"Okay, time to get to work"
The day after Tian Long's day of leisure, he is sat on a circular meditation mat on the floor of the basement gym wearing a set of exercise clothing..
Opening the virtual interface using the silver bracelet, he accessed the first tab and pressed the white swirl icon at the top center of the blue holographic display. The display starts to warp and swirl from the middle shortly after from the center of the screen. Tian Long closes his eyes in meditation preparing for the transfer. Right before he closes his eyes, he sees the screen pop up with a couple of words.
⌜￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
[Entering World 0: Practice Room]
____________________________________________________________⌟
…
As Tian Long opened his eyes, a white room that seemed to go on infinitely appeared before his eyes. He sat cross-legged atop a meditation mat. After taking a while to reorient himself, he opened the holographic display. Navigating to the Techniques tab on the sidebar, he selects the
"Let's see, the fourth stage of the muscle strengthening stage still focuses on the overall improvement of the body's muscles but the 8 movements of the tempering technique has to be more fierce to further temper the body. Does that mean that I haven't been performing them fiercely enough?"
After a bit of contemplating, Tian Long got up and started punching, stomping, and kicking the air imitating the postures depicted in the book's Muscle Strengthening section. While performing the depicted postures, he started to control his breathing, inhaling and exhaling in a specific cadence. A short while later, Tian Long started to feel parts of his body start to tingle. As the sensation got stronger and stronger, he could feel his muscles starting to heat up. After performing one set of 36 stances, he starts all over again repeating the body tempering technique over and over again.
After about 3 sets he stops, gasping with sweat running down his body as he places his trembling arms on his knees.
"The 80th failed attempt. Still not there, I have to increase the intensity of performing the moves even more." After resting a while, he gets back into position "One more time, I think I finally got the feeling of how to do it."
As he pouches and kicks while going from one stance to another, his body starts to heat up again but after a while, the tingling sensation becomes a lot stronger than normal. The heat also becomes a lot fiercer, burning his muscles such that it starts to hurt to continue. As he pressed on, the heat spreads to all his muscles and soon after he finished the 3rd set, Tian Long pushed on and started a fourth set. Halfway through the fourth set, the heat starts to recede. Tian Long feels the heat concentrate itself on his muscles. The muscle fibers seem to become tougher and he starts to feel a lot lighter.
When he finishes the fourth set, he feels strength coursing throughout his body as if he could smash the ground and shatter a mountain. Of course, this feeling is a mirage caused by the body getting stronger. Tian Long shed tears of joy. After 81 tries, he had finally broken through to the fourth layer of muscle strengthening, and he was finally able to break through the minor bottleneck of the third layer.
There are ten realms in the first phase that martial artists can reach. Within each realm, three bottlenecks are hard to cross. People who are stuck in those stages may never improve again in their lifetimes. Those stages are naturally the third, sixth, and ninth layers. Thus, it would make sense why Tian Long was so happy that he broke through. Considering that most of his class had already reached the 5th layer, he was at the very back in terms of progress in martial stages. Now at the very least, he had caught up to the lower end of the class who were still in the 4th layer.
After doing a little dance in celebration of his breaking through to the fourth layer, he started to execute the muscle strengthening chapter again to continue strengthening his body and to stabilize his martial cultivation in the fourth layer by getting acclimated to his newfound strength.
…
Opening his eyes, Tian Long has returned to the basement gym sitting on the meditation mat. He sat there for a bit and opened his status panel.
⌜￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
[Tian Long] [Age: 15]
[Phase: 1] [Level 4]
[Cultivation: Muscle Strengthening Fourth layer]
Progress: (Intermediate)
[Techniques:
___________________________________________________⌟
It seems that his progress has reached the intermediate stage after stabilizing his martial cultivation. His constant dedication to practicing his martial technique and executing the muscle-strengthening chapter relentlessly had paid off. Otherwise, he would only be at the initiation stage.
For cultivation, there are three stages to a layer. When you first reach the layer, you are at the initiation layer. If you gain control of your strength and reach halfway on the layer, you are at the intermediate stage. When you reach your personal limit for the layer, you will reach a stage of perfection. Each person has their own personal limit which means that each person's maximum strength within a stage is different from each other. It mainly depends on how well they nourish their bodies and their body structure. Depending on the difference, the gap in strength can differ by only 1 to 2 kilos or by 10 to 100 kilos.
Getting up, Tian Long punched the air to test his strength.
"The force of my punch has increased. I feel much stronger at the fourth layer." Tian Long clenched his fist. After a while, he looks down at his body covered in sweat. "I should probably go take a bath."
Tian Long walks up the stairs. School will start again in 2 days and he is ready for it.