Chapter 157- Going Past The Nascent Warrior

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Liu Guanyi suddenly opened his eyes as he looked at the surroundings underwater.

An unnerving and chilling smirk curled up on his mouth as a subtle, yet unsettling aura began to exude from his body.

Many of the fish and creatures could faintly feel the dangerous presence that he emitted and quickly swam away from the spot as their instincts immediately blared to warn them to go away as far as possible from him.

'After all these years, finally… I am one step closer to surpassing humanity and to reach that "Realm" again.' Liu Guanyi thought as he looked up to the surface and smiled in satisfaction.

'I only have to complete the last stage of the Nascent Warrior to go up to the next realm...'

Indeed, after the last time he had advanced into the Nascent Warrior realm, it had been more than twenty-seven years passed since then.

As always, Liu Guanyi had been using every second of his time to train his body in the Martial Way, or if he didn't do it, he would use his time to train his shinsu control.

The Nascent Warrior stage was divided into four stages. Once a martial practitioner completed all of the parts in succession, they would then could advance into the next realm.

The first stage was the refinement of the flesh and tissues.

After ascending to be a nascent warrior from an initiate warrior, a martial practitioner had remade and refined all of the blood vessels in all of the three blood circulations, the systemic circulation, pulmonary circulation, and lastly, the portal circulation.

The function of blood vessels was mainly to transport and deliver oxygenated blood and the nutrients needed to sustain life or biological function to every single part of the human body. The ones that were directly supplied by the blood vessels were muscles and tissues.

Because of this, the flesh and tissues were the first ones to be refined in the Nascent Warrior stage as they were the easiest and quickest to do so.

Just like how an initiate warrior needed to break down their blood vessels to renew and reform them with inner energy, a nascent warrior also had to destroy and break down their muscles and tissues and reform them with the inner energy.

However, the process must be done slowly, patiently, and steadily for every single day without stopping until it was fully finished, but also making sure it didn't take too long as well. The reason was the same as before, refining a part of a body caused an imbalance to appear.

And if the imbalance stayed for too long, it could inflict a hidden injury that could inhibit a martial practitioner from achieving their true potential and even destroy their body from inside. This was the hard part of the first stage.

Liu Guanyi had to endure excruciating pain every single day as he refined his muscles and tissues, making his bodily fluid become bloody red until he finished the process.

He had to do the process correctly and steadily while fighting against the pain, laziness, and the reluctance feeling as the process was indeed taxing both in the body and mind.

Fortunately, with the help of shinsu and his past experience, he managed to accomplish it and easily pass this hurdle in just a few years, an incredible and unbelievable speed compared to his previous attempt!

The second stage of the Nascent Warrior was to refine all of the inner organs.

Inner organs were vital and crucial parts of the human body or any single creature as they were the ones who worked hard to support their living and made sure that the entire body could operate as it was intended without any issue.

They were the ones to deal with the respiratory process, digestive process, detoxing process, metabolism process, organization process, movement process, reproduction process, and many other processes that they had to manage at every single second.

If there was just a single slight mistake in any of them, it could lead to a deadly chain reaction that could result in internal damage. To keep all of those processes while maintaining the balance of the body, it was easy to imagine how hard the organs would have to work.

Thus, it was a must-to-do step for martial practitioners to improve and refine their internal organs after the muscles and tissues.

The ancient Martial Masters had described, explained, and written that without improving them first after the first stage, the inner organs would gradually experience a breakdown as the heart, muscles, and tissues were too strong for them to keep up with.

The internal organs couldn't manage to do all of the biological processes that a powerful Martial Warrior needed to have as the parts of their body had been strengthened significantly while the organs still operated at the same power and capability.

The internal organs refinement step usually started from the most important organs first, before moving on to the less important ones. Since the blood vessels and heart were already refined in the previous stages, it usually started from the lungs and liver to the kidneys, spleen, and intestines.

To refine every single organ was incredibly risky and difficult.

Their tune control of the inner energy had to be gentle and steadfast. It was a much slower and delicate process compared to refining the muscles and tissues as the internal organs were very squishy and fragile.

However, if the martial practitioner was extremely gifted in controlling the inner energy had an abundant amount of it, they could start the process of organs refinement on more than a single organ at a time, making them save more time and their body balance, making them able to walk further on the Martial Way albeit at risk of higher organ failure.

Back then, when Liu Guanyi was in the Nascent Warrior realm, he had refined two organs at a time, saving his lifespan and vitality so he could reach further. Although it might not seem that important, even the most powerful Martial Masters could only live up to a few hundred years.

The achievement a martial practitioner could reach in their lifetime was strictly tied to his lifespan and his balance. This was because the inner energy was the lifeforce itself.

The younger they were, the more vibrant and richer their lifeforce would be.

Thus, the faster a martial practitioner passed each stage while keeping their body balance in check, the greater their achievement and the further their journey on the Martial Way would be.