Chapter Fifteen: Consolidating the Foundation Middle Period

  It's late at night.

  Zhao Yang sat cross-legged on the bed, holding in his hand the fish-shaped jade pendant he had bought at the antique market today.

  Zhao Yang closed his eyes and cultivated the "Hunyuan Wuxing Xuanjing". The colorful light dots in the air were drawn into his body one by one, and the fish-shaped jade pendant in his hand emitted strands of misty spiritual energy that was absorbed into his body with each breath.

  The five elements' essence and the spiritual energy from the fish-shaped jade pendant entered Zhao Yang's body and immediately transformed into a surge of dark energy that dispersed into his muscles all over his body, even reaching his internal organs.

  In the dark room, even a faint halo could be seen emanating from Zhao Yang's body surface.

  As time slowly passed, a fine black sweat gradually seeped out of Zhao Yang's skin pores. The fish-shaped jade pendant in his hand emitted a soft, warm glow in the darkness, like a misty aura that was constantly released and swallowed into his body like a whale taking in water...

  After an unknown period of time, a cool night breeze blew in from the window, and Zhao Yang slowly opened his eyes, with a flash of clarity suddenly appearing deep within his pupils.

  Bang!

  Zhao Yang casually turned on the bedside lamp, looked down at himself and frowned for a moment before exhaling and revealing a hint of delight.

  "The jade pendant indeed contains a lot of spiritual energy from heaven and earth. I have only refined less than one-third of it, but my cultivation has already been smoothly promoted to the middle stage of foundation building. The 'Shaving Hair and Washing Marrow' of the body is complete."

  At this moment, the fish-shaped jade pendant in Zhao Yang's hand was no longer as shiny and radiant as before, but had become somewhat dull. His skin was visibly covered with a layer of dark, greasy impurities, emitting a foul odor. This was the impurity discharged from his body after 'cutting hair and washing marrow'.

  The practice of the foundation stage is divided into early, middle and late periods.

  The cultivation of this realm mainly involves tempering the physical body and refining the vital energy. When the internal energy completely permeates the entire body, even into the internal organs, it is considered to have entered the later stage of the foundation-building period. The next step in cultivation is to refine the internal energy within the body into the meridians, transforming it into true qi.

  But 'cutting hair and washing marrow' is a sign of the middle period of foundation building. Next, Zhao Yang needs to continue refining spiritual energy into his body, gradually practicing internal strength into every corner of his body, even into every cell.

  Once he truly reached this stage, Zhao Yang only needed to stimulate his inner energy and a protective aura would immediately form on the surface of his body. This was an aura formed by the air on the surface of his body under the joint action of the inner energy in every cell of his body, rather than the inner energy itself being emitted outward.

  The cultivation of the foundation period has only internal energy but no true qi, and it is impossible to truly release the true qi externally.

  In "Di Yuan Xian Lu", Zhao Yang had cultivated to the Tribulation Crossing stage, and his understanding of each realm was as clear as the palm of his hand.

  He casually put down the fish-shaped jade pendant in his hand, looked at the sticky black stains on his body, quickly got out of bed to find a clean set of clothes, and then rushed into the bathroom to wash up.

  It was already one o'clock in the morning, and Lin Xueqi was not in the living room, which saved trouble. Otherwise, if Lin Xueqi saw those smelly black substances on his body, Zhao Yang would have to spend a lot of effort explaining.

  As he walked past the living room, Zhao Yang casually glanced at Lin Xueqi's room. There was no light coming from the gap under the door, and it seemed that she had already fallen asleep.

  He scrubbed himself with soap three times until there was no strange smell on his body, and then Zhao Yang finally stopped and came out of the bathroom.

  After washing the dirty clothes clean and tidy, she went back to her room and fell asleep.

  A good night's sleep.

  Early in the morning, Zhao Yang woke up as usual and held the fish-shaped jade pendant to cultivate for nearly two hours. Zhao Yang clearly felt that the inner strength contained in his body had become much stronger.

  The fish-shaped jade pendant had lost about 60-70% of its spiritual energy after being refined and absorbed by him twice. The original bright green and glossy texture had also turned pale white, losing its original luster. It was estimated that with one more time, the spiritual energy in the jade pendant would be completely refined, and the pendant would be thoroughly crushed into powder.

  This jade pendant, although costing Zhao Yang over three thousand big yuan, was still worth it. Originally, with the current density of spiritual energy on Earth, he would have had to undergo four or five months of bitter cultivation to raise his cultivation to its current level, but now he only needed to cultivate twice a day, once in the morning and once at night, to achieve it.

  "It seems that in the future, if I want to speed up my cultivation, I'll have to think of a way to find more of these ancient artifacts that have been nourished and cultivated by spiritual energy for many years. Otherwise, relying solely on slow and steady refinement of heavenly and earthly spiritual energy through water grinding techniques, it's uncertain how long it will take to break through to the 'Condensation Period'."

  "However, just buying this small jade pendant yesterday cost me over 3,000 yuan. I must think of a way to make some money, otherwise even if I encounter a treasure with spiritual energy, I won't have the money to buy it. The saying 'wealth is the foundation' is indeed true, without wealth, wanting to rapidly improve one's cultivation is simply impossible. Especially in a world like Earth where spiritual energy is scarce..."

  Zhao Yang couldn't help but sigh.

  Washed up and went jogging to the park for a boxing practice, just like yesterday.

  When Zhao Yang arrived at the place where he practiced yesterday, he saw the girl with a ponytail again.

  The girl's attainments in 'Xingyiquan' are indeed very profound, the inner strength in her body has almost reached the peak of the initial stage of foundation building, and further progress would be to complete the process of 'Fa Mao Xi Su', entering the realm of the middle stage of foundation building. Which is now Zhao Yang's cultivation realm.

  Although Zhao Yang was a true cultivator, he had only been cultivating for half a month after all. He was able to cultivate so quickly to the mid-stage of foundation building thanks to the subtlety of the "Hunyuan Five Elements Mysterious Classic" and that fish-shaped jade pendant.

  Zhao Yang's own qualifications belong to the 'Five Elements Spirit Root' balance, and do not lean towards any one system spirit root. Such qualifications are most suitable for practicing 'Hunyuan Five Elements Mysterious Classics'.

  That girl's cultivation has apparently entered a bottleneck period, and to truly break through to the mid-term foundation building, relying solely on routine hard work will probably take at least one or two years.

  Zhao Yang glanced at it for a moment before withdrawing his gaze and starting to practice 'Tiger Down the Mountain Fist'.

  Practicing boxing by the lake, Zhao Yang wasn't worried that someone would steal a look at his practice and learn the boxing technique. This "Fierce Tiger Descending Mountain Fist" might be a profound and mysterious martial art for others, but for Zhao Yang, it was just an auxiliary internal strength cultivation "fitness boxing".

  As a cultivator, the 'Tiger Down the Mountain Fist' which belongs to the lower level of martial arts is not valued at all. Once the cultivation breaks through the 'Condensation Period' and reaches the higher 'Transformation Period', these low-level martial arts are completely disposable things.

  For the 'Fierce Tiger Descends the Mountain Fist', Zhao Yang had spent a great deal of effort to painstakingly cultivate it when he was still an ordinary disciple in the small sect of 'Diyuan Xianlu'. Although he hadn't used this basic martial art fist method again in the hundreds of years that followed. However, for cultivators, some things are deeply ingrained and once understood, they can never be forgotten.

  Even if Zhao Yang's soul crossed back to his original body on Earth, his understanding of the 'Tiger Down the Mountain Fist' was still at a supreme level. It's just that his body slowly adapted and he could fully exert the power of this fist technique.

  Yesterday's morning practice had allowed Zhao Yang to slowly get used to this set of fist techniques. Today, he came again to practice his skills, especially with a significant improvement in his cultivation, breaking through to the middle stage of foundation building. The display of his fist techniques was even more astonishing.

  One punch struck out, strong gusts of wind attacked, the clouds and thunder moved, as if the rolling thunder was echoing again, like a fierce tiger's long roar. The fist wind actually had a few points of turning virtual into real, condensing into the momentum of a fierce tiger, the surrounding trees all rustled...