Although all his cultivation tools had been confiscated, it didn't hinder his cultivation; he had already memorized the cultivation techniques, the elixir pills were too wasteful to consume now, and there was no place to use the spirit stones...
Engaging in full-force Energy Induction was exactly what he was doing at the moment. According to the Daoist Record's explanation of this stage, the time should be between one to five years. He wondered, after his sudden breakthrough in cultivation aptitude, was he a genius, a fool, or just average?
Time was pressing, and he dared not slack off. No matter his own talents, if he followed the conventional path too rigidly and adhered to the rules, he would never catch up with others.
A human life is limited, merely a few decades; deduct the years of juvenile ignorance and the senility of old age, and the time truly available for cultivation doesn't exceed forty years. By this calculation, the urgency of cultivating up to the Tongxuan Realm to extend lifespan can be easily imagined.
Most cultivators stop at the Essence Building, Fasting, or Bridge Connection realms; either they live a life like Daoist Anhe, cultivating their morals day and night, nurturing their years amidst nature, or they become like the Demon Cultivators from Shan Country who enter the royal court and fritter away their time in cumbersome rituals.
He was twenty-three this year, in the prime of his youth, yet if placed in the Cultivation World, his age relative to just entering the Energy Induction Realm would make him old; he hadn't joined the Quanzhen Demon Sect yet, but if he really got mixed in, gathering all the Energy Induction disciples together, he would be considered a senior citizen.
He needed to find a method to accelerate the process!
Cultivation should not be pursued with the hope of quick success, yet history told him that indeed there were exceedingly rare individuals with extraordinary talents who saw realms as plains before them!
He hoped he was one of them, or at least, he wanted to try, right?
This kind of mindset was not unique to him; basically, every person entering the Dao held this belief, each thinking they were the only one in this world. Even without historical precedents in the Cultivation World, nothing could stop a cultivator's pursuit.
There were many imaginable shortcuts, elixirs being the most common. If you were wealthy and resourceful, such shortcuts seemed expected and real.
But he knew this path was blocked for him, having no elders nor a place to belong. Even if he entered the Demon Sect, he would be at the bottom; why would such an enormous amount of resources be allocated for him?
Besides, that path wasn't truly a shortcut, just a slightly faster route, with limited speed nonetheless. For all elixirs contain poisons, and caution is needed with their use; too much consumption also has its downsides.
There were few paths available for him to choose from, and he could only search among the few he had at hand; since he couldn't count on spirit stones or elixirs, all he had left were three Daoist texts.
Using the most basic logic, wouldn't practicing two cultivation techniques simultaneously make it twice as fast? And three techniques thrice as fast?
This thought was naive. If he had a guide, an elder would tell him that there is a limit to the inner secrets of a cultivator's body; it's not a matter of solving problems by practicing more techniques or spending more time.
But the issue was he had no guidance. Trying it out wouldn't kill him, so why not?
Chong Ling had given him three copies of the Energy Induction Guiding Skill, and he was practicing the Dragon and Tiger Meeting, starting from the Lower Dantian. Now it seemed natural to think, if he also practiced a technique associated with the Middle Dantian, wouldn't it be faster?
Between the Union of Origins Technique and the Supreme Guiding Technique, he chose the Union of Origins Technique because it felt more suited to him. These days, with nothing else to do, he tinkered with this thing.
He wasn't the first in the Cultivation World to do this, nor would he be the last. In fact, thousands of cultivators had done the same, even practicing three Dantians at once; in the Cultivation World, there was never a shortage of those seeking death or the bold, yet their attempts invariably ended in failure.
Because of the special inner structure of the human body.
The human body has three Dantians, upper, middle, and lower; there are also two mysterious places between the three Dantians, the twelve floors between the upper and middle Dantian, and the Purple Mansion between the middle and lower Dantian!
For those who are recklessly daring, their attempts would end there, as the existence of the Purple Mansion prevents the two Dantians from being cultivated at the same time, each hindering the other. This situation could only be improved upon reaching the Tongxuan Realm, and then they would inevitably fall into the next obstacle, entangled with the twelve floors.
All this is often mentioned in the basic outlines of the Daoist Records, and Hou Niao was not unaware of it; but even with this knowledge, he could not stop his attempts. Humans are like that, never giving up until faced with the bitter end, never shedding tears until seeing the coffin.
Many people have died, and even more have cried, but after such attempts, he neither died nor cried?
He discovered that cultivating both Dantians at the same time didn't conflict! At least there were no obstructions for him, but the effect wasn't as quick to double in speed as he had imagined. Instead, it only increased slightly, and where the rest of the increase went was unknown?
Surely, the spirit mechanisms he absorbed went somewhere. If they were transforming his body, he should have felt it, but the current situation was untraceable.
Energy must be conserved, it couldn't just disappear for no reason. Perhaps it had gone to a place he couldn't yet comprehend?
He was a rational and calm person, never believing in such things as everlasting Qi Fortune, and by connecting all the recent changes in himself, he had made a rough hypothesis.
It must have been something that happened on the altar, during the exit of the Soul Root! It resolved the difficulties of Energy Induction that had long troubled him and made his path of Dantian cultivation unlike any other.
This was a good thing, a tremendous one at that, but blessings come with danger lurking behind them. Nothing in the world is a tide of benefits without costs!
So, where lay his misfortune?
Anyone with even a little ambition wouldn't give up their fortune just because there might be misfortune! Face difficulty with resolve, deal with trouble as it comes, there is no reason to shrink back.
In such a situation, his path of Energy Induction started to smooth out, changing at a nearly visible rate, as a massive influx of Heaven and Earth Spirit Mechanisms crazily surged into his body, beginning to remodel his muscles, skin, and bones.
This too was a painful process, much like a snake shedding its skin, or a cicada being reborn, living daily in a state of unbearable itching all over his body, muscle soreness and swelling, bones pressing against the flesh as they grew, internal organs being renewed... Every single part of him, inside and out, was in discomfort.
This condition would occur during the Energy Induction phase for every cultivator, which is why that phase is also known as the period of hardships, full of pain despite not being overly difficult.
But in the history of cultivation, no cultivator has ever given up due to fear of pain. With the goal of longevity ahead, anything can be endured!
Hou Niao's suffering was particularly intense because he was faster than others. The physical transformation that would take an ordinary person five years to complete, he would finish in one year, having to endure five times the pain without missing even a bit of it.
It also made him understand what was meant by 'genius'. Behind every legend of a genius lies sweat and endurance! The silent suffering, and you can't even speak of it, you have to pretend to be nonchalant like everyone else, but in reality, you've already ground your teeth to bits!
There's no such thing as easy success; it's just invisible to others.
Endure the suffering like countless ants gnawing at your heart, train hard until your skin thickens and your flesh hardens.