After Augus left, Lu and Sarah were left in silence for a moment, until Lu asked.

  “Do you know what he was talking about?”

  “I have no idea, but I can make some calls if you want.”

  “No, there’s no need. If I should know he will tell me himself.”

  To someone perceptive like Sarah little exchanges like this one would be precious, as it informed her about the type of relationship Lu and his friends had. And that, in turn, informed her about what he was comfortable with and from what he could gather from Lu’s friend, Augus’s expressions, she would need whatever she could get.

  He wasn’t only surprised by her presence, but by her closeness with Lu, which let her know it wasn’t common. Though she could already guess why it was so uncommon, even if she had only known him a few months, as the person who recruited him to their Company she could tell he wasn’t the extrovert type.

  Or even the introvert type, as from what she had seen it wasn’t that he had a low social battery, but that he had a low tolerance for the things that bothered him. If someone did things that bothered him he wouldn’t tell them, he would just reduce the time he needed to spend with that person at a minimum or cut them off entirely.

  Which said a lot about the type of person Augus was, from what she knew the guy was the oldest friend Augus had period. She would need to get in touch with Lu’s longest relationship if she wanted to start one with him.

  Sarah could check the company’s possible recruits from the time of Lu’s recruitment to get Augus’s number. According to what she knew he was at least at the level of Lu in his profession so he would have been a graduate the company wanted. Sarah had to be discrete about it though, she wanted to avoid Lu’s scrutiny if possible, she didn’t want to be seen as crazy by him even if her behavior was a little crazy. But Sarah felt she really needed information from Augus if she wanted to last more than all of Lu’s failed almost-relationships.

  * * *

  After his short encounter with Lu, Augus got back to his cultivation chamber to resume the grinding. Said grinding continued until dinner time, at which Augus left and got back to his home just in time to help set the table. After eating and chatting for a while with his parents Augus went to bed, though before sleeping he made a tally of the day’s progress, he had jumped from 9% to 19%. And even if his future progress speed tanked, his prospects were definitely promising, he would not need the full three months, the only question would be ‘by how much’.

  Despite that Augus wasn’t sure he would be willing to cut a full month, as that would mean he rushed things, and rushing things in cultivation was basically forbidden. Rush got cultivators stagnated, even if some other factors could leave a cultivator stagnated they were solvable or at least not the fault of the cultivator. Like natural talent, nothing could be done about that, a lack of resources could be solved, but stagnation by rushing was unsolvable as it resulted in failed breakthroughs.

  For example, if someone advanced to Nascent soul with anything less than 99% purification of their Golden core they wouldn’t be able to cultivate as Nascent soul cultivators. The excessive impurities would make cultivation spiritually impossible as any transforms into a barrier around the Nascent soul, barring any improvement.

  Because of this, even if Augus wanted to go quicker he wouldn’t be able to do so, each cultivation session had to be thorough in the cleanse of impurities. In actuality, the main bottleneck that Augus would encounter is his level of control of lightning, as his purification advanced he would need stronger electricity and that meant compacting it and destroying impurities with that compacted electricity at some point.

  Why did this happen? Because when a cultivator destroyed or moved in any way the impurities inside their dantian these would start gathering in harder clumps. So in any attempt at destroying impurities, although part is certainly destroyed another part gathers and hardens until a single percent is left.

  This percent is certainly destroyable, though so dangerous that is not recommended as the power and control required are of such level that are almost impossible to achieve as a Golden Core cultivator. So what happens with this hardened impurity? It’s given a use.

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  When a cultivator forms their Nascent Soul they use this impurity to give stability to the soul, a kind of barrier that impedes the dissipation of the Nascent Soul. That didn’t mean cultivators had to aim for a specific impurity gathering, even the thinnest impurities barrier was sufficient for a successful breakthrough.

  All this information didn’t impede Augus from falling asleep. The next morning, refreshed and motivated Augus ate breakfast and prepared lunch for this day’s cultivation.

  With lunch ready Augus arrived at his cultivation chamber, checked everything was in order and then refilled the tower’s electricity supply. The same as yesterday, Augus cultivated until lunch, which he ate inside the cultivation chamber, there wasn’t really a need to get out. Despite the lack of windows the tower wasn’t dark thanks to the constantly flowing electrical current. Afterwards Augus repeated yesterday’s routine and continued cultivating until dinner, for which he went back home.

  This cycle repeated for about a week in which Augus made less progress than the first day’s 10% anticipated. Because Augus actually took it easy and didn’t spent all his time cultivating, he also practiced his control of electricity by compressing big amounts until they occupied the least amount of space. Then he made shapes with the electricity until he lost the density he had established, at which point Augus would stop and recompress the electricity and start anew.

  Because of this and Augus’s insistence in eliminating the most impurities he could in one attack, he only reached 30% by the end of the week. At which point his routine changed, instead of cultivating for another week Augus would be training his combat techniques inside the cultivation chamber. Combat techniques in plural because Augus had shopped the rest that he initially wanted: Void palm, drunken fist and Kangaroo kick.

  To these he added a movement technique called “Thunder step” that would see him using less of the public transport and more of his legs, even though it was made for short, almost instantaneous, dashes. Augus’s practice of his movement technique was mainly during his transportation, while his combat techniques were practiced in the privacy of his cultivation chamber.

  And he made remarkable progress, at least in Augus’s estimation. By the end of the second week Augus could transition without discomfort between Void palm and Drunken fist, and he could also launch a Kangaroo kick in the middle of any movement of both techniques.

  He also made progress in his “Lightning sword” combat technique, which was brought by an improved understanding of the techniques combat stances. Instead of viewing them and using them as separate movements Augus now saw them as a full dance where one stance led into the other. Though after understanding this he got a new problem, which was the impulse to either restart the dance or start from the beginning when it was interrupted. When instead he should start a new dance from the most effective stance for the situation.

  Augus hoped this impulse would disappear with conscious training where he would imagine an opponent that would suddenly interrupt his dance so that he gets used to them and knows how to react.

  This impulse to train his combat techniques came, as expected, from his fight against the crazed cultivator. Not because he feared encountering another, such incidents were rare enough that he wasn’t worried.

  The real reason he wanted to practice was to be better prepared when he was suddenly attacked or he was forced to fight, this possible opponent would be Siphon monsters, as an attack from them was always a possibility even inside a city. The walls had been breached before and would most likely be breached again and Augus didn’t want to be caught unprepared when that happened.

  So, after a week training Augus went back to cultivating which resulted in Augus reaching 40% in cleansing, while his control over electricity had improved a lot, most likely aided by his practice in “Lightning sword” and “Flash step” that also used electricity as a boost.

  The usual amount of electricity Augus used to practice could now be used to cultivate as he now could compress it enough to insert it through his apertures and maintain enough control to destroy only the impurities. Though he didn’t use it much as it left him drained mentally, keeping that level of control over such a big amount of energy had a mental cost that only increased with every passing minute. His current limit at these energy levels was 5 minutes, so his new goal with this control training was to maintain the five minutes duration while gradually increasing the energy levels.

  The next week Augus confirmed that his increased control of high density lightning could be applied on his two electricity based techniques. This made them exponentially stronger for very short periods as keeping high levels of control during a fight or moving though the city was even more tiring than using it for cultivation.

  The last week of the first month of cultivation and training saw Augus with a respectable 51% purification of his Golden Core. While his combat and movement techniques didn’t come with levels like his cultivation, Augus was pretty confident that he had at least a novice’s level of mastery on most techniques, though “Lightning sword” and “Flash steps” were definitely higher mastery by sheer amount of use. In training “Lightning sword” would be Augus’s focus training technique, while “Flash steps” progressed through sheer use as he would use them for transport and for training inside the cultivation chamber.

  While Augus wanted more practice before the second month rolled in, considering his improvement the decided to stay content, for the moment.