The early dawn brought in rays of light that lit up Alex's courtyard where he was currently cultivating. Alex slowly opened his eyes as he got out of what he considered was basically sleeping.
Every time he cultivated, he would always fall asleep. But somehow never wake up later than the morning. He would always wake up at some time between 6 and 7 am for some reason.
He had gotten used to that by now. He looked at the rays of light coming in from the front of his house. It seemed his house was facing east. At the same time, he saw the walls of the house, the trees in the courtyard, the multitude of blades of grasses in the ground, as well as the pond that was currently behind him.
'Wait a second. What is going on?' he thought. He could currently see things he wasn't even looking at. The pond was currently behind him, so how could he possibly see it?
The blades of grasses were too many for him to be able to 'see' at the same time. He closed his eyes to clear all of the visions he was seeing right now, but that didn't help.
He could still see everything clearly. Well, almost everything. He could no longer see the rays of light coming from afar, or anything that wasn't in his courtyard.
He could see the walls of his house, and also see beyond those walls, but not far off. He could see the pond, and also everything in it. He could see the many fishes swimming in the pond.
Once he started focusing on specific things, everything else stopped overwhelming him. While he could still see everything, he started to ignore them. Yet even when he focused on something, he could still feel the thing he was looking at had multiple things in it that he was looking at once.
For example, when he looked at the pond, he could see all the fishes at once, and individually at the same time. He felt that he could keep track of all the fishes even though there were hundreds of them in there.
He looked at the multitudes of grass blades on the ground. Since there were easily more than a hundred grasses, he was having trouble focusing on them all at the same time. He had to section off about a hundred or two hundred of the grass blades to see them all at the same time as well as individually.
He could clearly feel his mental strength had improved a lot more. He kept looking around at the different things with his eyes still closed. He kept wondering what was happening, why he could see so much.
Then he looked at his own self and realized something—The yellow flower was gone. Only then did he understand what happened.
'Wait, so this is the 'spiritual sense' that Luo Mei was talking about?' he thought. He used the spiritual sense to look at himself. He finally saw what the other people would see when they looked at him. No more reflected image in the water, this was the true him.
He quietly admired how he looked. He started looking at the different things with his spiritual sense. Slowly, he realized that 'seeing' was not all there was to the spiritual sense.
He could also 'feel' the objects he was looking at. He could tell whether an object was smooth or rough. He could tell whether something was hot or cold. He could even tell apart which objects weighed more, and which weighed less.
As he was looking at the different things, he realized something was being drained in his mind, and before he knew it, he stopped seeing anything. He was now in the dark.
'Did I deplete my spiritual sense already?' he thought
He opened his eyes to look properly once more. Looking with his eyes felt like a degrade now that he had spiritual sense. Still, due to his increased mental power, his eyes could keep track of a lot of different things now.
While the amount wasn't as large as when he was using his spiritual sense, it was still a lot.
He decided to check if he could handle multiple objects with Qi manipulation now that he was able to track multiple things at once. He started floating a small stone. Then, he started to do the same to another stone. And another. Soon, he was individually keeping 5 stones afloat.
He tried some more. At around 8 stones, he started feeling some mental strain, and at 10 he had reached his limits. After moving them all separately for a while, he dropped the stone.
'10 is too much for me. I should stick with 8 or less for now,' he thought. He looked at the time and realized he had been practicing for nearly an hour now, and it was almost 7.
'Hmm… I have an alchemy lesson with master today. I should go and come back to the game as soon as I can,' he thought. He quickly logged out and did all of his morning business. Once he ate his breakfast, he returned back to the room and logged into the game.
He had returned to the game in about 15 minutes, so decided to go to the sect leader's abode as soon as he could. He opened his eyes and started to stand up, but suddenly he noticed something.
The first thing he noticed was that quite a lot of his Spiritual Sense had come back. But that was not what surprised him the most.
He slowly looked around, using both his eyes and spiritual sense. He was no longer where he had logged out and had in fact logged in a room somewhere else.
'Where am I?' he thought. Just as he thought that the door to the room opened, and he looked up to see who it was. He looked at the person who had just entered and said in surprise, "Master?"