Wu Guang and Xiao Feng choose to enter the cultivation rooms right after breakfast, while Old Rui again neared the map and started checking some of the ideas that Wu Guang shared with him earlier.

Inside the cultivation room, Wu Guang sat down, recited the mantra to activate 'Chaotic Gathering', and reached a state of qi saturation. This time it took him only half the time of his first attempt, but he didn't stop there, continuing to operate the breathing technique to force an oversaturation, the glow around his skin grew brighter, while the skin itself reddened. Reaching some kind of threshold, Wu Guang concentrated not letting the qi leave his body.

After some minutes and some escaped strands of qi, he seemed to have succeeded. His skin was no longer red, and the glow didn't fade as the previous days. In this condition, he continued sitting crosslegged for a full hour, then, Wu Guang relaxed his body, and qi started quickly leaving his body, the glow fading as well. Right as the first qi strand left his body a sound that was alike to a click was heard. In a moment, all the qi that he had gathered and forcefully retained rushed out of his body through the pores that suddenly enlarged enough to become visible. Some of it did not disperse in the air but remained around his body while covering it with a hair width, practically invisible membrane.

If a cultivator saw Wu Guang during these moments, he would be absolutely shaken. The sound that was heard and the body changing to allow the qi passage signified that his cultivation broke through to the 2nd level Body realm. The fact that it took him only three saturations to reach it would be already unbelievable to any standard cultivator. But the most shocking thing would be the membrane of qi around his body. This was a sure sign of him reaching the peak of the level, with his body being constantly bathed and slightly protected by qi.

Wu Guang did not look surprised about this, he knew that retaining the qi before letting it out was actually a shortcut to skip over to the peak right away, one that wasn't known to minor realm cultivators.

He opened his eyes and after examining himself made some mental remarks "I reached the peak of the 2nd Body realm quickly, as expected after using an advanced breathing technique. The next step will be to forcefully inject qi inside the meridians, unblocking them and reaching the 3rd level of the realm. I should be able to complete it today as well, especially as the 2nd level is too eye-catching and would be difficult to explain for now, while the 3rd one will let me control the qi membrane, making me able to disperse it"

If a cultivator knew of these thoughts, they would surely die from anger on the spot. Breaking through a second level in the same day, and just to hide the fact of your first advancement?!

Deciding on this, he stood up, made a run of his Tai Chi 24 forms, and after feeling that his breakthrough was settled, sat down activating the 'Chaotic Gathering'. This time, he did not activate it for more than a few breaths, gathering an amount of qi that was enough for the task at hand.

To reach the third level, one should start slowly willing a small and equal amount of qi to enter the meridians, one by one. It would take the cultivator several days to finish the process and enter the 3rd level. A body contained 12 main meridians divided into two Ying and two Yang groups. Their only use during the Body realm was to reinforce the body by circulating qi and prepare for the ascension to the Spirit realm and the creation of a Dantian. Only when the Dantian, which acted as qi storage was formed and all converged into a single circulation system one could start using them to channel qi to each part of the body.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

For a mortal, it would be impossible to pinpoint the exact location where a meridian should be opened from, but after the first and second Body levels were passed a cultivator should start partially feeling some of these openings. 'The Path' had described the possible locations to ease the starting process, but everybody had small variations of their location and size. So by using either the feel or the hints provided, a cultivator would unlock the first meridian and find the next meridian opening by following the path between them inside the body.

But for Wu Guang this all was not needed, using his Saint realm consciousness he could see and control anything inside his own body. Not to say the Principal 12 meridians openings, he could actually discern each of the pathways connecting them.

Using qi to forcefully open them all at the same time was like feeling dozens of daggers scrapping his bones and churning his innards. But using his consciousness, he managed to suppress most of the pain and complete the process in one session. Although this could be considered an extreme manner of doing things, by opening all of them at the same time one would evade one of the most common problems that minor plane cultivators would have in the future, the disbalance between the development of the meridians and their connections. This disbalance appeared if a cultivator did not use the same amount of qi to open each meridian, did not know the correct order, or messed up later during the first circulation. It did not really affect cultivators under the Sage minor realm, but if not corrected with special techniques and resources one would never be able to cultivate higher than the Soul realm.

"Haaa" Wu Guang exhaled, his face was pale, his skin looked dry and had some small cracks, and his hair lost its gloss. Although he felt an enormous amount of pain and looked worse than a corpse, he had a smile on his face.

"It took me less than a day to attune the body and unlock all the principal meridians. Reaching the peak of the 3rd level of the Body realm starting from the 1st level peak, if the local cultivators knew of this, they would surely consider me a genius or most probably a monster. I should rest for a full day now, preparing for the real start of cultivation, the first qi circulation" after saying this, he got up and slowly left the cultivation room.

Here, one should add that Wu Guang was absolutely right, the first three levels of the Body realm could not be really considered as cultivation, only some kind of preparation. The real foundations of cultivation would begin from the 4th level of the Body realm, that being the creation of the first part of the qi circulation system. And as the system will be used by a cultivator during all his life, indeed, the 4th level was the most basic foundation of one's cultivation. As for resting a full day, that also was missing from 'The Path'.

This rest would let the meridians naturally absorb qi from the surroundings and open the connections themselves. And do so without any interference from the cultivator. Such a thing would actually help to improve and quicken the circulation system, by making it more natural.