Back in Ling Xu's room.
[Name]: Ling Xu
[Realm]: 7th stage of Blood Qi (100%)
[Cultivation]: Basic Blood Circulation (perfection), Existence Shadow Will (28,4%)
[Techniques]: Three Purities Sword (proficient 72%), Blood Thread Transformation (completed)
He was seated in the middle of the room inspecting the small changes from his status panel after falling into enlightenment.
"The sensation of going through enlightenment when I was in the middle of the fight with Ma Dongpil feels so refreshing. It's as if my body learns how to naturally use any kind of knowledge I have while my mind is in its own trance, comprehending the technique's meanings and ways to use every stance."
Noticing this, he also realized that he wouldn't be able to create something out of thin air if he didn't have any previous knowledge about it.
"And this isn't even all."
Having controlled the path to stop letting the energy inside his body, Ling Xu still felt that it was open and that he had more than half the energy yet to use as it felt more intense than the times he entered enlightenment after waiting one week.
"I will wait for when the night comes to continue practicing it, now let's continue refining my bones and breakthrough the eight stage of Blood Qi."
Circulating his blood qi through the whole body, the faint sound from a torrent of energy could be heard as it was moving through every muscle, organ and bone, not leaving a single place unrefined.
While his body was getting stronger, he could feel his bones reaching their current limit as the blood qi that refined them seeped into them, trying to reach as far as they could.
After half an hour, he felt a movement as his bones had started to absorb his blood qi, getting stronger every breath that went on.
…
"Now is the time!"
Another half an hour passed and Ling Xu has finally entered the eight stage of Blood Qi after having been stuck ever since he went into the second mission when he was on Earth.
Having already recovered his blood qi and feeling the new capacity of his body, he had realized that the quantity had almost doubled compared to before entering the eight stage.
He also noticed that his bones became stronger as his body now felt much more solid and every punch he made carried more strength with the increase of bone density.
"The feeling of getting stronger after every breakthrough feels amazing, I can't believe I'm actually experiencing it." he said to himself, remembering how just a few months back he was still studying and working unaware of this fantasy like world.
And Ling Xu still had an infinite amount of things yet to experience as he had been here for just two weeks and he didn't know even a fragment of what this world had to offer.
"I wonder how difficult it's the refining of the bones now that they have become stronger and the amount of blood qi has increased almost two fold."
He continued circulating his blood qi, focusing on refining his bones while feeling the effects the breakthrough had brought.
After another minute, Ling Xu opened his eyes surprised.
"It hasn't decreased in the slightest the refining speed of my bones!" he felt that way as once someone advanced to the next stage the body would get stronger and the difficulty of refining every part of it would get harder.
"Is it possible that because the quality of my blood qi has already reached the limit, it has no effect on the speed of my bones being refined?"
After all, if anyone felt the purity from Ling Xu's blood qi they would realize that it had already reached the limit of what someone could have before undergoing the third blood exchange.
For him, breaking through to the ninth stage of Blood Qi posed no difficulty as it would take him the same amount of time that it took him to enter the eight stage.
He could already guess that after a little more than a week he would be able to advance once again.
For the next three hours, Ling Xu continued refining his bones as the night had yet to come and he didn't want to get any more attention from the one he had already gotten.
After entering enlightenment publicly and defeating Ma Dongpil, once his sword technique had surpassed his, the news had already reached everyone that lived in the same villa as him.
Fortunately, it didn't reach further than that as there wasn't much communication between the menial workers from his villa and the others.
But that didn't diminish the effect it would have on how the disciples from his villa would now look at him as Ling Xu was two stages below him and he still managed to defeat him.
That was something they had never seen before and could only heard from word of mouth as there was the mention that only geniuses were able to surpass their cultivation stage and defeat those on that were on a higher level.
But none of the unofficial disciples had seen one and even less in the periphery of the sect because those kind of people would always directly enter as outer disciples.
…
Seeing the rays of light slowly disappear, it was finally time to come out and train in the Three Purities Sword technique.
Ling Xu came out and saw that no one could be seen as the light was fading and everything the other disciples could do now was enter their rooms and decide if they would go to sleep right away or refine their bodies and strive to get closer to the Qi Refining Realm and enter the outer sect.
Taking out the high grade refined short sword from his spatial ring, he started reenacting the new level of mastery he had reached just a few hours ago.
His sword moved and it didn't stop as it showed every kind of sword variation, starting with an horizontal slash then doing a diagonal one and continuing with the rest.
Persisting this way, Ling Xu ingrained every sword stance into his body as he didn't plan on just depending on the enlightenment and he wanted to make his body experience the technique so it felt more natural its use.
If not, he was afraid that one day his foundation would start to decrease after depending solely on this ability he got for free without any kind of effort.
After an hour of constant training, Ling Xu was profusely sweating as he had started to let lose the speed of his blood qi circulation.
His strength increased and everywhere his sword moved a strong wind accompanied, making a sound that could be heard.
But if anyone came outside and heard him, he would still not know who that was as night had already fallen and Ling Xu was training in his technique blindly.
If this was done before he reached the proficient level of mastery he would have never been able to do so as he had barely started to learn to do the sword stances correctly, but now it was different.
Every sword he threw was extremely sharp and if Ling Xu tried he would be able to repeatedly cut the same spot in the middle of the air.
While the sweat coming out of his forehead touched his cheeks, Ling Xu naturally decided to open the path between his eyes once again.
Opening it up, an extremely pure energy entered as it started swimming around his body, taking away any kind of exhaustion he previously had.
His mind was in a tranced and his body moved on its own.
The speed at which his sword technique improved was alarming as after a few minutes it had already entered the great success level.
Reaching this stage, it almost looked the same as before but the more time passed the more the difference started to show as his progress in the sword technique was still increasing.
Every sword stance that his body made would smoothly move to the next, showing a level of connection between his every move that couldn't be matched by someone who had reached the end of the proficient level.
…
A dozen minutes passed and the energy that was almost overflowing from his body had started to decrease showing that the time of enlightenment was reaching its end.
Ling Xu's mind had slowly started to come back to reality as he followed the flow that his body was moving at.
"I feel so free." he said, feeling the movements of the sword that he was currently making.
Every basic move of the sword was natural and he felt how they would all connect with no difficulty, having grasped every sword variation as if it was deeply ingrained in his body.
He suddenly made a drastic change and realized that he could even change the flow of the sword without losing any momentum.
Before the golden energy that bathed his body was completely spent, Ling Xu felt something coming from the sword.
"What is this energy?"
But the next second, before he could grasp what this feeling was, he felt how the last strand of energy was absorbed and he came out of the enlightenment.
Returning to his room, he was still thinking about this feeling as it ignited his curiosity, but without entering the enlightenment he would be unable to figure it out.
"This is the worst kind of way to go to sleep, as I won't be able to fall asleep because I will be thinking about what happened all night."
But on the contrary to what he thought, he immediately fell unconscious after looking through his status panel once again.
Back in Ling Xu's room.
[Name]: Ling Xu
[Realm]: 7th stage of Blood Qi (100%)
[Cultivation]: Basic Blood Circulation (perfection), Existence Shadow Will (31%)
[Techniques]: Three Purities Sword (perfection), Blood Thread Transformation (completed)
Even though Ling Xu's mind was very curious about it, his body was exhausted because of all the work it had done throughout the whole day.
And even though entering the enlightenment helped him recover, his body needed to rest before fully recovering from the turn he had been through and the extensive training that took several hours of the day.
…
Ling Xu woke up and he continued the day like any other one.
He started training in his sword technique when the sun had started to rise and then he would go and complete his turn as a guard in the border of the sect's array.
Afterwards he would continue training in the sword technique, Ling Xu didn't plan on stopping to train even though he had already reached perfection in the Three Purities Sword technique as he felt like there would always be something new to learn.
He also didn't plan on losing his momentum as he felt that the best way to keep being disciplined was to never stop practicing.
Doing the sword stances from the sword technique in the morning and evening, he travelled through the different levels of mastery of it as he was constantly revising every step of it.
This made several people that were looking from the side look at him with a strange face as they didn't understand why he would still train in the previous levels if he had already reached a higher one.
But they didn't dare to say anything or even approach him as they felt intimidated by him.
Daring to challenge someone on the ninth stage of Blood Qi while being two stages below was something none of them dared to think about, and even less for him to defeat him afterwards.
Still, the method Ling Xu tried seemed to work as every once in a while he would have a faint feeling as if something was missing in his sword.
But after several days of doing so he still couldn't get the feeling as clear as it was when he entered the enlightenment.