Green Zhi Pulp, breaking through to the third level

[Deduction result: restorative medicine may be taken to replenish bodily depletion and losses of vital Qi. Prescription follows: fifty-year-old Green Zhi as the principal ingredient, one portion of purple cloud stone marrow, fo-ti...]

[Supplicating the Heavenly Book to reveal my current cultivation progress.]

"Just as I thought! Even with spirit rice at every meal nourishing my body, my cultivation is still progressing slowly!"

Jiang Yi glanced over "79%" and could not help shaking his head.

"If I don't use Tiger-Wolf Medicine to stimulate a breakthrough, I really might have to slog on until winter begins next month, barely scraping together eighty or ninety percent and brushing the edge of the third level of Qi Refining."

He had never been the indecisive sort who looked forward and back. His gaze immediately sharpened, and he reached for the earthenware jar.

Before using it, though, he still had to go through the procedure.

Ripples spread across the golden paper, like a pebble falling into a placid lake.

"Now it's settled."

Having received an affirmative answer, Jiang Yi finally felt at ease.

He took two portions of medicinal paste from the earthenware jar and applied them over his heart and lower abdomen respectively.

Then he gently rubbed them with his palms, melting them with the heat of his True Qi so that their fierce medicinal potency gradually seeped through his skin and flesh, burrowing into his sinews and bones.

"It certainly lives up to the name Tiger-Wolf Medicine!"

Jiang Yi's brows knitted tightly. In less than half an incense stick's time, his whole body had turned red and burning hot, like a cooked shrimp.

The melted medicinal paste was like scalding oil poured over his entire body!

In an instant, a fiery pain rose from every inch of his skin.

It was particularly intense over his heart and lower abdomen: the former throbbed like a pounding drum, while the latter felt branded by a hot iron.

"A good thing! It means it's working!"

Jiang Yi comforted himself, trying hard to forget the torment afflicting his body and skin.

The first level of Qi Refining transformed the sinews, the second transformed the bones,

and this third level transformed the blood.

As the saying went, the sinews were the bones' clothing, and the bones were the blood's root.

Only when the sinews, flesh, skin, and membranes were strong and tough could they wrap each bone like a well-fitted robe, protecting it from the shock of tremendous force.

Likewise, only hard bones and a sturdy body could continuously produce fresh blood, allowing a mortal physique to flourish with vitality.

Within the Qi Refining realm, the changes at every level echoed one another.

"At the third level of Qi Refining, Qi boils like fire, scouring the Hundred Bones; marrow produces fresh blood, and a hundred illnesses cannot invade... at the fourth level, the organs are transformed and the viscera refined.

"Once the fourth level is perfected, I can open the Inner Mansion of the Origin Gate and gather and refine the Spirit Chance of heaven and earth."

Jiang Yi sat in meditation and circulated his cultivation method through a celestial circuit, absorbing and digesting the Tiger-Wolf medicinal paste.

As the medicinal power spread and became increasingly pronounced, he gradually felt his True Qi, thick as hemp rope, turn searing hot, like red-hot steel needles.

Every push, every measure circulated, stabbed him with pain!

Moving it through the Hundred Bones and along the celestial circuit had actually become torture!

"Whew!"

Jiang Yi endured the agonizing bite of those piercing steel needles, breathing in and out without pause.

Two streams of white smoke blasted fiercely from his mouth and nose, extending and contracting like long snakes.

All hundred and eight thousand pores on his skin opened, wreathed in clouds of heat.

Every time Jiang Yi completed a Greater Celestial Circuit, his True Qi grew by ten percent.

By the end of the thirtieth grand circulation, his body rumbled as though a stone roller were rolling within it, its might extraordinary.

"It really has improved!"

The light in Jiang Yi's eyes grew ever stronger, almost like blazing flames, while his youthful face flushed crimson with intense excitement.

Clearly, the Tiger-Wolf Medicine's potency had been driven to its utmost, stimulating his entire body into an exceptional state.

When his physique could swell no further, as though held taut to its limit, he abruptly drew a deep breath. Wild wind surged through the cramped room, making the door rattle and sway.

"My cultivation has advanced greatly! The Tiger-Wolf medicinal paste is extraordinarily effective!"

Another quarter of an hour passed before Jiang Yi slowly brought his practice to a close.

The Qi and Blood released from his body roared like dragons and tigers, blasting out layer upon layer of ripples through the air, almost shaking apart the shack he had rented for five hundred Talisman Money!

Crack, crack.

The two portions of medicinal paste stuck to his skin had been baked dry and hard.

Caught in the disturbance, they broke into fragments with a crackle and fell off on their own.

**Clang!**

The tottering door crashed to the ground. Wind and snow howled inside, only to meet a surge of fiercely blazing, masculine Qi and Blood and vanish without a trace.

Jiang Yi carefully experienced his mortal body after its blood transformation, vaguely sensing something like a seedling sprouting, renewed from top to bottom.

Moved by the feeling, he softly recited:

"Only when the mortal shell is shed does truth appear; within the furnace, a free self is tempered;

"A thousand hardships become stepping-stones; an inch of spiritual light pierces bewildering dust... I suppose I've come to understand why my old boss liked putting on literary airs."

Jiang Yi smiled self-mockingly and stepped outside. Snowflakes like cotton flock drifted thickly down, all melted away by his vigorous Qi and Blood, blazing like a furnace.

Holding the jade bottle in his right hand, he tipped back his head and drank the prepared Green Zhi Pulp.

It was icy as it entered his throat, its taste rather like turtle jelly, faintly bitter with a returning sweetness.

Once all the sticky, pulpy Bait Medicine had entered his stomach, the oppressive, parched heat filling his limbs and Hundred Bones was swept away in an instant.

Jiang Yi abruptly grew still.

His surging, masculine, blazing Qi and Blood became like a furnace with its lid closed, that boiling heat drawing back little by little.

The True Qi strengthened by applying the Tiger-Wolf medicinal paste and forcibly squeezing his sinews, bones, blood, and marrow was like a red-hot knife plunged into water, quenched with a hiss.

From its earlier insubstantial instability, it gradually became solid and rounded, firmer instead.

Such a domineering use of medicine, ravaging his own body, had actually neither injured his foundation nor harmed his Dao Path in the slightest.

"Another step along the long road to becoming human material."

Jiang Yi settled the karmic debt and erased the tiny tadpole-like characters, then posed his question.

[Deduction result: third level of Qi Refining (11%).]