Meaning of Cultivation

Raul's head felt fuzzy when he woke up. He remembered making the bond to find out if anything was wrong with her and looking around for a bit, then everything turned hazy. All he could remember clearly was the feeling of sheer terror.

That's what he told Marina when she questioned him on what happened. She warned him severely about not using the Divine Pairing Hearts recklessly. Hearing about all the different ways it could go badly caused cold sweat to run down his back. He couldn't help feeling lucky that he only had a distinct feeling of fear leftover.

"Whatever you did you managed to profit from it. Your mental energy is actually considerably stronger than before." She noted. 'His talent for mental cultivation is surprisingly high, I'll have to study more on that topic for later.'

It wasn't just through this event she reached that conclusion, it was also due to the physiques that had taken root. Four of the nine were mental related, this was also a display of aptitude. Mental cultivation was extremely difficult at low levels however, so she planned to wait until their cultivation improved before training him in it.

"Still, I put us in danger again. I'm sorry, for that, and for not stopping when you'd first asked me to. I got too wrapped up in trying to beat this thing that I completely forgot I wasn't the only one feeling the pain." Raul apologized sincerely.

Marina was a bit confused by what he meant again. It took her a second to understand his misunderstanding and follow his train of thought.

"It's fine, we'll be more careful in the future." She felt it was troublesome to correct him, plus if his guilt made him listen to her better then it was a boon.

"… That didn't sound right." Raul suddenly narrowed his eyes and looked at her suspiciously.

Marina forced herself not to flinch and said, "Anyway, we should get back to your qi training. I administered some medicine while you were sleeping and replenished your qi, so you should be good to go." Raul was asleep for over twelve hours and it was a bit past daybreak now.

"Eh? Didn't I already master that?" Raul raised his hand and released a small burst of wind to prove his point.

Marina almost choked on her sigh of relief over the topic change when she saw how easily he could already use his wind qi. He only had a smidgen of qi left yesterday and couldn't refill it himself, which meant this was only his second time doing it.

'It's fine, the more talented he is the better for me. It just means I picked a winning horse.' Marina comforted herself while dismissing her own qi training difficulties from memory.

"Firstly, learning to release your qi is only the basics of the basics, it's a far cry from mastery. Secondly, attributed qi is different from regular essence qi, and you still haven't managed to release that. Don't forget that most spiritual tools require essence qi for imprinting." She reminded him.

Instead of tailoring them towards attributed qi which varied from person to person, spiritual tools were usually attuned to essence qi which everyone possessed. The obvious exceptions were spiritual tools tailor made for specific people or attribute types.

Raul's expression changed and he tried to use his essence qi like he did his wind qi, but it still wouldn't come out his body. "Damn, it really is different." He conceded.

"Remember to think hard on it, you can't just rely on instinct for everything."

"And I suppose you won't give me any hints?" He questioned hopefully. He'd already tried just about everything he could think of and he'd rather not waste time if he could help it.

"What do you think?" Marina tilted her head.

Raul sighed in resignation.

…

'This isn't working.' Raul frowned while looking at the damaged post before him. It'd already been two days since he'd restarted his qi training and he didn't feel any closer to succeeding.

He'd refined his old methods to the point he wasn't hurting himself anymore, and even came up with some new ones, but he still couldn't achieve whatever qualitative jump was necessary to project it.

He'd tried learning from his wind qi, but it was a dead end. All the methods he'd failed with essence qi worked with wind qi. His wind qi just seemed to run on entirely different rules and responded to his will much easier. It was a good thing, but it didn't help him here.

He glanced at Marina, but she was ignoring him with her nose deep in a book, as usual. Worse yet, staring at her made his stomach rumble in demand.

His training was not helped by the fact that he'd spent the last two days feeling like he was starving. She'd giving him multi course meals like she used to, but oddly, he felt even hungrier than when she made that singular meal from the first day they started qi training.

Yet even when he finally caved and outright asked for more, she refused. Now he was left with a constant burning sensation in his stomach.

'Ok, calm down Raul. You don't need her help, you got this.' He breathed in and out while suppressing his hunger. He sat down and tried to think about it from the top.

She may be an evil witch, but she shouldn't be ok with wasting time on a hopeless task. She told him to think, and he'd been focused on trying to come up with ways to manipulate his qi, but maybe that was the wrong path.

He needed to stop thinking of his wind qi as an example. While the full implications of it were lost on him, he understood from Marina, Tai, and Ellen's reactions that it was unusual. But Marina once said that qi was the deciding factor of a cultivator's strength, meaning all cultivators could use it, so he shouldn't use an anomaly as a guide.

Likewise, focusing on qi manipulation methods was too unique. He still hadn't found a limit to the ways he could manipulate his qi in his body, there were too many methods and changes possible. There's no way she could expect him to guess the right one randomly.

He felt like he was on the right track. For it to be vital to all cultivators and also be simple enough for her to expect him to get it, it couldn't be any unique traits or thought patterns by him, it had to be something more fundamental. So what was fundamental to cultivators? No, narrowing it down more, what was fundamental to the Qi Refining Realm?

Despite how it might seem at times, Raul really had skimme, *cough*, read the book on the Refining Realm. Upon reaching the refining realm a cultivator develops their dantian and twelve illusory meridians.

A refining realm cultivator must then refine their qi and use it to fully materialize the illusory meridians one by one until all twelve were complete. Only once they'd done that would a Refining Realm cultivator be able to reach the Spirit Ascension Realm.

Looking at it that way, the qi refining realm's whole purpose was to complete the dantian and meridians. The dantian's purpose was obvious, it held essence qi so that it had a place in the body instead of attempting to escape or immediately being used.

As for the meridians, his memory was sketchy on the details, but he knew they had many uses and could change the properties of qi, but all of those uses were only available once they'd fully materialized… right?

He closed his eyes and turned his focus inwards and towards his meridians. They were clearly incorporeal, and he could see right through them. Surely something like this can't be interacted with… Right?

He clenched his teeth and brought some of his qi near a meridian. After a moment of hesitation, he plunged the qi into it. The response was immediate.

His meridian ate up the qi he pushed near it hungrily. It then pulsed once and released the qi it'd sucked up.

He sent the qi to his hand and tried to make it exit, but instead it melted into his hand. That feeling of increased strength he always got when filling a limb with qi was back, but even stronger. Not only that, it was also lasting without him having to put more qi in it.

'It seriously works?' Raul felt his commonsense cracking. Though his qi didn't project, there was clearly a transformation after it went through the meridian. While this was a good thing, it left Raul confused.

Illusory things weren't real, it should be impossible for a real thing to interact with it… 'Wait, but isn't qi also intangible and illusory normally?' Raul had a sudden thought.

Essence qi was made from primordial qi and was visible and tangible when used, but primordial qi existed all around and was incorporeal and intangible to mortals. It exists all around them, but those who aren't blessed with cultivation talent will never interact with them, as if they exist on two separate planes.

Logically they shouldn't be able to interact, but a cultivator's first act is to absorb that intangible substance and make it interact with their body. Their first act was to make the impossible possible.

'Forget everything you learned when you were a mortal,' when Marina had said that he only thought she meant about fighting skills, but it was actually all encompassing. Cultivators lived in an entirely different world from mortals, they were already traversing the impossible path of immortality, their basic moves were already beyond the scope of mortal comprehension!

Raul felt one of the foundations he'd built throughout his twenty years of life collapse and his worldview underwent a drastic change! But this didn't dishearten him in the least.

'Turning the impossible possible, a world where the line between real and unreal is incomprehensibly blurred, this is cultivation!' His blood boiled in excitement.

His eyes shot open as he glared at the post with an intensity that rivaled the sun. "Get ready, I'm about to turn you into splinters."