After setting his belongings and saving them in his spatial ring, he set to the Treasure Pavilion to sell the extra spatial ring he had with hopes of earning a few extra spiritual stones since he would have to use a few next.
Ling Xu headed to the building and after asking a worker for its price, which was a hundred spiritual stones, he sold it at ninety since he already knew that the Treasure Pavilion had a ten percent fee when selling to them.
But since it was the easiest way to sell and they would buy any kind of item related to cultivation, he decided to lean on them instead of doing it the hard way and finding out another way.
"It is finally time to compensate for something that has put me in a disadvantage when fighting ever since I became an outer disciple." he sighed feeling relief as he was now prepared to buy a movement technique.
"Ever since I fought with the night assailant and all the way to Xie Jian, I have lost an advantage when it comes to speed. In this way, not only has my strength decreased since when moving faster the attacks are also stronger, but I have had a hard time to react to those who had already learned their own movement technique."
Since he encountered that Affairs Hall worker at night, he had deeply engraved the usefulness from a movement technique. Not only could it increase his movement speed but using it would allow for one to use their own fighting style.
After going to the Books Pavilion, Ling Xu took a while searching for the movement technique that he felt suit him best based on his own preferences. Being on the second floor, he revised the shelves corresponding to them.
Time seemed to go pretty fast as he felt that he was in a candy store, having to choose from different candies, although they all had different flavors he liked them all.
After an hour and a half of deciding, he had already chosen as the moment he read its introduction he knew that it was the one he wanted without a doubt.
"It is a hundred and twenty spiritual stones." the outer elder guarding the Books Pavilion said bluntly acting almost as indifferent as the old man that replaced him before. The only difference was that the elder at least looked him in the eyes when saying it.
"That is great, I thought that its price would be much higher than that. After all, just a regular low grade treasure weapon costs between one hundred and one hundred fifty spiritual stones."
The reason that he felt this way was because while a low grade treasure can directly increase the strength from a cultivator in the lower stages of Qi Refining, once they reached the middle stages its help would decrease.
This could be shown directly when fighting beasts, since their tough bodies could only be injured by weapons that rivaled their stage.
Considering this, if Ling Xu had a middle grade treasure sword in his hand when attacking the snake, he would have probably managed to make a deeper wound than what he only managed to do.
But compared to this method of increasing one's combat strength, techniques were of much more value since once you reached the next level of mastery you would be able to increase your strength.
So for every time you advanced in your technique you would become stronger, having several instances to do so since the levels of mastery were five and they were entry, small success, proficient, great success and perfection.
Considering that one technique would be able to increase one's strength from the first stage of Qi Refining all the way to the ninth, it was a very low price since once you considered buying a treasure weapon of middle grade instead of low grade, its price would almost double.
…
As he returned to his room, Ling Xu took out his new movement technique and started comprehending it right away as he still had the rest of the day and he was very eager to use it already.
Once he had grasped it completely, he took his eyes off the manual and sighed. "It is as expected, this Gale Wind manual has many similarities with the skills I had in the tutorial."
He recalled the middle grade skill Swift Steps which increased his flexibility and its latter version, the high grade skill Gale Steps he obtained after buying the chance to increase its grade in the system's store.
This high grade skill had the ability to increase his movement flexibility to a terrifying degree, even allowing him to move while being in the middle of the air.
"This movement technique teaches the way to move like the wind, making the body lighter and allowing it to move flexibly." he said with joy as he was already desiring to have the ability to move again as he was able to when he still had his skills.
"Although my strength and speed has far surpassed by previous self, when I still had my skills and was in the seventh stage of Blood Qi, I want to have the freedom I felt when I used Gale Steps."
This was an accurate description of how he felt since Ling Xu's current strength was incomparable to before. But when it came to his ability to use his body and move it freely like before, he was falling behind.
"I can already feel my skin tingling from the excitement!" he came out from his room as fast as possible and headed to the forest that he had used to practice in his Flowing Stream Sword technique.
It took a bit to arrive but once he did he started right away, taking the basic stances from the manual and following the method to circulate his qi through his body.
This time, compared to when he started with the sword technique, it took him much longer to learn as this was his first time learning a movement technique.
So after several hours of training he had only progressed so far with it, but at least he had started to get the hang of it as he realized that his speed had gained a slight increase.
As the sun had started to disappear in the horizon, Ling Xu was already back in his room, not wasting a single second as he had begun refining the formless qi into the body through his breathing method.
Every hour that passed, Ling Xu was getting closer to the completion of the first stage since the acupoints in his body were filled being filled to the brim.
Although it was already night time and there was not a single ray from the sun left, he continued as he didn't care about time anymore.
After seven hours of continuously breathing in and out to refine more qi into the body, Ling Xu looked into his status panel as he confirmed the sensation he had from his dantian and acupoints.
[Name]: Ling Xu
[Realm]: 1st stage of Qi Refining (100%)
[Cultivation]: Formless Qi Breathing (proficient 85%), Existence Shadow Will (40%)
[Techniques]: Gale Wind (entry 16%), Flowing Stream Sword (great success 2%), Three Purities Sword (perfection), Blood Thread Transformation (completed)
Closing his eyes once again, his mind was completely silent as he begun the process of breakthrough to the second stage. The qi that came out from his dantian and 13 open acupoints traveled through his meridians, forming a cycle of energy that stimulated his whole body.
Ling Xu's closed acupoints started to loosen up as the qi from his body continued cycling at full speed for an incense stick of time.
After he passed that time, he felt that the acupoints wouldn't soften anymore as his heart moved and he started the breakthrough.
Passing through the 13 opened acupoints, Ling Xu's qi continued as it started opening the fourteen. It took an instant for it to open as his qi continued going to the next acupoint.
In this way, he opened the fifteen, sixteen and more without stopping, showing almost no resistance against his dense qi. Continuing like this, he saw one acupoint open after the other, reaching a terrifying level compared to any other disciple that was breaking through the second stage.
…
In the dark room, Ling Xu's body suddenly moved as it started radiating an intense light through the pores of his skin.
Once the light subsided and his breathing had calmed down, he opened a pair of eyes that showed happiness. "I have successfully entered the second stage of Qi Refining!" he yelled full of excitement, feeling his qi that had become stronger with the breakthrough.
Counting the number of acupoints that he currently had opened, he was even more shocked as he never expected to reach this amount. "I have opened a total of 31 acupoints. With this number, if I just compare my current qi capacity, I am on par with someone in the fifth stage of Qi Refining. This is a huge step compared to before when my 13 acupoints could be barely compared to someone who had entered the third stage of Qi Refining!"
Not only has his qi increased in strength as it was now the condensation result of 31 acupoints in the body, but even his current capacity had greatly increased, allowing him to use more than once the stream of energy in his sword as before he could only use it once before almost depleting the qi in his body.
"I never expected for this breakthrough to be so crazy. After all, there are 360 acupoints in the whole body and every time you advance a stage the amount of acupoints opened increases."
This was part of the information that Ling Xu had gotten from the Formless Qi Breathing cultivation technique as it had all the related information that one would need for the Qi Refining Realm.
"For example, when I first entered the first stage I opened 13 acupoints in total, setting my capacity of qi to how much could be stored within my dantian and acupoints. But after entering the second stage, not only has my dantian gotten stronger but I even managed to open another 18 acupoints."
Although Ling Xu was already very surprised, anyone that got the wind of this news would be extremely shocked.
This was because, from regular to genius disciples, the amount of acupoints they open in the first stage of Qi Refining ranges from one to five. And once they entered the second stage they would be able to increase their opened acupoints to a range of two to twelve.
Here is when the difference in talent and foundation would start to divide the disciples as those that were mediocre would be left far in the dust, compared to those that had opened more than three acupoints in the first stage. Since with every stage, the gap in strength would only widen more and more.
But with Ling Xu's current advancement, this difference was the same as creating a rift between himself and the rest of the disciples in the outer sect.
Even if he compared himself to those who had managed to open five acupoints and then they had reached eleven or twelve in the second stage, the gap only increased as he had turned from having opened twice as many to almost three times.
…
The next day begun and Ling Xu had woken up, as he had already begun comprehending his cultivation technique, aspiring to advance as much as he could in the next few hours before using his last enlightenment chance.
After several hours of circulating his formless qi and trying to close the distance to transform it once again, it was time to use it as he closed his eyes and the path between them set free the golden energy.