Immediately after deciding to start my cultivation journey here, I look for a house that I could hide up in to complete it.

I quickly find one that my scanning informs me is uninhabited. Luckily for me, it is normal for cultivators to stay in one of these houses and meditate/cultivate before starting their journey.

So, this won’t be strange to the guards here.

The house is clearly a simple dwelling. One with only a few candles, some mats to sleep on, and a place to use the restroom. Although it is simple, the house itself is covered in an additional array, which is meant to protect the people hiding within for a period of time if the main array breaks. All they would need to do is shut the door.

During normal times, it prevents people from being able to break into it, exempting the guards themselves.

That must be why people feel so comfortable cultivating here. You would normally only cultivate in a safe area. With the guards here in a secured area, this is the best you would get, this far away from civilization.

Shutting the door, I sit down, fold my legs, and get into a comfortable position.

Looking inward and using my scan, I review the basics of starting cultivation using this method. Several different steps and facts fill my head until I get a clear understanding of what I need to do in order to practice this cultivation method.

However, I stop.

I lay down.

I bunch a number of mats beneath my head and some underneath my knees.

I then place one hand on the middle of my upper chest, near where my middle dantian is. I placed my other hand just below my rib cage, on my belly and just above my lower dantian.

Starting from there, I slowly breathe in with my nose, letting the incoming air flow towards my stomach area. My hand in that area slowly, but surely, rises. When I finally exhale, I blow out the air with tightened lips, while hardening my abs.

All the while, my hand that lies on my chest stays in the same place. Only the belly hand rises and falls.

In my world, they called this diaphragmatic breathing.

Here, it is called breathing techniques.

Something so simple that not only had benefits in my world, but this one too.

For most people here that would practice it, they would try it while sitting. The most effective way is to do it is by laying down, though.

This is one of many techniques, but one that works perfectly for me.

Why am I doing this now, though?

One thing that people sometimes miss when they don’t have a teacher or mentor to guide them through a pre-determined cultivation method is that before you start your cultivation method, you need to prepare your body for it.

If you just start channeling Qi through your body and attempting to make use of it to pursue cultivation, for the first time, you may actually stunt your growth for your entire cultivation time. You’ll be successful at your cultivation method and moving it through your body, but if there are any issues… it’ll mess you up.

After doing this exercise for a good 10 minutes, my Qi starts to reflect the direction of the air in my body.

Coming in through my Twelve meridians and circling between each other through the eight connecting ones, they intertwine and flow between each other, before finally moving together into a coherent, continuous stream.

Soon after, the first portions of it arrive in my lower dantian. Like a waterfall entering a basin full of many outlets, the Qi enters my dantian and almost immediately heads back out into my meridians.

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But it just keeps coming. Normally, this action would be to wear away any impurities that can be found in the body. To refine and prepare it to accept Qi.

This would take an extraordinary amount of effort and energy to complete.

But since my body is already in a perfected state, it simply washes through without change. It takes almost no strength to complete this.

Along with my breathing, it rises into my middle dantian.

Now this is where the separation between geniuses, rich people, and the ones with insane willpower from the normal aspiring cultivators starts.

Most normal cultivators would only ever be able to work within the lower dantian. Pushing through the muck of their bodies is just too much effort just within that realm. For those who can reach the middle dantian, they either had a body that was refined enough to blow through it, were skilled/knowledgeable in ways to force into it, or had the resources from a young age to prep their body for this.

There are also those cases where a person with absurd amounts of willpower force into the middle dantian, permanently damaging themselves, but achieving some benefits.

This is easy to say, but in actuality would entail only doing this without eating, sleeping or any other activity for years to decades. All while dealing with unimaginable amounts of pain and suffering that can’t be adjusted to. The pain will always stay the same amount and wear your body and mind even more as it continues.

But like the lower Dantian, for me, the Qi just passes through and then out to the meridians yet again. This time, it is just a bit more refined and concentrated. With the same ease as the lower dantian.

Cultivation is a lifelong journey. An unfair struggle where you fight against the normal bounds of mortality. Some people have to struggle and sacrifice to get even a single step. Others take a single casual step and cross mountains.

… I’m so happy to be me.

Moving from that point, is the upper dantian.

This is the area beyond geniuses.

Not only do you have to have a perfect body, it also has to be refined to the highest level, you have to know certain techniques to guide the Qi into the right areas to access it, and it takes a large amount of willpower to push through to reach it.

Normally, this would be where I say despite all those things that I know about this, it was easy for me to go through. Just as easy as the previous levels.

That would be a lie.

As the Qi flows upwards towards my head, the location of my upper dantian, it’s like my Qi hit a wall.

A wall made of titanium, with no gaps.

My breath falters as I feel this and I almost lose the rhythm that I had going, where my Qi was matching my breathing.

Successful cultivation is about building a rhythm. A pattern.

Breaking that rhythm can lead to making mistakes that can harm you or, worse, cripple you.

Luckily, at such an early stage, I won’t need to worry about such a thing. I’m able to quickly concentrate back in and reorient my breathing/Qi to slam against that wall repeatedly.

Over, and over.

Again, and again.

A day passes.

I’ve been doing nothing but fighting against this barrier.

No sleep. No food or water.

Not that I need it… but still.

Realizing this is fruitless, I slow my breathing before bringing it to a stop. Rising to a sitting position.

I haven’t started my cultivation, and I’ve still just started this, so I have a chance to keep trying.

But I’m running out of time. Both for my time limit and continuing the process successfully.

The secrets and techniques to push through this are much too difficult to find out from my scan. The evil cultivator also didn’t know of any such thing, as he was just an average, though still successful, demonic one in his time.

This seriously is no joke.

The demonic cultivator’s knowledge of the wall that is the middle dantian and the myth that is the upper one, is practically screaming at me that this is an impossible feat without knowing the techniques to navigate the body.

Wait a second.

Why do I have to know the techniques to navigate the body, when I can just use my scan to dive deeper into my body to figure out where the paths are?

It might seem obvious, but in cultivation there are set ways to do things. Traveling new paths is not the norm, and it is the law in each of these methods to avoid too much deviation.

To change something is to truly court death. There are reasons that cultivation methods and techniques are so treasured. Even the lowest versions represent millions of lives lost in its potential creation. An attempt to create something new.

For the highest? Unimaginable sacrifices.

… But that’s because they work off flawed or lacking information on the person themselves.

I can dive deep into my body, to see these paths using the scan. As long as it is my body, I can see as much as I want, even down to the molecule.

Cautiously, I bring myself back into the diaphragmatic breathing position. With that done, I move the flow into the lower, then middle area.

And then I pause, before redirecting it around my meridians and not up into the upper area just yet.

While I divert the flow with my scan, I probe deeper and deeper into that wall. Looking for any holes or channels that my Qi can pass through.

Closer and closer to the molecular level.

And it is close to there that I find one.

And another.

And another.

There is a plethora of channels that could be used, as long as I can widen them.

The only bad part?

Passing kidney stones would be a whisper compared to What I’m going after endure for this.

The pain that I felt from the demons ripping open holes in my soul plane? A relative joke.

So, I come to the question that’s been plaguing me since I arrived in this cultivation world.

… Is this really worth it for me?