At this point, Li Xingkong could proudly say that he counted as a Qi Refining cultivator. Although, for now, he really could only refine qi; in every other respect, he was still just an ordinary person at the limits of human ability.
But the sensation of absorbing energy every moment of the day made him realize that he really was refining qi, not imagining things out of thin air.
"So I've gotten started with the Sun and Moon Qi Refining Method, right?"
Li Xingkong rubbed the back of his neck, savored the feeling for a moment, and then spoke to the system.
"More or less. You've already completed the hardest step."
The system was somewhat gratified too. To it, this was like playing a raising sim and seeing its protagonist finally earn his first achievement.
Li Xingkong couldn't wait to go out and throw a few punches and kicks to see how strong he had become. He ran to an open space and clenched his fist, wanting to see how much strength he had now.
He threw a punch, but nothing unusual happened. It was just like before, except that he put so much force into it that it made a faint sound as it cut through the air.
He stood there for a while without feeling any invisible force empowering him. He also tried punching the wall beside him, but the blow did no damage to the wall. Instead, his own hand stung terribly.
"Haven't I already started refining qi?"
Li Xingkong looked like a fool at that moment.
"Are you stupid? You've only constructed one meridian. Your qi sea has energy in it now, but do you know how to use it?"
The system was a little speechless. He had only just gotten started with Qi Refining, so why did it feel as though he had damaged his brain while constructing his meridian?
"Oh, right!"
Li Xingkong began to understand. Right now, he was like a human-shaped power bank: he was storing electricity, but he had no device to use it.
"So next, you need to construct the meridians in the places you'll need, according to your own needs. Only then can you improve your body and truly begin Qi Refining."
Li Xingkong pondered the system's words. His abilities were basically no different from an ordinary person's, and the fundamental nature of his body had yet to change.
"But there is a way, according to the thinking of ancient immortal cultivation civilizations."
After looking through its information for a while, the system came up with a way to use the energy in his body ahead of time.
"You can connect your qi sea to your stomach first. Then you can use your body's existing digestive energy supply system-your blood vessels-to distribute the energy."
Although this method couldn't bring out its full power, it would still allow Li Xingkong to perform far beyond an ordinary person's abilities.
Without delay, Li Xingkong followed the system's advice and constructed a meridian between his dantian and his stomach.
He simply set a small meridian circulating according to the meridian diagram, and the feeling immediately changed.
He felt the energy in his qi sea begin flowing toward his stomach. As blood coursed through his vessels, it carried the pure energy to every part of his body.
The feeling of being brimming with energy made Li Xingkong feel like a superman, as though every blood vessel in his body were filled with adrenaline.
Forget an Olympic drug test-what urine? That was petroleum!
He decided to try it out. He walked over to a pillar and gripped the middle of it with one hand, at about waist height.
Once his hand was firmly around it, Li Xingkong exerted himself and lifted his entire body using that hand alone.
This was brute force sending bricks flying. From a physical standpoint, the position in which he lifted himself formed a purely force-consuming lever.
As he exerted his wrist, his whole body swung up and down, supported by the hand gripping the pillar. If anyone else had seen Li Xingkong like this, they would probably have cried out that gravity didn't exist.
After a few movements, Li Xingkong landed steadily. He still hadn't had his fill; he felt as though he could do even more.
Li Xingkong then tried standing beside the wall of his house. He reached out his left hand and hooked his little finger lightly into a gap between the bricks.
Normally, there was no way a person could lift themselves using only one little finger, but Li Xingkong managed it.
Like someone using the lightness skills on television, he raised his entire body using only the strength of his little finger.
Li Xingkong thought of the countless wuxia dramas he had watched on television. Now he could easily perform many moves he had only ever seen on TV.
For instance, he could do moves like the scorpion's backward climb up a wall and run across rooftops and up walls. As for moving and maneuvering, the current Li Xingkong was almost on par with Lara from Tomb Raider and the assassins from Assassin's Creed. What Li Xingkong lacked was experience; in terms of physique, he was even a cut above them.
Having gained such abilities, he naturally couldn't calm down for quite a while. Li Xingkong had already started running around his farm.
During his first few steps, he failed to control the energy in his body, and instead used so much force that he jumped high into the air and took a nasty fall. Afterward, Li Xingkong gradually grew accustomed to it, and his steps became lighter. With one stride, he could leap a great distance; in just a few steps, he covered about fifty meters.
After running for a while, Li Xingkong also felt his body growing tired. With his current physique, although he had energy, his tendons, bones, and muscles had not been nourished by Spiritual Qi, so his body was naturally still that of an ordinary person. After being overclocked for so long, it was bound to grow exhausted.
A simple analogy was that a person couldn't work for twenty-four hours straight just by eating constantly; they had to rest for a while. The cells throughout his body were now like someone running while receiving a glucose drip. Although they had all the energy they needed, they really had reached the point where they couldn't take it anymore.
He dragged his exhausted body back into the house, but his physical fatigue clearly couldn't restrain the joy in Li Xingkong's heart.
Lying in bed, Li Xingkong was still savoring the exhilaration he had just felt. The exhaustion in his body made him want to sleep, but his excitement kept him awake no matter what he did.
Since he couldn't sleep, Li Xingkong didn't force it. He remembered that he had something else to play with: that particle of Spiritual Qi.
He controlled the Spiritual Qi and sent it roaming around inside his body, looking everywhere. One moment, he watched blood flow through his vessels like a boundless river of blood; the next, he watched how his muscles rested and expelled waste gases. No biology teacher could have taught him these things so directly, yet here they were, vividly laid out before his eyes, with nothing hidden from view.
The various elements inside his cells were like warships coming and going through the universe. They made contact and reacted with one another in the air, and the sight was enough to make a person forget everything else.
Sensing the vastness within his body and the tininess of the Spiritual Qi particle, Li Xingkong thought of a question.
"System, Spiritual Qi is so tiny. How long would it take to transform my body?"
Compared with the size of the Spiritual Qi, his body was obviously enormous. The ratio between their volumes had to start in the hundreds of millions.
"Actually, in a normal immortal cultivation civilization, Spiritual Qi has generally already spread throughout the entire known world. Your situation is special, after all."
The system was quite emotional about it too. This was also its first time encountering a world without Spiritual Qi, so it was a new experience for it as well. Not every world required painstakingly making Spiritual Qi by hand at the start.
"So is Qi Refining this hard for everyone else too?"
Now that other worlds had come up, Li Xingkong couldn't help feeling curious. He wanted to know how long Qi Refining took for geniuses in immortal cultivation civilizations.
"Emm, exceptionally gifted people probably take three to five days to refine qi. Even the most ordinary people take only a little over a month."
The system gave him an answer that startled Li Xingkong. As he saw it, he would need decades of Qi Refining before he could hope to reach Foundation Establishment, so others shouldn't be that much faster.
"Why? Why are they so fast?"
Li Xingkong couldn't understand. Was he a dullard?
The system laughed. "They only need to know how to practice. They don't need to know what Spiritual Qi is, why the cultivation method's circulation route was designed that way, or what principles the method works on."
"When you learned to use a computer, how long did it take you? If I remember correctly, it only took you one class period to go from first using a computer in the computer room to beating the AI in Red Alert."
After listening to the system's explanation, Li Xingkong understood. He was essentially the one building the computer, while most people in the other worlds the system mentioned were merely the ones using it.
What theory did you need to know to use a computer? None at all. As long as you had hands, you could do it.