When Wu Long recovered his breathing a little, he sat not far from the flower. After taking a fasting pill and sipping some water, he meditated a little to calm down and restore the Spiritual Qi that he was nearly completely exhausted by exerting his body to that extent.
Two hours later, he recovered enough to cultivate, and gently harvested the flower with the jade knife.
"A low-level 4th tier Mortal grade medicine, I guess for this place it is quite a rare find."
Just like demonic beasts, medicines as well as spiritual treasures, pills and materials also had their classifications, what was common for them all was the grade, which always corresponded to the Nine Great Realms.
So any of them that were mainly useful to cultivators in the great realm of Nine Mortal Realms would be Mortal-grade, for the great realm of Seven Profound Realms would be Profound-grade, for Five Origin Realms would be Origin-grade and so on.
And just like the Demonic Beasts there were tiers and levels to these ingredients that followed the same logic. The number of tiers in any grade was set to the number of major realms in the great realm the grade corresponded to. And each tier was divided into three levels of low, mid and high which corresponded to first three, second three and last three minor realms in each major realm.
"If I could use alchemy right now, I could at least double the potency, if not triple considering there might be the right ingredients nearby, but oh well." he said as he looked at the flower.
A low-tier mid-level Mortal-grade medicine such as this flower would normally be appropriate to consume for at least Qi Manifestation Realm Realm practitioners, and would be suicidal for someone in Body Transformation Realm, not to mension it required to be processed and made into a pill to be safe to consume. But with his cultivation technique he had no qualms, and was sad that he could not enhance its effects instead.
This flower was of the Yin attribute, and male cultivators would not be able to consume it. But as a Dual Cultivator, what Wu Long needed is exactly Yin Qi to increase his cultivation base in the way he was most accustomed to, it is just that normally even dual cultivator male practitioners were unable to directly consume a Yin attribute medicine, and had to absorb the Yin Qi from the female partner.
What Wu Long was going to do was use a peculiar technique he once learnt to absorb this Yin attribute medicine. He could not of course consume something of Extreme Yin attribute with this technique but just a Yin attribute medicine was doable.
'Haa, what a waste…' he sighed and thought as a graceful figure with a sword appeared in his mind.
In truth, most of the benefits of this medicine would be lost, as this method was far from perfect, he would ideally help his partner increase the quality of their Yin Qi and/or if possible Yin Root with such Yin attribute or Extreme Yin attribute medicines and receive full benefits for both his partner and himself during dual cultivation, but as that was not available right now and he urgently needed to increase his strength, he could not have lot of scruples.
In fact, with the Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art he could potentially directly absorb the energy in it without much of a waste, but there was a catch to it. Chaos Refining meant that he could refine any type of energy to use for himself without suffering the side-effects, but Yin type medicine enhancing feminine qualities of the body was not a side effect but its benefit for all intents and purposes.
So if he used Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art to consume this flower and not the technique he was preparing to use (which would waste a lot of the medicine's potential) he could indeed get greater benefits from it but it would enhance his body towards feminine traits, which he absolutely was not willing to allow.
So he prepared the technique called the Yin Yang Conversion Cauldron Body, which would albeit wastefully use this Yin medicine to enhance his cultivation.
He took out a few berries he collected earlier, planning to exchange them for quite a lot of points, from the sack. These berries were of the Yang attribute. He did not anticipate he would need them but Yin Yang Conversion Cauldron Body required the male user to have Yang medicine to consume Yin medicine, and female users to have Yin medicine to consume Yang medicine. The auxiliary medicine was not required to be as potent as the target medicine so these berries would do the trick.
He also took out a bamboo slice he cut on his second day while passing through a bamboo trove as he figured he might need it for such occasions and split it in half, getting two half-cylinder plates. He stashed one of them, placing the flower into the other plate. He then placed a few stalks of White Spirit Grass as well as a few other plants, and crushed them with the jade handle of the jade knife into a herbal paste. It was awkward using such crude tools but it was not particularly troubling for him as there was a time where he had to survive with such means before.
When he got his herbal paste, he drained the liquid into one corner of his bamboo bowl by tilting it and pressing the herbal paste with the jade knife handle on the higher side.
Taking the paste drained of most liquid out of the bamboo bowl he rolled it into a ball shape roughly resembling a slightly bigger pill with his hands.
Placing the herbal ball, herbal liquid in the bamboo bowl and the berries on a big leaf he took out prior, he meditated for a few seconds in lotus position to clear his mind and enter optimal condition.
He then took the berries and started eating them one by one in quick succession, the first berry was like a spark and his stomach quickly began to heat up, as each additional berry was like fuel further invigorating the fire started by the first berry.
Wu Long took a few minutes to circulate his technique to ensure that his body was in the condition he needed, and then in a very slow pace drank the medicinal liquid from the bamboo bowl tiny drop by tiny drop. Each drop produced a violent sparkling reaction in his stomach, as if cold water was sprinkling on a heated oil, as he gradually changed the circulation of his technique and increased the volume of the drops he was sipping by tiny increments. As his stomach was producing intense energy that circulated in a profound way throughout his body, he finished drinking the medicinal liquid and cultivated silently for about half an hour until at a certain point he suddenly took and gulped down the herbal ball. And at the moment the herbal ball entered his stomach he also changed the circulation pattern of his technique as well as the intensity, rushing at the maximum speed. There was a small sound of explosion from his body and an enormous amount of energy was produced by the reaction in his stomach, as he struggled to keep this much energy from blowing him apart.
All of his veins became visible and bulged as if on the verge of bursting, his skin turned red, and sweat gushed from all over his body, steam began rising from him and his every muscle was twitching and spasming. He then began using a pattern of hand seals that did not contain any Spiritual Qi and were designed to control the processes in the physical body by altering the blood flow in hands. The pattern contained 48 hand seals that he changed with specific speed for each seal, which he then repeated after going through the whole pattern over and over again.
His breathing also was in a repeating pattern of slow and fast breaths.
He cultivated like that until noon of the next day.
A profound ripple would occasionally spread from him as he broke through to the next minor realm. At the moments of breakthroughs, the wounds he created by using sword intent with such a weak body healed at a visible rate, and his body was constantly being tempered and transformed by the Spiritual Qi.
When he opened his eyes his cultivation had gone up to the sixth level of Body Transformation Realm. He went up three whole minor realms in one day.
Not to mention that he had to cross the threshold of going from 3rd level to 4th level, which was one of the minor walls in each of the major realms. The other one being going from the 6th to the 7th level.
He then took out the Blue Tongue Purple Lizard's Neidan and swallowed it starting another cultivation session, this time purely with Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art.
After several hours he broke through to the 7th level and his physique received a major boost, his body tempering achieving consecutive breakthroughs.
Now, even though his cultivation was still not sufficient, with sheer physical body endurance he could use sword intent without taking so much risk, granted that he did not use more than the lowest level he displayed against the lizard.
Experiencing a dramatic leap in strength, he could not make breakthroughs for some time, as he had to consolidate his achievements, lest it would make his foundation unstable.
He was also starting to run low on fasting pills. He could of course just kill edible demonic beasts and roast them for sustenance, but he originally planned to only stay outside for a week at most, to not cause an uproar by disappearing.
So even if his main goal of finding a suitable natural treasure to repair his broken sword was not accomplished, he was still pretty satisfied with his harvest.
He now at least had some assurance and power to defend himself in case of something going wrong.
With his increased speed he could reach the sect back in around a day, as he traveled three days in this direction. So he decided to detour and go back using a different route from the one he came here with, while keeping an eye out for a possible lucky encounter. Although it would take him slightly longer he wanted to try his luck again.