Chapter 291: Necromantic Meditation (1)
It would take a couple more days for Song Junlang to come back from the New World after placing his bets there. During that period, Xiao Lin intended to focus on necromantic meditation first. His original intention of borrowing that book from the library was to break through to Black Iron-rank as soon as possible, but his plans were not affected despite reaching his goal ahead of schedule.
Xiao Lin’s interest was particularly high, especially after skimming through the book during the past few days and discovering many novel explanations of meditation which had never been mentioned in cla.s.s. It was perfect for Xiao Lin because he was still in the inquisitive phase.
Speaking of that, Xiao Lin had actually been feeling quite miserable in recent days. He was both physically and mentally tired after the training hall incident happened and he woke up from his coma. He did not give it much thought then, but after all that rest, he realized that things were not as simple as it seemed. While his physical strength did recover, his mental fatigue showed little signs of improvement. It was slightly unusual, because he was previously able to recover quickly so long as he had a period of rest.
The student council president took the initiative to speak with him once more, stressing yet again that Xiao Lin had to take a few more days off. Although the baby-faced president never explained the reasons, it seemed to be related to the talent that the president used on him that day. In any case, Xiao Lin could sense that the president was being kind.
During those few days, Xiao Lin could only stay in his room most of the time, except for when he took his three daily meals. Aside from browsing the forum, studying necromantic meditation was the only way for him to pa.s.s the time.
Of course, Xiao Lin had also asked the president earlier on whether meditation would exacerbate his fatigue. To his surprise, the answer was in the negative, and the president even encouraged him to do more meditation to restore his spirit.
His first attempt at necromantic meditation was not very smooth, even though the process of entering meditation was similar to ordinary meditation. All he had to do was close his eyes, concentrate, and get rid of distracting thoughts. It was an easy process for Xiao Lin as he had already reached Black Iron-rank.
However, the similarities between ordinary meditation and necromantic meditation ended at that point. The first thing he had to do was completely sever all communication with the basic elements in the outside world. Judging from how the book elucidated it with only a few sentences, it appeared to be very easy.
In practice however, one would discover that it was the first hurdle of necromantic meditation. For people who were just getting used to ordinary meditation, sensing the basic elements was as natural as breathing oxygen every day, so imagine being told one day that they should be breathing carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. Of course, that was based on the premise that they could still survive in a certain environment by breathing carbon dioxide, but it was still hard to get used to it.
The same was true of meditation. Whenever Xiao Lin entered meditation, he frequently allowed himself to enter naturally into the vast galaxy filled with countless stars. That was the virtual world of meditation in his mind, with the stars representing the abundance of basic elements in the air. Ever since he entered Black Iron-rank, the stars here have increased in both number and brightness, which meant that Xiao Lin’s ability to communicate with the natural elements had been strengthened.
For the moment however, it seemed that entering Black Iron-rank was actually disadvantageous for learning necromantic meditation. Since it had become easier to perceive and therefore rely on the basic elements, it became even more difficult to sever that connection.
Xiao Lin was unaware that necromancy’s failure to become a mainstream course of most colonial academies did not stem from Earthlings’ prejudices against necromancers. From an objective point of view, it was very difficult for mages who had already studied ordinary elemental spells to learn necromantic meditation. The difficulty of learning necromancy increased proportionally with the rank of an elemental mage.
Xiao Lin began to gradually feel distressed too. It was as if a right-handed person was forced to use his left hand all of a sudden—such habits were too difficult to change. Entering the meditative state takes only a few minutes, which meant that Xiao Lin had only a few minutes to temporarily sever his communication with the elements.
It was only when he entered an empty meditation world that he could begin to sense the death energy. From that perspective, it would appear much easier for beginners, but necromancy has many limitations after all. It was also not mainstream, and by comparison, most colleges were more keen on training elemental mages.
After trying his best and wasting at least a few hours, Xiao Lin finally gave up with that kind of rigid method. The book stated that even a beginner would take about half a month to a month to master that technique. That duration would double for mages who were already able to communicate with the elements.
Xiao Lin could not possibly waste so much time on that, so he decided to try it in another way. Since he could not directly enter an empty meditation world, he would simply enter the one with the elements before slowly eliminating the communication with those elements to achieve the same result.
He closed his eyes and meditated. A few minutes later, he once again entered the vast galaxy full of dazzling stars. He randomly searched for the nearby stars. One of them was burning with red flames, which represented a certain fire element in the real world. Xiao Lin’s mental strength was gradually improving, and along with the Black Iron-rank’s influence, he could even begin to slowly distinguish the flames bouncing off those stars.
However, that was not the point of his meditation. After perceiving everything carefully, Xiao Lin began gradually cutting off communication and contact with the stars in his consciousness. It was somewhat difficult in the beginning because he had to make sure that he severed his connection with that one star only, and not the entire meditation world, or he would otherwise exit the meditation world directly. In that case, he would have to face the problem again and fall into an endless loop.
After dozens of attempts, Xiao Lin gradually learned how to cut off his communication with a certain star alone. Once the connection was interrupted, the star will instantly disappear without a trace from his perceived galaxy. The first successful attempt seemed quite interesting.
However, his point of interest did not last too long. After repeating it endlessly, Xiao Lin realized the biggest drawback of such an attempt: he had only severed connection with one star out a sky full of stars, and the degree of c.u.mbersomeness was simply unimaginable.
That it was c.u.mbersome might not have been that big a deal since he could simply be patient and spend more time on it. However, Xiao Lin soon discovered that he had no control over the number of stars in his galactic meditation world. He might be able to temporarily cut off the connection of certain stars, but after a long enough time has pa.s.sed, he would soon reconnect with those stars the next time he meditated. He obviously could not just meditate day and night without eating or drinking all day.