Walking back to the inn, the three were silent. While Lan Ying was busy guessing Zi Yue’s Iron Qi level, Ye Yu and Zi Yue were both lost in their own thoughts.
Ye Yu looked over at his Young Mistress and thought back to Zi Yue’s cultivation journey.
The Zhao family was a family of cultivators so Zi Yue started cultivating from a very young age, younger than most of her peers. Normally, most cultivators start their journey when they enter one of the Sects and the Sect masters there teach them the art of cultivation and their Sect’s skills. Of course, they could choose to find a cultivator and take him (or her) as their teacher. That is provided the cultivator is willing to accept a disciple. Also, most of the cultivators who do not belong to Sects belongs to either a Clan or an Association.
These Clans work similarly to a Sect but their skills are usually kept secret within the Clan itself and are seldom, if not never taught to outsiders. Alternatively, one can join an Association. However, Associations although are more lax than Clans or Sects in accepting members, are not the ideal place to join if you want to focus on cultivating. They are usually more focused on their own Association’s goals than training cultivators. In addition, they are usually made up of a loose group of people from all sorts of background. For example, the thugs the three of them just met and crushed was from one such Association.
Therefore it was difficult for people with no backing to cultivate until they join one of such organisations. The ones who are serious about cultivation would usually join a Sect, which means that they start only when they have reached the age of twelve or above. To start cultivation from as young as possible would be optimal but twelve was the age when Sects start taking in disciples as that was the age where their bodies have matured to a certain extent. Before 12, their bodies are not strong enough to be able to handle all the stress from cultivating and would require one-to-one mentorship with a master who will have to keep track of the levels of stress the disciple’s body is able to handle.
Basically, the Sects do not have enough manpower to be able to carry out one-to-one mentorship with all the disciples who enter. As such, they had to wait until the body mature to a point where it is strong enough to handle the beginnings of cultivation, where they no longer require personal observation. Only in situations where the Sect uncovers a true genius who has the potential to break through to an Immortal stage that they will accept him or her into the Sect before the age of 12 and provide a personal mentor.
In Zi Yue’s case, she was born into the Zhao family, where her parents were both cultivators who had reached the Immortal stage. She had the fortune of enjoying personal tutelage from her parents alongside her siblings. Therefore she was able to start cultivating early, at the age of 8, four years advantage over her peers.
Four years may have allowed a normal person to advance to around the fourth or fifth stage of the Low Transcending level but Zi Yue was no normal person. In that four years, she managed to reach the 5th stage of Mid Transcending level. To reach Immortal 4th stage by the age of 18 was an amazing feat.
What took a normal person almost half a lifetime to attain took Zi Yue less than 10 years to achieve. At the Low and Mid Transcending stages, it was still relatively easy to progress and advance. However once one hits the Peak Transcending stages, it gets progressively difficult. The closer to Immortal level, the harder it is to break through each stage. Each subsequent stage is about ten times harder than the previous stage. Many cultivators end up taking years and years to advance from stage to stage, which is it was so difficult to reach the Immortal level. To advance further after the Immortal level was even harder, with each subsequent stage being around fifty times harder than the previous.
It was normal for a cultivator to be able to advance through the stages at the Low Transcending level as they were still considered “easy stages”. It gets harder after they have passed the Low Transcending level.
To cultivate, one had to first enter a state of meditation. Meditation allows them to enter the spiritual world to connect with their spiritual roots. Before one can cultivate their Qi (also commonly known as life-force energy), they have to first be aware of it within their body and mind. By tapping into the spiritual world, the cultivator will be able to sense the flow of their life-force energy within their body and from there, learn to cultivate that energy.
Organisations wishing to test a person who wishes to become a cultivator usually test that person’s spiritual roots as it is the first step in cultivation. If he is unable to connect with their spiritual roots and detect the Qi’s pathways, he will not be able cultivate his Qi.
To cultivate their Qi after connecting with their spiritual roots, cultivators will have to draw in the Qi of the natural world and at the same time, expel any unclean Qi in their bodies. Through Qi Condensation, they will then refine the Qi absorbed from the natural world in their bodies. When the levels of accumulated refined Qi has hit a specific threshold of that stage, it will allow the cultivator to breakthrough to the next stage of cultivation.
In Zi Yue’s case, she managed to advance so quickly because of her high Karma and pure Qi.
Higher levels of Karma allows one to tap into both the spiritual and natural world more easily. Since Zi Yue possessed high Karma, she was able to connect with the spiritual world easily and her spiritual roots. So the first step in cultivation was a piece of cake for her. Following that, she could tap into the natural world and draw in the Qi of the natural world much more easily.
To add on, her pure Qi meant that most of her own internal Qi did not have to be expelled from her body because of impurities. Combining the amount of both her pure Qi and refined Qi, it had already surpassed the standard levels of normal people at the same cultivation level.
That explained how Zi Yue had managed to cultivate so quickly and advance to the Immortal 4th Stage by the age of 18, within those mere 10 years of cultivation.
Her family had no idea about her high Karma and pure Qi so they were naturally taken aback by her cultivation speed. They just assumed she was a genius cultivator and celebrated the birth of a genius cultivator in their family.
Ye Yu, being a celestial beast, and thus had keener senses, suspected that Zi Yue was different from other normal cultivators but he was unable to pinpoint exactly what it was. However, as Lan Ying often mentions, Ye Yu is really smart. So through the ten years that Zi Yue cultivated, he often watched her cultivate. He noticed that the speed of which she seems to be absorbing Qi was faster than usual.
When one enters the state of meditation and cultivates, they would be surrounded by a very slight halo of light around their body. The more Qi is being absorbed and refined, the stronger the light would be. Ye Yu realised that when Zi Yue cultivates, the halo of light around her body seems to be brighter.
As such, even though no one was able to believe that someone could possess such innately high Karma level, Ye Yu was willing to believe that Zi Yue could. That would explain why she was cultivating so much faster than others.
Thinking about that, Ye Yu shook his head. Her soul must have been one of the purest soul ever in her previous life. Even Celestial Beasts, who were more in tune with the natural world, do not cultivate as quickly as Zi Yue. He himself reached Immortal level at the age of 25. It took him another theee years to advance two stages to Immortal 2nd Stage, which was where he was at now. It was considered pretty fast compared to normal cultivators but it pale in comparison with Zi Yue's speed.
Celestial Beasts grow up slower than humans. When he followed Zhao Yan home, he may have still been a tiger cub but he was in fact, already 16 years old. So in reality, he was now 28 human years old.
——
Because of Lan Ying’s question, Zi Yue thought back to when she first started learning Iron Qi.
When she first started cultivating, she did not realise that she was different from others. She had then assumed that it was natural to advance at this speed and did not understand why everyone had told her how hard cultivating was when they heard her parents were going to start teaching her. She was often left confused when her parents reacted with strange shocked looks whenever she proudly announced that she had yet again, advanced past another stage.
Initially she had thought maybe they were shocked at how she so brazenly announced her cultivation progress and that she was supposed to be more humble about it. She thought she had done something wrong to elicit such a response. Therefore, she started keeping it to herself whenever she passed another cultivation stage.
This, in turn, resulted in her parents calling her to their room one day. The lack of updates from their daughter on her cultivation progress started worrying them. The fact that she suddenly stopped announcing her progress when she had been cultivating at such an insane speed previously made them worry that perhaps she had met some difficulties and had bottlenecked in her cultivation journey. The odd thing was that they had not noticed any signs of such issues during their lessons.
“Zi Yue, have you met with some difficulties in your cultivation?” Her mother had asked her then, her face full of worry and concern.
Puzzled, Zi Yue had replied that she had not met any difficulties and enquired the reason behind her mother’s worry. Was she supposed to meet with difficulties in cultivating at this stage?
It was her parents' turn to exchange a puzzled look.
On that day, she finally found out how different she was. Connecting with her spiritual roots, entering the spiritual world, absorbing Qi from the natural world and refining the Qi - all these steps that she had found easy, were actually tough for a large percentage cultivators out there when they first begin. She finally realised that the Transcending level of cultivation was not as easy as she thought. She had hopped through the Mid Transcending stages as if they were Low Transcending stages. True, she had found it harder than the Low Transcending stages, but she was still quite relaxed when cultivating at these stages. She finally understood everything.
Slowly, while cultivating, she found out that the amount of unclean Qi she expelled during meditating and cultivating was quite low. Most of the time, she could feel that her own Qi circulating in her meridians were clean. She realised that a reason why she was cultivating so quickly was because she might have purer Qi than others.
Later on, Ye Yu had told her of his suspicions, that she might have a high level of Karma and had asked her if she felt that was easy to connect with the natural world, spiritual world and her spiritual roots. Surprised, she had replied in the affirmative. There, she found the second reason behind her zoom zoom cultivation speed.
She had then silently thanked the Heavens for blessing her with such qualities.
As for Iron Qi, it was relatively easy to pick up the basics of Iron Qi, but she found it different to increase its mastery level. For some reason, she found it difficult to get past strengthening her body to more than sixty times.
It was at this point where she met her first bottleneck.
Iron Qi requires the cultivator to first circulate the Qi in the meridians at a smooth and constant speed. A huge amount of concentration is required as the mind has to lead the Qi to the muscles of that body part and strengthen it. This gives the muscles strength and in turn, hardens that part of the body. The stronger your concentration and ability to circulate the Qi smoothly, the higher your mastery of Iron Qi is.
It may sound easy, but in reality, it was not easy at all.
Firstly, she had to concentrate on circulating the Qi smoothly and at the same time, focus on directing part of that Qi to the body part that she wants to strengthen. Secondly, the problem was that Zi Yue had experienced too smooth a journey in her cultivation. Therefore she did not have to practice concentrating intensely in order to cultivate, unlike the other cultivators who had to do that in order to tap into the natural world to absorb Qi.
Hence, when met with such a situation where her high Karma and pure Qi matters not in her ability to concentrate and multitask, Zi Yue walked straight into a wall.
For the next few days, weeks even, all she did was sit in the training room and tried her best to up her Iron Qi mastery level. Her parents had ordered everyone to leave her alone and to not disturb her for fear that it may break her concentration.
It was not until 2 months later when she was sitting alone in the training room when she finally broke through.
What happened was that she had fallen asleep. For the past few days, she had barely slept in an effort to try to cultivate and train. Even her parents and siblings words fell on deaf ears as she tuned them out and continued training through the night. That night, her body could not take it anymore and succumbed to tiredness and had the strangest dream ever.
In that dream, she met the most beautiful lady she had ever seen. It was as if she met a Goddess.
The Goddess had taken her hand and led her to a beautifully furnished room and sat down with her.
“Child, your mind is a powerful part of you. As long as you have the willpower and determination to do so, your mind will naturally follow. Split your mind into two and try to make them focus on each separate matter. It may be difficult at the start, but try to do that and you’ll be able to succeed. I wish you luck my child. We will always be with you.” After saying a string of words Zi Yue did not understand, the Goddess started fading away with a beautiful and yet sad smile.
With a start, Zi Yue had jolted awake and thoughts lingered on her odd dream. Thinking of the Goddess suddenly made her heart ache inexplicably. She thought back to what the Goddess had said.
Splitting her mind into two… Splitting her mind into two!!
It was as if she had been enlightened.
Maybe… Maybe she could try splitting her mind into two streams and work on the flow of the Qi in her meridians and directing the Qi to specific parts of her body at the same time in the separate streams.
Not willing to waste any more time, she quickly sat back into the lotus position and tried splitting her mind. Of course, nothing works at first try. Plus splitting the mind was not an easy feat.
Zi Yue closed herself in the training room, coming out only to eat and to wash up. Her family worried that she might overstrain herself at this rate and wanted her to take a break but Zi Yue was adamant and continued training.
3 months later, she finally came out of the room, all smiles on her face. She had finally succeeded!
From there on, her mastery of Iron Qi rose at an astonishing pace. With the ability to split her mind, she found it a lot easier to train in the art of Iron Qi. It was a cheat, but if it works for her, it works.
Now that she thought about it, Zi Yue realised that the Goddess last line was “We will always be with you.”
What did she mean? And who were those “we”?
Confused, she thought about it for the rest of the journey back to the inn.