‘What is that?’
He stared at the star located underneath his belly button emanating warmth. ‘Is this the so called Dantian?’ It was extremely tiny but he could still feel the energy located inside. ‘Then, the energy located inside would be true essence, which would equate to mana in this case.’ He felt like he could control the energy with ease, and him having Mana Control Lv. 1 only proved his conjecture. ‘I think I’m supposed to use this energy to temper my body, but I have no clue as to how.’ He was at a dead end at this. He scratched his chin for a bit trying to come with different ways before shaking his head. ‘No point thinking about it too much if I can’t come up with anything for the time being.’ He instead decided to check the new skill he had acquired.
Divine Sense <Active> Lv. 1
Project your consciousness outside your body and use it observe.
You can project your consciousness 10m
‘This is…something amazing!’ He smiled at the find, deciding to test it out. Using his thoughts to activate the skill, he could immediately feel that somehow all his senses other than sight had been extended beyond his body. Lin Ming began to expand the area covered by his Divine Sense, beginning at his position and extending out until it finally reached 10m. ‘This is pretty good.’ A smile appeared on his face as he deactivated the skill, causing all the sensations to disappear as if it was a dream. ‘Lets take a quick stock shall we?’ Opening his skill window, Lin Ming began scrolling through the list. ‘Nothing new, nothing new, nothing…new?’ He suddenly froze as he stared at his skill window.
Divine Perception <Active> Lv. 1
Use your Internal Divine Sense to observe the external world
10% Increase in PERCEPTION
‘I don’t remember getting this skill.’ As he read through the description, an idea came to his mind. ‘Could it be?’ Scrolling back up the list, he spotted the skill he was looking for.
Internal Divine Perception <Passive> Lv. Max
User’s soul is powerful enough to perfectly perceive the body at all times
100% Increase in PERCEPTION
‘Its changed.’ He scratched his chin, confirming his conjecture. ‘It seems like PERCEPTION is heavily dependent upon the WIS stat, which is related to the soul. So once it reached a certain threshold, my soul had evolved enough to have the ability to observe the surroundings.’ Indeed, he could feel that by simply focusing on a particular part of his body, he could perceive every single fibre around that area. ‘But what about Divine Perception?’ Deciding to simply try out the ability, he simply activated the ability. ‘Okay, it seems like it just lets me see things more clearly?’ Everything around him seemed to come alive, in the sense that it simply allowed his view to become more vibrant. ‘Lets just add this to my repertoire.’ Nodding his head, Lin Ming sat cross-legged and started to concentrate. That was when he realized a problem. ‘I feel like it would be quicker for me to focus all these skills at a particular object.’ It was just a intuition, a gut feeling. If he was in his previous world, Lin Ming would simply ignore this gut feeling. He was never a person that liked to act only on feeling, instead always choosing to go down the road proven effective. This world however, was very different. ‘This world actually has a proven fate or providence.’ Specially something like a gut feeling, in this world it signified the soul trying to communicate. ‘Alright, not like I have something to lose.’ Getting up, he went to one of the oil lamps hanging by the doorway. Opening the latch to expose the flame, he fished out the candle and brought it back. Placing it before his mat, he once again sat down and assumed the lotus position. He first activated Meditation.
[Meditation has leveled up to Lv. 20]
Of course he ignored the notification, for the simple reason that it was only one level. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately, Lin Ming didn’t know that level 20 was actually a major hurdle for the skill according to the rules of this world. Continuing on his merry way, he activated Concentration, then he activated his Divine Sense, focusing it only on the flame of the candle, barely the size of the finger nail on his index finger. He could immediately tell something was wrong.
‘This…whats going on?’
It was like the flame had become something completely different, a different phenomenon. It was no a small flame. Instead, the flame was made of two different colors; one white and the other black, with small shades of black. At the core of the flame, white particles would be born before spreading out in waves, becoming duller and duller along the way until they became completely black. A curiosity arose within him as he saw this kind of phenomenon. ‘Beautiful.’ That was the only word that went through his brain as soon as he lay his eyes upon the phenomenon. It was followed by another word, one that came with an urge. ‘Why?’ As he stared at the flame, the answer always seemed to be within reach, yet, somehow out of reach. It was driving him insane. That was when a thought struck him. ‘I haven’t activated Divine Perception yet.’ He activated it without a thought. It was like a drum had gone off inside his head. Another way of describing it would be like a dam bursting. It was because comprehension seemed to become abundant and everything made sense.
‘Oh, so it was that.’ The wave-like phenomenon he saw was actually thermal convection of heat. Essentially, it was particles transferring their kinetic energy through longitudinal waves. ‘Right, this would be the zeroth law of thermodynamics; the law of thermal equilibrium, quantified through the heat exchange formulas of convection, conduction and radiation.’ Lin Ming was a university physics major in his previous life, as such, it was somewhat simple for him to understand this concept. ‘The amazing thing is that these laws exist in this world, signifying that most other physics laws are the same. Then why does this universe have organisms with the ability to literally drill holes through planets and the other one doesn’t?’ Shaking his head, he brought his focus back to the matter at hand. ‘It doesn’t really matter, I’m in this world now, no point thinking about the world I left behind.’ Instead, he thought about the observations he had just made. ‘This couldn’t be the the Concept of Fire could it?’ As he thought back to the novel, it indeed seemed like the First Law; Burning Heat. ‘But, isn’t this too simple? Why was it treated like it was some form of great insight?’ He didn’t have to wrack his brains for too long. ‘Ah, right, I’m looking at it from the perspective of a person who grew up in peace and had the advantage of nearly 4000 years of knowledge built up by hundreds of people. Which is why only high level experts know about these laws, only they have the energy and relative safety to actually sit down and try to understand these complicated concepts, an average person in this world is just trying to get by, they don’t have time to do something so impractical.’ Nodding his head, Lin Ming decided to focus more on the topic. ‘Okay, focusing back on the 2nd Level Concept of Fire, Annihilation, I think the novel described that as a pretty straightforward destruction caused by fire.’ It didn’t require much thought from him. ‘With enough energy it would turn from fire to straight-up disintegration, so I guess that would be Annihilation.’ The most interesting concept to him however was the third law. ‘The 3rd Law of the Concept of Fire, Creation. The novel mentioned the situation of a small spark turning into a raging inferno when describing Law of Creation. In that case, isn’t it talking about Creation of fire’
