He had rested enough on the high-speed train.
After Li Yuan returned home, he did not lie down to rest again.
He took out the flash drive and inserted it into his computer.
Inside the flash drive was a PDF document.
Its filename was the cultivation method Xia Zhao had mentioned earlier, "Heavenly Refining Body."
Xia Zhao had explained this cultivation method quite clearly.
"Heavenly Refining Body" was a foundational cultivation method that countless powerful experts had once pursued, willing to risk their lives to obtain it.
Yet once they truly got their hands on it, these experts discovered a major problem.
They could not make sense of it. It could even be said that they could not understand its contents at all.
In their understanding, the content described in this cultivation method was simply wrong.
Perhaps the copy of "Heavenly Refining Body" they had obtained was fake.
Or perhaps all the rumors surrounding it were false.
The powerful effects of "Heavenly Refining Body" simply did not exist.
Li Yuan did not waste his energy dwelling on such matters. He would know the truth after reading it himself.
Opening the document, Li Yuan began reading this foundational cultivation method.
The contents described by the method were somewhat obscure. Even Li Yuan found them difficult to comprehend.
He needed to combine them with his thoughts and simulate cultivation scenarios in his mind.
The two had to proceed in tandem for him to understand their meaning.
There were also many annotations in the document, presumably left behind by Xia Zhao.
They recorded some of her thoughts and interpretations.
For his first read-through, Li Yuan hid all the annotations and looked only at the original text.
Only after he had read it through completely would he examine those notes himself, lest they mislead him down the wrong path.
It was nine in the morning when Li Yuan returned home.
By the time he finished reading the document, it was already evening.
Over eight hours, nearly nine in total, Li Yuan felt completely immersed in it.
The content of "Heavenly Refining Body" truly was difficult to understand.
Reading it felt more like studying an even more difficult version of the Cloud Extreme Fist.
For an ordinary person to read a single page, they would need at least half a day to digest it, and even then they would often misunderstand it.
Yet in these nine hours, Li Yuan had already read through "Heavenly Refining Body" once.
He did not dare claim that his understanding was entirely correct, but based on what he understood, there was nothing erroneous about this "Heavenly Refining Body."
This was an exquisite and profound cultivation method!
After reading it through once, Li Yuan had not yet seen through all of its mysteries.
But from his own understanding, its greatest profundity 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 have been able to understand this part as well.
But once they went deeper, they could no longer comprehend it.
According to "Heavenly Refining Body," Gang Qi tempered the body, while the body also tempered the Gang Qi.
In other words, the physique and Gang Qi were meant to temper each other.
The two needed to improve in tandem.
Others could not understand this point at all.
This was also why they believed the cultivation method was flawed.
To them, using the physique to temper Gang Qi was clearly self-harm.
Gang Qi had no physical form. If one used their own body to temper it, would that not injure the body itself?
And this was where the key point emerged.
The reason this foundational cultivation method was named "Heavenly Refining Body" was that it sought to completely unite Gang Qi with one's physique.
Cultivating according to this method would indeed cause damage to the body.
Those damaged areas were precisely where Gang Qi came into play.
Gang Qi transformed into armor attached to the body, coexisting with flesh and blood to form protection.
Once cultivated to great mastery, Gang Qi and the physical body would completely merge, forming a Gang Body!
Upon seeing this, Li Yuan understood why it had been so highly sought after.
With such powerful effects, no ordinary cultivation method was even qualified to compare with it.
Conventional foundational cultivation methods strengthened the physique on three levels: cells, bones, and fascia.
"Heavenly Refining Body" took an entirely different path from other foundational cultivation methods.
From a certain perspective, "Heavenly Refining Body" was more like a cheating cultivation method.
By cultivating this method, with Gang Qi involved, one's physique would attain strength far beyond that of martial artists at the same realm.
For others to achieve the same degree of physical strength, they would likely need to be an entire major grade higher!
A Fifth-Rank Martial Artist possessing an ultimate physique comparable to that of a Sixth Grade martial artist sounded like pure fantasy.
He went downstairs to buy something for dinner. After eating, Li Yuan began reading it through a second time.
During this second read, Li Yuan began examining the annotations in the document, and his reading speed increased considerably.
Li Yuan read every one of those notes.
In Li Yuan's understanding, the vast majority of the annotations were wrong.
They interpreted "Heavenly Refining Body" through preconceived notions.
With that mindset, the conclusions they eventually reached could not possibly be any good.
Those top experts and Grandmasters, because of their own experiences and accumulated knowledge—
—found "Heavenly Refining Body" even harder to understand.
They had studied other foundational cultivation methods for decades, perhaps even more than a century.
Their understanding of foundational cultivation methods had long since solidified. Even overturning their established impressions would take a great deal of time.
Now that he understood it, the next step was to cultivate it in practice.
Sitting cross-legged on his bed, Li Yuan began attempting to circulate the method and condense Gang Qi.
Everyone in martial cultivation knew that it required long-term persistence.
Cultivation consumed an immense amount of time and energy. It was not something that could be accomplished in a day or two.
Even if "Heavenly Refining Body" was not so difficult to comprehend, cultivating Gang Qi would still take more than half a year.
But at this moment, relying on the [Martial Recruitment Accelerator] Talents, Li Yuan began attempting to condense Gang Qi.
A faint layer of mist appeared over the surface of his skin.
This layer of mist slightly lifted his close-fitting clothes.
In just over an hour, Li Yuan successfully condensed Gang Qi for the first time.
In truth, aside from "Heavenly Refining Body," many cultivation methods required the condensation of Gang Qi.
This was especially true of many body-protection arts and defensive techniques.
But "Heavenly Refining Body" was a foundational cultivation method.
A method that condensed Gang Qi to temper one's physique truly was something Li Yuan had never seen before.
And the mystery of this cultivation method lay precisely here.
After successfully condensing Gang Qi, Li Yuan began guiding it to temper his physique.
At the same time, his physique also polished and refined the Gang Qi.
It gave him the feeling that the two were interacting, adapting, and improving together.
A moment later, his body felt a stabbing pain.
This was a warning that his physique had been damaged.
According to "Heavenly Refining Body," this was a normal step in cultivating the method.
Next, Gang Qi and the physique would merge.
Outside his body, a layer of protective Gang Qi would firmly cover him.
At that point, this layer of Gang Qi would no longer merely protect him.
It would constantly temper his physique, while his physique would constantly refine it as well.
This was somewhat similar to the Zhou Tian Dao Yin Technique.
But this foundational cultivation method was far beyond anything the Zhou Tian Dao Yin Technique could compare to.
Both methods could cycle continuously, tempering the physique without end.
As Gang Qi and the physique gradually improved, the tempering effect would rise in a spiral.
Meanwhile, not only would the Zhou Tian Dao Yin Technique fail to improve, its effects would instead become increasingly ordinary as one's martial realm rose.
Furthermore, Gang Qi itself had a protective effect.
By practicing this foundational cultivation method, he was simultaneously practicing a top-tier body-protection art!
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