The Master Of Cards Chapter 13: Fourth Level

Alex decided to follow up on his idea. He discovered that even increasing the normal gravity a bit increased the difficulty of performing the torture exercise.

Alex slowly began to master the complete exercise at higher gravity. Slowly moving from 1.1 to 5 Gs. As he did that, be felt the statue also becoming more and more transparent.

As his bottleneck's limit continued to increase, he could sustain higher gravity nearing 6Gs. However, his exercise was also catching up and Alex realized that when his physical body limit reached 6 Gs, the exercise would catch up to 6Gs as well and his statue would become completely transparent at the same time.

Hard work, perseverance and tolerance towards extreme pain as well as consumption of an incredible amount of resources, Alex had the complete cycle required to achieve this never before achieved situation in history.

With the final practice of the exercise at 6G, Alex saw the final sport of black marble turn transparent. Suddenly, Alex heard a huge boom within his internal world and a lightning struck down from the sky, piercing through the wooden dojo building and striking Alex's body.

Old Ren who had been secretly watching was shocked. "What did this kid do? Heavenly Tribulation? Di he cultivate against the heavens?" In panic he released a card from his body that sealed the area so that no one else would know about this incident.

From Alex's mind, a transparent liquid flowed and began merging into his body changing its structure at the cellular level. The lightning struck him at this moment and fused with the transparent fluid and then merged with the body as well. After a long while, Alex opened his eyes. He felt different. He had instant connection with his statue, but it was completely transparent like an invisible man.

"Fourth level of the internal world! It actually changed my body in some way." Alex was shocked. He had finally persevered and managed to achieve something no one had done before.

Suddenly Old Ren came with a very serious face. "Kid, don't reveal to anyone what has happened to you. Keep it a secret."

Alex nodded. He wasn't stupid, he could imagine the ramifications of what had just happened.

Old Ren looked at Alex. "What exactly did you do?"

Alex acted dumb. "What did I do? I didn't do anything."

Old Ren shook his head with a bitter smile. "Are you ready to sense the source?"

Alex nodded. "I can now finally read the Fundamental Training Formula and practice its method after sensing the source."

Old Ren snorted. "Don't get ahead of yourself. Can you sense the source?"

Alex closed his eyes and immediately became the transparent statue. Then he tried to spread his sense out of the inner world. As he did so, he was greeted by a bright spectacle. A blanket of a mystical and shining colorless ether covered the entire world. Alex was filled with shock. After some time he opened his eyes.

"Old man, tell me something. How does the source energy looked like?" Alex asked cautiously.

"How does it look like? You can't see the energy at your level. You can only feel a pressure when you attempt to search for it through the inner world... wait a minute, you can see it?" Old Ren barked.

"See it? See what?" Alex acted dumb again. Old Ren looked at him with a sharp gaze.

"Practice the Fundamental Training Formula. Don't rush to make the base card, work on fortifying the seed." He sighed.

Alex kept on a blank face and agreed.

With six months to the high school exams, Alex finally managed to complete the four level of his inner world, triggering a heavenly tribulation and reforming his body completely from the inside out.

He focused on sensing the source and after a couple of days he managed to verify that the transparent ether like blanket covering the world when Alex tried to explore the outwards from his inner world was indeed the source energy. The deeper he observed the source he felt like he could see hints of various colors hidden within the transparent blanket just like the colors that would appear on the surface of a soap bubble.

Alex took his time to read through and understand the Fundamental Training Manual and learned the method to gradually guide the source energy into the body through the pores into a specific circulation path within the body and then condense into a seed in the chest.

The seed was essentially a solidification of source energy within the body and gradually absorbed the source energy to grow.

Before Alex began training this formula, Alex looked for the old man to clear up some doubts. He found old Ren sitting on the doorway of the dojo, looking at the skies with a wistful expression.

"Old man, why are you sad?" Alex asked him.

"Nothing kid. I was thinking about the past when this Ren was a handsome young man who was powerful. Now I just turned into an old bony man." Old Ren sighed with a sad expression.

Alex looked at the old man curiously. "Old man, did you never marry a woman?"

"Marry? Ha!" The old man snorted. "May be I should've married an ordinary woman and made a family, instead of trying to reach the sky like a fool."

Alex was stunned. "You have a tragic backstory?" He asked.

"Did you come to me to make fun of me, ha?" Old Ren snapped.

"Actually I wanted to ask you something about the Fundamental Training Formula, but you were sitting here busy acting like a tragic hero." Alex mocked.

Old Ren retorted to his comment. "An old man can't reminisce now?"

Alex shook his head. "Okay, I just want to know which part of the formula is it that controls the inflow of attributes here?" He asked the old man Ren his doubt.

Alex went through the entire training formula amd couldn't see which part of the formula actually correlated to the rate of absorption of the source or the attributes.