What they sought and couldn't obtain, they already held!

He had rested enough on the high-speed train.

After returning home, Li Yuan did not lie down to rest again.

He took the USB drive and plugged it into the computer.

Inside the USB drive was a PDF file.

The file name was the cultivation method Xia Zhao had mentioned earlier, the Heavenly Refining Body.

Xia Zhao had explained this cultivation method quite clearly.

Heavenly Refining Body was a foundational cultivation method, once pursued by countless powerhouses who would risk their lives to obtain it.

But once they actually got their hands on it, these powerhouses discovered a major problem.

They couldn't understand it—in fact, they couldn't even grasp its contents.

In their understanding, what this cultivation method described was simply wrong.

Perhaps the Heavenly Refining Body they had obtained was a fake.

Or maybe all the rumors about it were false.

The powerful effects of Heavenly Refining Body simply didn't exist.

Li Yuan didn't waste energy thinking about it. He would just see for himself how it really was.

Opening the file, Li Yuan began reading this foundational cultivation method.

The content of the method was somewhat obscure, and even Li Yuan found it difficult to understand.

He had to combine it with his own thoughts, simulating the cultivation scenarios in his mind.

Advancing both simultaneously to grasp its meaning.

The file also had many annotations, presumably left by Xia Zhao.

They recorded some of her thoughts and understandings.

For his first full read-through, Li Yuan hid all the annotations and only looked at the original text.

After finishing the complete read, he would then look at the annotations to avoid being misled down the wrong path.

When Li Yuan returned home, it was nine in the morning.

He read this file all the way until evening.

Over eight hours, nearly nine hours, Li Yuan felt completely immersed in it.

This Heavenly Refining Body was indeed difficult to understand.

Reading it felt like a harder version of Cloud Extreme Fist.

An ordinary person would need at least half a day to digest a single page, and they would often misunderstand it.

In these nine hours, Li Yuan had finished reading Heavenly Refining Body once through.

He wouldn't claim his understanding was flawless, but based on his own interpretation, this Heavenly Refining Body had no errors.

It was a refined and profound cultivation method!

After the first read-through, Li Yuan hadn't yet seen through all of it.

But from his understanding, its greatest mystery lay in its Gang Qi.

This foundational cultivation method helped martial artists condense their own Gang Qi and use it to temper themselves.

Others should also be able to understand this part.

But when it came to the deeper aspects, they couldn't grasp it.

According to Heavenly Refining Body, while Gang Qi tempers the body, the body must also temper the Gang Qi.

In other words, the physical body and Gang Qi were in a mutual grinding relationship.

Both had to improve simultaneously.

Others completely failed to understand this point.

The reason they thought the method was wrong also came from here.

Tempering Gang Qi with the physical body seemed to them like self-harm.

Gang Qi had no physical form—using one's own body to temper it would surely injure the body, wouldn't it?

And here lay the key point.

Why was this foundational cultivation method called Heavenly Refining Body? It was because it aimed to completely merge Gang Qi with the physical body.

Cultivating according to this method would indeed damage the body.

But those damaged areas were exactly where Gang Qi played its role.

Gang Qi would transform into armor attached to the body, coexisting with flesh and blood to form protection.

When cultivation reached its peak, Gang Qi and the physical body would fully merge, forming the Gang Body!

Seeing this, Li Yuan understood why it was so sought after.

With effects this powerful, no ordinary cultivation method could compare.

Conventional basic cultivation methods strengthened the body on three levels: cells, bones, and fascia.

Heavenly Refining Body followed a completely different path from other basic cultivation methods.

In a sense, Heavenly Refining Body was more like a cheat of a cultivation method.

By practicing it, the body, with the intervention of Gang Qi, displayed a physique far beyond that of martial artists at the same realm.

For others to achieve the same physical strength, they would need to be an entire major rank higher!

A Fifth-Rank Martial Artist possessing a physique comparable to a Sixth-Rank Martial Artist—that sounded like pure fantasy.

He went downstairs to buy something for dinner. After eating, Li Yuan began reading through it a second time.

On this second read, Li Yuan started looking at the annotations on the document, and his reading speed increased significantly.

He read all of those annotations.

In Li Yuan's understanding, the vast majority of them were wrong.

They interpreted Heavenly Refining Body through a lens of preconceived notions.

Thinking about it that way, the conclusions they reached couldn't possibly be good.

Those top-tier experts and Grandmasters, because of their own experiences and knowledge...

They actually found Heavenly Refining Body harder to understand.

Having studied other basic cultivation methods for decades or even over a century, their understanding of basic cultivation methods had long since solidified. Reversing those ingrained impressions took a long time.

Since he already understood it, the next step was to put it into practice.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Li Yuan began attempting to circulate and condense Gang Qi.

Everyone in martial arts knew that cultivation required persistent, long-term effort.

Cultivation was a time-consuming and energy-draining endeavor, not something that could be completed in a day or two.

Even if Heavenly Refining Body wasn't that difficult to understand, it would still take over half a year to produce Gang Qi.

But at this moment, relying on the [Martial Recruitment Accelerator] talent, Li Yuan began attempting to condense Gang Qi.

On the surface of his skin, a faint layer of mist appeared.

This mist slightly lifted his undergarments.

In just one hour, Li Yuan succeeded in initially condensing Gang Qi.

In fact, aside from Heavenly Refining Body, many techniques required condensing Gang Qi.

Especially many body-protection arts and defensive techniques.

But Heavenly Refining Body was a basic cultivation method.

A technique that condensed Gang Qi to temper one's own physique—that was truly a first.

And the subtlety of this technique lay precisely here.

With Gang Qi successfully condensed, Li Yuan began to guide it, using it to hone his own physique.

At the same time, his physique also tempered the Gang Qi.

It felt like a mutual interaction and refinement, a joint improvement.

After a moment, his body felt a sharp sting.

This was a warning that his physique was being damaged.

According to Heavenly Refining Body, this was a normal step in practicing this technique.

Next, the Gang Qi and the physique would merge.

Outside the body, a layer of protective Gang Qi would firmly coat it.

At this moment, this layer of Gang Qi would no longer be just a protective barrier.

It would constantly hone the physique, and the physique would constantly refine it in return.

This was somewhat similar to Zhou Tian Dao Yin Technique.

But this basic cultivation method was far beyond what Zhou Tian Dao Yin Technique could compare to.

Both techniques could continuously cycle and temper the physique.

As the Gang Qi and physique gradually improved, the tempering effect also spiraled upward.

Zhou Tian Dao Yin Technique, on the other hand, not only failed to improve but actually became increasingly ordinary as one's martial realm advanced.

Furthermore, Gang Qi inherently had a body-protecting effect.

By practicing this basic cultivation method, one was simultaneously training a top-tier body-protection technique!