Bai Hong told Alicia that cultivation came in stages. Body refinement, which refined and strengthened the skin, muscles, bones. Qi gathering which strengthened the meridians and prepared one"s dantian to hold spiritual qi. Qi condensation was when you would begin to form your qi sea within your dantian allowing a cultivator to fight longer because they have a larger amount of spiritual qi. Then there was also foundation establishment and core formation but Bai Hong did not go into detail about those. Body refinement, qi gathering, and qi condensation were all broken up into nine stages. Each stage takes longer to reach the higher you go. "I understand what body refinement is. I have done it before. Magicules will also refine one"s body as well. It"s the other parts of the cultivation I do not understand." Alicia explained after listening to Bia Hong"s lecture.
"That is fine, for now, concentrate on working on body refinement. I will work on the items needed to change your hair and eyes." Bia Hong left these words and then went to a corner of the cave and sat down. He pulled out a few items and began working.
Alicia closed her eyes and entered a state of meditation. She quickly sensed the spiritual qi in the air a lot faster this time. Once she did she slowly willed strand by strand of spiritual qi into her body causing it to merge into her skin, muscles, and bones. Strand after strand as plucked from the air and injected into her body. Nothing was wasted as she did this tedious task meticulously. Hours based and Alicia was still taking in spiritual nouris.h.i.+ng her body over and over again.
From the side, Bia Hong watched from the corner of his eye monitoring her the whole way in case something happened. To his surprise, he watched as Alicia carefully nourished each muscle in her body one at a time. Then she moved to her bones and lastly her skin. Slowly but surely making sure every inch of her body was nourished by spiritual qi. Seeing such a sight made Bia Hong very satisfied.
For the next few days, Alicia"s daily life consisted of refining her body with spiritual qi, eating the food Bia Hong prepared, learning this world"s writing system, and sleeping. Bia Hong even created a second room with a door to give Alicia privacy for when she bathed and changed clothes. He even pulled out a few of his clan robes and adjusted them so they would fit her. For this Alicia was very grateful. Especially because after every cultivation session she would be covered in a black sticky goop that really smelled bad and it would get on the clothes as well.
Alicia found out a few things about cultivation. First, it took a lot of time. To be strong you needed to spend a good amount of time to be able to defend yourself. Second, was the fact that it was very tedious. And one must have a determined mind in order to cultivate. So even if one was a genius, if they were lazy they would be no better than those who had no apt.i.tude for cultivating.
The last thing she found was that although it was very tedious it showed great effects. She could feel her skin, muscles, and bones growing stronger every day. These kinds of results Alicia liked very much. Even after her body was strengthened with magicules she could feel herself growing even stronger. It seemed magicules had a limit to strengthen the body but allowed for one to use very strong magic. From what she learned from Bia Hong was that cultivation was more about training oneself to become stronger. Each thing one did during their cultivation journey was a step by step process even when using techniques. Each technique would come in layers and you could not advance to the next layer until you had mastered the previous layer. The number of layers per technique depended on the technique itself.
It had been a week since Alicia started her cultivation journey when she suddenly felt a rumble inside her body. After the rumble, a large amount of black sludge came out of her pores on her body. "Wha? Why?" Alicia was startled because she had yet to do a full cycle in her cultivation.
"Haha! You finally broke through to stage two of body refinement. Not bad. Using a week without any external elixirs, this cultivation time is not bad. Not bad at all!" Bia Hong was very pleased to see this. This meant her talent was real. Normally it would take a few months to reach the second stage of body refinement without elixirs. So her current speed of cultivation was truly heaven defying. But he did not want to let Alicia know this since he did not want it to go to her head and start slacking off. "Go get cleaned up, after you are done, I will give you a sword technique called the Thousand Piercing Lotus Blossom and a fist technique called the Thousand Fist Lotus Blossom. These two techniques are a pair. They work in a way that allows you to combine a fist and sword fighting style. So even in such a case where your sword falls from your hand in the middle of an attack, you can continue the attack with just your fist! It is a very unique fighting style and this is just the first in a twelve part series. There are one hundred layers for each the sword and fist technique. This technique is of the heavenly grade."
Alicia"s eyes lit up hearing sword technique. Even the fist portion interested her. Because this would expand her battle prowess by a huge amount. She quickly ran off to her room to wash up and get ready for a tough day of training techniques!
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