Nio was alone at the moment. Using the excuse that he needed to start cultivating, he was able to freely go to the yard where the children of Squad 9 played. He had received the manual for Bone Tempering, and he was eager to start his journey of cultivation.
Refining one's body was an important part of cultivating. When starting to cultivate, one needed to first refine their body before they properly started. If one skipped one of the stages or completely skipped Body Tempering, they would be dead quicker than they could react.
If you, for example, did not complete Bone Tempering, your bones would never grow stronger as you advanced in the various cultivation realms, at some point your muscles would be so strong that they would completely pulverize your mortal bones, killing or crippling you. In a world where strength was as important as money, Nio was not sure which was worse.
Or if you, for some idiotic reason, decided to completely skip the body tempering, form your dantian, and step into the Martial Beginner Realm, as soon as you first circulated your Qi after your advancement, your very own Qi would kill you. The power in your Qi would burst out from your dormant meridians and spread through your whole body in a rampaging frenzy. It would crumble your bones, rupture your muscles, burn your skin, force your organs into failing, and bring your mind to complete madness.
So it was better to focus, and focus well, on Body Tempering. Bone Tempering was the first step, this would greatly increase his END and STR stats, according to the system.
Although Nio was still not sure of how much of an increase it would be, he was sure that he could take various benefits from it. Besides that, he supposedly had great talent in the area, so surely he would increase his strength exponentially.
Soon, he would find that rabbit and blow it to smithereens.
Refining the body had several steps. Depending on the manual you were using, the complexity and the number of steps one had to take were derived from its quality. The manual that had been given to him was quite basic and followed the simplest way to refine the body.
Not a problem, the body could still be refined at later stages of cultivation to better improve the synchronization between cultivation and body, therefore, he would be able to better refine his body once he got his hands on a more advanced manual.
To refine the body, one needed to draw the heaven and earth energy from the atmosphere towards their own body. Once there, they needed to guide it towards their target with great care. If they made it flow too fast, it would destroy their body, and if they were too slow, the long exposure to non-converted energy would rapidly age the part of the body that was exposed.
Once it reached the target, one needed to make it move inside it, making sure that it was never in the same place for a long period of time, and then one would accelerate the flow little by little until it was no different from having heaven and earth energy all over the target, in this case the skeleton.
One would repeat these steps until the skeleton started converting the energies into actual Qi on its own. On average, this process took around two months. For members of the Stygian clan with a talent level of 1, they were expected to do it in a week, in the case they repeated the process every day.
Considering his own talent and the fact that he was already quite skilled in energy manipulation due to his experience with cursed energy and chakra, paired with the fact that he could sense any changes as well as feel the chance of success of certain operations with his bloodline, he was aiming to do it in one or two days.
Now, this was a really touchy subject. Tempering his bones in the span of two days, almost four times faster than expected, would put him in a great and bright spotlight. However, there was no need to delay it.
Nio's plan was simple. He would refine his body with great talent, but he would cause doubt in the minds of the Nell family. He would perform exceptionally well in some aspects and then perform below expectations in other aspects. He would counter his own talent and strength with fake weaknesses.
People tend to let their guard down if they believe they've figured out their target's weakness. If one day the Nell family decided to take action towards Nio or any of his loved ones, they would be surprised to find out that his lack of talent in certain aspects was merely a play.
So Nio got to work. He was now seated cross-legged in his usual meditation spot, a branch in the singular tree in the yard, his back against the trunk. He closed his eyes and spread his awareness to his surroundings, countering his instincts to use his bloodline to scan for changes.
Soon, he noticed the powerful pull of the heaven and earth energy. He resisted it and instead pulled it towards himself, absorbing it into his body. Carefully, he guided it inside his body towards his skeleton. It was an easy process, and he was quite focused on any changes that he picked up.
Using the paths that the manual instructed to be used as reference, he used his physique to scan the chances of success of all the various paths to take.
In no time, the energy reached his skeleton and penetrated into it. He made it move inside as if dancing with his bones as a stage. Soon, the energy completely filled all of his skeleton, and he carefully let it stay there.
He started to feel his skeleton change and feel more durable and more powerfull, he felt great.
After half an hour, the energy dissipated and Nio had to repeat the process, he did so five times to a total of two hours and a half of meditating, and the results were already fascinating.
[
Status:
Name: Nio/Nioo/9-1-1/Alex
Age: 10(28)
Cultivation: Body Tempering Stage 0 (Upgrading, please continue the process)
Bloodline: Mortal Body of Chance and Change
Health: Evolving
PHY: 41
SPE: 24
END: 49
INT: 31
CON: 30
Credits: 662
]
His PHY stat had increased slightly, and his END stat had made a gigantic leap, even his control improved, probably because of the long process of meditating. This was even better thanks to the bonus stat points that he gained thanks to Yuji's Physique that he had bought years ago.
His cultivation path was only just starting.
He was really excited that in the next day, after classes ended he went straight to cultivating. He wondered if it was normal for new cultivators to feel so eager to cultivate after making the smallest bit of progress. He certainly enjoyed it, especially being capable of witnessing his growth through numbers in his status.
On the second day, Nio cultivated for three hours, and he had grown stronger yet again.
[
Status:
Name: Nio/Nioo/9-1-1/Alex
Age: 10(28)
Cultivation: Body Tempering Stage 0 (In Breakthrough)
Bloodline: Mortal Body of Chance and Change
Health: Evolving
PHY: 46
SPE: 24
END: 56
INT: 31
CON: 30
Credits: 672
]
However, there was still a problem.
He had theorized he would be capable of entering the Bone tempering stage in two days, but he still wasn't, for some reason. Naturally, his eyes fixated on the words "In Breakthrough".
"System. What is the meaning of the 'In Breakthrough'?"
[When cultivating, you may find yourself in the "In Breakthrough" state, this normally happens when a cultivator has hit the ceiling of the stage/realm he has reached, and he must now repeat the process he was already doing with great effort in order to break through the wall that is preventing them from reaching the next stage/realm.]
"So basically, I have already reached the pinnacle of tempering my bones, and to finally reach the Bone Tempering Stage, I must repeat the process so many times that I end up breaking the wall that's in my way? Sounds simple."
With that, Nio went back to cultivating, and he did so for the next two days, at which point he was finally able to reach the next stage.
At the time, he was, like always, in his meditation spot repeating the process of pulling heaven and earth energy and then sending it to his skeleton. Unlike before, his skeleton stopped absorbing the energy to refine itself, instead it started accumulating it as if saving food for later.
In the last day, the energy that was being "saved" exploded forth, encompassing the whole skeleton. Nio sensed it to be different from Heaven and Earth energy.
Somehow, he knew what it was, it was Qi. His skeleton started absorbing energy and refining it into Qi on its own, he was now at the Bone Tempering Stage.
[
Status:
Name: Nio/Nioo/9-1-1/Alex
Age: 10(28)
Cultivation: Body Tempering Stage 1 : Bone Tempering
Bloodline: Mortal Body of Chance and Change
Health: Very Healthy
PHY: 55
SPE: 24
END: 71
INT: 32
CON: 32
Credits: 672
]
****
Fun Fact: I was not expecting to write so many status pages in this chapter.
Check Out my other Novel: Unsealed Demonic Dragon goes to the Academy (UDDA).