With the Fire Marrow Blazing Crystal, Xiao Hua's cultivation method and speed naturally differed from everyone else's. After his "failure" at Foundation Establishment, he had forcibly entered the unprecedented thirteenth layer of Qi Cultivation through the Prairie Fire Cultivation Method. In just over two hundred days, he broke through another bottleneck and entered the so-called fourteenth layer of Qi Cultivation. Afterward, he spent more than a year refining the last remnants of flame within his meridians, reaching the bottleneck of the fifteenth layer of Qi Cultivation. Then, he returned to East Ridge Medicine Garden, used the second Fire Marrow Blazing Crystal, and broke into the fifteenth layer of Qi Cultivation. Only after drawing the flames into his meridians did he emerge from the medicine garden again. As he finished reading the remaining records from Thunder Palace, he also raised his realm to the late stage of the fifteenth layer of Qi Cultivation. He believed that in less than a year, he would calmly step into the sixteenth layer of Qi Cultivation without a ripple. Yet as his realm rose, the speed at which he refined the Fire Marrow Blazing Crystal was slowing.
Still, Xiao Hua did not mind. He knew that the speed at which he could truly refine it had not slowed; rather, advancement became more difficult as his realm rose. Breaking through from the tenth layer of Qi Cultivation to the eleventh would certainly take longer than advancing from the eleventh layer of Qi Cultivation to the twelfth. Thus, he peacefully enjoyed the pleasures of cultivation. Naturally, Xiao Hua was still in the Qi Cultivation stage and possessed no pressure. Moreover, he had cultivated the Concealment of Heaven's Guise technique. With only a slight concealment, he appeared no different from an ordinary disciple at the late twelfth layer