During the two long years, Meng Li helped Xie Ja continue working by taking care of Ye Jian when his parents were out gathering herbs. After all, the money he gained from selling the rare spiritual herb wouldn"t last forever, and Ye Jian couldn"t support his entire family by himself no matter how hard he worked. Ye Jian also didn"t ask him about his work - he knew that Meng Li was doing fine and didn"t try to intrude on his life. He seemed to accept that Meng Li had his secrets.However, Meng Li was saddened by Ye Jian - he noticed that Ye Jian was still avoiding him. The now three years old reincarnator had found a spot in the forest near the town where he hid all day. Meng Li kept watch over him with Spiritual Sense, but so far, Ye Jian was able to take care of all the dangers he encountered by himself. In fact, Meng Li had teleported over to Ye Jian several times where the situation seemed to be quite dire, but Ye Jian was able to resolve the situation by himself every time. In one case, Ye Jian fought off a fourth layer Qi Gathering beast while he himself only had a cultivation of the third layer... The battle was quite intense, and Meng Li put up a simple barrier to avoid alerting the town lord. He wasn"t quite sure whether Ye Jian noticed, but he had a feeling that he did.
The place Ye Jian picked was a small valley with a cliff closing one end. The valley had a small stream flowing through it, from above the cliff. The waterfall created a small, but deep lake near the bottom of the cliff. Ye Jian was usually cultivating there, but Meng Li noticed several times as Ye Jian practiced the sword on the rocks in the stream. Although they were above the water, they were still wet and it was extremely hard to get a grip on them since the rocks themselves were quite slimy. However, Ye Jian could practice an entire sword routine without falling in.
Meng Li was quite surprised by Ye Jian as he practiced - even though he was only using a tree branch during the practice, to Meng Li, every swing of the branch seemed like it could cleave rocks. Meng Li didn"t have any idea how that was happening, and he made up his mind to ask Ye Jian after he was ready to talk.
A few more years had pa.s.sed. Ye Jian was now seven years old, though he only acted like a child his age near his parents. Meng Li was satisfied, as he could see that Ye Jian did really love his parents - which was one of his worries in the previous years. He still kept contact with Ye Jin, though they had grown distant throughout the years. Meng Li mostly cultivated by himself at home. He didn"t have to help Xie Ja and Ye Jin with Ye Jian anymore, as they simply let him go around as he pleased. Ye Jian had broken through a few times and was now at the 6th layer of Qi Gathering. He was now stronger than the town lord and could, as such, hide his cultivation. Meng Li also made progress. He had completed the pillars reinforcing specific organs in his torso - the spleen, pancreas, gall bladder, and the bladder. He also created pillars to support his sensory organs - the two eyes, the nose, the tongue, and ears. As well, the most important organ of all - the brain.
That last pillar was quite an important one. Meng Li could sense that his thinking speed was increased, his control over his Qi, body, Spiritual Sense, and aura was increased as well. Supporting the brain basically gave a boost to everything the brain was responsible for - including memories. Meng Li was quite sure that a pillar supporting the brain was practically a must for all cultivators who did things requiring the brain - like creating artifacts, pills, formations, etc.
In total, Meng Li built another nine pillars. However, despite logic telling him that he had supported everything he could, something was still telling him that it was not all. Something, maybe his instincts, told him that if he tried to move on and merge his pillars, he would regret it in the future. Thus, Meng Li didn"t. However, the nagging feeling in the back of his mind irritated him, and urged him to find the answer to the question as soon as possible. Thus, Meng Li naturally thought about entering seclusion - however, he didn"t want to leave until he communicated with Ye Jian. Unable to find an answer, he suddenly had a crazy thought.
"If in the control room, the time in the world pa.s.ses a thousand times faster, can I change the scale? Like, pause the world entirely?!" This idea came to him like a bolt from the blue. He couldn"t help but ask the system.
[Absolutely.]
The system"s answer was emotionless, as though it was stating something extremely obvious. Meng Li wanted to slam his head against the wall, but he decided not to, since doing so would certainly destroy his little house. His body was far too strong at the moment...
A few minutes after learning of this, Meng Li saw no problem with the idea and teleported into the control room after he confirmed with the system that as soon as he entered, time would be frozen. When he entered, the first thing he did was dive into his consciousness and scan the globe in there. It was true - the world was paused. He could see birds mid-flight, their bodies frozen in the position they were as he entered. Without looking at the world"s best freeze challenge anymore, Meng Li sunk into cultivation. He wanted to test something.
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His first few pillars were reinforcing specific parts of his body, including his torso. He could tell that when he did so, the connection increased the abilities of his specific internal organs, but not as much as supporting them individually. This meant that if he supported a larger part of his body, he could also support smaller parts of it - this could, theoretically, go to the point of reinforcing specific cells. It was a crazy idea and Meng Li loved it.
So, he jumped into action. He already had enough solidified Qi to create a new pillar. He chose to support his right fist. It was an arbitrary decision, but it would still tell him whether his idea was correct.
A few minutes later, Meng Li was staring at his right fist in amazement. It was connected to him through two pillars - the one supporting his entire right arm, and another supporting the fist itself. Although the same feeling was present with other organs, it was far weaker since he couldn"t control them as precisely as he could his fist. Without thinking, Meng Li jumped into cultivation.
He spent a long amount of time in the control room, but it didn"t matter - the world was paused, and no matter how long he spent in the control room, not even a second would"ve paused within the world.
In that long time, he created a large amount of pillars. He theorised that the body could be split into several layers of complexity - for example, pillars could be made to support the right arm, then the fist, then a specific finger, then a specific part of the finger, until the lowest level, the cells. He experimented with the idea first. He created pillars to support the index finger of his right fist, and then the tip of the finger. Unfortunately, his theory of supporting cells didn"t work out. The mysterious power indeed worked in mysterious ways.
After many successful and failed pillars, Meng Li found the way. The smallest segment he could support with a pillar was something which contained bones or was an important internal organ. After all, the heart didn"t have any bones within it, and yet, he could make a pillar supporting it. He guessed that the individual cells couldn"t be supported because they were replaced all the time - like skin cells, the blood cells, etc.
In total, there are two hundred and six bones in an adult human"s body. Meng Li managed to reinforce them all. However, those were not all of the pillars - for example, the pillar supporting the hand. It could be split into many more smaller sections, which he could reinforce. The foot too - in fact, it contained more bones that a hand does.
However, during his cultivation, Meng Li found out another important thing - he could reinforce specific muscles. Although the discovery made him jump with joy, it also meant that he had to spend even more time cultivating. In fact, he vaguely remembered from school that the human body contained more than half a thousand muscles in total.
His cultivation confirmed it - there were exactly seven hundred muscles he could specifically reinforce. During this journey, he also found out that despite the smallest segment he could reinforce being a section of the skeleton(like the tip of a finger), he could reinforce the specific bones as well(the bone in the tip of a finger).
After finis.h.i.+ng creating pillars from all his findings, Meng Li had a total of one thousand one hundred and thirty three pillars. It was a total mess. Meng Li eagerly awaited for the Pillar Merging stage. However, even when he finished doing so, Meng Li still had a feeling that he could do more.
While thinking, he had a crazy idea - if specific sections could be split into smaller sections, what if all of the pillars were smaller sections of one giant pillar which supported the entire body?
Meng Li got to work. And indeed, his crazy idea turned out to be true. Although the increase was slight, the pillar supporting the entire body could be used as the main pillar in the future, when he was merging all of the pillars into one.
However, even after all of this, Meng Li still had that nagging feeling in the back of his head. It didn"t get any weaker with the pillars he built - instead, it got stronger. It"s as if it was telling him that since he was already at such a point, if he gave up now, it would all be for nothing.
And so, Meng Li thought. He had many ideas, some of which turned out to be useful. He had and idea that since he could reinforce specific organs, then weren"t things like the nervous system, the skeletal system, the circulatory system or the lymphatic system just big organs? Those ideas turned out to work. He also had a bright idea to reinforce his skin - it also worked, somehow. In fact, this pillar caused the biggest change from all that he built. His skin, although previously smooth, turned incredibly smooth. And grew even whiter than before. After the breakthrough, it looked as if he was covered in flour with how white he looked. However, with his control, it wasn"t hard to revert the colour of his skin to normal. However, it was still extremely smooth, something which Meng Li appreciated.
However, all those pillars only made the feeling grow stronger. Meng Li felt out of ideas. He had scoured his mind for other things which he could reinforce, even going as far as to try and reinforce his hair. It didn"t work, of course. But, he was truly out of ideas. So, he asked the system.
[The meridians and the three Dantiants.]
Meng Li once again felt like banging his head on the wall. The feeling he had was probably from the fact that he didn"t support his Dantians. The human body had a total of three Dantians. They were the lower, middle, and upper Dantian. Normally, every time someone said "Dantian", they were referring to the lower Dantian, as it was the place where the cultivation was located. However, the other two Dantians were equally as important. The middle Dantian was located in the middle of the chest and it contained the vitality of a person. If it was broken, the person would inevitably die within a few years. A human naturally drew in the Vitality of the world in order to keep themselves alive, but the ability to draw in Vitality declined with age. The aging process started when the Vitality a person drew in was not enough to sustain their body. The middle Dantian was the place which stored Vitality and drew it in - if it was broken, there was no way to survive.
The upper Dantian was located between a person"s brows, just above the nose. It was the place where the soul resided. If the Dantian was broken, the connection between the body and the soul would be broken, and everyone under Nascent Soul, who could exit their body with their soul, would die.
And finally, the Meridians were a network of channels which distributed Qi around the body. It was the basis of the Qi Gathering and the Qi Sea stage.
Meng Li was convinced that he didn"t think of this because he was too stuck on thinking using the earth"s terms - things like the nervous system, the skeletal system, the circulatory system and the lymphatic system were all the things which he knew from earth - and although they were real, it didn"t mean that it was all that made up the body.
However, without dwelling on this, Meng Li instead jumped into cultivation.