As he contrasted that stifling feeling with the disharmony in his body, Li Xuan began understanding in detail. After a long while, he suddenly had a profound flash of understanding.
“This so-called abolished talent, it should probably be the result of some complicated process of sealing the energy channels. Not bad. With regard to mages, to reconnect the meridians under this complicated sealing with the remnant elemental energy within them is extremely difficult, and requires exhausting an enormous amount of energy. However, to me, this isn’t anything difficult because concerning the knowledge of energy channels and meridians, it is the most elementary level of knowledge for martial artists. Although there’s a definite difference between mages and martial artists, this kind of distinction isn’t really significant. Once I thoroughly research it in detail, it won’t pose any problem. Furthermore, by sensing the changes in my body, although I failed to successfully tear s.p.a.ce apart, after my soul pa.s.sed through the void and was baptized amidst the chaos by that heavenly lightning, I can tell how strong it’s become. The strength of my soul even shocks me! The strength of this kind of powerful soul is even sufficient enough to allow ordinary martial skills to unite with the law of the ‘Dao’ (way). In this manner, if I wished to restore my strength from the past world, with just a rough estimate, I know it wouldn’t exceed three years time! Good, good, good!”
As Li Xuan pondered in his heart, he was currently lying on a newly made bed at home. At his side was that old lady—that is, his mother, Siqin Duanyue (斯琴端月), and she was presently guarding him in silence. On the other side of him was a shabby little bed that his older brother was currently lying on in unconsciousness.
At this moment, his heart was a bit touched. In his past world, he had wanted to properly fulfill his filial duties to his parents, but they were no more. As such, he had many remaining regrets in his heart, and these regrets further shackled him into the way of martial arts. In this life, he also had good parents and siblings of blood thicker than water. He would definitely properly cherish them.
Although he didn’t really connect emotionally with this family except through the concept of a home, while he was living, Li Xuan still felt obligated to sacrifice a bit of himself for this family.
“In this world, there is no so-called world qi, but rather a kind of distinct, scattered energy fluctuation—this should be what is called the magic elements. As for the concentration of this elemental energy, it really makes me amazed. This kind of elemental concentration is even denser than the world qi on earth by several hundred times! Logically speaking, under these kinds of circ.u.mstances, if I simply took these magic elements and cultivated them as inner jin, then manifested all my inner jin as magic elemental energy, could my cultivation speed be a hundred times that of my speed on earth? And that so called innate talent, isn’t it basically dependent on the energy channels’ degree of permeation and its width? If so, then by fully opening all the channels of the body and expanding one’s dantian, couldn’t one have the highest level of innate talent?”
As Li Xuan pondered in his mind to this point, although he already had the att.i.tude of a peak martial arts expert, he couldn’t help but grow excited!
One must know that in this world, 5th Xing meditative innate talent was already considered the ultimate innate talent in a city with a population exceeding a hundred million people. Then what about 9th Ming innate talent? What about innate talent that surpa.s.sed the 9th Ming level?
Suddenly, his original goal of simply becoming powerful changed. This was because he discovered that if his calculations weren’t wrong, to become an expert was actually so simple!
Not only that, he could also purposefully change the apt.i.tude of other people—because once he had reached a certain level of strength, it wouldn’t be difficult for him as an expert to help fully open other people’s energy channels and expand them.
Thinking up till here, Li Xuan immediately invoked his perception abilities to begin spiritual perception of his body.
Spiritual perception was a type of method of inspecting one’s body, and could be done once a martial artist’s spirit reached a certain level. Originally, Li Xuan’s frail body wasn’t able to use spiritual perception. However, after his soul had pa.s.sed through the void and gotten baptized, it was incomparably powerful. Furthermore, he possessed iron willpower, so after fusing his memories with that of this world’s Li Xuan, his spirit grew incredibly large. As such, not only was spiritual perception exceedingly effortless, with just a thought, he could even spread out his spiritual perception within a ten meter range!
It was exactly because of this that he was able to judge the circ.u.mstances of the body beside him.
Moreover, once he adjusted his body properly, his external range would probably increase even more!
Under the observation of his spiritual perception, Li Xuan confirmed his conjectures. Concerning the original natural disposition of his energy channels, there was one part that was rougher than the rest, and it was quite obvious. Especially under the observation of his spiritual perception, it was clear that the width of this energy channel was a lot more prominent than the other channels.
It’s just that, his current energy channels had turned from a scarlet color to a dingy brown hue, withered and rotten, as if it had become cancerous, which gave people a sort of frightening feeling.
“These energy channels have already undergone necrosis, and it’s not as simple as just having decayed and crumbled. However, it’s not hard to have countless threads of magic elemental energy nourish it, allowing the magic elements to merge with inner jin to continuously cleanse them.”
Li Xuan muttered to himself, and then subsequently began to try his luck.
This process wasn’t complicated at all, nor was it very hard. After all, the leading ideology stemmed from a resolute, stalwart, and strong-willed peak Xing Yi Quan martial arts expert and martial emperor from the modern era.
Exhale, inhale, but it’s not world qi, but rather magic elements.
And after the magic elements had been absorbed and drawn into the body, it began to circulate through the energy channels. Immediately, it became as if Li Xuan was a cultivator of all the magic elements. This was due to the fact that in the world, it was a disorderly mess of all the elements: earth, fire, wind, lightning, water, wood, light, darkness were all present. It’s just that they were present in different amounts.
After absorbing all the magic elements, the elemental energy began to acc.u.mulate and circulate around his body. Following this aggregation of magic elements, Li Xuan began manipulating the elemental energy, as if he was manipulating inner jin, to form a vortex in order to begin opening the channel to start the microcosmic orbit*.
(TL: look at the bottom of the page for an explanation. I’m still a bit confused but I’m sure the concept will clear up later on.)
The pain of this process was a lot more intense, but to Li Xuan’s powerful soul, it was just a tickling feeling. His eyebrows didn’t even furrow the least bit, and in just a breath, he had opened up the channel to the microcosmic orbit. Immediately, after the microcosmic orbit had completed one circuit and the channels had been nourished by all the types of elemental energy, the effect was several times greater than that of world qi.
The effect world qi had in improving the body was naturally good, but its effect was mainly singular. As for magic elements, although their singular effect wasn’t equal to that of world qi, their effect was remarkably well-rounded.
The wood element signified vitality, while the earth element symbolized solidity and st.u.r.diness. The light element’s purpose was healing, and the darkness element, on the contrary, brought death to all things and symbolized destruction. As for lightning, it was for the sake of tempering…
If these elements were present in large amounts, their effect naturally wouldn’t be small. However, the amount of these elements currently present wasn’t much, and was actually very little. As such, the microcosmic orbit circuit’s process of absorption was slow, very slow in fact, but it was still noiselessly providing nourishment.
This process persisted for around four hours, and after it was completed, Li Xuan only felt that his whole body was full of vitality, and the bruises and vestiges from the beating and such were already half-gone.
However, he was still aware of his circ.u.mstances, and knew that he still needed a slow ten days in order to recuperate. If he rushed and got up after only a short recovery, then one could imagine the consequences that would occur.
It wasn’t that he was afraid of anything, but at this point in time, he truly believed that it was still better to diligently cultivate in secret for ten days, first drawing on the greater power of his soul to totally reconnect his energy channels, and then step into the so-called realm of *innate martial law!
(*TL: Uhh…. I’ll probably come back to this ><>
Only then would he start relying on his energy channels’ cheat permeation degree to begin absorbing elemental energy with all his might, ama.s.sing it within his dantian!
For the mages of this world, although they were able to store a fixed amount of elemental energy within their bodies, they all chose to communicate with the external elemental energy through a medium. As such, the process of casting spells had a definite lag time.
But what Li Xuan aimed to do was first condense the elemental energy into a gaseous state, then liquid, and then even a solid state within his dantian!
In this world, the term ‘dantian’ didn’t exist, and as such, only a portion of their energy channels counted as innate talent. However, how could the s.p.a.ce within energy channels compare with the frightful size of a dantian?
You want to talk about innate talent? Geniuses? Then Li Xuan would be completely unparalleled in this world!
As for this secret, Li Xuan definitely wouldn’t leak it out to anyone.
With this plan in mind, the next ten days were simply the beginning to Li Xuan’s transformation.
During the ten days, at a set interval of time, he would again open another energy channel, allow all the types of elemental energy to nourish his body, and then expand his dantian to continue acc.u.mulating elemental energy.
Because the various elemental energies coalescing into one body didn’t result in any sort of chaos, after being directly absorbed into his dantian, it likewise didn’t cause any sort of turmoil either.
This process continued relentlessly day and night because the process of cultivation vitalized the body even more than sleep. Therefore, as Li Xuan’s complexion grew healthier and rosier as time pa.s.sed, Siqin Duanyue finally revealed a thankful smile.