Qi and Blood Pill Freedom

You paid the villagers to build you a grand villa.

You continued cultivating.

But going from Skin Tempering Realm to Bone Tempering Realm meant crossing a major realm boundary, and your progress was slow.

To put it bluntly, there had been no progress at all.

You knew this was normal, so you were not impatient.

Outside of cultivation, you developed a fondness for fishing.

As a fishing addict, you returned fully loaded every time you went fishing.

Because whenever a fish failed to bite within two breaths, you used true qi to stun it and scooped it straight out of the water.

You thought fishing was easy and could not understand why there were so many fishermen who came home empty-handed.

In the twenty-third year, you had already lived in Xiangyue Village for two years and grown accustomed to everything there.

You paid the villagers to feed your horse and chop firewood, while you faced the great lake and enjoyed spring blossoms in warm weather.

You felt that dying of old age here would not be so bad.

That day, you were fishing... no, stunning fish.

The drooling genius Jiang Manzi came to the lakeside with a silly chuckle and began stunning fish just like you.

You discovered that Jiang Manzi actually possessed true qi. Judging by its amount, he was at the Early Skin Tempering Realm.

Jiang Manzi was so strong because of the true qi within his body.

But Jiang Manzi himself was a genius, so he could not control the true qi in his body and instead let it rampage recklessly.

That chaotic true qi was constantly damaging Jiang Manzi's body as well.

Whenever the true qi damaged his body, he suffered greatly and became extremely irritable.

That was why he would suddenly sexually assault feces.

You asked Jiang Manzi where the true qi in his body had come from.

He merely drooled and gave you a silly grin.

When you pressed him too hard, he relied on his great strength and tried to hit you.

You struck backhandedly, knocking him onto the ground, where he wailed loudly.

"I generally do not hit children or idiots, but I never expected you to stack two buffs and still be this punchable."

After you beat Jiang Manzi, his eyes became much clearer.

His speech also became more organized.

He told you that he had found some candy beans in his grandfather's grave. After eating them, he had become stronger.

You went to Jiang Manzi's grandfather's grave.

You directly dug the grave open and found quite a few good things inside.

There was a top-tier Bone Tempering Realm cultivation art in the grave: the Dragon's Roar Saber Art.

"It is actually a top-tier cultivation art, even more badass than a first-rate art!"

You immediately put it away and decided to switch to cultivating the Dragon's Roar Saber Art.

You also found a key and a token of the Extinction Sect.

The Extinction Sect was one of the Three Great Demonic Cults, and you vaguely felt uneasy.

Most unexpectedly, there was also a pill formula for Qi and Blood Pills.

With it, you could refine Qi and Blood Pills yourself and achieve Qi and Blood Pill freedom.

There were also quite a few finished Qi and Blood Pills in the grave.

Aside from the portion Jiang Manzi had eaten as candy beans, there were still over two hundred Qi and Blood Pills left in the grave.

Jiang Manzi had only eaten Qi and Blood Pills to increase his true qi, but he had not cultivated any cultivation art.

Therefore, the unrestrained true qi had constantly damaged his body and ruined his mind as well.

You helped Jiang Manzi disperse all the true qi within his body.

Without that true qi, his body would no longer continue being damaged, and he would not become irritable anymore.

But there was no way for his mind to recover.

He could only remain a carefree fool forever.

You knew Jiang Manzi's grandfather could not have had a simple identity, so you decided to leave Xiangyue Village at once.

You left five thousand taels of silver for the village chief and asked him to look after Jiang Manzi.

Jiang Manzi had originally grown up eating meals from every household in the village. As long as he did not hit people, the simple and honest villagers were still willing to care for him.

You continued westward.

Half a month later, you arrived at a prosperous small city, Changfeng City.

This small city lay at the frontier of the Great Qian Empire.

Precisely because it was so far from the central regions of the Great Qian Empire, Changfeng City had instead flourished on its own, forming a school of its own.

You bought a quiet little courtyard in a remote part of Changfeng City.

You stopped cultivating the Golden Saber Art and switched to the Dragon's Roar Saber Art.

"Men are just that fickle, loving the new and loathing the old."

With the aid of Qi and Blood Pills, you needed only half a year to cultivate the Dragon's Roar Saber Art back to the Skin Refinement Peak.

You could clearly feel that the true qi in your body had become far more vigorous, five times greater than the true qi produced by the Golden Saber Art.

"As expected of a top-tier cultivation art. This stuff is awesome!"

Whenever you swung your saber, the faint sound of a dragon's roar arose, affecting your opponent's mind and leaving them dumbfounded for an instant.

Do not underestimate an instant.

In battle, life and death were decided in an instant. That instant was enough to determine victory or defeat.

After switching cultivation arts, you began attempting alchemy.

You bought a large quantity of materials for refining Qi and Blood Pills, then shut yourself in the courtyard and practiced with your head down.

Alchemy required extremely precise control over true qi. The slightest deviation meant failure.

You kept trying and kept failing.

You kept failing, then kept trying again.

Every day, the moment you opened your eyes, you refined pills.

Even when you closed your eyes to sleep, you were still thinking about technical details.

Half a year passed, yet you still had not successfully refined a single Qi and Blood Pill.

But you did not gain nothing from the process.

Your control over true qi became increasingly precise, and your saber art improved greatly.

Before, you could only accurately cut a fly. Now, you could split an ant apart.

Another month passed, and you stopped refining pills because your money was nearly exhausted.

Friends who knew you well all knew that you were about to start sneaking around and stealing again.

In truth, your thieving skills had not gone rusty over the years. Whenever you encountered an opportunity, you practiced.

Sometimes, you did not even deliberately practice, yet after strolling through the streets once, several other people's money pouches would somehow appear in your hands.

You had developed an occupational disease.

Your auto-loot function could not be turned off.

This time, Flying Giant Cockroach returned to the martial world.

Without any surprise, you needed only one month to steal enough money to continue refining pills.

You continued burying yourself in alchemy.

After more than another year of attempts.

In the twenty-fifth year, when you were forty years old, you finally refined your first Qi and Blood Pill.

Your Qi and Blood Pill refining skill had entered the beginner stage.

But your success rate was too low. Out of ten pills, you could only successfully refine one or two.

Such output was clearly insufficient.

You continued practicing.

Once you had successfully refined the first pill, subsequent progress became much easier.

In the twenty-sixth year, your Qi and Blood Pill refining skill reached the minor success stage. Out of ten pills, you could successfully refine around six.

You could barely be considered to have mastered the core technology.

You felt it was enough and did not continue practicing.

Long-term alchemy brought your control over true qi up another level.

Now, if you wanted to cut an ant's upper eyelid, you definitely would not touch its lower eyelid.

You began using the large quantity of Qi and Blood Pills you had refined to charge toward the Bone Tempering Realm.

You could feel that breaking through to the Bone Tempering Realm was not far away.

You no longer ate Qi and Blood Pills one at a time. You ate them by the handful.

You did not know how many pills made a handful.

You only knew that no bottleneck could not be solved by one handful of Qi and Blood Pills. If there was one, then use two handfuls.

You had completely achieved Qi and Blood Pill freedom.

You now felt bored, especially bored.

That dull life passed for two years.

The old locust tree in your courtyard withered and flourished twice as well.

In the twenty-eighth year, at night, while cultivating, you had just swallowed a handful of Qi and Blood Pills when a dragon's roar rang out inside your body.

You broke through to the Bone Tempering Realm.

True qi surged wildly around your body, blasting your clothes to pieces and revealing your dozen-plus abdominal muscles.

Your pants were blasted apart as well, revealing the huge mosaic beneath your crotch.

The amount of true qi in the Bone Tempering Realm was simply incomparable to the Skin Tempering Realm. You felt that you could slap dozens of Skin Refinement Peak versions of yourself to death.

"Pills really are the fastest way!"

After entering the Bone Tempering Realm, you could now release true qi onto the surface of objects you directly touched.

You took out the Minghong Blade, attached true qi to it, and swung once.

The decades-old locust tree in the courtyard fell at once. It had not offended anyone.

The power of that strike increased by more than tenfold.

"Holy crap! Enchanting really does make a difference!"

After reaching the Bone Tempering Realm, you were already capable of opening an academy and taking disciples.

Wan Kun, the master of Golden Saber Academy, was only at the Early Bone Tempering Realm.

You could now be considered an expert as well.

After breaking through to the Bone Tempering Realm, you rarely gave yourself a day off.

You lay in the little courtyard for an entire day.

You thought of nothing and did nothing.

You completely emptied your mind and quietly watched the white clouds drift across the sky.

After resting for a day, you threw yourself back into the great cause of cultivation.

That day, after finishing your cultivation, you planned to buy materials for refining Qi and Blood Pills.

You opened the courtyard gate and discovered an injured woman lying at your doorstep, covered in blood and barely clinging to life.

"A flower girl? Yoshi~"