Cultivation.

Chen Liwei quickly got up and went to the room given to him by old couple. The fact that Liu Ling saw him in the mountains without him knowing gave him a strange feeling but he quickly put that at the back of his mind and try to focus on the cultivation manual in his hands. Just before he opened the manual he muttered something to himself, got up and went outside to clean himself thoroughly before coming back to sit cross legged on the mat in his room.

Chen Liwei closed his eyes and took a deep breath before slowly opening the manual. In the manual was a brief description about the beginning of cultivation and how to cultivate to the third level of Qi Refining accompanied by some drawings.

According to the manual, there are essentially 9 Levels of Qi Refining. Qi Refining basically is about sensing the spiritual qi in one's environment, absorbing the spiritual qi into the body and forming Qi lobes in certain parts of the body. The body parts where the lobes are formed or condensed are not the same for every practitioner but depends on the cultivators themselves. Forming one Qi lobe in the body means one is in the Firstst Level of Qi Refining, two corresponds to the Second Level of Qi Refining and so on. The more lobes one had the higher the reserve of Spiritual Qi one will get. For the first three levels of Qi Refining there's not much difference but the difference becomes more obvious from the Fourth level going where any additional Qi lobe formed brings a qualitative change in the practitioner. This difference becomes much pronounced in the latter stages of Qi Refining stage, that is the Seventh, Eight and Ninth level.

After reading the description, Chen Liwei put the manual down, rubbed his temples and took a deep breath again before taking the manual back. He opened it to where the the first level of Qi Refining was talked about and followed the instructions in the manual. The manual talked about how to adjust the mind, body and breathing in order to sense the Spiritual Qi in the world and absorb.

Chen Liwei sat there as described by the manual and closed his eyes doing his best to focus on sensing the Spiritual Qi.

He sat there in the same position for about three hours without feeling any difference but he did not have any thoughts of stopping even though being in that posture was very demanding on his body and mind.

After about thirty more minutes he experience excruciating pain in his skin which made him almost jump and scream but he endured the continue to sit there.

In fact this pain gave him a sense of relief because according to the manual this excruciating pain in the skin is a sign of Qi sensing. From the skin, the pain spread to other parts of his body and eventually his whole body was experiencing the pain. The pain was so deep that tears were streaming down from his eyes but he still kept his mouth tight shut. According to the manual this pain is as a result channels being created in the body to form a passage in the body for Spiritual Qi absorbed into the body to move through.

Just as the pain was increasing beyond what he could bear he suddenly felt a comfortable feeling all over his body. Chen Liwei immediately knew that he had successfully passed spirit sensing. Now what he had to to was try to absorb the Spiritual Qi into his body. The manual talked about how different practitioners had different amount of Spiritual Qi their body can accommodate in certain periods. Forcefully absorbing Spiritual Qi than the body could tolerate could cause severe damage to the body or even death. So assuming a practitioner needs ten tonnes of Spiritual Qi to form a lobe but can only absorb a quarter of a tonne during each time he cultivates, he will have to go through a total of 40 cultivation sessions before he can form a Qi lobe. Also, the time intervals between each cultivation session is different for each person. That is, for some people after absorbing Spiritual Qi up to what their body can bear during their cultivation, they can cultivate the following day and absorb the same amount of Spiritual Qi. For some people however it might take up to three days, one week, two weeks, a month or even a year before they can absorb Spiritual Qi again. As a result, most practitioners can roughly estimate when they will have their breakthrough in their cultivation level. The major sects also uses this to judge how talented a cultivator is. That is, someone who absorb great amount of Spiritual Qi within short cultivation intervals will be seen as heaven defying talent that most sects will fight. This means of judging a person's talent is however limited to the Qi Refining stage. For the higher stages, the means of calculating one's talent is quite different.

So as Chen Liwei sat there he was wondering how much spiritual energy he would need to absorb in order to form his first lobe of Qi. As he sat there, the Spiritual Qi began to enter his body through his skin and gathered towards his forehead. The spiritual energy gathered there to form a hazy mist. He knew that after he absorbs enough Spiritual Qi to form the lobe the mist will will turn heavy and eventually condense to form the lobe. Two hours after he started absorbing Spiritual Qi Chen Liwei collapsed to the floor. He had reached his limit. But even though he was so exhausted he was very happy. In fact he had never been this happy as far as he could remember. With a smiling face he muttered something to himself, " So I have started cultivation haha... Immortality is no more out of reach for me." And just like that he fell asleep.

At this moment, Liu Ling walked out from the shadows of the night and looked towards Chen Liwei's room with surprise and interest. "He was able to reach Spiritual sensing within just a day of cultivation, that's impressive", she muttered to herself. She clicked her tongue, gave a light chuckle and silently walked to her room. " What an interesting fellow".