Jiang Mang would now become a second-year student and would become eligible to participate in house tournaments which would allocate medicines to break through bottlenecks. Unfortunately, these were useless to him as he had already broken through to the mid foundation stage. His improved cultivation had increased both the quality and quantity of his qi. This change enabled his techniques to influence all beneath the manifestation stage. He has trained all his existing techniques to perfection and improved his reformulated qi songs through different qi application methods to become equal to peak Huang tier techniques.
Drunken Parade trapped the targets in an inescapable illusion dome unless physically broken. Lust Waves was renamed Lust Song as he altered the qi application to make the sound not come in waves but become everlasting. This will make the music become a stimulant for lust and emotions which can only be ignored through willpower as it has changed from a consciousness technique to a physical technique. Jiang Mang gave the mind-controlling part up as its ability was too limited and he thus altered the technique to become a harassment and disruption skill. Nightmare Hell and Nightmare Cage were respectfully an assassination technique and a mental attack that made use of nightmares and hallucinations to weaken or kill the mind of the target. Illusion land had become his staple illusion technique by creating mental illusions to incapacitate the target and temporarily trap them. This technique will suck all targets in an illusion and can only be broken by circulating qi through the head and senses that are equivalent to the manifestation stage. He had also improved on his forbidden technique Reincarnation Paradise, which served as his brainwashing skill. Its ability to incapacitate targets is lower than Illusion land, which has served as the reason for its infrequent usage aside from the risks.
His physical combat ability can be rated as only below the Manifestation realm. He can beat both his guards when they drop their powers to the peak foundation stage. He has his hidden weapon mastery for ranged attacks and Flower's hand for close combat while he uses the mastered Nature's Call to restrict and support against opponents when he is in the woods. Jiang Mang has also mastered his inner vision and can now see the world surrounding him if he plays music with his flute, zither, or a leaf. This enables him to fight like a normal person with his hidden weapons, one arm, and with qi songs. His weakest ability while using inner vision is his close combat ability as he has to use minimally one hand to play music with a leaf.
He has not learned any new techniques from the technique department as he is accumulating points to buy the body cultivation Flower Beauty of the low Xuang tier. This technique will allow him to strengthen his body through training and medicines, which will enable him to physically fight those at the early Manifestation stage without touching their manifested profound spirit. The technique requires wood or similar type qi to be fused into the body when the user soaks into herbal concoctions while performing required postures. This will strengthen the body while increasing its flexibility but its cost doesn't equal its outcome as the body will only become as strong as a person's body coated with early manifestation qi.
Body cultivation techniques are rare and extremely costly while the user will have to endure extreme pain during the training of the techniques. This combination makes it the most unused type of cultivation technique on the Xuan Continent.
After a year of completing tasks and earning points, he has accumulated 3000 Tiancai points to redeem the technique. The moment he redeemed the technique, the manager of the technique department warned the boy of the techniques deficiencies but Jiang Mang ignored them. He thought that training his body with multiple body cultivation techniques would allow his combat ability to not be restricted by his musical instrument profound spirits which aren't suitable for combat. He believed that using the right tactics and methods combined with an agile-strong body would even out the destructive capability of qi attacks from high realm opponents.
In the previous year, he visited headteacher Zhu to discuss the path he should take with his cultivation. His profound spirits were capable of physical qi attacks. Unfortunately, after testing, it was concluded that his life qi and death qi would be weaker by a small cultivation realm compared to the common types of qi from tool type or elemental type profound spirits. This ability was already extraordinary compared to other musician cultivators who were incapable of physical qi attacks and qi defenses but was not enough for Jiang Mang.
The discussion ultimately led to Jiang Mang deciding to train in body cultivation techniques to enhance his close combat ability and hidden weapon techniques while perfecting his musical abilities. The combination of both aspects should allow him to battle those at an equal cultivation stage directly while allowing him to defeat and kill those he was able to prepare against. That discussion would result in Jiang Mang becoming the most troublesome opponent in the entire jianghu while also becoming the most feared. He would become known as an unexpected reaper who couldn't be killed. His ability to survive would become a legend on the Xuan continent. Unfortunately, all of this would only happen in the future and isn't known by those in the present.
Back to the present, when he returned to the musician house to start training in his first body cultivation technique. He went into seclusion and read through Flower's body. The technique was split into three stages. They were respectfully flexible tendons, supple muscles, and flowery skin. The user had to first train their skin to become jade white while also enhancing its hardness to become like jade, muscles would then, later on, be trained to increase flexibility and explosiveness, while the tendons would be trained as last to allow extreme explosiveness and flexibility. Flower's body is commonly trained by females, but Jiang Mang also chose it, because ordinary body cultivation techniques don't pay attention to flexibility, which is necessary for hidden weapon masters and musicians to perform to their best capabilities.