What started off as only a few days, soon becoming weeks, Wuxian spent his time locked inside his room with the curtains shut. When he wasn’t cultivating, he was practising the Natural Spirit Blood technique, continuing the twice a day conditioning program.

Aside from that, the only other times he paused cultivation was to receive food from Shui Qianyue who visited two to three times a day, but after the first week, Wuxian decided to stop relying on her kindness to eat- especially since he had enough fasting pills to last him several years. But perhaps more importantly was the desire to cut himself off from the people around him.

Despite feeling lonely and wishing to forge closer relations, there was something about being alone in the darkness that solidified the resolution within his heart. Making friends with these people only to leave the city once he was strong enough would only hurt everyone and waste their time.

And friend-related activities wasted precious cultivation time. Who knew when the white robed man or the gu master’s factions would decide to make another move. If the time did come and Wuxian was not prepared, he’d have nobody but himself to blame.

Wuxian wasn’t sure how well his talent measured up to his peers, but he was certain that at the very least, he was no slouch when it came to meridian refinement. Within the first week, everything went smoothly and he finished refining the stomach meridian and its collaterals.

This marked his fifth major meridian. Going through each meridian he’d refined thus far; Triple Burner, pericardium, liver, small intestine and now, stomach meridian.

Each major meridian provided spiritual and physical benefits to his body. But more importantly than those were the mystic techniques which were enabled as a result.

Natural Spirit Blood required the Triple Burner and liver meridians. Zhurong’s Breath required Triple Burner, pericardium and small intestine.

The newly-learned Turning Stone required the stomach, the pericardium and Triple Burner. Whereas Natural Spirit Blood was mostly restorative in nature, ignoring its later semi-offensive poison-based properties, while Zhurong’s Breath was purely offensive, Turning Stone covered a new base- defence.

According to the technique manual, defensive techniques could be classified into either hard or soft techniques. From there, external and internal. Turning Stone was an external hard technique.

Compared to the three techniques Wuxian already knew, Turning Stone was by far the most complex. When he circulated Natural Spirit Blood and Zhurong’s Breath, the meridians he channelled his qi through was the same each time. The former passed wood qi’s healing energy into the blood through the liver meridian, while the latter forged destructive fire qi and ejected it through the mouth or nose.

Turning Stone was similar to Effortless Flow- its effects could be manifested anywhere across the body. This meant that the meridian pathway that was required would differ based on where exactly the technique was used.

For example, if Wuxian wanted to double jump in the air using Effortless Flow, he’d have to channel qi down to his feet. If he wanted to empower a thrust, he’d have to channel qi into his arms. But the meridians located lower down in his legs and midriff wouldn’t be accessible unless he took a large detour, hence the complexity and therefore difference with each application.

The principle was identical for Turning Stone too. But unlike Effortless Flow, the ‘key’ meridians that were integral for the technique’s successful activation were much more numerous, so the detour required was longer and therefore harder to successfully complete, especially in the moment.

In the scenario where there was an attack coming from beneath and Wuxian wasn’t already familiar with the meridian pathway required to conjure up a defence, there was a zero percent chance of him doing so on the spot.

Hence, while Natural Spirit Blood required continuous daily activation to condition the body, Turning Stone required constant familiarisation with the meridian network.

As for how exactly Turning Stone created a defence, the name was misleading. Rather than directly turning one’s body into stone, it was more like encasing it in solidified protective qi.

And like the other Nine Revolutions Earthfire-related mystic arts, they had room for qualitative improvement as the cultivator raised their skill and cultivation realm.

For Natural Spirit Blood, it was more of a skill and time based progression, where the next stage was unlocked post-conditioning. As for Turning Stone, it was cultivation based. Of course, one’s familiarity with the meridian network would naturally translate to combat effectiveness, but to truly elevate the level of one’s defence, higher quality qi was required.

At Foundation Building, the cultivator barely met the requirements to cast the technique. Once Turning Stone was cast, it would encase the desired part of the body in solidified earth qi, similar to the barrier created from earth qi imbuement. It was important to note that unrefined qi could not be used to fuel the technique.

This type of hard defence was very powerful against opponents of a similar power level. To merely create the earth armour, Wuxian would expend a fixed amount of refined qi. From there it would not require a continuous supply of qi to maintain, only to repair after damage had been sustained.

Although, the created armour wouldn’t remain indefinitely- after a few days or weeks, depending on the quality of qi used, it would eventually degrade into unrefined and impure qi, scattering into the air. But few battles lasted that long, so this was effectively negligible.

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But back to the main point, why was it particularly effective against same-realm opponents?

Simple. In order to penetrate the technique’s defence, the attack must either possess very special properties or be able to ‘outpace’ the rate at which Wuxian could supply qi to repair the earth qi armour.

Against a same-realm opponent, with his heaven-grade cultivation technique, he would often have a greater volume of qi available. If his opponent focused solely on attacking the same reinforced section of his earth qi armour, they would run out of qi before him- of course, this was the ideal scenario that would likely never happen. Against a weaker opponent, assuming they had no special penetrative or offensive methods, they would be incapable of breaking through Wuxian’s defence.

But what about higher ranked opponents? The earth qi armour created from Turning Stone would merely dampen the amount of damage received instead of nullifying it completely. At the same time, the armour would need to be completely regenerated after each hit was received.

So overall it could be described as a technique which specialised in bullying the weak and poor.

But of course, as the saying went, there was no one invincible technique. Not only could earth qi armour be countered if specifically targeted by a specially-designed technique, as could any other defensive mystic art, but there was no way it would be able to protect Wuxian against five Qi Refiners.

Even ants could fell an elephant if in great enough numbers. The same applied here.

Regardless, it wasn’t like Wuxian was planning to stir up the hornet’s nest and single handedly go and challenge an entire sect all at once. Turning Stone was a welcome addition to his arsenal.

Now, if he were to spar against Shui Qianyue another time, her flying qi swords would be significantly less threatening. Not only would Wuxian be able to take the initiative and bring the fight to her, he could begin to use weapon imbuement for its intended purpose- increasing the offensive capabilities of his artifact weapon.

Truth be told, he had been misusing earth qi weapon imbuement to an extent. While it did grant his weapon protective properties, that was more of a natural side effect of using earth qi. This was like wood qi’s healing properties in that they were innate.

Earth qi actually possessed great capacity for offence. Back in Liang’s time, sharp polearms were heavily favoured not only because of their reach, but also because heavier full-body lamellar armour was often reserved for the elite or the wealthy. Against flesh and leather or cloth armour, blades reigned supreme, and since the majority of any army would consist of poorly armoured peasants, blades would remain a ubiquitous mainstay for the times to come.

But against heavily armoured shock troops, a sharp edge would be ineffective. In this case, something like a mace or hammer would be better, directly causing blunt trauma to disable and dispatch the armoured target.

While the Northern Dark Edge was an artifact weapon with incredible penetrative power, against a set of immortal armour, an alternative method would be necessary. That would be where earth qi imbuement came in, directly converting the reclining moon blade into a reclining moon… hammer.

With the added mass from the earth qi, Wuxian’s swings would become devastating.

But there’s more!

By the end of the second week, Wuxian finished refining another major meridian- the large intestine meridian. This was a yang-metal meridian. Though there was no metal qi-related mystic art available to him now, there were the two generic techniques that he could learn instead.

One was called ‘Reactive Qi’ while the other was named ‘Sonic Strikes’. Both fell into the category of supportive techniques, doing little alone, but improving the effects or providing new ones to pre-existing mystic arts.

Unlike Turning Stone, these two generic spells were truer to their names. Reactive Qi imbued one’s qi with an explosive property. For example, in the scenario where Wuxian had created earth qi armour with Turning Stone and then enhanced it with Reactive Qi, his defence would no longer be purely ‘hard’.

If the qi armour was destroyed, the remaining qi would burst outwards, sending the attacker flying, or at the very least, preventing them from making an immediate counter attack. This was assuming that they were a melee combatant, since if Reactive Qi was triggered from afar, then it would be ineffective- unable to reach the attacker.

There was a rather technical aspect to this in that it was very easy to harm oneself along with the opponent. At his current level, the only way Wuxian would be able to effectively employ the technique would be to create two layers of earth qi armour and imbue only the outer section with Reactive Qi.

This way, when the outer layer was penetrated, it would explode. The attacker would be blown back, while Wuxian would be protected by another layer of earth qi armour. At that time, he’d be able to regenerate the outer layer and reapply Reactive Qi.

Of course, he couldn’t do this indefinitely- it was on the costlier side of qi expenditure compared to other techniques, mainly due to the necessity of having to create multiple layers of earth qi armour and regenerate or repair it. Compared to the usual method of usage of Turning Stone, two layers of armour would need to be created, plus the additional expenditure required to activate Reactive Qi, so each use would cost a little over two times the normal volume of qi.

On the other hand, Sonic Strikes was more straightforward. At the Foundation Building level, it affected only bladed weapons. For an imbued bladed weapon, after enhancement with Sonic Strikes, any attack executed would tear through the air resulting in a cacophonous sound.

But the sound was actually a somewhat unwanted side effect. After an attack was made, the the qi spent to activate Sonic Strikes would scatter off the weapon’s blade as it cut through the air and eventually hit the target. This would speed up the weapon’s movement as it reduced air resistance.

Additionally, it directly enhanced any attack’s damage too. On contact, the qi scattered off would collide with the target and wear down their defences, allowing the true offensive technique like weapon imbuement to preserve its strength.

While Reactive Qi was more novel compared to Sonic Strikes, both were useful additions to Wuxian’s current skill set. After refining the large intestine meridian, he first learned Reactive Qi, destroying a nightstand in the process.

Finally, to complete his first half of the five phases, Wuxian refined the kidney meridian next. As an yin-water meridian, similar to the large intestine meridian, there was no related mystic art to be learnt. As such, Wuxian learned Sonic Strikes.

It had taken roughly two months, but Wuxian was now halfway through Foundation Building. At the same time, he had a total of 6 mystic arts at his disposal; one restorative, one offensive, one defensive, one movement and two supportive.

With a newfound sense of confidence, Wuxian couldn’t help but smile to himself. At the same moment, there was the sound of knocking on his door.

Opening it, Wuxian was met with Wan Qiushou’s deadpan stare.

“It’s time for your language lesson.”