Thinking of this, Lingxu fell back into his sea of consciousness, feeling the yaksha mask and communicating with it. As a spiritual tool of high level, it had a small spirit. He asked it about his spiritual roots, thinking it should know it.
There was indeed an answer – which was somewhat unexpected. Every cultivator is born with the five elements, some are purer while others are not. With the advancement of a cultivator, the roots also expand and become purer. There are ways to directly purify them while there are others that mutate them to different roots.
Some are directly born with mutations while others have to do it themselves.
What surprised Lingxu was that he had a mutated spiritual root.
The five elements are the four elements that created the world and the element of growth. The four are fire, water, wind and earth, while the element of growth is wood.
He had the spiritual root of Yi Wood… and Fog!
All elements are split into yin and yang. There is Jia Yang Wood and Yi Yin Wood. It is quite rare for the cultivators to directly have a specialised element, this is something that only evolves later on. Yi Wood is the wood of plants and decline while Jia wood is the wood of trees and vitality.
The Fog element is a mutated element from Bing Yang Fire and Gui Yin Water. Bing Fire is the fire of the sun, while Gui Water is the water of the mist. The Fog element is the strong and rising mist that rises from water and hides the sun.
'Two yin roots… well, the Mo Yue bloodline cultivated yin arts for so long, it's no wonder that their bloodline specifically has more yin roots than others. As for me, well, since I am the first to be born after the bad karma diminished, I should have a little more good fortune. Heaven and earth are just after all…'
After thinking about it, he wanted to continue cultivating. He formally became a cultivator, but in fact, he didn't enter the first stage of qi refining just yet. The qi refining stage is the stage where one refines qi into their body, clears all their meridians and fill the lower dantian.
Clearing meridians is secondary as that happens as long as one cultivates as long as they don't have a special situation. The primary goal is to fill the lower dantian.
There are ten stages during the qi refining realm, the stage one to nine and finally the perfection stage. Each stage fills a certain percentage of the bowl. The first three stages actually only fill about 10% of the bowl, the next three stages fill about 20% and the last three stages fill about 67% of the bowl, the last and smallest stage only contains 3% of the dantian, but these 3% are extremely concentrated, the gaseous qi nearly becoming liquid.
Now, he has to fill the first percent before he truly enters the qi refining stage. After every stage, there is a bigger hurdle to advance. One can imagine the lower dantian like four bowls stacked above each other.
The uppermost bowl is small and filling it is the same as filling a tenth, the second bowl is larger and the third bowl is extremely large, enough to fit several of the second bowl. As for the fourth bow, this bowl is actually smaller than the first bowl.
It has immense force and can carry the other three bowls, but because its so closed, there is no entrance, so one has to slowly grind a small hole through the three bowls to reach the last bowl, slowly dripping until the last bowl is full.
Reading the basic logic of qi refining, Lingxu understood the matter better. He wanted to continue but then contemplated "The night has passed and it will only be a few more hours until morning comes…" he asked the mask on his face another question, which immediately delighted him.
It was able to hide his cultivation! He asked a bit more but didn't get any answer – he wasn't sure whether there was a requirement he had to fill or whether he was simply too weak, but he couldn't do anything about it and stopped thinking, focusing on cultivation.
Cultivators can replace sleep with cultivation for a major part. The disadvantage is that they can only cultivate for a certain length as their body is still mortal. Meridians and veins can only be nourished to a certain level in the qi refining stage, at one point they will be strained when there is too much movement.
Although cultivation is 'clearing the mind' in fact, it's a state of constant focus. One can focus on one thing for some time, but the longer one does that thing, the more tedious it becomes. The common break is to go sleep, so although cultivation is a replacement for sleep, sleep itself is necessary to effectively recover the mind and body.
Still, this doesn't mean this process is useless. At least one can replace half the sleeping time for cultivation, and the further one goes, the better this effect will become. At the foundation building stage, the body will be fully functional for cultivation and the conscious becomes lively, cultivation becomes an easy task.
From that point, unlike the qi refining stage, one has to do more than just gather spiritual power. The many activities exhaust the body and mind in different ways, so in the end, one will still use sleep to recover.
Lingxu cultivated until he couldn't, then went into his room to sleep.
The next day he realised he needed four hours of sleep.
'Since I cultivate best with the presence of the moon currently, I should just keep doing the same… haha, staying up late, now I really feel like a young brat playing games all night. Only, I do something better… of course it's not being lustful, no, I cultivate!'
He smiled and dressed himself, opened the door and let his face drop. After three months, he was good at acting, at least the role of a dazed person is pretty easy. Fortunately, he didn't have an issue keeping a poker face, else it would be a lot more difficult.
The days passed and he began to love cultivating. He was already used to the boring act of only doing one thing for a long time, only this time, he would be directly rewarded with an advance in cultivation.
It was just seven days later when he fully filled his lower dantian!
In that week he was beaten only once, probably a gift for his birthday. Anyways, his body recovered even better than before, without needing him to do anything, which delighted him.
It was night and the moon was shining, only half was visible. He now felt that his lower dantian, which was very empty up to now, was a bit fuller.
With a bright smile, he looked into the distance while thinking 'From the records, my root average purity should be somewhere between 80-90% I wonder if one of them is purer than the other, or if both of them are equally good.
Well, with this purity, regardless of which, I will have a very high speed. It seems that I have more than just a little good fortune!'