Smoke Sea Tower was the Jin royal family’s private library collection, used by other royal relatives and nobles as well, so it couldn’t be exclusively allocated to her alone. Therefore, she searched for books in Smoke Sea Tower, and whenever she encountered something puzzling or unclear, she would bring it back to ask Xu Fengnian for answers.
A great master produces excellent disciples, and the State Preceptor Mo’s disciples were much higher in cultivation level than ordinary practitioners. With Xu Fengnian’s help, her progress was rapid—though limited to external martial arts.
Following Second Senior Brother’s recommendations, she used “Steps to Immortality Manual” as her foundational outline, then practiced two cultivation methods selected by Xu Fengnian as her orthodox path, followed by various miscellaneous studies she had recorded from Smoke Sea Tower, which Xu Fengnian jokingly called unorthodox techniques.
With Feng Miaojun’s prior example of stabbing the shark demon to death, Mo Tizhun was very interested in her physical constitution and personally tested her about five days ago. It was an object like a crystal ball; the tester placed their hand on top, and the more affinity one’s body had with spiritual energy, the brighter the light evoked within the sphere.
Xu Fengnian rolled up his sleeve to demonstrate for her first, making the crystal ball shine like a fifty-watt bulb.
As for her, the brightness was probably like a filament about to burn out.
The contrast was too stark, and Feng Miaojun couldn’t help but sigh. She wasn’t completely impervious to spiritual energy, but could draw very little into her body, and what little entered dispersed before it could reach her dantian.
Mo Tizhun, seeing her crestfallen expression, made the unprecedented gesture of comforting her: “Don’t be discouraged. I see that the strength and flexibility of your physical body far surpass ordinary people, otherwise, that force would have burst your meridians long ago.” It seemed the King of An Xia had known early on that his daughter had little affinity for cultivation, so he had focused on conditioning her body.
Hoping for children to be healthy and strong was the most basic wish of every parent.
Feng Miaojun blinked her eyes and asked: “Was it because I was too weak that I fainted?”
“Yes,” Mo Tizhun gave her an analogy. “Your situation was like a five-year-old child swinging a ten-pound hammer. Normally they shouldn’t be able to lift it, but somehow succeeded, yet at the moment of impact, they would also be injured by the recoil force.”
She immediately deduced: “So if my tendons, bones, and meridians were trained to be strong enough, I could withstand such power?”
Mo Tizhun smiled and said: “You could say that. But to what extent you need to train to withstand it is hard to estimate.” He hadn’t personally seen the shark demon, nor experienced the burst of strange power she had suddenly released, so he couldn’t give an accurate assessment.
“Then I need a method to quickly strengthen my physique!” She had encountered too many setbacks and disappointments and had long since learned to handle them calmly. Even if there was still some disappointment, it wouldn’t affect the rhythm of her actions.
For Mo Tizhun, this was just a small matter, and he agreed casually. Feng Miaojun was now just like ordinary people, and even if he retained some curiosity, he didn’t place much importance on this matter. The State Preceptor had countless affairs to manage; with a turn, he once again handed Feng Miaojun over to Xu Fengnian and went about his busy schedule.
According to his prescribed formula, Feng Miaojun began sending people to gather medicinal herbs. The method provided by Mo Tizhun essentially consisted of two approaches: “washing” and “refining.” The so-called “washing” referred to medicinal baths, soaking in a mixture of sixteen medicinal herbs ground into powder, with ingredients of good quality and proper aging. The so-called “refining” was not about cultivation but about taking materials according to the Great State Preceptor’s secret formula, simmering them over a slow fire for nine hours, and slowly extracting the medicinal paste to be taken daily with warm water.
Whether taking the medicine or soaking in the bath, she chose the hour of noon, which was the time of day when yang energy was most abundant. Mo Tizhun’s secret formula was just like the man himself—exceptionally domineering. After taking the paste and soaking it for just over ten breaths, she would be covered in sweat, and persisting further would make her temples throb, and her heart pound loudly as if it would leap out of her chest.
Persisting until her blood vessels were about to burst when the medicinal power reached its peak, she had to emerge from the tub, dry her body quickly, and immediately perform the “Steps to Immortality Manual” over and over, until the surging blood and energy throughout her body subsided. Only then had she dispersed the medicinal power without harming herself.
This process was called “tempering the body.”
Xu Fengnian told Feng Miaojun that the State Preceptor Mo’s standard for creating formulas was for cultivators. That is to say, this prescription was used for beginning cultivators to temper their bodies, gradually eliminating impurities. Whether she could persist depended on her physical constitution and willpower.
Although the process was somewhat painful, the benefits were obvious. After just five sessions, she felt her body becoming lighter day by day, as if springs had been installed in her feet, each step seeming to leap upward, and her body seemed to contain inexhaustible strength.
Of course, she understood these were pleasant illusions, differences arising from not yet adapting to the rapid changes in her body. However, objective progress still existed: the time she could endure in the medicinal bath was getting longer and longer, from the initial ten breaths to fifteen breaths, then to thirty breaths…
This indicated that her body’s tolerance was improving. The prescription given by Mo Tizhun for tempering the human body emphasized working from inside out, internally strengthening tendons and bones, externally nourishing the skin, using medicinal effects to expand the strength of meridians.
Another unexpected benefit was that her small face was always rosy due to the vigorous blood circulation, making people want to take a big bite out of her cheeks when they saw her.
Xu Fengnian also wanted to do this, but he couldn’t scare his little junior sister, so when his hands itched, he could only pinch her cheeks.
As for her visits to Smoke Sea Tower, she persisted as well. Whenever she set out, she would rise earlier than the roosters, boarding the carriage before daybreak to hurry to Small Lonely Mountain, watching Cao Dehuan feed the demonic creatures, then spending most of the day in Smoke Sea Tower, returning only at dusk. She didn’t waste any of the five two-hour periods each day, alternating days with medicinal treatments.
After persisting for sixty days, she finally sat cross-legged after completing her daily practice. The difference between the “Steps to Immortality Manual” and general cultivation mantras was that other methods first taught people to regulate breathing and gather energy, nurturing inner yang, while the “Steps to Immortality Manual” did the opposite, emphasizing from outside to inside, using blood to drive energy—when blood flows, energy flourishes.
Therefore, its breathing techniques were only revealed on the seventeenth page. Feng Miaojun tried to complete two cycles, and her mind gradually quieted. The trace of spiritual energy obtained from the medicinal herbs also began to circulate with her blood throughout her body after her countless pleas.
Then, she “saw” the condition inside her body. The feeling was extraordinarily strange—she wasn’t seeing with her eyes, yet every tremor of her organs, every slight expansion and contraction of her blood vessels, the exchange and passage of air in her lungs, could all be clearly perceived by her.
She knew her first “internal vision” had succeeded.
The most important step for beginners was to learn internal vision, truly mastering every detail and every change within one’s body. Without mastering this, all subsequent changes would be illusory.
This step had an even deeper significance for Feng Miaojun:
She wanted to see what kind of pearl the turtle had tricked her into swallowing!