The Art of Persistence

"Ahh... after this, it would be good for me to take a good day of rest and relax my spirit," Chen Wei said wearily as he looked at the walls of his aperture, which took the form of solid walls of bright white stone, giving a sense of robustness and strength.

This, along with the Crimson Red primeval essence surging within his aperture at a steady rate, are major indicators of his breakthrough in cultivation to Rank 2 Upper Stage after great effort and dedication.

"Ah... cultivation in the Gu world is truly simple and tedious," Chen Wei weakly walks towards a table full of food that could be described as a feast by a common Gu master.

It could even make a mortal cough up blood and die of anger and sadness while watching Chen Wei devour the luxurious banquet, which probably costs more than all the money the mortal could make in a lifetime even if he wass "rich"

But as Chen Wei devours this food, he cares little for its refined taste and delicate manners in eating, which were taught to him as a child, as his only thought is to quickly finish these highly nutritious meals and return to cultivation.

And so it has been for Chen Wei for about a month and a half since he entered his closed and constant cultivation, until now where his hard work has paid off with his advancement to the upper stage of Rank 2 at an impressive speed.

Well, of course, this speed may be impressive to those looking from the outside, but for Chen Wei, this cultivation speed is completely natural and nothing beyond what he expected before starting this intense cultivation session.

And no wonder, for during this month and a half, Chen Wei has slept for a maximum of five to six hours a day and, except for the moments when he needs to take care of his basic needs or like now, eat, he never stops for even a moment.

Even the moments when it was necessary to recover primeval essence were nonexistent since he simply used the primeval stones that were constantly provided by his grandfather, consuming the primeval stones as if he were a bottomless pit.

Chen Wei has not kept track of how many primeval stones he has consumed so far, but he imagines that it must be in the thousands, which, from the perspective of a cultivation aristocratic family as rich as the Chen family, is an investment that is totally worth it.

The same goes for other great families in the He An clan who have been investing large amounts of primeval stones and resources lately to have their most talented members try to reach Rank 3, and Chen Wei imagines that the same is happening in the Feng Zhi and Xiong Mao clans.

In fact, the only reason the great families within the clans had not practiced this attitude more before was because these talented Rank 2 upper and peak stage members were the pillars and commanders on the front lines of the war, so it was not feasible to make a large part of them retreat to cultivate. But now that the pillars of the front line have become the rank 3 elders, this has quickly changed.

And something like this also applies to moments of peace where such a huge expenditure of resources that wears down a family's base and even somewhat infringes on the wealth and interests of the elder would have been unthinkable and could make whoever suggested it be treated as a fool, and if he actually went through with it, he would be treated as a lunatic.

"Among all of them, my advancement must be the fastest and most significant," this conclusion of Chen Wei comes not from arrogance or disdain for the other talented members of great families but rather is the logical conclusion from his perspective.

Because all this time, with the help of the Four Flavor Liquor Worm, he has been using his Rank 2 upper stage primeval essence to nourish the walls of his aperture, which were still at Rank 2 middle stage, which made his cultivation speed twice what he would normally achieve without the Four Flavor Liquor Worm.

This, along with the rich resources and Chen Wei's unceasing dedication to his cultivation, as cultivating for eighteen hours a day every day is an extremely taxing activity not only on the body but also on the mind and spirit of someone, made him reach the Upper stage in record time, which will become Peak Stage today with the help of the Red Relic Gu.

"Now I have six and a half more months to achieve Rank 3 within the expected time..."

"Of course, this is the expected time by my grandfather because I am confident that I will be able to reach Rank 3 by the end of the year, which will arrive in three months," Chen Wei heads to his bed to enter cultivation again while speaking to himself, a habit he has had even before coming to the Gu world.

"Actually if everything goes correctly and I have no problems in my advancement to Rank 3, I will be able to reach this level in at most one month," of course, if he were in a time-limited situation or in a hurry, he could try his advancement by the end of this month, but as they say, hurry is the enemy of perfection or the best friend of failure.

Which in such a dangerous process as cultivation breakthrough can be a death sentence since even the slightest mistake at a critical moment can easily lead even a great genius to have a deplorable and painful end.

This is one of the parts of cultivation that is not explored much in the novel because it follows Fang Yuan's perspective, who had already become an blood path immortal of Rank 6 just two tribulations away from Rank 7, so from his perspective, something like advancing from Rank 2 to 3 and so on seems like child's play.

But for the mortals of this world who have to face this great barrier for the first time, this is a great tribulation that has defeated many young talented and dedicated people, ending their dreams and inspirations for the future as if they were nothing.

Or do you think all these middle-aged men who are stuck at Rank 2 Peak Stage or B-grade talents who even after years of effort barely manage to reach Rank 3 but completely lose hope of advancing to Rank 4 are just lazy people with weak wills?

Of course, some of them are the former who, after reaching a point where they can live comfortably, simply lose all their ambitions while living luxuriously, but the vast majority, especially in the Longhua Shan mountain devastated by war, do not advance because no matter how hard they try and cultivate, they never have enough resources, time, and talent to break through this barrier.

And the list of people who died or suffered serious injuries while attempting to advance in just the He An clan is quite extensive, so Chen Wei wants to have at least a little preparation, and even this preparation time would be considered very little by most people who spend years in this process in normal times.

But Chen Wei is confident that even with this little preparation time, he will succeed in his advancement because of three main factors: his luck, his talent, and his family inheritances.

The first factor, if spoken aloud, would make almost every Gu master consider him a fool, whether mortal or immortal, since in this era, luck path does not even exist in concept, and people treat luck more as a concept than something practical that can be used in cultivation.

The maximum practical knowledge about luck in the Gu world at this moment is Fortune Qi, and even then, it is only a minor aspect and not fully developed of the Qi path, so it can be said that Chen Wei is the greatest expert in the Luck path alive, so he knows how strong and imposing this path created by the same creator of blood path can be.

And shortly after obtaining this Red Relic Gu, which he will use to greatly advance in his cultivation, he had an inspiration related to Luck path that was quickly put into practice by him.

What he did was simple: he took a silver coin that is generally used by mortals for trade among themselves and went to one of his servants and made a bet that consisted of guessing which side the coin would land on after he tossed it in the air; if the servant guessed correctly, he would win a primeval stone for each round ge guessed right against Chen Wei if the servant won. Unfortunately, for him, after playing ten times, Chen Wei won all.

But as a consolation prize, Chen Wei gave him a primeval stone and told him to call other servants to do the same, and to Chen Wei's lack of surprise, even after making the same bet against several servants, he never lost once.

Chen Wei even went so far as to make the same bet against his grandfather and won every time, this made him quickly conclude that his own luck must be at least much greater than the average Rank 3, since it had the capacity to suppress Chen Wang's luck to prevent him from winning and causing Chen Wei to suffer a loss or negative outcome.

So with all the evidence, he came to the obvious conclusion that his luck must be considerable enough to prevent an unexpected negative variable from causing his advancement to fail.

"Honestly, I should be able to achieve Supreme grand master attainment just for this idea hahaha..." This is clearly a joke since he is fully aware that Heavens Will has more knowledge about Luck path than he does, so this will not happen, and the same goes for Blood path.

Secondly, of course, comes Chen Wei's talent, which modestly considers to be greater than that of any other Gu master he has encountered and which combined with various theoretical knowledge he has gained from the novel and science has made him become a Quasi-master in the Blood path in just over a year of cultivation.

And finally, there are the various cultivation inheritances that belong to his family, which have their origins dating back to the early years of the clan's existence and which over all this time have had various great specialists who created and collected various Gu that can help someone go through their cultivation breakthrough more easily and safely.

One of these Gu, for example, is the Weak Membrane Gu, which weakens the walls of a Gu master's aperture to facilitate their breakthrough but has the side effect of decreasing the talent of the Gu master proportionally to how much the walls of the aperture were weakened, so the idea of using it was automatically discarded by Chen Wei.

But one of the Gu to aid in cultivation advancement that he will definitely use is the Gluttonous Toad Gu, which can store primeval stones within itself and in the midst of a Gu master's advancement, it automatically transfers the primeval essence from the primeval stones to the Gu master without him having to do anything and with an efficiency of 60% conversion, which is extremely high when the Gluttonous Toad can store up to a thousand primeval stones at once.

"But let's set these thoughts aside for now... because I have finally reached my first goal," Chen Wei looks at his aperture, which presents walls made of bright white crystals containing a sea of dark red primeval essence in which various Gu swim or float peacefully.

"I really need to rest after a process like this..." Chen Wei says as he inspects a Gu that contains a congratulatory message and also recommends that he rest for about three days from his grandfather, who has already been informed by Chen Wei himself about his cultivation advancement.

Soon Chen Wei finishes inspecting his aperture and Gu to see if there is anything wrong, and when he confirms that everything is normal, he relaxes his body and falls into a deep sleep since he has spent the last 32 hours awake without a minute of rest or sleep while cultivating without stopping, so he is exhausted.