5 Muscle and Blood

Jin was sitting beneath the shade of a tree on a boulder near his house as he gazed into the distance.

He often gazed into the distance. Maybe it was because 'God', who he speculated was that old man he had met at the train that set off this whole incident, took pity on him but he had been gifted with an eyesight that was so good that it was almost abnormal. Also, colors.

He was looking at the various colors in the far distance and distinguishing the shades of each color in detail as he reviewed over what he had learnt over the last few days from Luca.

Luca had taught Jin various basics regarding the training of the body cultivation over the past few days, it was rather tedious trying to understand and memorize all these methods but Jin believed it would help him in the future as he revised them over and over again and prepared to come up with a solid plan to initiate his path upon cultivation.

And Jin finally realized why the body needed to grow up to a certain extent before it could go through the procedure of strengthening.

Thankfully, the bodies of people in this world seemed to be stronger than the norm and thanks to the special blood flowing in his body, he was even stronger than the norm of this world.

But even so, Jin contemplated if his body could go under such stress when it was still growing.

There were 3 parts of body cultivation that one needed to strengthen: Muscles, Blood and Bone.

Muscles were relatively simple in concept but hard work. The method of training the muscles were similar to 'working out' from Earth. The people of this world also realized that muscles, after breaking and shredding apart, became stronger every time it healed. So they utilized this concept ever since the ancient days to train their bodies. The key difference was that, though they didn't realize it in the ancient times, as more and more people researched into these methods, they realized that the muscles actually held tiny amounts of qi.

This meant that as the muscles healed, a small amount of qi would fuse into the muscles and though it was extremely small in relative to the amount of qi one could gather at the qi condensation stage, every bit mattered at this stage. The qi acted as a form of nourishment and an extra 'battery' of a sort for energy and a higher density was the key factor of increasing in succession from small, medium to large.

A small succession of the muscles would allow a normal man to lift an object that weighed similar to their own body mass and swing it around in a free manner. Medium succession doubled the weight and large succession doubled that again.

This meant that anybody in the large succession of the muscles could freely lift and wield an object that weighed almost four to five times their own body weight.

For strengthening and training the blood, one had to forgo in various 'aerobic exercises.' Though this term wasn't known to the people of this world, they had realized that the more often one stressed the lungs and the amount of 'air' in their body, the longer their overall stamina would last. And various areas of the continent had different training methods for the blood. This caused minute differences in the end dependent on the training method for the blood.

The Ryong family's area of the eastern islands ancestors used diving and swimming as the training method as this greatly stressed the lung. And due to this practice, they resulted in being able to go for the longest amount of time without breathing for air. This may sound quite useless in a day to day life but breathing actually interrupted the actual flow of battle. This was why the majority of battles had 'rhythm', this was because each fighter had different timings during a battle when they would need to breath.

The people who trained in this method, however, were famous for having exceptionally long and slow rhythms and were a headache to fight against by most others since their own rhythms could not match up. It basically meant that if they could swing 3-4 times before they needed a breather, someone who trained in the Ryong family's method could swing 6-8 or even more times before they had to.

Of course this also had downsides, mainly the fact that the 'break' for the breath was longer than the norm which created an opening.

The Zak family practiced in high temperature and low-oxygen areas such as hot caves near volcanic areas whilst the Mue family practiced deep underground.

They each had their pros and cons and it was the same for the Ho family as well.

The Ho family's practice method for blood was similar in concept as the Zak and Mue family's low oxygen training as it was mainly focused around climbing up and down mountain ranges but maintaining a certain height in order to stay within areas where there was less oxygen.

As an example, the mountain that Jin's village resided on was approximately 1,200 meters, not the highest one by far. He had heard from Luca that the tallest peak within this mountain range towered over 12,000 meters tall, this was even taller than Everest of Earth.

Of course his training won't be in such extreme conditions as even the peak of the qi condensation stage cultivators won't be able to survive in such conditions.

Luca hadn't bothered to teach him the bone training method as of yet but told Jin that he would be able to read if he really wished to in the family library. His father had mentioned that whilst blood and muscle can be strained during growth, straining the bone can have dire impacts in height or unequal limb lengths. It was best for him to not touch the bones too much until he was at least 12 years old.

Luca had given him a few options but told him to experiment and find the best method that suited him.

The words he specifically told Jin were: "Only with enough experience would one be able to pave their own path upwards. Yes, staying within the guidelines of an elder would give you an easier time but this is only to a certain extent. When time comes where you would need to reach up to the next step, only you yourself will be able to take that step. The more you know about yourself, the easier this step will become."

Jin shifted his gaze towards the various mountains in the distance.

"Hmm..."