"Cock-a-doodle-doo~~~"
Before dawn had even broken, rooster crows were already rising one after another.
In the courtyard of Ju'an Pavilion, Ji Yuan, who had been reading, finally realized that an entire night had passed.
During the stretch between the third watch and fourth watch of the night, Ji Yuan had continuously practiced the Heaven and Earth Transformation of the Qi Guiding Technique, allowing his body to be nourished by spiritual qi in every aspect.
During this process, Ji Yuan had also tried gathering qi with the Seal of Holding once. This time, however, he chose to disperse all the spiritual qi before absorbing it with the Qi Guiding Technique.
This method gathered a high concentration of spiritual qi within the small courtyard. While the Qi Guiding Technique's efficiency rose greatly, Ji Yuan himself felt no pain or burden whatsoever.
Still, this method had its limits in the end. Or rather, Ji Yuan believed that his current body was ultimately limited.
By the fourth watch of the night, Ji Yuan could feel that the spiritual qi his body could hold had reached its limit. Spiritual qi accumulated throughout his body, slowly tempering it at an extremely low efficiency.
Ji Yuan was helpless about this as well. He only had one Qi Guiding Technique and no Qi Refining Techniques at all. This was all he could do, yet it was already far, far better than gathering qi with the Seal of Holding.
So afterward, he picked up the bamboo slips again and read another book related to cultivation.
These bamboo slips concerned various arts. Most of their content covered common categories of techniques, such as the Five Elements Category, Yin-Yang Category, lightning arts, strange Cursing Techniques, Illusory Arts, and certain Special Unusual Arts, such as entering dreams and Soul Pulling, as well as miraculous methods like Summon Deity. They also mentioned matters related to the Path of Gods, including incense-offering deities and Mountain and Water Deities.
But the book itself amounted to only two volumes of bamboo slips. No matter how tiny the writing was, its content was limited, and each type it mentioned was merely given a taste-test introduction.
At the end, it also recorded several minor techniques: two simple Illusion Techniques, the Fire Element's Minor Fire Control Technique, and the Water Element's Minor Water Evasion Technique.
Even without Qi Refining Techniques, Ji Yuan could use these basic arts with the untempered spiritual qi he now possessed. Yet he merely had the foundation to cast them; he still needed to study and master them, so he could not immediately try them out.
These bamboo slips were all basic material, yet they opened the gates to a truly new world for Ji Yuan, filling him with unprecedented excitement and anticipation.
At this moment, Ji Yuan was like the child he had been when he pestered Great Uncle-in-law and Grandpa for stories, brimming with yearning for this world full of every kind of wonder.
Sleepiness? Sorry, that thing simply did not exist right now!
"Cock-a-doodle-doo~~~"
This rooster crow came from very close to Ju'an Pavilion. The roosters in the nearby households' coops had likely begun to call as well.
"Phew... I ended up reading all night without realizing it!"
A breeze brushed past, bringing Ji Yuan the chill of early spring. He knew he still had a long way to go; at the very least, he was nowhere near being immune to heat and cold.
The branches of the large jujube tree in the courtyard rustled, swaying and dancing gently in the breeze.
Ji Yuan looked up at the aged jujube tree. When harvest season came, it would surely be laden with fruit!
In this world, unless one had truly reached the level of coming into contact with an immortal abode, one could forget about eating out-of-season vegetables and fruit. Thus, Ji Yuan was also looking forward to the fresh, sweet jujubes from his own yard.
"You were the only one who kept me company while I read all night. Not bad, not bad. I'm not all that lonely after all!"
Ji Yuan consoled himself, smiled, and gently set down the bamboo slips in his hand before stretching in the courtyard.
He had spent an entire night reading the two most important books. With a balance between work and rest in mind, Ji Yuan began rummaging through the remaining book chest for other interesting reading material.
He set the Chess Sutra and chess manuals aside and directly pulled out those Martial Arts Manuals. Of the ten remaining volumes of bamboo slips, aside from one volume of the Chess Sutra and two volumes of chess manuals, the other seven volumes contained only two secret manuals.
One was the "Iron Punishment Battle Post," which covered both Internal Cultivation Methods and Combat Techniques and occupied six volumes of bamboo slips. The other was "Eagle Claw Hand," which contained only Breathing Methods and combat techniques.
Ji Yuan had formed a faint guess from their names, and the descriptions in the books indeed confirmed it.
These two Martial Arts Manuals were both martial arts practiced by people within the sect like constable Gong. Judging from the manuals' own assessments, they were likely not top-secret arts, but neither were they common goods found all over the streets. They belonged to the upper-middle tier of martial studies.
Both martial arts had been created by masters of the yamen who had once been known as the Six-Prefecture Iron Constables, after exhausting the efforts of their lifetimes. Their traits were that they were easy to learn, quick to practice, and their moves were fierce and immensely powerful. Their first halves had spread widely through official circles, and many outstanding men of the public service had learned them.
Yet martial studies qualified to be ranked upper-middle tier naturally could not be simple. They were typical examples of easy to learn but difficult to master, making it hard to produce true experts.
Ji Yuan could only laugh and cry at what he read.
These two Martial Arts Manuals went on and on, listing an N number of things. Their content far surpassed the two strange cultivation books, yet to Ji Yuan now, they simply felt overly mixed and cluttered.
"Martial arts, huh!"
The bamboo slips in Ji Yuan's hand tossed up and down. Since he had no better cultivation methods for the moment, practicing martial arts to gain more means of self-protection was not a bad idea either.
As the sun rose and set, more than half a month passed. Ji Yuan lived an unhurried life of complete absorption, immersed in an experience much like the first time he had encountered computer games in his previous life.
Whenever his body could bear the spiritual qi, he used the Seal of Holding to gather it, then guided it with Heaven and Earth Transformation. Afterward, he practiced the two Martial Arts Manuals, and in his spare time read the Chess Sutra and chess manuals.
In short, aside from going out to eat at mealtimes each day, Ji Yuan lived even more like a shut-in than he had in his previous life. As a result, apart from the neighbors of Tianniu Quarter, no one even knew there was a person named Ji Yuan. Only a few people near the noodle shop he frequented recognized him.
One day, Ji Yuan adjusted his breathing and stood straight as a pine, his feet raised slightly onto their toes.
Whoosh~
His entire body suddenly leaped upward. Then, with light pattering steps, he ran up the jujube tree in the courtyard, reaching its crown in a dozen or so strides. After a graceful backflip, he rose more than three zhang into the air.
The whole sequence flowed like clouds and water. Yet after reaching that height, his body did not crash down like a heavy object. Instead, as he drew in a breath of qi, he descended like a swallow gliding on spread wings, swiftly and lightly landing on a branch of the jujube tree, bending it into an arc with a creak.
His whole body stood steadily atop the branch. A breath of true qi seemed to sway along with the branch and his center of gravity; at least for a certain period, so long as his true qi did not scatter, his weight would not break the branch.
Stylish!
Ji Yuan could not help crying out in his heart!
After practicing lightness skill as his main focus for so long, he had finally achieved this much. Ji Yuan had nothing to compare himself against, but he felt that his martial arts progress was definitely at breakneck speed. After all, the bitter training described in the secret manuals was routinely measured in years.
At the root of it all, Ji Yuan's high efficiency in practicing martial arts came down to spiritual qi.
For Mortal Martial Practitioners, transitioning from the Post-Natal to the Pre-Natal Realm was an enormous dividing line. The Martial Arts Manuals described the Pre-Natal in fantastical terms: sensing the Vast Heaven and Earth, gathering the Power of Heaven and Earth to cleanse the marrow and purge the organs.
But in Ji Yuan's understanding, the so-called Pre-Natal Realm meant that one had already begun to use Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy to cleanse oneself. The qualitative change in Internal Energy within the Pre-Natal Realm could be said to be a special true qi infused with spiritual qi.
Thus, for Ji Yuan, setting martial arts moves aside for the moment, things such as Internal Cultivation were extremely easy to begin with, which also made his lightness skill progress remarkably obvious.
Moves, however, were more troublesome. They were martial skills that required a thousand hammerings and a hundred temperings. But Internal Cultivation and moves complemented each other. With the paired Internal Cultivation advancing at divine speed, progress in moves would definitely cover a thousand miles in a day.
The book also had a saying: "Once You Reach the Innate Realm, All Arts Become Clear." Ji Yuan felt that was somewhat exaggerated, but it also fully illustrated the leap in efficiency.
These were merely Mundane Minor Arts that cultivators would dismiss with a snort, yet Ji Yuan enjoyed them tirelessly!
Gathering his thoughts, Ji Yuan, standing on the tree, leaped down and landed steadily beside the stone table. He stretched out a leg and hooked with his toes. A jujube branch flew over his head together with a Heaven Ascending Kick from his straight right leg, and Ji Yuan caught it firmly.
Graceful!
If Ji Yuan from his previous life had attempted such a move, he would probably have pulled something vital. Now, though, it was as easy as drinking water.
Ji Yuan gathered himself, used the branch in place of a broad-backed straight blade, and began to perform the moves in the courtyard, producing sounds of "whoosh, whoosh, wooo, wooo."