Power like that of lions and elephants coursed through his body. Li Hao gently clenched his fists, feeling as though his little hands could easily crush a boulder!
A moment ago, he had still been an ordinary mortal. In this brief span, he had actually become a cultivator!
The Power Through Realm was the first realm of martial cultivation, focused primarily on strength!
When strength permeated the entire body, one had achieved power through.
Over the long years, the standards for each layer of the Power Through Realm had been clearly defined. The first layer meant lifting one cauldron-200 jin of arm strength.
With ordinary food and exercise, people from common families could barely manage to match the first layer of the Power Through Realm.
But unless they were born with exceptional strength, reaching any higher required cultivation.
Each additional layer added another cauldron.
The seventh layer meant seven cauldrons. In other words, despite having the body of a five-year-old, Li Hao could now lift something weighing 1,400 jin.
And that was only his arm strength. An explosive burst of power from his entire body could let him easily leap a hundred meters, move like lightning, and effortlessly slaughter a hundred ordinary, burly men.
At last, I can cultivate. At least I'll have the strength to protect myself from now on.
Li Hao was thrilled. He felt that with just a little exertion, his whole body tightened and his skin became incredibly tough. Although his flesh remained tender, a light pinch could no longer pull up his skin. Instead, it was like taut cowhide-impossible to twist!
But this should only be the limit of Stone Skin Hundred Refinements. If I cultivate those other two manuals, my cultivation should rise some more!
Li Hao thought to himself.
He took a deep breath and adjusted his condition. Only after the crimson color of his skin gradually faded back to normal did he leave his room.
Then Li Hao summoned Uncle Zhao and asked him to send someone to inform First Madam.
First Madam soon replied, and once again, the maid named Xue Jian came to accompany him.
This time, they went straight to the sixth floor. Li Hao picked up the two manuals and began reading through them one by one.
With his first-stage understanding and insights into the Path of the Physical Body, Li Hao found that many passages he had previously been unable to understand when read together suddenly made sense.
[You have learned the basics. Record it?]
Yes!
He recorded both manuals in the panel in succession. Less than half a quarter-hour had passed before Li Hao asked Xue Jian to take him downstairs.
Though Xue Jian felt helpless, she did not show it on her face. He was a child, after all; she could treat this as accompanying him on an outing. As for reading the manuals, hah-even if he spent several more days rather than this little time, it would be a miracle if he understood anything.
Even the manuals on the first floor would be considered mid-grade outside. Without three to five days of study, learning even their basics would be difficult.
And these were manuals from the sixth floor.
Naturally, the more powerful they were, the harder they were to learn, and the higher the threshold for cultivating them.
Li Hao had no idea what the young girl was thinking. Even if he had known, he would not have cared. She was a child-why stoop to arguing with her?
Back at the Mountains and Rivers Courtyard, Li Hao asked the maids to prepare some food and drink before he began cultivating.
Cultivating Stone Skin Hundred Refinements earlier had taken quite a toll on his body. Only a short while had passed, yet he was already ravenous.
"Who's supposed to get full on this little?"
"Bring another plate. I mean another plate of everything. I'm still growing-do you think I can't finish it?"
Under the maids' dumbfounded gazes, Li Hao ate an entire tableful of meat dishes. He wiped his greasy little mouth, feeling only sixty percent full.
But afraid of frightening them, he did not keep eating. Instead, he swaggered nonchalantly back to his room and began cultivating.
The previously obscure Thousand Dragons Sacred Body had four layers. When it was recorded in the panel, only the first two layers showed that he had grasped them.
The first layer was the Dragon Demon Body. Once cultivated, it hardened every bone in the body and made the skin like dragon scales, impervious to swords and sabers.
The second layer was the Dragon Body, which contained the strength of half a dragon and further improved every aspect of the body.
Whoosh!
Li Hao settled into a stance, crouching low like a vicious tiger, his spine rising like a bent bow as his bones faintly crackled.
Through his first-stage understanding of the Path of the Physical Body, he was opening the gate to his body's hidden treasury.
As though stimulated, every cell in his body stirred, and his blood flow accelerated once more. This time, Li Hao also felt threads of cool power seep in from outside and flow into his body.
This was the Taiyin Power within Heaven and Earth Energy.
As Taiyin Power entered him, Li Hao's reddened body gradually returned to its normal color, while his flesh rapidly transformed.
The gate to his hidden treasury had opened, allowing heaven and earth to temper his body.
As more and more Taiyin Power poured in, Li Hao's skin gradually turned pale, then took on a bluish tinge like a corpse. Faint protrusions even appeared on its surface, resembling dragon scales.
After three incense sticks' worth of time, he finished cultivating the first layer.
Li Hao checked his cultivation. Astonishingly, it had risen again from the seventh layer of the Power Through Realm to the tenth layer-completion!
The gaps between the first nine layers of the Power Through Realm were small, each marked by an increase of 200 jin. But the transition from the ninth layer to the tenth was a threshold, one that doubled a cultivator's strength!
The tenth layer meant achieving complete power through, with strength reaching every part of the body and uniting it into a seamless whole!
And the weight one could lift with both hands would reach 3,600 jin!
Amid his delight, Li Hao examined his body closely and felt a little disappointed. His divine blood had not awakened.
Those who inherited divine blood could awaken it upon reaching Power Through Realm completion, whereupon their strength would increase again to 7,200 jin!
Such a disparity allowed Power Through Realm cultivators with divine blood to easily sweep aside others in the same realm. It could even make up for differences in technique, letting them shatter skill with sheer strength!
It was like the difference between a big spender and an ordinary player in a game.
It seemed extremely unfair, but it was normal. After all, inheriting divine blood required one's father to have reached the Three Immortalities Realm, and throughout the Great Yu Dynasty's Nineteen Provinces, the people who had reached that realm could be counted.
Without the enhancement of divine blood, Li Hao did not lose heart. He simply made a few adjustments and continued cultivating the second layer.
Half an hour later, he slowly finished. When he opened his eyes, divine lightning seemed to flash from them, and his pupils appeared a little darker and deeper.
He examined his body. His strength was clearly far greater than it had been just now. He wanted to find someone to spar with and test exactly how strong he was.
Calling up the panel, Li Hao looked at it in surprise, only to discover that he had not broken through. His cultivation remained at the tenth layer of the Power Through Realm.
My strength has clearly soared, yet I haven't reached the Circulation Realm?
Li Hao froze for a moment, then suddenly realized that he still did not know how to circulate qi.
After reaching Power Through Realm completion, something called "qi" had appeared within him. Strength and qi-as strength reached its fullness, qi was born.
This qi felt like the sensation of strength when his biceps flexed.
But although qi wandered throughout his body, he could not control it.
Li Hao suddenly remembered that the second layer of the Thousand Dragons Sacred Body did not seem to explain how to circulate qi either.
As for the third layer, his current attainment in the Path of the Physical Body was still insufficient to comprehend it.
The Dragon Body grants the strength of half a dragon. I wonder how strong I am now? Li Hao thought. He could feel that he was far stronger than before-at least twice as strong, perhaps even more.
Li Hao did not rush to test it. Instead, he turned to the other body-refining art:
The incomplete Primordial Beginning manual.
With the aid of his insights into the Path of the Physical Body, Li Hao quickly understood much of it and immediately began cultivating.
According to the general outline of the incomplete Primordial Beginning manual, this body-refining method had five realms.
But the fragment in Li Hao's hands contained only the first two realms. The last three had been lost.
Even the first section of the Primordial Beginning secret art required opening the gate to the body's hidden treasury, sensing the Taiyang Power and Taiyin Power between heaven and earth, and drawing both yin and yang powers into the body simultaneously to temper it.
Without help from the Path of the Physical Body, completing that first step would be as difficult as ascending to heaven for an ordinary person.
Yet Li Hao handled it effortlessly, as though following a familiar path.
As the powers of yin and yang gathered within him, his physical body was continually remolded.
The second section involved using the yin and yang powers within his body to draw in the power of the stars and cultivate the Star Battle Body.
This physique was even more domineering than the Dragon Body. Containing both Taiyin and Taiyang Power, the physical body became a furnace like the core of a star, brimming with heat and strength.
When Li Hao opened his eyes again, it was already midnight.
Without realizing it, he had cultivated for seven or eight hours.
His gaze was restrained and calm as his eyes slowly opened, his breathing deep and long like that of a coiled Jiaolong.
Both his hearing and his sight had improved enormously.
Li Hao could even hear faint swishing sounds still coming from the courtyard. That was not the sound of wind, but of a sword.
Someone was practicing swordplay.
With Li Hao's attainment in the Sword Dao, he could picture a person's posture and movements from the sound of the sword cutting through the air alone.
It was that little girl.
Was she working this hard too?
A smile touched Li Hao's lips, and then he called up the panel.
[Name: Li Hao] [Age: 5] [Cultivation: tenth layer of the Power Through Realm] [Sword Dao: second stage] [Skill: Boundless Sea - Tide (supreme perfection) [Forbidden]] [Path of the Physical Body: first stage] [Skills: Stone Skin Hundred Refinements (major attainment), Thousand Dragons Sacred Body (Dragon Body: minor attainment), Primordial Beginning (Star Body: beginner)] [Chess Dao: third stage (0/5000)] [Chess Manual Catalog Collection: 0] [Art Skill Points: 0]
"Still the Power Through Realm?"
Li Hao was somewhat surprised. He could feel the enormous changes in his body. He was clearly several times stronger than when he had first reached the tenth layer. He even felt that his current physique could execute the Tidal Sword Art at supreme perfection without any strain, yet he still had not broken through.
Still, he truly did not yet know how to circulate qi through a full circuit.
These first two sections of the Primordial Beginning Body Refining Art seemed intended solely for the Power Through Realm.
Yet the strength they granted already far surpassed that realm.
The only problem was that cultivating them was far too difficult!
Even with his current first-stage insights into the Path of the Physical Body, he had barely reached the beginner level. An ordinary person would probably need ten or twenty years to reach this point.
By then, they would probably have long since entered the Circulation Realm.
After all, this seemed even harder than entering the Circulation Realm.
Li Hao stood up and adjusted to his body, then opened the window and looked out. Sure enough, a little figure was practicing swordplay beneath the starlight in the courtyard.
But to Li Hao's surprise, compared with her clumsy, crooked swings that morning, her movements now actually looked quite proper.
This little girl did have some talent.
Li Hao smiled, then braced himself with one hand and vaulted out the window, landing lightly on the ground.
He went to the rockery in another part of the courtyard. According to Uncle Zhao, his father had carried it back with one hand as a youth. It weighed a hundred cauldrons!
Li Hao hunched slightly. The servants and maids had all gone to rest, and the few on duty were patrolling elsewhere.
Taking advantage of the lack of people nearby, he ran over to the rockery, examined it briefly, and reached into a recessed hollow in the stone to try pushing it.
Rumble!
To Li Hao's shock, when he exerted all his brute strength, he actually lifted the rockery, which weighed more than ten tons!
As the rockery shifted, the water in the pond beside it surged and flooded beneath its base.
The tenth layer of the Power Through Realm, without divine blood-and he could lift 20,000 jin!
Startled, Li Hao hastily eased off his strength and gently set the rockery down.
(End of chapter)
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