Ning walked back with Sophie, taking in the setting sun to the west. That was the direction he had come from, according to the map. He wondered how far west he must've been for no boats to even bother going there.
"How did you meet boss?" Sophie asked out of nowhere.
"I came with Carlos to… uh… well, I escorted Carlos basically," Ning said. He wasn't sure how much of the information on crystal was free for him to give to random people in the gang.
"You escorted Carlos?" Sophie looked at him weirdly. "Aren't you weaker than him?"
"In Essence," Ning said.
"Hm, I did hear your fighting capabilities were quite good," the blue-haired girl said. "I wonder if you are as good as Band."
Ning gave a curious look. 'Wasn't that the guy I beat in swordsmanship today?' he thought. He decided to not answer Sophie at all.
They finally returned back to the house. "Find me tomorrow around noon. We will go together to get your sword sheat," she said.
"Thank you, Sophie," Ning said with a gentle smile.
"I'm just doing what I was told to," the girl said and simply walked away.
Ning was about to go his own way too when someone told him that Kepli was looking for him.
He went to the room where Kepli was and found him alone. "The boss is not with you this time around? I assumed she would be with you," he said.
"He can't be with us at all times," Kepli said before giving Ning a glare.
"Ah, he. Yes, he." Ning said before quickly nodding. He was supposed to hide the boss's gender too. After all, that was the most important piece of secret that was keeping the boss and enigma.
Everyone expected the boss of the Paradise Hunters to be a battle-hardened middle-aged man. No one would expect a young girl like Clara to be the boss.
'Young… I wonder if she is young,' Ning thought. Since a person goes through the physical improvement realm very early on, their body's rate of aging is slowed down by a lot. While he wasn't aware of just how much it slowed down, he was absolutely sure that the girl he had met was not in her 20s.
He wouldn't be surprised if she was somehow in her 80s.
"Here," Kepli said as he handed Ning something.
Ning curiously grabbed the object and found out it was a book. "What's this?" he asked as he looked at the cover with no name.
"An absorption technique. You wanted one, right?" he said.
"Oh, yeah," Ning said excitedly. "Thanks."
"Don't be too excited," Kepli said. "It's a bad book."
"It's a… what?" Ning looked back at the man.
Kepli nodded. "You should meet with the boss tomorrow and ask her to change the book for you. I have no idea why she would ever give you a book like this. Unless…"
"Can you tell me why this book is bad?" Ning asked as he flipped through the pages.
"How much do you know about Absorption techniques?" Kepli asked.
"I would love it if you act like this is the first time I've heard of it," Ning said.
Kepli nodded. "As you may know, you cannot go through your various Essence ranks without first absorbing Essence," he said. "There are various ways to absorb the essence, but the most practical way is to use a technique."
"Using a technique, you can absorb all the Essence around you without having to look for it specifically. However, for the first 3 ranks, namely the Physical Improvement realm, the 5-Sense Improvement realm, and the Essence Sense realm, you cannot just absorb whatever Essence you want. It always has to be Pure Essence."
"Oh," Ning exclaimed in surprise. "Don't people absorb whatever Essence they can find? I thought that was what I heard."
"They do, but those essences simply turn into pure Essence," Kepli said.
"What about the elemental attribute of the Essence?" Ning asked. "Does it have no impact on absorption at all?"
"In some ways. After a while of absorbing the same Essence over and over, your body gets used to it and is better capable of turning it into Pure Essence," Kepli mentioned. "Not only that, it also becomes capable of holding the Impure Essence. While it doesn't help you improve ranks, it helps at just being able to quickly gather Essence."
"Its real effect comes at the Essence Manifestation realm where your body changes so that it is capable of improving through Impure Essence. Although that is too far for you right now to talk about," Kepli said.
Ning nodded as he heard and cocked his head a little. "So, why is this book bad?" he asked.
"Most techniques improve your Essence rank while you absorb the Essence," Kepli said. "That one, however, only does it when your core is entirely filled with pure Essence. That is to say without spending hours at a time collecting the Pure Essence, you can't even advance."
Ning thought for a bit and asked, "so, if I were in a place full of Water Essence, with that technique, I would first have to collect the Water Essence, turn that into what little Pure Essence it can become, and then do it over and over until there is nothing but Pure Essence in my core. Only then can I absorb more Essence and start improving my Essence realm?"
Kepli nodded. "That's exactly it," he said.
"That… is bad on paper," Ning said. "But there must be something good about it, or the boss would never give it to me, right?"
"I'm not sure," Kepli said. "This is a technique that has publicly existed for hundreds of years, and yet I'm not aware of anyone who has been able to make good use of it due to its strict requirement."
"Does it have a name?" Ning asked.
"It does," Kepli replied. "It's called the Twin Moon breathing technique."
