Heavenly Stars Might

Under the guidance of scientific theories, how many steps does it take to create a cultivation technique?

The answer is four steps.

Step one: measure the number of human muscles and their positional distribution.

Step two: through massive amounts of practice, make every single divine form movement correspond one-to-one with the muscles being exercised, commonly known as feeding data.

Step three: select the best exercise regimen for each muscle from the data.

Step four: integrate all the optimal solutions.

Yang Ning had figured out step one long before he began cultivating, and spending the remaining three steps demonstrating the twelve divine forms took Yang Ning two days.

Since both step three and step four were pure calculations, Yang Ning mobilized the computational power of the Spirit Realm and yielded results in less than a second.

After all, the number of human muscles was no more than six hundred thirty--nine; even if one set a movement for every single muscle, it would only be six hundred thirty-nine movements. As for the calculation speed of the Spirit Realm, Yang Ning had yet to see its upper limit!

In fact, the new cultivation technique created by Yang Ning did not have as many as six hundred thirty-nine movements, but only three hundred sixty-five.

Because many movements exercised more than just one muscle, linking three to five movements together could exercise a large swathe of muscle groups.

Because the quantity happened to correspond to the number of heavenly stars, Yang Ning named it Heavenly Stars Might, and according to the principle of progressing from easy to difficult, divided it into seven tiers.

Just the first four tiers of Heavenly Stars Might were already on the same grade as the Twelve Divine Forms, while for the remaining three tiers, tiers five and six required some complex equipment, and tier seven required electric shocks—though of course this was an immortal-cultivating world, so Yang Ning used a localized term called lightning power.

As for gravity, it could actually be used at any tier, but currently Yang Ning lacked the resources to create a high-gravity environment, so he had to leave that until after getting off the ship.

He did not even plan to practice tiers six and seven on the ship; it was too unpresentable, and the first five tiers were enough for him to practice for half a month.

Well, actually he was also a bit superstitious, in case the formation really could isolate the Primordial Chaos Qi, so he also chose to cultivate on the deck!

As for whether exercising together with everyone else on the deck would expose him, after trying it for two days Yang Ning was certain that it would not.

Because everyone was busy with their own exercise, absolutely no one cared what anyone else was practicing.

Moreover, not only was Yang Ning's mind running wild—Yang Ning had originally thought that creating his own cultivation technique was already preposterous enough, but as it turned out, everyone was creating their own movements during their spare time from cultivation.

Their creative ideas leaned toward whatever looked the coolest, which was far more preposterous than Yang Ning's.

As for Wei Daocheng, he stayed in the cultivation room year-round and never came out.

It was purely hands-off, relying entirely on self-discipline.

Yang Ning had still worried that Zhao Bu would stir up trouble on the deck and delay his cultivation, but he ended up finding that he had worried too much.

In that small clique of his, he was the only one who had stepped through the threshold of the breathing technique, so he felt thoroughly insecure on the deck. Every day he would punch through the divine form technique once like doing a chore and then bolt, refusing to linger on the deck a moment longer.

His forms weren't even standard, and Yang Ning deeply doubted whether doing it like this actually had any exercise effect.

The crucial point was that he wasn't the only one playing like this; among the people who had started the breathing technique, thirty to forty percent were like this.

As time went on and more and more people stepped through the threshold of the breathing technique, the number of slackers also grew increasingly large. In fact, there were some whom Yang Ning only saw come on the very first day, and after that they never came again.

Thinking about it, it made sense: they were all twelve- or thirteen-year-old kids. If left unsupervised, who could endure the hardship of cultivation?

If not for the assistance of the Spirit Realm, with Deep Blue monitoring his physical data at every single moment and allowing him to see his own progress at every single moment, Yang Ning wouldn't have been able to persist either.

Of course, it also owed to the fact that Yang Ning was rolled out from a 996 society. He could risk his life working for that salary of a few thousand yuan, and what was he doing now? This was immortal cultivation right now!

So wasn't it just a matter of grinding himself to the bone as long as he didn't cultivate himself to death!

At my age, how could I possibly sleep!

Besides, cultivating like this really didn't kill him; instead, his body grew stronger and stronger!

The first five tiers of Heavenly Stars Might first laid a foundation and then strengthened the entire body. The very first tier strengthened the stomach and small intestine; after all, energy was neither created nor destroyed out of thin air, and for the physical body to grow stronger through cultivation, it relied on the nutrition provided by food.

Being able to eat meant the speed of cultivation would naturally be fast, and eating much while digesting fast, coupled with a rigorous cultivation plan, made the growth rate naturally lightning-fast.

By the fourteenth day on the ship, which was the third day of practicing Heavenly Stars Might, Yang Ning discovered that his speed had already broken through ten seconds per hundred meters, arriving at 9.86 seconds, and his height had reached 1.64 meters.

On the sixteenth day, a hundred meters required only 8.52 seconds, and after activating the Seven-Day Breathing Technique to strengthen his bodily functions, it plummeted even further to 7.98 seconds!

This was ultimately an immortal-cultivating world. In his past life, humans had to expend countless mental power just to advance 0.01 seconds, but in this world, they surpassed it with ultimate ease.

It was as if the human body had no limit.

Twelve meters per second—how terrifying.

Coupled with his 0.13-second reaction speed close to human limits, his vision of 2.2, and his flexible body after exercising the divine form technique, even if someone were to stand within seven paces right now holding a gun against him, he could dodge and counter-assault the opponent before they pulled the trigger.

Clearly, in the eyes of cultivators, within seven paces, the fist is faster!

Of course, if the gun were in Yang Ning's hands, that would be a different story. His arms could withstand firearms with heavier recoil, and the greater the recoil, the faster the bullet's flight speed, naturally making dodging it even more difficult.

On the eighteenth day, Yang Ning gained a little companion by his side: Ning Rong. After being moved to the front to listen for a few days, her breathing technique had also crossed the threshold.

Yang Ning had originally tried to lead Xun Hu to cultivate properly; after all, everyone else was too lazy, and if you rolled just a little bit you could surpass countless people.

Yet Xun Hu preferred making friends and playing politics, saying that being too much of a workaholic made it easy for others to alienate him, and moreover his royal father had also told him that cultivation was not about fighting and killing, but about human relationships and worldly sophistication.

Yang Ning couldn't out-talk her father, so he had no choice but to let the matter drop.

Unexpectedly, Ning Rong was actually able to endure this hardship, and she was extremely obedient, doing whatever she was told, going to sleep whenever she was told to go to sleep, which made Yang Ning look at her with a certain degree of astonishment.

Thinking back to the empresses produced by the Ning family—each one possessed a resilient personality and managed her husband into total submission.

Now this was what you called genetic advantage! What use was being born an imperial prince or a bloodline of the Grand Progenitor if you were just afraid of death, lazy, and gluttonous? Having a strong, competitive personality, and being able to endure hardship and toil, made for a superior bloodline!

Yang Ning picked out the parts of Heavenly Stars Might related to digestive functions, named it Golden Cooking Jade Feast Art, and prepared to teach it to Ning Rong.

Yet after studying it, he discovered that without jade slips to impart the technique or the assistance of the Spirit Realm's cell-level control, getting this cultivation technique across the threshold would be as difficult as ascending to heaven; by the time they got off the ship she probably still wouldn't know how to use it, so he had no choice but to prune it again and again, ultimately forging an Elephant Eating Art.

The effects of the Elephant Eating Art were dozens of times weaker than the Golden Cooking Jade Feast Art, but once practiced to great accomplishment, it could still enhance the digestive speed by two to three times and double the cultivation speed.

By the way, he also established a positive feedback mechanism for Ning Rong through physical testing.

Every day, Ning Rong could test her fist strength, grip strength, pulling strength, speed, and reaction speed right here with Yang Ning.

Later on, Ning Rong chose the sword as her weapon, so he added tests for sword-drawing speed, sword-striking speed, and sword-swinging speed.

With data to support her and being able to see her own progress every day, Ning Rong's enthusiasm for cultivation, which was already not weak, was now massively heightened.

It was only a pity that there were no sparring activities or the like on the ship, otherwise the young lady could definitely have astounded everyone with a single feat.

Yang Ning wasn't doing entirely good deeds either. His cultivation method had undergone heavy demonic modifications and required a local cultivator as a reference, so as to let him have a clear grasp of his own strength, and having a reference also saved him from skewing too far off course.