Chapter 368: Body Cultivation And Qi Refining

　　Translator: AstralGhost Editor: Kurisu

　　Although it had managed to reach the Fake Dan realm in the past, it had actually not realized its maximum potential!

　　What the Cerberus wanted to do now was to grab every opportunity to set the most stable foundations in every realm and minor stage. At the same time, since it was cultivating the Xiantian realm using its knowledge of a Fake Dan expert, it was like answering a primary school student’s questions using the knowledge and experience of a university student. It was bound to discover the errors in its previous cultivation.

　　This was not an exaggeration in any way, because the difference between Controlled Dan and Xiantian was truly that huge! Anyone in the Controlled Dan realm could be said to have stepped into a higher level of existence!

　　The most obvious mark of a Controlled Dan Heavenly Expert was that one could stay suspended in midair without any external aid. Although they could not hover in midair indefinitely, this was still a large leap forward for any life form!

　　Right now, the Cerberus had reached over 5 meters in height and 15 meters in length!

　　The Cerberus lifted its body and looked around its surroundings with a domineering air!

　　Actually, only Indigestion’s head was raised domineeringly. Insatiable and Black Hole looked rather absent-minded.

　　Unfortunately, right now, the Cerberus was simply too monstrous in size. Rows upon rows of sharp canine teeth gleamed with a cold light, and adding on its ugly features, it would be hard even if it didn’t want to scare anybody!

　　***

　　One would only think that a tiger was cute and harmless if they only saw it on TV.

　　But if they were to bump into a real tiger in the jungle, they would learn that no matter how cute a tiger was, it was still a carnivorous predator! Especially if a meal was delivered to its doorsteps, there was no way the tiger would reject it!

　　There was a saying that went, “The person was bitten with my own abilities. By what rights should I spit him out?”

　　The same logic applied for Mystic One as well. It was just a bowl of soup and two pieces of meat, so she did not take it seriously at the start.

　　But only after finishing everything did Mystic One realize how wrong she was! The huge amounts of energy rampaged through her body, causing her to feel like she was going to explode from eating too much food!

　　Mystic One’s main path of cultivation was mainly a Qi refiner, with body cultivation as a complimenting path.

　　The Minor Illumination Breathing Technique she practiced had set a pretty strong foundation for her body. With just the strength of her body, she could sweep through all other Evolved Jing masters unrivaled!

　　The very first step to refining Qi was, most importantly, to have a strong body. Where did Qi come from?

　　There was a certain term: training vital essence and evolving Qi! Qi was, in itself, something that was refined from the physical body!

　　With a powerful physique, not only would the Qi refined through it be of a higher quality than normal, it’d allow one to progress through the Light and Dark Jing stage much quicker!

　　Mystic One only used three months to step past the Light and Dark Jing realms, directly becoming an Evolved Jing master!

　　In just over two years, she’d managed to attain a cultivation of half-step Xiantian. Such an achievement could not be accomplished without her foundations of a strong physical body!

　　And right now, Mystic One’s strength had already been stabilized at the primary level of the Xiantian realm. Large amounts of energy flowed through all her limbs.

　　At this moment, Mystic One was revolving her blood and Qi, separating the energy into two portions. One portion carried 90% of the energy and was being circulated to every part of her body, strengthening it.

　　The remaining 10% was used to cultivate her inner Qi.

　　Mystic One knew that a strong body was required if an early stage Qi refining martial practitioner wished to improve quickly and control their strength.

　　She also knew that she would have to make her choice ultimately. And for Mystic One, her choice was to focus mainly on body cultivation in the early stages of her martial path, while the later stages would be focused on Qi refining!

　　Until she reached a point where her inner Qi would strengthen her body by itself, Mystic One would continue to focus on body cultivation.

　　Only with a strong body could she progress quickly as a Qi refiner!

　　If the body was like an empty shell, no matter how much spirit herbs one took, the Qi refined by that person would definitely be unable to compare with the Qi refined by another person with a strong body!

　　The only exception was if one managed to reach an incredibly high level in Qi refining, allowing them to refine Qi directly from the Heaven and Earth Ling Qi around them without needing to draw it into their bodies first. At that time, it would be completely fine to discontinue body cultivation.

　　At that level, the Heaven and Earth Ling Qi would also clash with the body’s inner Qi. When that happened, the body would be tempered and its strength would also begin to rise slowly!

　　As for cultivating both paths together, that was something that had never crossed Mystic One’s mind. Mystic One was a clever person and naturally understood that there were many people who were smarter than her. However, it might not be a big issue to cultivate both the body and inner Qi at the time if one had sufficient resources.

　　But once one reached a certain level of strength, they would start to see just how much resources was actually needed to be a dual cultivator!

　　It was completely not as simple as one plus one equals two. After reaching a certain point as a dual cultivator, it would be impossible to just turn back and only cultivate one path!

　　Admittedly, the battle prowess of someone who cultivated both paths at the same time would be invincible within the same realm. If paired with a good set of martial techniques, it was possible to cross ranks and fight! However, there still existed a huge disadvantage in cultivating both paths!

　　That was, the cultivation level difference between the two paths must not be too huge. Otherwise, one would end up being unable to progress. Take for instance a scenario where the inner Qi level was on the Xiantian realm, while the body cultivation level was only at the Evolved Jing level.

　　Unless the martial practitioner could raise his body’s cultivation level to the Xiantian stage, it would be impossible to ever step into the Controlled Dan realm!

　　In other words, the further one trained on this path, the more it would feel burdensome!

　　If for some reason one path was impossible to follow any further, the other path would never lead to a breakthrough as well!

　　Of course, there were a few heaven-toppling geniuses who attained extremely great heights in both fields. However, they were an extremely small number.

　　All that information had been gained using the data of the Martial Practitioners Control Department. There were indeed quite a few people in the past who were not scared of death. They all felt confident that they had sufficient resources.

　　Adding on to the fact that they would have no opponents on the same level, even having the thrill of crossing levels to battle, many people had already gone ahead as test rats.

　　At the beginning, they did improve very quickly, even managing to cross ranks and fight. All these felt extremely glorious.

　　Many people took up dual cultivation after witnessing the benefits. But the further they went on this path, the greater the requirements for comprehension and knowledge also grew—until crossing every minor realm would require a huge amount of time and effort. In the end, they reached a point where they were invincible under the same level, even managing to cross ranks and fight!

　　However, the peers who they thought had been left far behind had eventually managed to catch up to their level, even pulling ahead and chucking them far behind their backs!

　　So what if you were unbeatable under the same realm? So what if you could cross a few minor levels and fight? My cultivation is now much higher than yours—to a point where I could kill you with a single slap!

　　So what if you could skip one or two level to fight? So what if you could skip an entire realm to fight? At the end of the day, it was all but dust.

　　From then on, the elders in every sect and clan would always remind the juniors who were beginning their cultivation that they must never bite off more than they could chew! A human’s attention and strength were limited. They could only afford to focus all their energies completely on one path and use all their efforts to go as far as possible on that single path!

　　“Crack!”

　　After a long time, a series of popping and crackling sounds rang out from Mystic One’s body. A layer of impure dirt was also forced out of her pores.

　　Mystic One stood to her feet and moved her limbs slowly. In that moment, she felt like her whole body was filled with power!

　　She had once again taken another step forward in her body cultivation. Her height had grown taller as well. From the looks of it, she was almost 1.7 meters tall!