Friendship and hard work

Gaofeng continued his now regular routine of cultivating the Divine Myriad Changes in the morning, underneath the Divine Enlightenment tree. This brought with it bountiful harvests that were related to comprehension and mastery of the still cryptic abilities of this cultivation technique. He felt that the premonitions about positive and negative outcomes, as well as his general understanding of the Yin and Yang laws was rapidly improving. Although he still wasn't completely confident in advancing to the eleventh level of the body-strengthening realm, he was beginning to close in on his desired goal. Since he was focused on comprehension rather than directly increasing his cultivation realm, this would solidify his foundation and help him greatly when cultivating in the qi-gathering realm. Because Gaofeng's soul as well as heart-realm were both incomparably powerful, comprehending the mysteries of the Divine Myriad Changes went relatively smooth. If those heirs to the kingdoms of the Long Empire read the same technique, they would have no clue about where to even begin to cultivate such intricate and fundamentally powerful laws and abilities, but Gaofeng was steadily improving.

Gaofeng's comprehension of Yin and Yang could be said to be an innate attribute of his Holy Physique, and thus he start at a point which others couldn't even dream of reaching after having cultivated for decades. Even before entering the Holy Temple, Gaofeng had spent a lot of time on comprehending the laws of Yin and Yang, and had utilized multiple special treasures as well as been to many locations which had concentrated amounts of either Yin or Yang qi. So, through pure comprehension, he would already have been able to enter the Heaven-ascension realm, but after his rebirth and cultivation of the Divine Myriad Changes he could be said to have already comprehended Yin and Yang to the point of reaching the peak of the Dao Consolidation realm, one entire great realm above the Heaven-ascension realm. The improvement of one great realm might sound like it isn't much, but the difference between the comprehension needed to go from the initial Heaven-ascension realm to the peak of the Dao Consolidation realm is greater than the difference in comprehension between someone in the body-strengthening realm and someone in the Heaven-ascension realm, so Gaofeng's comprehension had definitely increased by leaps and bounds.

Gaofeng felt that if he was able to increase his comprehension of Yin and Yang to the Dao Transformation Stage, the eighth great cultivation realm, he would have complete assurance of breaking through to the eleventh level of the Body-Strengthening realm. This wouldn't completely solve his issues, however, as depending of his comprehension of Yin and Yang for further breakthroughs into the eleventh level of the qi-gathering realm and further down his path would require exponentially higher comprehension of Yin and Yang until it would toll too greatly on his speed of progression for Gaofeng to accept it. Thus, he was already planning for his future. In this last week since he made a significant breakthrough in Shimmer, he decisively changed his plan for which abilities he would focus on. He continued cultivating Shimmer, and was seeing some progress, but not nearly enough for him to be able to break through soon. What he mainly focused on was, as can be seen from his results, the Divine Myriad Changes technique, and he was actually able to more quickly advance in this technique, which was of a higher level, compared to all of his other abilities.

Other than cultivating hours on end, he occasionally chatted with Zhang Jing. The day after they had first met, Zhang Jing was quick to move out of the room, however she still had a positive impression of Gaofeng as a caring man and mighty cultivator, although he was a bit too blunt at times. She got used to this eventually as she realized this was simply Gaofeng's demeanor and that he didn't really intend to be mean, he was simply indifferent to the reactions he garnered from his provocative words. They usually interacted during their classes, whether they sat together, sparred, or had heated discussions. These interactions inevitably brought them closer together, and at this point they could be considered to be friends. Even Gaofeng had to admit that he had a soft spot in his heart for Zhang Jing, and he had decided that he was the only one allowed to tease her. If someone else bullied her, that wasn't appropriate in Gaofeng's eyes.

Gaofeng's staff techniques had also improved during this time, which was partly due to Shen Hai's careful instructions. Naturally, having a great expert like Shen Hai, whose main weapon was the great staff, personally instructing him, made his great improvement apparent in both the basic fighting style and in his divine technique. When comprehending the Heaven Destroying Staff technique, Gaofeng felt that he was on the verge of learning the second move, but he was lacking one last part until he could achieve this. He didn't put particular importance on this move compared to the Yin-Yang Dragon Fist, however, as this move would not only increase his might but also help his comprehension of the laws of Yin and Yang.

Gaofeng continued this lifestyle while waiting for the opportune moment of advancing his plan to get into the 10th valley's ocean of blood. This kind of relaxing period went on for another two weeks, and in this period Gaofeng was able to achieve the second level of the Heaven Destroying Staff, as well as understanding the second fist of the Yin-Yang Dragon Fist. Each of these breakthroughs caused great improvements to Gaofeng's overall fighting strength. Now he was able to fully manifest the Heaven Destroying Staff intent, which caused the might he could utilize while wielding a staff to increase greatly, and this staff intent could actually be projected like a mental attack. When utilizing the physical aspect of the staff in addition to the mental attack of the staff intent, his attack power increased twofold. Gaofeng was regularly testing his power using the different testing mechanisms in the strength-testing hall, and his power while utilizing the staff after this breakthrough reached the ninth level of the Dao searching realm. This was a massive improvement since he had begun cultivating a mere month ago, and he felt that when he broke through to the 11th stage of the Body-strengthening realm, his strength would skyrocket and reach all the way to the Heaven-ascension realm.

The breakthrough of his Yin-Yang Dragon Fist also improved this ability greatly, making the manifested dragons clearer. Their power was clearly much stronger than before, but Gaofeng was still not able to have these Dragons maintain themselves outside of his body. He would have to be in the qi-gathering realm to truly unleash this ability's true might. Right now he was simply using his innate Yin-Yang energy, and the energy in his flesh and blood, but he would have to rely on the external qi if he truly wanted the Dragons he manifested to be able to sustain their power. This breakthrough had an additional boon, however, which was a great increase in his comprehension and utilization of Yin and Yang, as each subsequent level of the technique required finer manipulation of these Grand Daos. Unfortunately, this was still not enough for Gaofeng's comprehension to break through to the level of the Dao Transformation realm. It still greatly improved his chances of strengthening his comprehension to that level in the coming weeks, so Gaofeng felt great after achieving one breakthrough after another.