Ninefold Refinement Enters the Ranks

To the Holy Demon Embryo, this was an almost instinctive habit, like how people were born knowing how to breathe.

The ability to directly absorb the endless primordial energy of heaven and earth for his own use alone allowed Chen Wu to leave everyone else far behind on the path of martial cultivation.

Not to mention the many advantages granted by his two bodies and three souls.

While others desperately tempered their blood and qi and painstakingly condensed true essence, Chen Wu could directly absorb the primordial energy of heaven and earth, nourishing his body and condensing true essence.

If he advanced to the first rank or even higher realms, he might return to the origin and recreate Reverse-Returning Demon Origin.

At the thought of this, Chen Wu warned himself. He had to maintain the cautious mindset he had cultivated over many years.

As the saying went, "A towering building rises from level ground." What Chen Wu needed most now was to lay a solid foundation for himself.

With the advantages of the Holy Demon Embryo, Chen Wu directly skipped the stage where others had to cultivate day and night to temper their bodies and take Qi-Condensing Pills.

The powerful soul perception and talent enhancement granted by his three souls allowed him to effortlessly sense the existence of the primordial energy of heaven and earth and helped him deduce cultivation techniques.

His constitution had transformed into the Holy Demon Embryo, and his flesh displayed an extreme hunger, swallowing the primordial energy of heaven and earth like a whale gulping down the sea and a tiger devouring its prey, frantically turning it into nourishment for himself.

In just a few breaths, countless streams of true qi coursed through his meridians and gathered above his qi sea.

Under Chen Wu's control, they were refined into a "true qi source seed."

To become an official martial artist, finding one's sense of qi was only the first step.

After completing this step, students refined a "true qi source seed" by cultivating techniques, tempering their blood and qi, and taking the Qi-Condensing Pills rationed by the state.

After that, they only needed to repeatedly refine this source seed. Once it reached a certain level, they could use it to open their qi sea and officially step into the ranks of martial artists.

As for these two steps of martial cultivation, there was plenty to be said about their intricacies.

Martial artists refined their "true qi source seeds" multiple times before using them to open their qi seas.

The number of times one refined true essence determined the size of the qi sea they would open in the future.

In theory, a true qi source seed could be refined nine times, known as "Ninefold Essence Refinement."

This also meant that the more times one refined their essence, the greater their advantage would be in the later stages.

However, no one had ever truly reached that end.

The reason was that the further one progressed in essence refinement, the more time and resources it required, both increasing exponentially.

There had once been an exceptionally gifted examinee who had already completed six rounds of essence refinement before entering China Martial University, one of the top three universities in the Republic.

To forge an unprecedented martial path, he resolved to complete all nine rounds of essence refinement before entering the martial artist realm.

Yet after spending three years at university and consuming a vast amount of resources, he had only barely completed the seventh refinement, greatly delaying his cultivation progress.

Meanwhile, the people who had entered university alongside him had all become ninth-rank martial artists, and there were even quite a few eighth-rank martial artists among them.

One had to know that on the path of martial cultivation, one step late could mean falling behind at every step.

His classmates had long since entered the ranks and taken on numerous missions through their martial artist identities, accumulating resources and exchanging them for good cultivation techniques at university.

In contrast, because he had remained a reserve martial artist, he had been unable to take on missions during his first three years at university.

He had wasted three golden years for nothing, and due to insufficient resources, he had failed to exchange for a cultivation technique suited to him.

A fine genius had thus faded into the crowd.

It should be noted that refined true essence could only be put to use after completing at least three rounds of refinement.

Before that, one was merely an ordinary person a little stronger than others.

Even after completing three refinements, without opening the qi sea, the true qi within the true qi source seed decreased with every use.

Once it was exhausted, the true qi source seed would wither and disappear. One would have to start over, condense true essence anew, and refine it again.

Therefore, even three-refinement reserve martial artists would only use true essence in critical situations.

Only those at the fourth refinement and above had any surplus to spare.

The martial arts examination took place in the lowest-grade secret realms specially prepared for reserve martial artists and secured by the state.

The ferocious beasts placed in such secret realms were also opponents that current martial arts examinees could handle.

Yet even so, every year across the country, anywhere from several to over a dozen examinees still died within those secret realms.

Thus, for examinees who had completed three refinements, the martial arts examination was truly a difficult choice.

Choosing to open the qi sea after three rounds of essence refinement would certainly allow one to enter the ranks of martial artists, quickly develop combat strength, and achieve good results in the martial arts examination.

But the price was sacrificing one's future potential.

Choosing to refine one's essence beyond the third round could grant an advantage that peers found impossible to reach, but it could also greatly drag down one's cultivation progress and affect one's martial arts examination results.

It was even possible that, in the end, one would accomplish nothing at all.

As for that, Chen Wu's response was: I want it all!

Since he had been given another life, he would scale the highest peaks, imagine what others dared not imagine, do what others dared not do, and behold the magnificent beauty atop that summit.

"If I cannot complete the unprecedented Ninefold Essence Refinement, wouldn't that be a waste of the Holy Demon Embryo's supreme talent?"

As for the resources required for essence refinement, they were no problem at all for someone like him, who could directly absorb the primordial energy of heaven and earth.

Having made up his mind, Chen Wu immediately sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and began cultivating according to the special breathing method in the cultivation technique within his mind.

The technique Chen Wu was currently cultivating was the Basic Internal Art uniformly distributed by the state.

Though this technique was called basic, it had been created by the state after drawing upon the strengths of countless schools. It was distributed free to everyone during middle school and was the most balanced and orthodox technique.

The reason for doing this was to prevent students aspiring to martial arts from casually buying some cultivation technique off the street, practicing recklessly without understanding its principles, damaging their foundations, and affecting their martial cultivation.

The government's thinking was that rather than letting students blindly practice on their own, it was better for the state to provide a unified textbook to schools, which would then hand it over to martial arts teachers.

Finally, the teachers would teach it to the students.

This not only minimized the risks of martial training, but also made it easier for teachers to guide their students' cultivation.

Even situations such as transferring schools would not pose a problem.

Chen Wu greatly approved of this approach.

It was like using the same mathematics textbook: some people could score full marks, while others could only score a dozen points or so.

Regardless of the scores, it at least ensured the accessibility and fairness of education.

This cultivation technique had been tested over so many years without any major problems. Even the children of high-rank martial artists practiced it, which indirectly proved that it truly was the best technique for building one's foundation.

Moreover, this technique contained cultivation methods from gathering qi and refining essence all the way to the eighth-rank realm.

In the extreme event that one could not obtain any other cultivation technique, it could at least help a cultivator enter the eighth-rank realm.

According to the memories of his former self, before awakening the Holy Demon Embryo, he could only hold on for three or four breaths at most. The moment he guided a thread of qi sense above his qi sea, his entire body would ache, and he could not persist any longer.