After slaying several Exotic Beasts and clearing out the dangers lurking nearby, Yang Jing stopped in his tracks.
His eyes narrowed slightly, his expression suddenly sharpening. With a thought, he poured the dense, refined heaven-commanding secret power within him into his eardrums and the meridians throughout his body.
In cultivation on the Martial Path, the gulf between mortals and martial artists had never been limited to strengthening the body and drawing in spirit energy. It also lay in the transformation of the five senses brought about by the use of internal qi.
An ordinary mortal's senses had innate limits: hearing reached only so far, vision extended only so far, and touch was dull.
However keen they might be, they could never escape the shackles of mortal flesh. They could hear no sound ten li away, see no figure a hundred zhang distant, and had no way to detect subtler movements.
But martial cultivation-tempering the body, breaking through realms, and refining internal qi-was, at its core, a continual breaking of the shackles of mortal flesh, a remaking of muscle, bone, and blood, and an elevation of the senses and divine soul.
As their realms rose and their internal qi grew purer, martial artists could continually strengthen their sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch through circulating internal qi, channeling secret power, and cleansing their meridians.
Their sensory range, acuity, and ability to detect minute details surpassed those of mortals a hundredfold, even a thousandfold.
Especially after Yang Jing switched to cultivating the Heavenly Imperial Scripture, his body had undergone repeated cleansing of marrow and meridians through the supreme scripture, transforming and reshaping itself. His foundation far exceeded that of others at his realm, and his senses had reached an almost inconceivable degree of sharpness.
Now, as secret power flowed into his ears,