Dantians

Yuyue looked at the 10 stones in front of her.

Looking at the items made her want to cry out. What was currently in front of her were 10 spirits stones and the cumulation of all the wealth she had saved up since joining the Fog Woods sect.

She had been very careful, trading in bezoars when the contribution point stand was empty and there were few bystanders.

She had 900 contribution points remaining after using her last spirit stone and in the past few days while trading she had managed to scrounge up another 100. She had just reached 1000 contribution points once again and they had slipped through her fingers like water.

"Humans may have two legs, but money has four" Yuyue muttered to herself*

*See author note at the bottom for an explanation of this phrase.

While contribution points could not be considered "money" they were essentially a form of currency in the sect, thus she used this phrase.

She began to strip down and waded into the small tub that she had prepared. The expelling of foreign impurities was something she had not expected the last time she used a spirit stone, but this time she was ready to use all the spirit stones in one go.

Forcing your way through a bottleneck was faster than slowly cultivating through it. While the number of resources via forcing through would be much higher than slowly cultivating. While the lifespan of a cultivator would increase with the cultivation level. Cultivators still had a limited life span and thus needed to speed up cultivation as much as possible.

There was also the factor that one's Qi would deteriorate once they passed the mid-point of their vitality, this would make it even harder to push through bottlenecks and make a breakthrough.

This was why cultivators would accumulate resources before spending them all in one go.

Still, forcing your way past a breakthrough carried risks, it might make an unstable foundation and thus hinder future cultivation as well.

Cultivators needed to be speedy and meticulous. Since Yuyue was forcing her way into the first step of qi development as a mortal, she didn't have a "base" to destabilize in the first place. Since she was a new cultivator the risks that came from breaking through bottlenecks were very low!

While the water in the tub had been hot when Yuyue prepared it, it had become a tepid heat now.

Not wanting to waste any further time Yuyue began to crush the spirit stones.

The first spirit stone she used had a very strong effect since she was still mostly a mortal and the Qi pathways had not fully materialized.

Now that their imprints had been formed she needed to begin the process of expanding and filling them with Qi.

She crushed the stones methodically, once a stone had reverted to its chalky texture and its glow had completely disappeared she would move on to the next stone.

Soon she was surrounded by white powdery stone and her body was filled with roiling Qi.

Yuyue closed her eyes and began the process of diverting the Qi to her meridians. In truth, for the average outer disciple using so many stones just to break through to the first step of Qi development was an incredible luxury. Most disciples would spend years cultivating slowly to breakthrough normally. Since it was only the first step of Qi development any mortal could cultivate it.

The Qi meridians in her body began to thicken and elongate. They began to form webs on her body and the three containers on her body began to connect to the strands.

These were her Dantians and where she would hold most of her Qi in the future. The second, third, and 4th steps of Qi development were based on forming these Dantians, starting from the lower, upper, and middle Dantians respectively.

Since she was only breaking through the first step of Qi development, she did not have to worry about filling these Dantians. She was surprised to find that the space for them had already been carved out in her body. Normally a cultivator who started as a mortal would have to carve them out themselves, and their potential could be directly related to how large of a hole they managed to carve out.

Some cultivators would only carve out peach-pit-sized holes and would be forever stuck in the Qi development stage.

The potential size that a cultivator could carve out had no relation to their physical size, but rather it was a metaphorical concept that only the cultivator in question could understand.

Yuyue was surprised to find that the Dantians that had been carved out in her body approached the size of an ostrich egg, she didn't know the absolute maximum size that a Dantian could be, but she could tell the hole that had been carved out for her already was formidable.

She thought back to the time she swore her Dao oath after Ji Ruo rejected her, at the time the talisman had influenced a change in her body, now that she could cultivate, she saw that the talisman had carved the Dantian imprints in her body for her.

The talisman seemed to only grow more mysterious in her mind.

Since the Dantians were already carved out, she only need to fill them with Qi in the future. As a result of her talisman, she had saved quite a bit of time.

Even though her large Dantians were empty and did not affect her battle prowess yet, they would be immensely helpful in the future.

The process of filling her meridians was nearly done, Yuyue began to realize she had crushed more spirit stones than she needed in the process, all of her meridians were completely filled, and now excess Qi was swirling in her body with no escape.

This was a bad situation!