For two days straight.
Chen Guan sat cross-legged in the Dilapidated Temple, deepening his sense of qi.
The strand of qi that had once been a hundred times thinner than a hair had now grown more than twice as thick.
But any further, and—
Chen Guan could clearly feel a limit, as if he was already "full."
It was as though his dantian couldn't hold any more.
Chen Guan knew that from this point on, he needed to open up his own dantian.
And on the morning of the third day,
Chen Guan rose from bed feeling refreshed, then went to a nearby stream to wash up.
Afterward, he returned to the Dilapidated Temple and began preparing to open up his dantian.
"According to the strange accounts in the manual, some people are born with broad dantians that can hold spiritual energy as fine as a strand of hair."
Chen Guan sat quietly in the side room, recalling what he had read as he calmed his mind.
"People with such unusual constitutions can usually gather spiritual energy very quickly once they sense qi.
And 'Refining Essence into Qi' means refining the essence of the elements between heaven and earth and transforming it into one's own qi.
For people with these unusual constitutions, their innate starting point is already higher than others'.
Though they may have very low spiritual roots, they still count among the ranks of geniuses."
The more Chen Guan learned, the more he realized how complicated the makeup of geniuses in the Spirit-Ghost World was.
Besides "spiritual roots," certain unusual "constitutions" were also of the utmost importance.
A good constitution could take one's cultivation speed to another level, complementing one's spiritual roots.
His own "Bear-Type Strength" was, in a sense, also a constitution of "Innate Monstrous Strength."
But it didn't seem to help with "opening up the dantian."
Still, innate strength was already quite impressive.
Some manuals had even recorded cases of it.
Some martial artists with Innate Monstrous Strength became astonishingly powerful after cultivating spiritual energy—or internal force—and combining it with their natural strength!
Because their constitutions were strong and their bones and muscles sturdy, their robust meridians and acupoints could store and contain more spiritual energy.
For example, if two "body cultivators" at the same level both infused their fists with spiritual energy and threw a punch,
the one with the stronger constitution could send more spiritual energy into his fist.
The one with the weaker constitution would send less, for fear that the energy would damage his acupoints or something else.
And under ordinary circumstances, spiritual energy didn't necessarily have to be stored in the dantian.
It could be stored throughout the limbs and body.
But the "upper, middle, and lower" dantians were the "main engines," like the heart and brain in the human body. They were part of the central system.
Ordinarily, most "cultivators" stored their spiritual energy there.
No one would risk storing spiritual energy in their acupoints and meridians.
One wrong move, and their arms or legs could be ruined.
Only "body cultivators" with unusual constitutions could rely on their powerful bodies to try opening their meridians and acupoints, awakening the various wonders within them.
The "Big Ears" martial artist from a few years ago, for instance, had risked storing a tiny bit of spiritual energy in his ears to gain hearing beyond that of ordinary people.
And even he couldn't keep this ability "permanently active."
He only used it for a few seconds when needed, then let his ears rest for several days.
Now,
Chen Guan was thinking of trying "Clairaudience" first.
If spiritual energy flowed through the meridians in his ears, he could activate the effects of Clairaudience.
His own big ears seemed quite sturdy, too.
So the next step was to use spiritual energy to open up his dantian and learn to control it.
As long as he could control it, he would have officially entered [Refining Essence into Qi].
He decided to do it.
In silence,
Chen Guan focused, eyes fixed on his nose and nose fixed on his heart, attempting to command the Fire Attribute spiritual energy in his dantian, which sat as immovable as a mountain.
Night.
The Zhao Family, rear courtyard.
Tap, tap...
After several footsteps sounded,
several guards entered the courtyard. They looked toward Patriarch Zhao, who sat before a stone table, and nervously clasped their fists as they reported:
"Master... we still haven't found him..."
"Still haven't found him?"
Patriarch Zhao frowned.
These past few days, he had been restless because of Chen Guan.
He hadn't even gone to the shop to check the accounts that night.
At the end of the day,
though he hadn't cared much for Chen Guan, blood was thicker than water.
Now that his son had really run off, no father could remain unmoved.
"You little brat!"
At that moment, Patriarch Zhao felt mostly hatred, so furious that he couldn't calm himself.
In his eyes, even if he hadn't shown his fifth son much affection, he had still fed and housed him well, raising the boy to be plump and healthy without ever letting him go hungry.
Now it was time for him to contribute, to learn, and then to help shoulder the family's affairs.
And the little bastard had run away?
Seven years of sunk costs, and a father-son bond as fragile as glass.
Merchants valued profit.
Patriarch Zhao felt he'd taken a terrible loss.
"You worthless brat! You worthless brat!"
At first, when Chen Guan had been gone for just a day or two,
Patriarch Zhao had worried a little, thinking perhaps the boy was merely throwing a childish tantrum.
He had even thought that once they found him, he'd have a heart-to-heart with his son.
But now, Patriarch Zhao was truly angry.
"Go to the accounts office and get some silver. Hire some wandering martial artists, then hire some idle folk in Zhennan. Search outside the town!
Even if he dies out there, he's still part of the Zhao Family. Even if he's torn to pieces by wild beasts, bring his remains back to me!"
"Yes..."
The guards didn't dare say more and continued searching.
"Damn... I found my left ear, but it really hurts..."
The following night, deep into the night,
Chen Guan abruptly rose from his cross-legged position, sucking in a breath through his teeth as he rubbed his stinging ear.
A faint trace of blood seeped from the rim of his ear.
"No... no..."
After rubbing it for a while, Chen Guan realized he must have practiced incorrectly.
According to the records on the elements, the ears belonged to "Water."
The tongue and other organs of taste belonged to "Fire."
Using Fire Attribute energy to stimulate his ears meant the five elements were clashing.
"I thought my constitution was unusual, and my ears were strange, so I could give it a try..."
Chen Guan had learned the hard way. One painful lesson was enough to make him understand that the words of the predecessors in the manual had probably been learned the hard way, too.
But the good news was that, after two days, he had learned to control the spiritual energy within his body and advanced from [Qi Sense] to [Refining Essence into Qi].
According to the book, crossing a cultivation stage in four days made him a minor genius.
An ordinary person needed at least two to three years.
Still, Chen Guan knew why he had advanced so quickly: in his previous life, he had already awakened Yin-Yang Eyes and often observed the changes in Yin Attribute energy.
And he had lived through four lives: "reality, old man, Black Bear, Fifth Young Master."
In particular, the sudden transmigrations of his first two lives—and the fact that he had truly felt himself die—
had given Chen Guan a far steadier mind than ordinary people.
That was why he had completed a process that took ordinary people years in just four days.
Riding this wave of cultivation momentum,
Chen Guan thought it over and decided to keep practicing.
But once he did,
he learned what it meant for "no time to pass in the mountains."
In the blink of an eye,
spring turned to autumn, and ten years passed in the human world.
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