Ning decided to check his status before he did anything. He wanted to see how much heat, Qi, and Aether energies he had with him. Unfortunately, his Aether absorption speed was very slow, so he didn't have any more than a couple of thousand Aethers.
As for Qi, he didn't have a lot of it either. In the end, he would have to use his heat energy, which he only had about 3 billion of after buying those knowledges back in the library.
'That should be enough,' he thought. Then he decided to get himself a new absorption technique that he could pass to these kids.
'System, are there good Aether absorption skills under a billion energy?' he asked.
<You can buy 'Abyssal Absorption Art' for 980 Million energy>
'Do it. Also, make a copy for these kids,' Ning said. The system used a little more energy to create the book, but Ning didn't mind.
Suddenly, a book appeared in front of him at the same time information loaded into his head. Mavenna was shocked when she saw it, but Famir was used to it and assumed he was using his storage device once again.
"Here, take this. It's a book that will teach you an absorption technique. After that, you can learn Aether as much as you can," Ning said.
"A-Are you really giving this to us, senior?" Famir asked in surprise.
"What is that, brother?" Mavenna asked.
"It's a technique that lets you absorb Aether and get stronger. After learning this, you won't ever have the same problem as before even if you make the same mistake again," Famir said.
Mavenna gasped. "Then it must be expensive right?"
"Of course. Even the worst of the worst absorption arts apparently cost around a hundred rops from what I read in those books," Famir said.
Mavennaa couldn't help but gasp once more. "Senior, we don't need this. Us brother and sister won't ever use this Aether. I-it's bad luck for us. Not only did using it make me go into a coma, it was also the reason why we lost our father. We don't want to ever use it," she said.
Famir was a little surprised when he saw his sister take such a strong stance against it. He was very conflicted about what his answer should be right now.
On one hand, it was a golden opportunity that was too good to be missed. On the other hand, it was in fact very inauspicious for them whenever Aether was in question.
In the end, he decided to follow in his sister's lead despite his gut saying not to. "I'm sorry, senior, but I will have to go with Mavenna here. Also, you have already given us so much. Any more and we will start feeling guilty about everything. So, we can't accept this. Please, understand," he said.
Ning was a little stumped. 'But I paid so much energy on it,' he thought. He didn't want to take it back just yet.
"How about this? You say you want to thank me right? Then learn this. You are free to choose if you want to learn Aether arts or not, just learn this absorption art. This way I can be sure that you guys won't fall into a coma again," Ning said.
The siblings both hesitated, but in the end, accepted his request.
Ning sent the both of them to the other room to learn the book, while he decided to try it out himself as well. He looked into the absorption art and was a little surprised.
'Holy crap! This is a good technique. Perhaps much better than my automatic one,' he thought.
The Abyssal Absorption art was designed to rapidly intake Aether from the surrounding within the least amount of time possible and then slowly filter it once it got into your body.
This usually required a robust body to handle the intensity of those small bursts of Aether absorptions at the start. 'They should be fine, they are in a sense cultivators now. Although I should hand them the body cultivation art just in case,' Ning thought.
He didn't know if those worked or not, but he was damn sure he would try to teach them that. He ignored all stray thoughts and took a deep breath.
Suddenly, he felt as though the pores in his entire body were all opened at once. The Aether in the air was rapidly sucked in through those pores, and within the next second, his Sea of Aether was full and his pores closed.
He suddenly felt bloated as if he didn't need to eat anything for the next few days. That did happen with absorbing Aether, as one could sustain a few days with it, but this one felt way too unnatural.
After his pores closed, he slowly started to refine what was in his Sea of Aether. His body started to slowly separate the junk from the Aether and it was introduced back into the environment through some random pores that opened up to dispose of them.
After 2 hours of continuous refining, he was able to clear away all of the non-Aether parts from his Sea of Aether and collected about half of the original volume instead.
"So, I have to do it again huh? Okay," he thought and redid the whole absorption process again. However, he soon realized that there was a problem he hadn't expected.
One couldn't just do the whole process again, and hope to gain the same amount of Aether. Since the overall available volume in the Sea of Aether dropped each time he distilled the absorbed Aether to get pure Aether, the volume available for the next absorption was less.
So, the closer one got to completely absorbing it, the more they would have to do it, and it would also take less time.
Fortunately, there was an incredible benefit to this system that Ning only noticed after a few iterations. Since he was fundamentally filling his Sea of Aether every single time, it increased by a tiny amount with each round of absorption.
This was far better than simply just using Aether and expecting the Sea of Aether to grow.
