Closed-Door Cultivation

After sending Li Mochou away, Wang Ming began his closed-door cultivation to elevate his strength.

Ever since he obtained the system, he had already experienced three worlds. Every time he arrived in a world, he swept through it like a swarm of locusts, collecting renowned martial arts regardless of their quality.

Right now, he was not lacking in martial arts manuals; rather, he had too many manuals and did not know which ones to practice.

Having conquered Jueqing Valley this time, he finally possessed a suitable place to begin organizing his resources.

As for the manuals of the highest quality in his possession, they belonged to those acquired from The First Under Heaven World:

Hegemon Under Heaven possessed formidable might, yet it was a martial art that drove people mad. He had no interest in practicing it; options were plentiful, so why torture himself?

After breaking through the seventh layer, the progression of Indestructible Vajra Body was terribly frustrating; he wondered if thirty years of cultivation would even allow him to enter the eighth layer.

Illusion Sword sounded mystical, but in reality, it was merely the utilization of light along with movement techniques for explosive speed. After all, this was a martial arts world, not a fantasy world, and overly complex illusions still could not be created.

Sky Full of Flowers Scattering Gold Coins also currently served as his primary area-of-effect damage.

Having only practiced Heaven and Earth Great Shift to the fourth layer, its progression had become sluggish, which must have been due to his insufficient internal energy. He set it aside for now.

Next, basically most of the martial arts acquired from The Smiling, Proud Wanderer World had been phased out, serving only as an accumulation of martial arts foundation:

The only one with remaining value was Nine Swords of Dugu. This swordsmanship actually possessed no stances; the nine swords were nine sets of calculation formulas used to calculate the flaws of nine types of weapons, a martial art that could be utilized indefinitely.

Ice True Qi was also an applied martial art. The strikes it unleashed carried a freezing attribute, yet within the body, it remained attribute-less.

Seven String Formless Sword was a sonic power skill, but unfortunately, its effects were too singular.

Star Absorbing Great Art was far too severely flawed, and he had no desire to become a balloon and get inflated to bursting. Furthermore, it required discarding one's cultivation, carrying far too much risk.

Bixie Sword Manual was utterly out of the question to practice. Naturally, it could alter one's physique, but this martial art was far too demonic. Wang Ming would rather practice Hegemon Under Heaven than touch this; the martial art could imperceptibly twist a person's psychology, turning them into someone extremely paranoid with altered sexual orientations.

Although the stances of Five Peaks Swordplay were exquisite—arguably reaching the absolute pinnacle of stances—its efficiency in utilizing internal qi was far too low. This Five Peaks Swordplay was like a bicycle, whereas Quanzhen Swordplay was like a motorcycle; their might was not in the same tier, which was why this martial art was basically phased out by Wang Ming as well.

Primal Chaos Technique and Purple Cloud Manual were likewise eliminated by Wang Ming.

Wang Ming's harvests since coming to this world:

Quanzhen Swordplay was a fine set of swordsmanship, its true qi utilization rate several times that of the Five Peaks Sects.

Nine Yin Manual was the greatest harvest of this world.

Heavy Swordplay was a style of swordsmanship he had deduced and restored himself.

He was already primarily practicing Innate Skill, but Wang Ming was considering whether to switch to practicing Nine Yin Manual.

Blue Sea Tide Song was traded from Huang Laoxie; he would find time to study it.

Empty Clarity Fist was created by Zhou Botong and possessed considerable might, only it did not quite match Wang Ming's style.

Twin-Handed Combat Technique and Yin-Yang Reverse Blade Technique were dual-wielding weapon methods. As for their value? They were not trash and could be used, but they were also merely ordinary.

The gap between himself and the Five Greats primarily lay in internal energy cultivation.

Therefore, he should focus primarily on internal cultivation.

Indestructible Vajra Body was basically bottlenecked; he had no idea how Gu Santong had cultivated it back then.

The upper limit of Nine Yin Manual was extremely high, making it well worth practicing.

Yet Wang Ming found himself in an awkward predicament; he had no way to cultivate the internal cultivation of Nine Yin Manual.

Wang Ming had underestimated Innate Skill; this martial art was exceedingly tyrannical. The moment any other true qi appeared in the lower dantian, it would be swallowed up, making it utterly impossible to cultivate anything alongside it.

This was precisely the reason why Wang Wangchongyang himself did not practice Nine Yin Manual—entirely because Innate Skill refused to let him.

However, in the original text, Duan Zhixing had practiced Innate Skill and subsequently practiced Nine Yin Manual.

Wang Ming deduced regarding that situation of his: Duan Zhixing had simultaneously used Innate Skill and One Yang Finger to treat Huang Rong's injuries, exhausting his own cultivated Innate Skill true qi completely.

In truth, that was equivalent to crippling his Innate Skill. This was also why it took him so long to recover after treating Huang Rong, basically akin to starting over from scratch.

Perhaps some people would say that internal energy isn't something that runs out, and doesn't it recover after one meditates and sleeps?

Actually, this was a misconception. Learning an internal cultivation method served to open up the acupoints and meridians in the body; once you cleared all the meridians described in the manual, you had successfully practiced it.

However, the true qi within the body remained empty nonetheless.

It required you to sit cross-legged and cultivate every day, training essence and qi, and then store the generated true qi within the dantian.

This was precisely the reason why rugged youths in the martial arts world could not defeat emaciated old men; the old men had accumulated internal qi for a much longer time.

Normally, circulating cultivation techniques during meditation also served two different functions: one was to recover consumed internal qi—as long as it wasn't completely drained all at once, recovery was very easy and took at most a few days.

The other circumstance involved increasing the storage capacity of one's internal energy.

The internal cultivation of Nine Yin Manual was not necessarily stronger than Innate Skill; crippling one's cultivation to retrain would result in losses outweighing the gains.

Then let's just continue practicing Innate Skill!

Wang Ming finally made his decision, whereupon he commenced his closed-door cultivation.

During the year that followed, Wang Ming never stepped out of his closed-door cultivation area. His meals and drinks were all arranged by Li Mochou, who had servants deliver them.

These servants were people Wang Ming had instructed Li Mochou to newly purchase from outside the valley. He could not entirely trust the original inhabitants of Jueqing Valley, and the original women and children had also been arranged to leave in batches.

Through this year of closed-door cultivation,

Wang Ming truly came to appreciate the genuine formidable nature of Innate Skill.

This martial art had to be cultivated while retaining one's youthful purity in order to achieve twice the result with half the effort; one could cultivate it without being a virgin, but the effects would be merely ordinary.

Back then, Wang Chongyang was well aware of the allure Nine Yin Manual held for martial artists. Among the other Four Greats, Ouyang Feng was the least scrupulous; the moment Wang Chongyang died, Ouyang Feng would definitely launch an assault, and by then, this foundation of his might be destroyed in a single stroke.

Moreover, Ouyang Feng was also the strongest among the remaining four; once Wang Chongyang left, there would simply be no one capable of subduing him.

Ouyang Feng's Toad Skill had indeed been broken by Wang Chongyang, but later he returned to White Camel Mountain and successfully re-cultivated it. Even so, twenty years later he still had not fallen behind the rest of them, which showed just how extraordinary his natural talent was.

Consequently, Wang Chongyang wanted to forge an opponent for Ouyang Feng.

The Eastern Heretic Huang Yaoshi possessed first-rate natural talent and brilliance, yet he was also someone who disdained rules, and his ambition was no small matter either. Do not be fooled by his appearance as a hermit in The Legend of the Condor Heroes; that was only because the death of his wife and the betrayal of his disciples had dealt him heavy blows. This candidate still would not do; it could not be him.

The Northern Beggar Hong Qi possessed exceptional morals, but still it could not be him. He was the leader of the Beggar's Sect; allowing him to become too powerful would be detrimental to the development of the Quanzhen Sect. Most importantly, everyone was eating from the same bowl of the Central Plains, and competition existed.

Thus, choosing back and forth, the only option left was Duan Zhixing.

Although Duan Zhixing was one of the Five Greats, he was in truth the sovereign of the Dali Kingdom. While he possessed fame in the pugilistic world, he was fundamentally not a jianghu person.

Most importantly, he was not a person of the Central Plains. As the ancient saying goes: "Befriend distant states and attack neighboring ones."

Duan Zhixing was a great distance away from Zhongnan Mountain, posing no conflicts of interest.

Duan Zhixing's ancestral One Yang Finger could actually break the Toad Skill, but his internal energy was insufficient, rendering him unable to accomplish the feat of breaking the Toad Skill.

Duan Zhixing's ancestral internal cultivation was ordinary, incapable of supporting the full-power output of One Yang Finger.

Therefore, Wang Chongyang traveled a thousand miles to impart Innate Skill.

Nor should one imagine Wang Chongyang as being so magnanimous; he knew Duan Zhixing could not possibly maintain his youthful purity, which was precisely why he taught it to him.

If one cultivated this martial art without being a virgin, it merely remained a decent internal cultivation method, ranking just slightly below Nine Yin Manual.

It was utterly impossible to obtain the genuine benefits brought by this martial art, and instead one was even forced to practice celibacy, which was rather agonizing.

Cultivating while maintaining youthful purity could drive one's potential and consciousness to their absolute limits, naturally propelling one's martial arts into an unfathomable realm of transformation.

Aside from this, the internal energy of Innate Skill was exceptionally formidable, accompanied by extremely rapid internal qi recovery.

This martial art possessed yet another distinct characteristic: it exerted an amplifying effect upon the might of martial arts.

During the first Mount Hua Sword Debate, it was certainly not some children's game like Guo Jing's sparring matches.

They had engaged in a chaotic battle unfolding simultaneously, yet in the end all four were defeated by Wang Chongyang—from which one could perceive the extraordinary nature of this martial art.