Chapter 3

The problem with just absorbing the qi from the atmosphere is that you can't control anything that it's happening. If the qi gets absorbed or not depends entirely on luck.

Sometimes, you could absorb the entirety of the qi that has entered your body. And sometimes not even 1% could be absorbed.

This limits the advancements you could make, and even the timing of the evolutions.

The beast around me don't mind the wait, but I can't keep waiting. Unlike the beasts, I don't have such a grandiose lifespan.

Unfortunately, in the last six years I've only learned how to sense and move the qi around and inside me.

To sense the qi was pretty easy. Considering the fact that this place has such concentration of qi that sometimes it can manifest physically, it wouldn't make sense not to sense it.

The hardest part was to sense it inside myself and move it according to my desire. The first time I could do it, after dozens of sessions of practice, I ended up sleeping the whole day.

It's a very energy-consuming practice, at least the first tries. As your body becomes accustomed to this practice, it starts to slowly absorb the qi every time you move it.

For now, I will just see how the body reacts by itself when I try to move it around the body, and what parts are more inclined to absorb qi.

Let's hope that this can let me ignore the fact that I dont know anything about anatomy and biology in general. And that I don't end up dying for trying stupid things.

And, while adding this new practice to my everyday routine, the time continued to pass.

----------------

It appears to be that the skin and muscles are the one that accept qi easily, followed by the internal organs. The ones that give me some problems were the bones; given their properties it seems obvious.

Well then, for now I will try to temper my skin and muscles.

Even if something goes wrong with them, I could just part with them, and latter regenerate them. It's pretty easy to regenerate flesh and muscle tissue.

One time, while fighting some kind of fish that appeared in the river, I lost various chunks of flesh. That fish only aimed towards weak points, and even then, it didn't land fatal blows, it just keeps cutting my flesh little by little.

That was the only time where I was near death, because of the blood loss.

And also, the shock because of all the injuries my body sustained.

It was a horrible experience.

It left a psychological shadow in me.

Now every time I see any other of those fishes, I tend to massacre them until nothing is left.

Pretty bloody right??

Even the little fox leaves my side whenever that occurs.

And when it returns to my side, it's always on high alert.

I'm normally not that bloody, but It's to kill them or to freeze in panic.

So, they earned that kind of treatment.

Back on track, the thing is that you can recover flesh and muscles easily, so there is no problem if I make some mistakes during the practice in this stage.

----------------

After trial an error, and two years of hard work, I've finally refined every single thing inside my body. The problem is, I don't know if I left something behind to do. For now, let's just try to see if my body could handle some more refinement without damaging me.

The good think about practicing two different kind of methods is that I still have an enormous amount of power, even if, with my new method, I'm still weak.

My method improves the control I have over qi and lets me use it externally, a little bit like magic.

Meanwhile, the first method lets me refine my body to godlike levels. It's less impressive, but nevertheless useful. For example, I can channel qi into my hands and form all kind of claws or weapons as if it were an extension of my body.

I can even create armor around me, but that consumes an unholy amount of qi.

The thing is, I can shatter boulders with just a tap, but my magic is pathetic. I can just summon a little flame that can't even damage wood.

To be fair this wood can't be set on fire by normal means. When we want to cook something, the little fox must set itself on fire and continuously try to burn the wood. And even then, the fire produced by this wood is too strong that normal ingredients would just burn to charcoal.

Well thanks to this I learned to produce materials strong enough to withstand the heat.

I know how to create frying pans and kitchen utensils with a strange ore. They are still too crude to be sold on earth, but at least they let me cook.

Back on track, the thing is that now I'm practicing two types of methods to use qi, and it would not be easy to keep up with both methods functioning at the same time.

I'll try to merge them and create something new, but it could very well go wrong so I would not get my hopes high up.

For now let's jut worry about speeding up the rate of absorption of qi without compromising my health.

And when I have almost the same amount of strength as the little fox, I would try to explore the nearby lands in this very same mountain.

It's no joke to say that this mountain is imposing. And with good reasons. It pierces the sky, like a spear trying to create a tear in the space.

Add to this that we are only in the middle section of the mountain, and that I can't protect entirely myself from all dangers lurking around.

You can see that the space in which I teleported is full of dangers and surprises.