respect for his 5th tier martial spirit. When he had just stepped out of the main hall, he suddenly heard a shout coming from right in front of him, and he quickly recognized the voice as his uncle. A couple of seconds later, Pierre was already in front of him. Pierre looked ecstatic at the moment, and he was filled with pride for his nephew, since he had just been looking from a simple array, he couldn't hear the wolfs howl, but a 5th tier martial spirit was already enough to make him proud, and add on the fact that Edward's comprehension seemed to be top-notch, his future was looking great at the moment.
"Since you have successfully awakened your martial spirit, the family will give you 10 body tempering pills, but since I'm your uncle I'll give you 10 extra as a celebration!"
Hearing this Edward's eyes lit up with excitement, he could finally cultivate! And he would even get some resources to help him on his way. Even though body tempering pills were quite normal, they were still something that Edward would have a hard time obtaining on his own. But since he got some for free, he would be able to cultivate for a while to build up his strength, then he could hunt some demonic beasts on his own to earn money, and maybe complete a task or two for the family.
After handing over a small storage bag with 20 body-tempering pills in it, Pierre went on his way, since he still had things he had to do, the work of an outer elder was never finished, and he even had a disciple to look after, as well as a daughter. A storage bag was essentially a small bag that contained a small space inside of a different dimension. These spaces were stable and therefore you could put stuff inside of them, but the storage bag that Edward got only contained space of about 1 square meter. Therefore it wasn't that expensive, but it was still very handy since everything you put into the storage bag wouldn't age, and you could therefore also store food inside of them. All you had to do was send some of your will inside of the bag, and then you could take stuff out of it and put stuff in, but you could only do this while you were holding it, so you couldn't just go around and steal peoples' treasures.
Sending away his uncle with his gaze Edward was excited, and when Pierre was out of sight, he hurried along his way into his own little hut. He wanted to quickly cultivate, as every second mattered right now. In about 10 months, there would be an inner member examination, and that was Edwards chance to become an inner member of the family, this was important since he would be able to gain more resources if he was an inner member, as well as a better residence, he had heard that the residences for the inner members were not only bigger, but the density in qi there was also a lot higher compared to the residences of the outer members, such as Edward.
Normally you would need to have a certain amount of talent to get recruited as an outer disciple of a sect, but since this was a family, everyone who hadn't awakened yet was counted as outer members.
Edward quickly made his way to his little hut, and entered inside, when he had sat down on his bed in a lotus position, he quickly summoned his martial spirit. Behind him a grey wolf with green tattoos as well as 5 white rays manifested. When Edward had summoned his martial spirit, he noticed how he could now interact with the qi around him, which made him very excited as he quickly urged his martial spirit to absorb the qi around him. The qi around him seemed to have grown mad as it crazily surged towards his body. When it came in contact with his body, Edward quickly guided the qi to temper his skin. This was what you had to do to step into the 1st rank of the body-tempering realm, temper your skin.
Edward sat solemnly on his bed as he continued to temper his skin over and over again with the qi around him, for every second that passed, Edward felt like he had gotten a little bit stronger. But he still felt that the progress wasn't the quickest, and since he had 20 body tempering pills, he decided to take 1 now. Sending his will into the storage bag at his waist, Edward willed one of the pills to come out, and it instantly appeared in the middle of his palm. He then swiftly swallowed it, but something strange occurred when he did so. Normally when one swallowed a body tempering pill, it would dissolve in the stomach and then turn into qi which the body could absorb, but when Edward swallowed it, it instead got absorbed into his martial spirit.
When the wolf had absorbed the body tempering pill, it slightly trembled before returning to its original state. Seeing this Edward decided to try again, as he felt like his martial spirit was benefitting from absorbing the body tempering pill. He quickly took out the rest of the pills and started to feed them to his martial spirit one at a time. After eating 9 more body tempering pills, the martial spirit behind him trembled heavily, revealing another white ray behind it. Seeing this Edward was instantly dumbfounded. His martial spirit had just leveled up with the help of body tempering pills! This was something that was totally unheard of, and Edward couldn't help but grin when he thought about it, this was what God meant when he said that Edward was special!
Since his martial spirit had leveled up, Edward decided to try cultivating again, and to his surprise, his cultivation speed was almost twice as fast compared to before! This made Edward very excited as he wanted to try something. He felt like he should be able to absorb the body tempering pills if he really tried to. Therefore he swallowed another body tempering pill, but this time when his martial spirit started to absorb it, he put his martial spirit away. Then he waited until the body tempering pill had completely dissolved until he brought it out again, and started to cultivate once more.
It only took 5 hours before started to feel his skin trembling. Then it trembled one last time before Edward's body exploded with a strong and domineering aura for a second, before it merged back into his body again. Even though the aura was supposedly strong, that was only compared to someone who hadn't stepped onto the path of cultivation and compared to normal 1st ranks of the body-tempering realm.
Feeling his body seething with power, Edward instantly wanted to try it out, therefore he quickly grabbed his sword and went out into the backyard to practice. He slowly started to go through the different motions of the foundation of the sword, His ferocity and power increasing for every stab, swing, and movement he made. Edward quickly evaluated his new power, and he found it to be at least twice of what it was before. Generally speaking, the power increase between every rank in the realms was usually 2 times that of the previous rank, so the power of a normal 2nd rank was equivalent to two 1st ranks. But this was only generally speaking, there was always geniuses that could fight opponents of higher realms, and you also had to count in martial arts, since that could make a massive difference.
Since Edward had become an official cultivator and stepped into the 1st rank of the body-tempering realm, he could now go to the martial arts pavilion to get some real martial arts, that needed qi to be able to be used. But since he was just an outer member that had just stepped into the body-tempering realm, he was only allowed access into the first floor of the pavilion, where all of the low-ranked martial arts were stored, but this would still elevate Edwards powers a lot, so he didn't complain at all. Instead, he only walked up to the elder in charge of the martial arts pavilion and spoke with him...