Lan Feng, who typically hated being assigned tasks, did not complain at all. His eyes were sharp and alert, constantly scanning the surroundings using martial power to detect any hidden beasts. Although Yan Xiaobao opposed using Wu Wei unless absolutely necessary, he understood that at this mont, he couldn’t afford any interruptions. He furrowed his brows and took a deep breath.
Yan Xiaobao inhaled deeply, fully imrsing himself in the essence of the heavens and earth. Slowly, he released the blue cloud, letting it envelop him. At the sa ti, he utilized the stone he had purchased from the Azure Dragon’s tunnel.
These two tools amplified the amount of energy his body could absorb. As he drew in so much energy, Yan Xiaobao had to constantly rotate it within his body. He needed to continue refining it without letting the Qi and Qi vortex rge, until it beca a pure, lustrous pearl-white. Managing this much energy and ensuring only fully refined energy was brought into the Qi vortex demanded imnse focus and control.
Pushing his cultivation techniques to their limits, Yan Xiaobao concentrated as much as he could. He soon managed to improve the threads after the Qi lines. Once the Qi vortex was filled and could no longer take in more Qi threads, Yan Xiaobao withdrew the blue cloud and placed the stone on the ground. The residual unrefined Qi stayed within his ridians. He then entered a deep, trance-like state again and refined the Qi further; they were distilled into silver droplets of spiritual energy.
One by one, the droplets entered the spiritual energy sea. However, Yan Xiaobao sensed sothing was amiss. Things weren’t progressing as he had anticipated.
Grinding his teeth, the young man refused to believe he couldn’t break through to the Duke Level. Stubbornly, he continued refining Qi thread after Qi thread. After so ti, when nothing changed, and he had perfected every strand of Qi, he enveloped himself in the blue cloud once again, holding the stone in his hand. Though he had yet to break through, he resolved to do so before continuing his journey. His determination, evident in his eyes, burned bright as he slipped into another trance.
The entire day was consud by alternating between absorbing the essence of the heavens and earth to refine Qi and then converting it further into spiritual energy. Throughout this grueling process, Lan Feng ensured no disturbances arose. His entire body was taut with vigilance, every muscle poised, his martial power rippling through their shared environnt, ready to be unleashed at the slightest sign of trouble.
While Lan Feng was entirely focused on the external world, Yan Xiaobao’s attention was wholly devoted to his inner world. As he felt the essence of the heavens flowing through his veins and ridians, his eyes remained tightly shut. He sensed the essence cycling continuously within the ridians until it was fully refined, eventually blending into the Qi swirl. From there, it was drawn into the central dantian, where Qi threads were refined one by one into tiny droplets of silver spiritual energy.
Typically, the spiritual energy sea would begin to rise along its shoreline and, at so point, beco so full that it overflowed the sea’s borders. The chaotic overflow would, in turn, carve out a larger spiritual energy sea in the central dantian, increasing its depth and breadth.
This was the usual progression for a breakthrough. However, no matter how much Yan Xiaobao refined, the sea showed no signs of rising as it had in the past. It did not breach its shoreline in an attempt to advance to the next level. The only visible change was faint ripples on the surface, created by every silver droplet as it descended into the spiritual energy sea below.
Xu Yue, exasperated, ceased refining more energy as he understood that the current situation couldn’t be resolved by forcefully producing greater amounts of spiritual energy. He had hit a bottleneck, one that required more than just raw energy to surpass. It was clear Yan Xiaobao was nearing the upper half of the mountain on his path. Reaching the Duke Level seed to necessitate a certain level of insight or enlightennt, sothing Yan Xiaobao had yet to encounter.
"Hey, Lan Feng, what do you think it is? What is it that I’m supposed to understand?" Yan Xiaobao asked bitterly, his frustration evident. He had enough energy to break through, yet lacked the necessary insight.
"I can’t tell you," Lan Feng replied earnestly. "If I tell you, you might achieve enlightennt—but it wouldn’t be yours. It would be mine. Your path of cultivation isn’t ant to unfold that way."
Even before Lan Feng finished speaking, Yan Xiaobao already knew the truth behind the answer. Though he planned to accept it, he felt a deep sense of frustration at his inability to break through at this mont.
Yan Xiaobao let out a long sigh, calming himself, and closed his eyes for a mont. When he reopened them, they glead with determination.
"Even though I haven’t broken through yet, I haven’t been idle. My strength has increased significantly, and though I’m not a Duke, I’m not weak either."
Thinking this way, he felt so satisfaction and once again settled into cultivation. Guided by the road Lan Feng had paved before him, he traveled through forest after forest, encountering nurous bandits—so fled upon sensing Lan Feng’s aura, while others, emboldened by their numbers, believed they could overwhelm him, only to et their ends instead.
Over the course of weeks of long travels, Yan Xiaobao spent half his ti refining more energy and the other half introspecting over what he was missing—what was preventing him from ascending to the next level.
Becoming a Duke would at least double his Qi’s power. Reaching such strength would an he could contend with any ordinary King-level beast or expert. However, facing a seasoned expert would be an entirely different matter.
Looking back on his cultivation journey, Yan Xiaobao recalled how it all started at his hotown. How he had trained his inner energy from infancy. He thought about the obsession he had with perfecting his Qigong techniques, molding them into the finest quality. At the ti, he had known it was an unconventional and roundabout path to cultivation, but the results were undeniable, though ti-consuming. Even back then, Yan Xiaobao had resolved to focus on quality over convenience, and he still stood by that decision today. Though reaching his current stage had taken a significant amount of ti, his resolve had always remained unshaken in carving out his own path.
Reflecting on the patience and toil his path had demanded, he realized he had beco too greedy, too reliant on shortcuts to achieve his goals. He understood now that his path of cultivation required hard work, and what he needed wasn’t a simple answer handed to him by Lan Feng. No, he needed to fully imrse himself in his cultivation and listen to what it was telling him.
The mont he had this realization, a golden light began to appear in his mind’s eye, streaming across his body. These golden streaks swirled through him before converging in the central dantian. They began carving out larger shorelines, chiseling a deeper and more expansive spiritual energy sea, reshaping it entirely.
As the golden streaks danced through him, Yan Xiaobao felt his soul grow lighter, suffused with a pleasant warmth akin to the heat of a sumr’s day. As the golden streaks faded, rging with the five elental flas hovering above the energy sea, those flas surged skyward. Their potency had now far surpassed their previous state, having absorbed golden energy that had doubled their size. Yan Xiaobao began to notice how his affinity with the elents had grown significantly. His eyes widened with the realization that it had been this introspection—this reflection on his cultivation journey—that he was missing. He had been rushing recently, anxious to grow in strength, forgetting the path he had resolved to follow all those years ago.
With the golden streaks dissipating into the elental flas, Yan Xiaobao experienced an overwhelming surge of joy and excitent. Imdiately, Lan Feng sought out a quiet place for the white-haired youth to process what had just happened within his body. Though his strength had soared, Lan Feng was on guard, ready to handle any unexpected developnts.
Sitting motionless, Yan Xiaobao evaluated his body. He realized it hadn’t grown significantly stronger than before. While his body had beco slightly more resilient, his focus on internal energy—Qi, spiritual energy, and martial power—ant he had neglected his physical strength.
Though his inner energy had far exceeded his expectations and granted him the ability to wield both martial arts and spiritual arts simultaneously, he understood the importance of cultivating his physical body as well.
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