Unaware of the human shaped concentration of trouble that was on his horizon, Hong was meditating and circulating his qi throughout his body while continuously swinging his sword in complex katas. To reach the grand master realm, one must have total control of their muscles, qi flow and state of mind. Only then would a martial artist's upper dantian finally open up allowing their qi to gain a spiritual aspect. Normally reaching grand master level takes years, but as a grand master level martial artist in his past life, Hong had managed to achive the peak of martial master in at the age of seventeen.
And after seeing how powerless qi is infront of spiritual energy, his resolve to gain spiritual awakening had increased.
He had met up with The master Chen Lin Jian and made arrangements to join the expedition without a hitch and joined them in their successful raid, though by the time they had broken into the treasure chamber, the lamp with the shadow devil spirit was gone and Nei Li was already there with Ziyun, but it held no importance to him. His purpose as he had revealed to the group was storage pouches and special metals.
Since he was a martial artist, he needed food to produce qi energy, which resulted him eating a massive amount of demon beast meat compared to a normal person. But he didn't want to go out hunting everyday when he ncould just hunt a lot in a single day. Storage rings are able to store food for a long time without letting them go bad , but they require spiritual force to operate them, which Hong didn't have .
So instead of the storage rings, he decided to turn to its cousin storage pouches. Though they can only store a little compared to storage rings, pouches operate without spiritual force making them perfect for his use.
Metals on the other hand were needed to forge weapons. Hong had discovered that spiritual artifacts cannot run on qi in an early age in his past life. So he had to learn how to forge weapons himself.
Murim martial arts were not always founded for fighting. Auxiliary professions like fishing, blacksmithing, medicine, farming all had their unique influence on martial arts, Heck even beggars had their own martial arts.
Divine sun energy arts was a supreme fire type martial art that had made a name in murim. But only a few knew that it was first founded by blacksmiths. Thankfully, with knowledge on the energy arts, the knowledge on the Auxiliary arts were also embedded into his brain by the ROB who reincarnated him so he could forge his weapons himself.
But before that, reaching grandmaster level was a must. Otherwise he would need to create another weapon shortly to match his powerful internal energy. And he didn't have enough black iron, a very strong energy conducting metal that is mainly used in artifacts.
So he kept moving his sword, palm , fist and legs all in their special martial way. Normal martial artists need to meditate to achive grand master realm, but in Hong's case , performing those Katas is the same as meditating. Most murim arts are made to follow a path in nature, therefore they need to meditate in order to reach an enlightenment and open their upper dantian to reach grand master level. But Hong's martial arts were made to follow the path of fighting. It doesn't focus on one aspect of nature, but use all aspects present in heaven , earth and hell to make a man truly powerful martial artist, and hence its name.
Since it was made to follow the path of fighting, every punch, kick , palm and sword attack made Hong enter more and more into a meditational trance where he was finally moving on thought. The katas flowed faster and faster, seamlessly blending all the stances into one long and dangerous dance. With each cycle , the attacks grew more and more strong as hee grasped the best way to move in every situation, his whole body responding to his commands, while his brain calculated more and more better ways at the speed of light.
This continued for hours at a daily basis until,
' BOOM'
Suddenly a massive flow of qi erupted from Hong's body raising clouds of dust . Upper, lower and middle dantians removed all locks in his body, completing cycles of new , more powerful, spiritually attuned qi through his veins, nourishing his fatigued muscled and breaking him out of his trance.
He had done it! Hong checked his energy reserve to make sure that it wasn't an illusion. And to his delight, not only had his reserves grown rapidly, but also the energy contained within felt more 'alive', like a tree in spring when compared with a tree in winter. The characteristics of a grandmaster level martial artist. He could also feel his upper dantian, or his soul realm and the spiritual energy flowing within.
He quickly sat down cross legged. The time when a person had just advanced to grand master level is the best time to control energy, because the later it becomes, the harder it will be to change the paths taken by his energy. And if one truly grasp the flow, then he would immediately step into the Zenith level. He had understood this after trying to break into zenith level in his past life. And now all blocks in his energy flow had been removed, it would be easier to reach zenith.
And so he grasped into his inner energy running it through his meridians with his will, concentrating so hard he actually felt his soul realm emptying and began moving in weird ways that would make a normal man bend into pretzels while making strings out of his qi. This was a special exercise he had created to increase his muscle control and qi control at the same time. With each move he felt his qi movement fall more and more into his control until it clicked to him. He immediately felt his control over his qi become absolute.
The zenith realm, he had reached it even though he was still a beginner. Standing upright, he began to do a small happy dance to celebrate reaching a higher level than in his previous life, in a record time. If it was now, he was sure he could heal Xiao Ning'er easily with his improved qi.
Now there were only two objectives of importance.
1 create a soul realm cultivation technique.
2 forge weapons.
He knew one method of cultivating the strength of the soul but it needed a lot of spiritual force. Which is where the soul realm cultivation techniques of this world came to play.
Mystic/saint garden cultivation. This method is a bit perilous since they are directly connected to soul. Apparently One's identity, experience and their actions directly create a special area in the spiritual plane called a divine soul. Mystic and Saint garden cultivators arrange this chaotic area into a garden with special characteristics in the spiritual plane, which is also known as the abyss of the unknown.
The thing they don't know is that the mystic gardens basically create a small world their upper dantian by changing it's shape. Most cultivators on this realm don't need mystic gardens since they have special soul realm forms like Du Ze 's lightning quiln realm. But these special forms don't bring much power. The only time it was really used, was by Xiao Ning'er, who got angry at their family for trying to take the purple haze grass she kept for Nei Li. They called it soul forming. This is also what let's her have a higher lightning affinity.
But the soul form is an inheritance. What Hong was doing was going against his birth nature and create a soul form that let's him use mystic garden spells that could change the spans of entire cities at peak.
Going deep into meditation, he began to feel his soul realm. Finding it quickly he disconnected from his body and opened his eyes in his soul realm.
It was ugly, he had to admit. His spiritual energy was colored like something a cat had thrown up. The many colors all representing the attributes he could control had mixed together to give off a vomit like color. Not to mention many hazy objects, that represented his thoughts floated around.
But he was unpreturbed, building mystic gardens is a very precise business. A slight mishap could turn the entire body of the cultivator into an pile of flesh. Thinking up the best cultivation techniques in the comic, Records of the mystic gardens, he chose to build a humanoid support type garden, along with the body of tumultuous gold.
Humanoid gardens were first taught to Zhan Hao by a monk he met inside a saint garden. The purpose of the humanoid garden is to attune parts of the garden with human body to turn it into cultivate the body. While the body of tumultuous gold let's the cultivator to change their body and soul with controlled mutations. Both were cultivated by Zhan Hao.
The reason for this was like Hong, Zhan Hao is also a martial artist, and the body of tumultuous gold increase the potential for martial arts by improving all aspects. But unlike him, Hong had decided to improve the body of tumultuous body when he came across it in his past life.
Otherwise what's the point of having an all attribute martial art that can use evil and taoistic techniques. Not to mention the lack of ranged attacks, which would prove to be a problem in front of cultivators.
He had spent a massive amount of time reviewing this technique to strengthen his soul realm in his past life, and he had created an art perfect for him, sadly he couldn't test it out because of his untimely death.
Sitting cross legged in middle of his soul realm, he began to change the mess around his soul into a garden. A small sun was built near the top which emmited fire and yang energy while a moon was built next to it , which emmited cold and yin energy. They were going to be the eyes of his soul form. Land was formed next, the soil containing hard rocks , and metals enough to give it a metallic sheen. Mountains were formed from the soil, each made of a type of rock mixed with metal to represent the bones of the body, being slightly bendable and super strong at the same time. Water flowed from the mountains representing the flow of blood within the body, and gigantic trees grew everywhere, being strong changing and flexible like muscles of the body.
Lava lied under the dark earth along with a massive statue of a frowning demonic being hidden in shadows while a floating mountain peak rose up close to the celestial objects which contained liquefied gases , and a glowing smiling statue that looked like it was made of concentrated light.
One represented the animalistic, demonic aspects as well as the fiery desires and passions of humans, while the other represented the pure , saintly, aspects and the cool headedness of intelligent man.
Standing on the tallest peak in his soul realm , Hong nodded his head in self satisfaction. A few lakes of lava and ice caps were there in the mountain but they caused no harm.looking up he could see a tiny dot, the sky island between the sun and the moon. Lightning crackled overhead and strong winds blowed making his clothes ruffle , but it didn't matter.
He had created his own soul form, which he called heavenly demon realm, with how both attributes existed in one soul. The soul realm's shape was a gigantic humanoid who was curled up in a fetal position.
He had achived what would take many mystic garden cultivators years, in .. wait how long has he been in there?
Suddenly he began to feel a bit scared, He knew he had more spiritual power than others because of his high talent, and he had exhausted and recovered it a multiple times during his mystic garden construction. And considering that a person takes about six hours to recover from mental fatigue, and assuming that a martial artist takes a lesser amount of time to recover, he dreaded to think what the state of his body is at the moment.
Reconnecting his soul with his body, he quickly opened his eyes, and thankfully, there had been no changes in his tree house.
There was no layer of dust, no cobwebs or even dry leaves that had floated into his dwelling during the time he had spent cultivating.
'Phew!'
A breath of relief passed through Hong's lips after he confirmed that he hadn't spent years in seclusion, like hermits in cultivation novels. Shaking his head at such absurd thoughts , Hong began to stand up.
He had more to do, he had weapons to forge. Arts to train and create spiritual techniques for his use. And there were barely three months till the demon beast hoard attack. So he had no time to spend idle.
He put his hand on the ground and began standing. ' crack ' 'pop' ' crackle',
Much to his suprise his bones started popping with every move he made. He looked down at his arms only to see two twigs. Panic began to settle in as he began hyperventilating. Without a care he ripped off his upper garment, and almost screamed like a little girl.
His muscles, his pythons and his bouncing pecs, his chiselled abs and his trunk like leg muscles were all gone! Muscles had been his only true friend that had never let him down. They were his passion, his hobby and his pride. After all, what fourteen year old could say that they had bouncing pecs. He felt like he was like the Rock back on his world. But now , they were all gone.
He was about break down on the ground, when a familiar feminine voice sounded outside before the door opened.
"I'm home!"
He only took one look at the look at the person's face before a curse left his mouth.
"Well, F#CK!"