Senior Ren just stared at my conjured Qi shield wide-eyed.

“This… can’t be possible, you are just a kid! How could you…” He poked my Qi construct with his finger and it collapsed.

“Oh…” He stared dumbly at the dissipating Qi mist. Then he began to laugh. “Ahaha! Oh, that was a good one! I almost thought you could already control Conjuration. I never saw any of the initiates demonstrate something like that before, but I guess it makes sense…”

Then it was my turn to stare dumbly at him. [I don’t get it.]

Senior Ren just shook his head and moved his hand. A semi-transparent knife appeared in his hand and he proceeded to stab a piece of meat with it and carry it into his mouth. He then whacked the knife on the table and it shattered like glass, before disappearing into mist.

“Weapon Conjuration, it’s a good skill to learn, but it doesn’t have much use under the Golden Core Realm. I didn’t expect you to know it since it is such a complicated technique, so it really surprised me. Though, with your grade of Qi, I guess it’s to be expected that I would be useless.”

[True, it is really hard to keep it going for more than a few seconds.] I had to agree on its usefulness as well. My guess was that the needle I created was somewhere between the Nascent Qi and Golden Qi based on his demonstration. My own was nowhere near strong enough to aid me in combat. Better to use the simple Elements themselves.

“No, no, it’s amazing that you can do it at all! You must be a genius or something, haha! Do you already know how high your talent is?”

[I have no idea.] It wasn’t a lie. I didn’t refine my Soul the usual way, so I had nothing to base my talents on. It could be that it was amazing, or it could be average trash. My guess was that it was somewhere in between, as things usually tended to be.

“A shame… Well, work hard, and I’m sure you’ll achieve great things!”

I nodded quietly and began eating. I could only hope he was right. There were so many things I wanted to do and had to think about, my head was starting to hurt.

We spoke some more, but it wasn’t an important discussion. Just a normal chat between friends.

----------------------------------------

After the meal, Senior Ren returned to the pill shop and I went back home. I immediately gathered a stack of papers and barfed out everything I have learned during our conversation. Even more than what I already wrote down in the notebook. I didn’t want to lose a single word to the imperfection of human memory, even if mine was extremely good already.

There were so many experiments I wished to do, I didn’t know where to start! As for why I was so desperate to learn, that was simple!

I would be stupid if I tried to delve blindly into this confusing Cultivation stuff, if we ignore my reckless beginnings, of course, and so I had to analyze my options before I would make any stupid and easy-to-avoid mistakes.

First on the agenda was a test I was planning to do for a while. Namely, trying out the differences in Qi grades. I wanted to see what they could do. Other than what I was told, of course.

On my way back home I visited a general store with various miscellaneous items, and luckily found what I was looking for. Namely, a roll of copper wire. It cost me only 2 SSS, and there was a lot of it. It saved me a lot of time making it myself, so that was good. And the quality was excellent as well.

I also got a basket with me, so the simplest test could begin.

I took the stuff and made my way into the forest until I found a tree branch at about head height. I cut off three pieces of copper wire and tied one end to the branch and the other to the basket.

Afterward, I had exactly the length of my forearm of straight copper between the two, and that would be my constant.

I dug into the soil and gathered small stones and bigger rocks until I had a small pile. I then placed them all to the side and began, carefully and one by one, filling the basket.

The wire quickly became taut and after a bit more weight, began to stretch. I stopped and waited. The wire stretched quite a bit but didn’t snap. I added more weight, slowly, one pebble at a time.

Eventually, the wire snapped and the basket fell, but I caught it with Telekinesis before it could hit the ground.

I took the stones inside and carved a number on each of them. Then I wrote the numbers in my notebook and tried again with another piece of wire. It snapped at about the same weight, +/- 5%. I repeated the process three times in total to get a nice average.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to any precise measuring devices, so this was the best I could do.

After a baseline was established, I did it again, only this time the copper wire had something special added to it. Namely Qi, Base Qi.

Why I didn’t use iron or steel instead? Well, there wasn’t a wire made out of it I could find, and that metal was a poor conductor of Qi, unlike copper. And so, the experiment began.

As I was loading stones into the basket, I held the wire between my thumb and index finger while sending Qi through it. I didn’t do anything special, just pumped the energy through the metal.

The wire became taut, stretched, and eventually snapped, just like the previous ones. Only now I had to carve a few more numbers into fresh stones.

[Interesting...]

A quick calculation pointed to about a 30% tensile strength increase. That was a lot. It could have been just a slightly thicker part of the wire, so I tried again. Same result, about a third increase in tensile strength. I wrote the discovery into my notebook.

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I repeated the experiment three times like the first one, and the results were always about the same. 30-35% increase. It was more than I was expecting, honestly.

I repeated the same result with Elementary Qi. 70% increase in tensile strength. Repeated three times, the results were clear. Very clear…

I didn’t do it with Nascent Qi because the basket was too small to hold any more stones. But, if this continued, the increase should be around 110-120% increase, maybe more. I unfortunately only had a way to test the tensile strength. Hardness was much harder to measure, no pun intended, and I really didn’t care to find out. I already knew things that had a lot of Qi were harder, I just didn’t know how much.

There was another round of testing I had to do. It was pushing the Qi saturation to the limit. Base Qi, when filling the copper wire to the absolute limit, would increase its tensile strength by nearly 50%! I was shocked! Unfortunately, it used about two times more Qi than what was needed for 30%, but overall, it was a small number. Two points instead of one.

However, when I pushed it over that limit, the strength instead declined a the metal heated up and lost its structural stability. A few more tests confirmed my suspicions. There was a sweet spot between strength and Qi consumption at about 35%. At 20% Qi expenditure would be really low, but at the same time, the increase wasn’t all that noticeable. It was the opposite on the other end.

I guessed that if the piece of metal would be bigger, the energy drain would be greater as well. It made sense.

I then tested the Elementary Qi and discovered that the increase could be pushed up to about 80%. Anything more than that and the strength would instead quickly decline with more Qi. And after extensive tests, the sweet spot was found to be at around 55%.

[Hmm, hmm… Fascinating stuff.] I diligently recorded my discoveries, even going so far as to put my results on a graph. I didn’t yet have enough information to determine anything concrete, but it seemed I was on the right track.

Over the rest of the day, I experimented further, even going so far as to eventually tie up a big rock under the basket, making it just heavy enough not to snap a normal wire. I then tested the Nascent Qi. I didn’t like what I saw.

The wire snapped at 95%, and that was the absolute limit. The optimal sweet spot I calculated was at about 75%. Anything more than that and the energy required to sustain it was way too expensive. 10 Qi to keep it at 90%, and that was with the Nascent Qi, from the Spirit Shard! I know I said I wouldn’t do it again, but I just couldn’t help it.

But yeah… I was feeling disappointed. It seemed copper simply wasn’t a strong enough metal to sustain higher grades of Qi running through it. They reinforced it a bit, but at the same time, the metal quickly became fatigued and snapped easily.

I would have to test other stuff, perhaps pure silver, or gold… They were good Qi conductors.

But the main thing I wanted to get my hands on, would be Mithril. The brilliant silvery-blue metal thirsted for magic. Some weapons in the Sect were made out of it, I believe. Spirit Swords, they were called.

Once again that name, Spirit… With my limited understanding, I guessed that would most likely mean that Spirit Qi was required to bring out the weapon’s true powers.

And it was probably why that bastard used a Spirit Stone to power his weapon which he then used to kill me. I would never forget the power and danger I felt from his sword at that time.

But they were so damn expensive! Even a simple dagger cost many Spirit Stones, with a sword going as high as multiple hundreds, and I didn’t have even a single one!

I internally sighed and accepted reality. It was hard being poor. My expensive experiments would have to wait and be moved to a later date.

But do not despair, for I had yet more tricks to spare!

I gathered all my stuff and returned back home. Only, three pieces of copper wire were in my hand, each of them a meter long, and I spent part of my attention on sending Qi through them for the entire time. It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t little either. It was in the sweet spot I had found earlier. A steady stream of Elementary Qi, since that one was currently the easiest for me to get as it was passively being refilled in my body.

As I came back home, I sat on my bed and meditated for a while and circulating the Qi across my body and out through the copper wire. I did that for many hours, Turtle Breathing Technique and Scales of the Earth, both were active at the same time as they slowly changed my flesh.

I wanted to say that I have done it through the night, but the truth was that I fell asleep at some point, and stopped the experiment. But that was fine too. I spent most of the following day Cultivating with the wires in my hand, and towards the evening, I decided it was time to see the results.

Coming back to the pile of numbered stones, I set up everything as before and began. No Qi with the first one.

I slowly added the stones, pausing after each one so the forces inside would stabilize. I added, and added, reaching the maximum soon after. The wire snapped. I gathered the stones and noted them down.

[7% increase...]

I smirked to myself and set up another wire.

[Mhm… 6% this one.] The last one came to a 7% tensile strength increase as well. There were slight variations between the three, but not enough for it to be a fluke.

Qi in nature flowed through all things, but that was Base Qi, and it was slow. Extremely so. Qi in nature was like a bog, swirling energy in one place, slowly moving to another, lazy and nearly still. Don’t get me wrong, compared to a world without Qi, this environment was extremely chaotic and animated, but compared to higher grades of Qi, it was nothing.

In comparison, the way I manipulated my Elemental Qi through the wires for nearly a day, would be comparable to years, perhaps even decades of it just sitting there, out in the open. But then nature would take its toll, counteracting the increase with the decaying powers of time.

But when concentrated… Hehe…

It meant that stuff could be improved by the lone action of Qi infusion. But that wasn’t anything new. We all knew stones and trees around here were much tougher since they were so old, bathing in Qi for centuries.

There was no doubt a limit to how much Basic Qi could improve a material, but the fact remained that it could. And so could Elemental Qi, and probably Nascent Qi as well… Every single grade could most likely do the same, each more than the last.

Animals and humans seemed to be improving a bit slower, but with the constant change going on in their bodies, it was understandable. And to confirm my final suspicion, something I suspected from the first time I heard of Body Cultivation, I performed an experiment on my own body.

That’s right, I was ready to sacrifice my own flesh and blood to get to the bottom of this!

Since the first day I learned the Turtle Breathing Technique, I have been supercharging my left pinky toe with Qi. I knew it was too much since it began to hurt every time, but I didn’t push so far it would do any permanent damage. In my opinion. Just some annoying aches and pains that I could sustain without too much of a hassle.

Yeah, well, a few days ago it started feeling different, but I wanted to confirm it wasn’t just my imagination and continued for a while more.

Then I just let it rest for a day and didn’t irritate it anymore so it could heal completely and I could see the results if there were any.

Well, I took off my boots and grabbed a knife. It had a pointy end and a sharp blade. I gently scratched the skin on top of my foot. It left a thin trail in my flesh despite my Martial Arts being practiced every day. There was some resistance, but not a lot. I didn’t see any blood though, the scratch was too shallow.

But then, as I came over my pinky toe, my skin didn’t budge. The knife left a white trail on it, but as I wiped it with my finger, it was gone. No damage. Not even a scratch.

There were mixed emotions, I wasn’t going to lie. I was happy that my hypothesis was correct, but at the same time, I was annoyed that my hypothesis was correct.

Just like the copper wire, the flesh also had the optimal area in which you would gain the best results.

[Damn it…]

And I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.