"Elder Li stared at the boy who had just shown up and whipped the entire sect into a frenzy, sleeping in a makeshift bed. Wang Feng was still ill. Elder Li sighed and made the child drink some low-grade mild spiritual elixir, which replenished his spiritual energy like the spiritual energy pill. After several hours, he observed that the fever was gone. In the coming hours, aided by the elixir, a surge of Wang Feng's spiritual Qi would slowly push out different Qi from his system, taking the toxins that they were tethered to with them."
A smelly, viscous liquid was pushed out from Wang Feng's pores. His body was now primed for cultivation. If one started cultivating without doing this, they would nourish these foreign entities alongside their own flesh, creating an uneven distribution of cultivation levels as well as colonies of microorganisms that produce poison and have high cultivation. These colonies would be harder to get rid of.
Elder Li had pulled an all-nighter for Wang Feng. He lightly smacked the lad awake. "Hmph... You stink. Go take a bath!" Wang Feng was shocked. Why did he smell so bad? What was all this sticky, dark green goo?
Wang Feng cupped his fists. "I apologize, senior!"
Elder Li waved his hand. "Don't worry about it," just as Wang Feng was about to leave. Elder Li shouted towards him, "You absolutely must cultivate today!" Elder Li was worried that Wang Feng would skip cultivating today and get swarmed by bacteria once more, negating all the work he had put into him. "I will listen to senior!" Wang Feng cupped his fists once again.
After taking a bath, Wang Feng pulled out the random cultivation method he had chosen.
"Seven basic movements, seven basic meditations."
To invent a new cultivation method, he had to know how to cultivate first. He first used the seven meditations chapter to guide the raw spiritual energy to his spiritual root. Each meditation was an instruction for an energy flow, sometimes through veins, sometimes through voids within organs like the intestines and stomach. Once all the raw spiritual energy made its way to the spiritual root, it started to convert to spiritual qi. Wang Feng, as instructed, used the freshly made spiritual qi to nourish his body. The book didn't clarify why, but most likely, spiritual forces are also subject to thermodynamics, losing more energy the longer they are stored.
As Wang Feng cycled his qi and expelled the qi that lost its charge, he noticed another phenomenon worthy of note. His brain was pumping happiness hormones like crazy. It wasn't as intense as the drugs he was on when he was a sickly old man in pain, but it was up there with junk food, chocolate, or intense exercise.
There is a concept called parallel evolution, where two different organisms evolve similar traits in similar environments, creating different species that look identical. It is speculated that since this reality also contains spiritual energy, species evolved here may have adaptations regarding spiritual energy, such as spiritual roots and the joy felt during cultivation. Wang Feng was likely not like the Homo sapiens of Earth. However, he didn't want to stray from scientific thinking and didn't dare accept his speculations as facts unless proven by evidence or experiments.
After four cycles, he stopped cultivating as he became too lethargic. He sat on a chair and relaxed. It had been a hectic couple of days.
Wang Feng made himself a to-do list:
First, try the contortionist fighting art. Second, try the gecko movement art. Third, experiment with the capabilities of the Dao marks.
After he had taken a satisfying break, Wang Feng got to work. The contortionist fighting art focused on joints and their flexibility, fighting close to the ground, and maximizing the battle range by getting as horizontal to the ground as possible. During each movement, the body sways like a whip to maximize the speed at which the strike is achieved. If performed correctly, like other whips, the strike spots can break the sound barrier, which is described in the manual as "the invisible barrier of speed". If practiced without spiritual qi, it would be a deeply stupid martial art. However, with the introduction of spiritual qi, the art becomes as competitive and viable as any MMA-friendly martial art out there. The sudden twitch of a highly specialized set of muscles and their guaranteed durability and stamina can be achieved using spiritual qi restorative effects. A specialized set of muscles can be strengthened to the extreme to achieve maximum penetrative power. This world has defense arts and high cultivation individuals. Penetrative power is a must. We all know the equation F = m × a. Since the weight of the fists is static, to achieve maximum force, one must achieve maximum speed. Maximum speed transfers to the things it strikes maximum momentum, thus maximum force. It also comes with a couple of flexibility exercises, which is very nice.
Wang Feng was sweating profusely. Practicing martial arts was as rewarding as good exercise.
He picked up the "Sticky gecko movement art." This art focuses on creating qi tendrils that move spiritual energy upwards, creating a downward force. If one could see spiritual energy with the naked eye, one would see that a gecko art practitioner has spiritual energy jets at the back of their hands, pushing their hands in the opposite direction. This allows someone to stick to walls and ceilings. They can even levitate until their qi runs out. Coupled with the contortionist fighting art, an unpredictable flurry of attacks could be unleashed. Because he can fix his feet to the ground, he can be nearly parallel to the ground and still have his stance unbroken.
Wang gave a hearty laugh. "Good art, hahaha."
Wang Feng took another break. He was excited - more excited than he had ever been in his entire life, except for the time the second spark appeared in the river of forgetfulness. Combining two arts, he was now able to use grotesque movements to dodge, parry, and strike. His fighting style had no firm attitude. To defend was to reduce mobility.
Wang Feng took another break and got his spiritual energy pills ready. It was now time to test out the applications and capabilities of the divination dao marks.
He found a small, ordinary stone and decided to touch the stone for the near future. A slightly auspicious-looking string formed between Wang Feng and the stone. The cost of divination was very low compared to other times Wang Feng had divined things. It was low range and inconsequential. The auspiciousness probably implied a positive gain from experimenting with the dao mark.
First, he went to touch the stone as he divined. The string disappeared after the touch, and it was nearly a hundred percent opaque.
For the second experiment, he found two stones and decided to flip a coin to choose which stone to touch. When he divined, the slightly auspicious string went through the coin and to the stone that was to be touched when it came up as tails. He flipped the coin, and it landed on tails. He went to touch the stone that was marked as tails.
He set up another stone, but he decided, "I will touch this stone, but along the way, I will pinch myself." Getting pinched was obviously a bad thing. However, the string leading to the stone was still auspicious. He pinched himself and touched the stone. He set up the stone again and again claimed, "I will touch the stone, but along the way, I will pinch myself." The auspiciousness of figuring out the ins and outs of the dao mark didn't mask the inauspiciousness of getting pinched. The string was slightly inauspicious, and Wang Feng was concerned. A large enough good thing could mask a small enough bad thing.
In another experiment, Wang Feng claimed he would touch the stone a hundred years later. A string of fate failed to form. Either Wang Feng was not going to live a hundred years, he would lose access to the stone within a hundred years, or the dao of divination has the same limitations as chaos theory. Between now and a hundred years, there are too many variables involved. Divination is a calculation at its core, and when a divination target is too distant or too far into the future, even a flap of a butterfly's wings could cause a storm as a result of a chain reaction of events.
Wang Feng sighed. Divination was far from invincible.