As the first rays of light shone through the gaps between trees to show the dew-covered forest, one could vaguely hear the sounds of trees breaking and falling.
The origin of these sounds was Martin testing out his newly achieved cultivation on the trees near his small log cabin.
Martin couldn't help but show a satisfied smile as he said, "there's probably no wild animal I can't kill with my bare fists."
When he finished verifying his progress, he decided to focus his mind on understanding the information about his current realm.
He learnt that,
The Initial element foundation realm is divided into three major stages, lower, middle and upper, each having three levels.
In the first to the third level, spiritual energy is absorbed then transformed into the body's spiritual qi/ elemental qi. Which then refines the body's meridians, muscles, and organs, thus expelling impurities.
From the fourth level, the body can store spiritual qi. Spiritual qi then needs to be accumulated to increase cultivation.
Martin then thought focused on the cultivation technique he received.
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With this cultivation technique, he can absorb any yang spiritual energy and efficiently convert it into his spiritual qi. But while he can take in and refine spiritual energy that is not yang in nature, it takes more time while needing more units to provide what yang can in less.
After learning all this, Martin decided to familiarize himself with the cultivation technique.
The weird breathing patterns gave him a headache. He had to keep his mind focused, taking long breaths and short breaths of different amounts of time irregularly. On top of it being a mentality tasking affair, he had to stay focused, or he'd have to restart the process.
It took him half a day to adapt.
On the second day, he could use the technique as if it were his natural breathing pattern. He also noticed that his wounds were healing at an increased rate.
A week later, he had fully refined and purged a lot of impurities from his internal organs, thus successfully achieving the second level of the initial foundation realm.
"Sigh. The spiritual energy in this forest is quite thin. If I cannot get my hands on some treasures that are yang in nature or find a place reach with spiritual energy, my progress would be unbearably slow." Martin sorrowfully said.
After his breakthrough, he decided to go to a nearby city. On his way there, he'd collect as many monster cores and spiritual cores as he could so he could trade for pills and resources.
...
A week later, Martin stood on a nameless hill humming a rhythmless tune as he tried to decern his direction,
"... sunny sun sun sun sun, sunny on a sunny day ..."
Anyone could see at a glance that he was in a good mood. But who could blame him?
During the past week, he had managed to kill three monster beasts. One of the beasts was one which he had fleed from in the past.
He had also collected a large number of herbs with spirit energy. The only downside was that he never studied herbology. He was sure that at least half of what he collected was probably useless.
Once he ascertained the direction, he got off the hill with a quick three hops and continued on his way.
Martin walked a few hundred metres before coming to an abrupt stop and turned his head right.
"Weird. What is this sensation? Something I have an affinity with?" he furrowed his brows in confusion.
Unable to hold his curiosity, he decided to follow the 'weird feeling' to the source. As he walked in that direction, the feeling continued to grow.
After walking for fifteen minutes, he finally found the source. It was a slanted wild fruit tree that grew on a slope. The was tree adorned with leaves of different vibrant autumn hues. But what caught his attention was the fist-sized, diamond-shaped, red and golden fruits hanging on the tree as they glistened in in the afternoon sunlight.
Gulping the saliva that had unknowingly accumulated in his mouth, he thought,
'So that's what's happening. It seems after cultivating the <
Without wasting any further time, he took out a sack of herbs with the lowest amount of spiritual energy and happily threw them out. Walking up to the tree, he thought,
"With such a concentration of pure yang energy, I will be able to go straight up one realm into the qi transformation realm."
Thinking about such a future, he couldn't help himself but giggle.
Climbing the tree while humming nonsensically, he started harvesting fruit. Just as he put the first fruit in the sack, a loud buzzing sound came from afar.
When he looked up, he saw a metre tall tiger beetle rushing over with bellowing monster qi.