2 Cultivation

Zhang Wuji took two clay pots, a water bottle, and two red stones from his bag. One of the stones had a darker shade of red compared to the other. These stones are fire stones. Found in abundance in hot areas especially around a volcano. They are sold for ten copper each which is dirt cheap for Zhang family. When agitated with a sliver of qi they gradually start giving out heat. After a minute they peak at around a hundred degrees. The pots which are about a foot high and wide have a small slot at the bottom where such stones could be put.

He poured water into the two pots took two different herbs each from the nourishing and healing labelled boxes his father sent, crushed them and left them to soak in the two pots. Nourishing herbs are to make a medicinal bath to be used in the nourish step of body refinement and healing herbs in the heal step.

One of the nourishing herbs looked like a grotesque elongated ginger with dense root hair like things all over it. The other looked like a safflower with mesmerizing violet colour of different shades. The healing herbs looked more normal. One was motherwort herb the other was a spoonful of cloves.

The herbs had to be soaked for thirty minutes. He put the pots in a corner, flipped the bed vertical and similarly shifted it and the table with the chair on top of it to a corner making enough free space for body tempering exercises.

There was a training ground beside the outer sect disciple residential building but the previous owner preferred to do the exercises in the room. Zhang Wuji was obviously not going to break routine and stand out. Thankfully the manual that he followed only required him to hold a few stances till exhaustion and did not require much space. The stances were divided into three categories namely stability and endurance, strengthening and balance. Body refinement has nine levels to it. First three levels are collectively known as low stage, four to six levels as mid stage and seven to nine as high stage of body refinement. The stances change with each stage. The previous owner has been in fourth level for a few months and therefore the body was already accustomed to the stances for the mid stage making it easy for Zhang Wuji.

The difficult part is really the breathing techniques. They are different for each stance and also different at different durations of the stance. Let's take horse stance for example. It comes under stability and endurance and is a repeatedly used transitional stance. For many standing holds when moving from one to another you have to hold the horse stance for a few breaths. If you are moving from a balance stance to a strengthening one and you are required to use horse stance as a transitional pose then your breathing should involve long inhalation short exhalation followed by a rest period with different time ratio depending on how tired you are, how far you have reached in your training session, and how sore your muscles are respectively. Balance to balance, strengthening to balance and strengthening to strengthening have different formulas that need to be followed. And all this for only one single stance that too only when used as a transitional stance.

A proper horse stance starts with long inhalation, exhalation and long rest periods between the two followed by a special method of breathing with the throat similar to when you fake hiccups only, a long breath version and when your throat is dry and hot enough you switch to another kind where you almost close your wind pipe with the back of your tongue and torture your throat breathing through the small gap left behind till you can take no more to finally get back to normal long and deep breaths that surprisingly feel comfortable and revitalizing especially after the torture.

Everytime you do something wrong you waste precious training time. Every time you feel bored or tired or sore and switch stances before exhaustion you waste precious time. This is one of the reasons contributing to his low cultivation despite all the precious herbs he had consumed.

Cultivation usually begins at eleven to thirteen years of age. An average cultivator could easily spend twenty years before reaching qi condensation and probably never reach foundation building realm before dying at seventy or eighty years. Before reaching foundation building there is no change in the longevity of a cultivator. All the cultivation before then only ensures a relatively healthy and fit life. A foundation building realm cultivator could live upto a hundred and fifty years, core formation three hundred and a nascent soul realm cultivator could live upto a maximum of five hundred years. The Yi family ancestor is said to be more than three hundred years old.

This is why herbs and pills are very crucial. The pill provided by the sect though a failed pill provides enough qi to greatly increase the efficiency of breathing techniques thus shortening the time required for body refinement. The pink healing and green nourishing liquids they provide further shortens the time making foundation building and further realms a possibility. The herbs his father sends are in fact more helpful than the liquids which have a meager herbal essence. These liquids are mere diluted versions of the actual products which are provided to the first class outer disciples which obviously have better affect than the herbs he has. The real reason why Zhang and other such families send their young ones to sects are the pills. The Zhang family did think of training their own alchemists but they lacked sufficient knowledge and experience to do so and as a business oriented family they chose the cost efficient method of sending their younger generation to the sect. And anyway the sect has a better collection of martial arts and ways to enter foundation building and above and therefore is an obvious choice for those who chose the martial way. The Zhangs on the other hand did not even have a single foundation building realm cultivator since their founding.

Zhang Wuji started his training. The starting poses were easy to do. Their purpose only to warm up the body and there was no need to exert till exhaustion. These poses stick with you throughout the body refinement realm with varying intensities. Following which was a pose similar to the chair pose in yoga with a weird breathing pattern halfway through which he couldn't handle the irritation in the throat and broke the pattern greatly reducing the efficacy of the pose.

'Damn! Every single time! Who knows how long it would be before I reach qi condensation if this continues. Come on man you can do it.'

With such repeated errors and subsequent encouragement he managed to complete the first cycle. There's a total of three cycles in one training session with increasing intensities. The first cycle is mainly to activate various parts of the body and make them more receptive to spiritual energy. The first cycle takes around forty minutes to complete when done properly. Zhang Wuji usually completes it within thirty minutes which is the amount of time the herbs needed soaking for. After poking at the soaked herbs Zhang Wuji poured some more water into the two pots to a level about two to three centimetres above the herbs. Next the water needs to be boiled for a few minutes after which you let it cool down. He took the fire stones and struck them repeatedly on the floor till they started giving off heat and put them in the slots under the pots. Once he reaches qi condensation all it would require is a sliver of qi to activate the stone. The darker one was put under the nourishing herbs pot and the lighter one under healing. Healing decoction required twice the amount of boiling time compared to nourishing decoction. One fire stone gives enough heat to produce one healing decoction and therefore could be used for two nourishing decoctions. Deactivating a fire stone is simple. One only needs to immerse it in water and it automatically stops releasing heat. He drinks a herbal soup every morning heating it with a fire stone producing a darker fire stone which is just right for the nourishing decoction. This way he wouldn't have to wait on it delaying his training. A few minutes rest after first cycle is good but waiting for too long after activating the body would bring it back to normal state wasting your effort.

Done with the decoction preparation Zhang Wuji went back to training. He took out one grey pill from the pill bottle he got today and swallowed it with some water. It is a failed tier 1 qi recovery pill that qi condensation realm cultivators use to recover their qi reserves after heavy consumption in a battle or in pill concoction, tool refining or some other reason. A failed pill is ofcourse useless to them but it still is made from herbal essence of tier 1 herbs which could provide ample amount of qi for a body refinement realm cultivator. All the precious herbs that his father sends are only rare mortal herbs also known as tier 0 herbs with not a sliver of spiritual energy within them.

The pill is a simple qi recovery pill and does not increase qi condensation realm cultivator's strength neither does it increase the qi held within a body refinement realm cultivator. All it does is provide copious amounts of readily usable qi which is guided via the breathing techniques to nurture the body.

The first cycle readies the body for spiritual energy and the second and third cycles temper the body with it. Zhang Wuji sat down cross legged and started with the second cycle which mainly is done either seated or laying down on the ground. It is filled with a bunch of ridiculous stretching exercises which if done without the right breathing technique would lead to tearing of muscles, ligaments and tendons. The breathing techniques in the second cycle provides targeted tempering to the stretched part. The whole body cries with pain during the cycle. If the exercises are not done to the fullest extent they give close to zero benifits the main reason why Zhang Wuji is still in the fourth level. The only thing he could do now is grit his teeth and endure and hope he could last longer.

The third cycle is the easiest. No pain no discomfort nothing. It simultaneously tempers the whole body unlike the second cycle's targeted tempering. All you need to do is sleep on your back on a flat surface and breathe. Only the breathing technique is ever changing and the slightest lapse in concentration leads to missing a breath and wasting all the effort put into that particular pattern.

Zhang Wuji laid on the ground. He took a deep breath and calmed himself down and started the first pattern. It was a simple long inhale short rest long exhale and long rest pattern. It helps calm the body and spreads spiritual energy evenly. With the energy smoothly flowing all around the body relaxes and one unknowingly falls asleep. Right before that happens one needs to shift the breathing pattern to what is natural. When one concentrates on one's breath it is difficult to determine whether it is natural or if you are unknowingly forcing it to maybe slow down a bit. Wuji easily gets frustrated in this step never knowing whether he is doing it right or not. What follows is a bunch of other breathing patterns with their own problems.

And the slightest lapse in concentration wastes the effort you put in that pattern.

'That reception desk lady is really hot. People in the cultivation world are really beautiful. Must be because of the spiritual energy of heaven and earth as the novels say. Even the ordinary faced senior brother of treasure hall that distributes resources has a certain attractive air about him. I wonder if there are ugly cultivators. I should be.. SHIT!! my pattern...'