Cultivation level

Long Yang controlled the energy and guided it to impact his eleventh meridian. The energy plowed through the blockages in his meridian, albeit slower than the previous one. The energy pushed out a bunch of impurities and gray substances oozed out of his body.

He opened his eyes and cringed, "Yuck, it smells so bad." He walked next door to his room and knocked, "Big sis Xiao Hong, is the bath ready?"

A voice came from inside, "Just a moment." Long Yang stood outside the door and waited, enduring the horrible smell from his own body. After a minute, the door opened and Xiao Hong walked out, "The bath is ready, you can go clean yourself now."

Long Yang rushed in to clean himself. Xiao Hong waved her hand back and forth in front of her nose as she chuckled and left as she had already done what she came for.

Long Yang scrubbed all over his body to get the gray substances off. The time and effort it took for him to clean it this time around, was longer than before. After cleaning himself and putting on another fresh set of robes, he circulated his qi.

He frowned, "My eleventh meridian, there are still some impurities present… I still haven't cleared it out." Inspecting it further, he frowned even more, "There are some impurities present that are different from the previous meridians. Is this… from the pills? This didn't happen when I used it for my tenth meridian… Pills definitely help but in the long term… I don't think I should be using too much."

Long Yang walked out from the bathing room and went back into his room. He sat down in deep thought. Suddenly, his eyes lit up, 'The manual! The subpart of the manual should allow me to extract the useful parts of herbs and treasures without absorbing the impurities!'

Long Yang nodded to himself with a smug smile before another revelation hit him, "Ah. I have no money, where will I get such things..." He shook his head, "I'll find someway, push comes to shove, I'll beg father for some." He continued to think, "Come to think of it… what cultivation level am I even at? I haven't kept track of my breakthroughs since I've mainly been focusing on my meridians..."

He got up, "I'll go to the training field, I need to test my strength as well. I'll ask around about my cultivation level, some people should know." Leaving his residence, he headed towards the practice field.

Arriving at the practice field, Long Yang could see around ten people practicing on the field. People were sparring and hitting dummies. Long Yang spotted two people gathered around someone in front of a bunch of different sized rocks. Noticing that it was Feng An, one of the few who took the Spirit Awakening Rites along with him, he decided to join the small crowd. Long Yang snuck up near Feng An, who was currently being lectured by one of the people present.

"Seeing as you just awakened your Spirit soul, you will have begun your journey in the world of cultivation. To summon your Spirit soul, you don't need a cultivation as Spirit souls reside in your soul, to summon it, you have to call it from within. At first, it'll be weird but you will get used to it, similar to moving your arm or leg. Just recall that feeling you felt when it awakened."

Feng An closed his eyes and tried to recall the mystical feeling he had felt earlier, his heart started to thump as he opened his eyes. Slowly, a blurry phantom of a bear appeared behind him. The phantom grew more and more corporeal by the second before it finally took physical shape.

The person who was lecturing Feng An earlier nodded, "Wonderful! Tier 7 Crimson bear, an impressive Spirit soul whose main strength is raw power. Try to test it on this stone here." He pointed to a decent sized rock that was the smallest of the bunch. "It weighs about thirty kilos, which is about the threshold of a qi gathering stage 1 cultivator. Your Crimson bear should have that amount of strength despite the fact that you have no cultivation at the moment. See if it can lift the stone."

Feng An nodded, "Go!" The bear walked forward and wrapped its large arms around the rock and exerted itself. Seemingly with ease, it lifted the stone up before placing it back down.

The man nodded, "Impressive strength, your Spirit soul grows alongside you in cultivation so as you grow stronger, so does your Spirit soul." He turned over to Long Yang finally noticing his presence. He bowed and saluted with his fist to his palm, "Hello, Young Master Long Yang, what brings you here today? Do you have a request for your humble servant, Long San?"

Long Yang nodded, "Yes, in fact, I do need help. I heard about it from you earlier but can you clarify the difference in power between ranks."

"Of course," Long San held up two fingers, "There are two ways to roughly gauge what rank a person is at. The less accurate way is to measure their strength when boosted by their qi. An average qi gathering stage 1 cultivator can lift thirty kilos and each level after the weight they can lift increases by ten. So a qi gathering stage 2 cultivator can lift forty kilos, stage 3 can lift fifty, etc. The amount changes for foundation building cultivators, but I'm not too sure about that.

The second way to tell is just based on the qi. The first method isn't always accurate and is rarely used, most people use this method. They determine the level that someone is at based on the deepness of the color of their qi. For example," The air around Long San's body started to fluctuate as his body started glowing green.

The color of green was very mild, in between light green and dark green. "The darker the color of the qi, the higher ranked that person is. As for me, I'm currently at the 6th qi gathering stage."

The light faded from Long San's body, "These are the two ways to roughly gauge someone else's cultivation level. As for yourself, you can feel whether or not you have broken through or not and you can tell from the number of breakthroughs you've had what level you are at."

Long Yang nodded, "Thanks for your trouble."

Long San saluted and bowed slightly, "No, I was glad to be of help, there is no need for you to thank someone like me for something so small."

Long Yang smiled, "Alright, I'll be going now, keep on doing what you were doing before." After bidding farewell, Long Yang returned back to his room.

'Uhh… I didn't exactly keep track of the breakthroughs I've had because I've been focusing mostly on clearing my meridians but he's given me a clue as to what I'm at.' Long Yang scratched his cheek with a finger, 'What do I do… Long San is at the 6th qi gathering stage but...'

Long Yang's body started glowing green. The tint of green was slightly darker than the color Long San's body. 'Judging from the color, I should be at the 7th qi gathering stage… I wonder what would happen if my parents knew about this...'

Long Yang shook his head, the color dissipating. 'Whatever, I'll focus on that matter later. For now, I'll continue cultivating.'