After Aiden reached the primary stage of Innate Meridian, or in other words, Foundation realm 2-dan, Denzel spoke, “Now try to circulate the mana through your body. But in constricted pathways. Progressing through the innate meridian stage is a long time taking process so don’t lose patience halfway.”

“Ok then”, Aiden nodded and got to work.

Slowly constricting the flow of mana, Aiden was able to feel how thin meridians actually were. But this didn't mean that by using meridians, the mana flow would lessen. Rather, mana when flowing through meridians would be more dense, and this high pressurisation would be much more efficient than just aimlessly circulating mana inside the body. Further, these meridians kept branching off into finer and finer ones for every muscle, tissue and every cell of his body. A vague feeling of enlightenment washed over him as he felt his consciousness exploring every single meridian that it could find.

He tried sending mana to his chest muscles through his these pathways. As his core thumped, as if pumping and beating like his heart, his chest muscles felt invigorated with the energy.

He tried imbuing mana into all parts of the body individually like Denzel had told him to.

And one by one, he went through each organ, each muscles, each tissue of the body and was able to accurately send mana to even the individual muscles on his fingers.

Denzel, "This wasn't supposed to happen……. Everyone is supposed to struggle at this stage. Why are you already at the innate Meridian consummation?"

"Uh….cause it just happened?", Aiden replied sheepishly, "Also you said this'd take more time. Now what am I supposed to do for the rest of the night?"

"Cough cough, we'll move on to the Accupoint Unsealing realm. Acupoints are basically like dams inside your meridian system that constrict the flow of mana in your body. If you can open these acupoints by pushing a lot of mana through each one of them in bursts, it'll allow a more liberated flow of mana, basically increasing your mana output by almost 80 percent. And honestly, 100 percent if you can unseal all your acupoints, but only great geniuses have been able to unseal all of their acupoints. So for the average person, opening just 300 of the 361 acupoints would be considered as reaching consummation. There is an order to open these acupoints in, so pay close attention."

And so Denzel told him the order in which acupoints should be opened and where the 361 acupoints were located within his meridians.

And truth being told, Denzel had been lying about the number of open acupoints required to reach consummation. 

By average, opening 40, was regarded primary, 80 was intermediate. And opening 150 was consummation.

Even for geniuses, 200 was the limit they could go. In fact, when denzel was at this stage long back, he had only been able to open 220 acupoints himself. But since Aiden had flashed through the Innate Meridian stage so quickly, Denzel wanted to provide him some challenge for the next stage. 

‘One must be humbled, in order to learn, and one must learn in order to grow. Value is only given to things attained by hard work. If he breezes through stages without any hardships it might make him complacent.’, Denzel thought to himself as he observed Aiden who was now trying to open his first accupoint.

POP!

The first acupoint was unsealed.

“Hm…the first one is always easy, it’ll take him a bit more time before he can open the second”, Denzel reasoned.

Pop! 2nd acupoint unsealed!

“Ok probably beginner’s luck, he has good masterful control over mana flow in meridians so I guess this much is still plausible.”

Pop! 3rd acupoint unsealed!

“Hmmmm he’ll he slowing down anytime now.”

Pop! 4th acupoint unsealed!

“He’ll definitely slow down after thi……..”

Pop! 5th acupoint unsealed!

“Surely there’s no way he’s speeding up….”

Pop! 6th acupoint unsealed!

Pop! 7th acupoint un…

Pop! 8th acu…..

Pop!

Pop!

The popping sounds from Aiden’s body started getting more and more frequent. The speed with which he was unsealing his acupoints was increasing drastically.

Within 10 minutes he had already reached the 40 acupoints mark that corresponded to the primary stage of acupoint unsealing.

He felt as if chains that had been shackling his body had finally been broken.

As he continued breaking through, he had already finished unsealing 150 acupoints that was regarded as the standard for normal cultivators, in only 6 hours. But he showed no signs of stopping.

Continuing on, he kept going and at the 250 mark, his momentum started slowing down. As lesser and lesser acupoints opened each passing second, he knew that he was going to stop soon. Finally he stopped just when he unsealed the 299th acupoint. He felt that the amount of mana circulating in his body by itself had increased drastically. Normally the amount of mana he was able to control before acupoint unsealing, was getting circulated throughout his body as naturally as breathing or hearing. His senses felt much sharper and he felt that he had indeed grown significantl stronger. Furthermore, the continuous circulation of mana and its intake from the surroundings had slowly refinied and polished the mana in his core into a denser and purer form.

Taking a deep breath he opened his eyes, “Sigh, I’m sorry. I know I’m below average but I was at least hoping to be able to reach the number necessary to be called consummation. I’m a real failure ain’t I?”

Denzel was silent. He needed some time to recover from the shocks that Aiden had given him in a single night.

“Hey I know you are disappointed in me but don’t give me the silent treatment here.”, Aiden felt his mood go down because of Denzel’s attitude.

“Sigh, whatever will I do with you? First the innate meridian stage and now this.”, Denzel spoke.

Aiden was confused, “Hey I cleared that pretty quick. Tch, fine. Stay cross, I’ll just try to get some sleep.”

“Well technically the sun should be rising any moment now, so you can forget about sleep.”, Denzel chuckled dryly.

“Oh no.”, Aiden looked outside the window to see the sky dyed in a hue of dark blue. “I’ll just take a walk around town then”, he laughed and got up from bed.

Putting on his sandals again, he locked the room and headed out of the inn into the silent empty streets.

“Nothing better than a good morning when the air is cold, the sun is barely up and there’s no fatso Jack yelling at you!”, Aiden stretched his limbs as he inhaled a fresh breath of air.

Suddenly someone shouted from an alley right in front of the inn. “Hey, I don’t think I’ve seen him in town before.”

Aiden turned his head to look in the direction of the voice. The source was a blonde-haired boy who looked like he was about 14 or 15 years old who was also pointing at Aiden at the moment. He was wearing a hooded robe and so were the 5 other similar aged children who surrounded him.

“Is a single moment of morning peace too much to ask for? REALLY?!!”, Aiden muttered under his breath.

Through the thin slit in the front of the robes, Aiden could see that they were all wearing similar bluish coloured clothing; Probably uniforms for some group. He had learned from Matilda that people in similar institutions or organisations wore similar clothes and that these were normally called uniforms.

‘But what do they want with me?’, Aiden looked confused. ‘I haven’t really caused any trouble since I came to town………I haven’t right?’, he asked Denzel just to double check.

But as expected Denzel had little input to give other than a dismissive ‘Meh’!

“Well he looks mighty shady too. I think we should knock him unconscious just in case he interferes with our mission.”, Another guy from the group, with fiery red hair, spoke up. He seemed to have a muscular build that looked unnatural for his height but Aiden wasn’t going to judge. 

“Well on the bright side, none of them look like Fatso Jack so that’s an improvement.”, Aiden sighed.

“Hey, it should be fine to just warn him. Knocking out a civilian is going too far! Plus he is too young to prove to be a disruption when it’s time.”, a tender voice of a girl came from the back of the group. The face that peeked through her hood looked much younger than the others, almost close to Aiden’s age.

“No can do Stacey. I can’t afford any hiccups this time. We are just a few hundred points away from being promoted. I can’t take any chances at this point. Further, you of all people shouldn’t be the one associating capability with age. ”, a boy at the front said. He seemed to be the one leading their group.

“Allow me to do the honours.”, the same boy who had suggested knocking him out, commented as he moved forward.

“Hey hold up, who even are you guys?”, Aiden asked looking at their direction and becoming alert, as he took a step back.

“You don’t need to know”, said the red haired kid.

Smling ever so lightly, he dashed towards Aiden.