Cultivating Peacefully

Whilst returning the artifact, no complications rose, thus Shen Wang, after successfully returning the artifact and paying exactly 30 Merit Points had successfully returned to his adobe. 

The next few days were quite peaceful, Shen simply cultivated in his adobe and occasionaly went out for the public lectures that were held for all of the outer sect disciples as a whole. 

Other than that, Shen would usually spend his time either playing with Floof, bathing in lakes, library and the Body Tempering Peak. 

The days flowed into months and in a blink of an eye, 2 months had already passed. 

Under the scorching sunlight, Shen's body could be seen as a glimmering diamond as light underwent total internal reflection due to the accumulation of sweat on Shen's body. 

'Huff.... Huff..." 

Shen was currently performing deadlifts on the Body Tempering Peak, In fact not just him, many disciples were indulged in the activities of their own choice. 

Although, Shen had already cultivated the Vital Lotus Body, it wouldn't mean anything if it was just filled with "Vital Lotus fat" instead of "Vital Lotus muscles", thus Shen Wang would come here everyday to perform various exercises. 

"Good job Shen, you've successfully lifted 10000 kilograms of weight, that's a new record," This voice naturally belonged to Feng Long. 

Over the past two months, both of them would spend most of the time working out together, Shen Wang also got to know more about Feng Long's past and about his martial artist family. 

In fact, they bonded quite well!

So much so, that they started to address each other by their names itself, skipping over the needless honorifics. 

"Haha, Feng Long, I'm still far behind your record of 15000 kilograms, save your praises till the day I beat your record!" Shen Wang spoke with a grin on his face. 

"Hoho, It seems that I need to start training harder!" Feng Long's spirits rose up, as he got provoked by the friendly challenge. 

As time went on and the sun's rays started to set down, the disciples of Body Tempering Peak, finally retired for the day. 

The entire peak was cladded by the stench of sweat and muscles, however it was soon replaced by delicate aroma of cooked meat.

It was a service provided by the sect itself, every evening, the sect would organise a small fest to reward the disciples for their workout while also taking care of their nutritional needs. 

Food was naturally the way to a person's heart, thus during dinner, the disciples would hang out and just chill after the hard workout. 

Shen Wang and Feng Long sat across to each other, each of them focused on devouring their respective plates filled with meaty sausages. 

After the feast, the disciples would start cultivating their Vital Lotus Breathwork, naturally both Shen and Feng Long would join in as well. 

However, since Shen had already condensed his Vital Lotus Body, his progress was simply too slow, it had barely progressed since. 

'It seems that the 81-times condensed Vital Lotus Body would take quite a long while to condense...." 

Over these 2 months, Shen had read up quite a lot in the libraries of the Sect, his grasp over the basics of the cultivation world had theoretically increased and his position was far better than before. 

'Other than that, my cultivation is progressing smoothly which is most likely due to the spiritual conduction of Vital Lotus Body and the fact that Elder Jian Hu had cleansed my body of quite a lot of pill impurities.' 

Shen's knowledge about pill impurities had already increased quite a bit, ever since he recieved the lowest tier alchemy insights from the system, another interesting thing to note was that, ever since Shen acquired the insights again, the system seemed to have entered into hibernation and didn't emit any prompts. 

'Well.... going back onto the topic of pill impurities, I should be able to get rid of them completely through Vital Lotus Breathwok in about 2 years." 

Since, Shen was already reforming his body through the Breathwork, the impurities were also starting to dissapear bit by bit. 

The pill impurities caused resistance to a certain type of pill, thus by reaching higher levels in body tempering, a cultivator could naturally get rid of them and remove the resistance towards that specific pill. 

However, there wasn't much benifit in regaining senstivity to a pill that you'd already overdosed on, as the effect it would provide would just by quantitave, and even that would feel nothing since your cultivation would've already advanced. 

But nonetheless, having a cleased body sounded better than having pill impurities so cultivators would choose to get rid of them anyways, after all, one better be careful than sorry. 

Thus, Shen Wang focused more on using the Vital Lotus Breathwork to take care of the pill impurities rather than simple using it to refine his physique. 

'However, during these 2 months, one thing that I never did was learn martial arts....' 

All this time, Shen had been working on his cultivation and body tempering, but never once had he ever dabbled into martial arts. 

Neither the previous Shen Wang nor the current, none of them had any knowledge about any martial art. 

This was mainly because the previous Shen Wang was dead-stuck on reaching Foundation Establishment before the age of 19. 

However, Shen's thoughts were a bit different now.

Did that really matter? 

How could he consider establishing his foundation without even learning a single martial art! 

'For God's sake, I'm a cultivator, not a cauldron!' 

Shen planned on utilising the months down the lane to actually work on his attack skills, because even though he was able to acquire the strength of a middle Foundation Establishment cultivator through the effects, this would only take him so far. 

'Lastly, Elder Huang hasn't shown up even once, did something happen to him?'' 

There was no trace of Elder Huang yet, who had promised to meet Shen Wang after a month ago, whose deadline had already passed 2 months ago. 

'Nonetheless, it's quite nice having a peaceful time to cultivate by myself' 

Sitting between the many disciples, who were already focused on circulating their breathwork, Shen just performed it casually while spending more energy on laying out some sort of a flowchart like timetable for him to follow. 

'So my current priorities are as follows,

1. Learn martial arts and practice them 

2. Reach the peak of Qi condensation 

3. Get rid of pill impurities 

4. Take on missions to officialy venture out and actually earn some merit points.'