’External force... external force...’

Chu Mu pursed his lips, Elder Li’s words once again surfacing in his mind.

’Cultivation is, at its core, the process of absorbing external forces into oneself.’

Chu Mu didn’t know if this principle applied to higher levels of the Extraordinary, but it certainly captured the essence of Qi and Blood Cultivation.

This slow, grinding, day-by-day effort also relied on external forces. It relied on medicinal baths every few days and the Essence Qi absorbed from the meat and vegetables he ate at every meal.

The human body itself ran on external forces. Without them, a person couldn’t even exist.

And just as Elder Li had said, external forces were precious, but knowing how to better utilize them was even more important.

This was precisely where Chu Mu was pinning his hopes now, and he was making preparations for it.

His several trips into the mountains to gather herbs were for this very reason.

Medicinal herbs were expensive, and with his current financial situation, he clearly couldn’t afford them.

After all, his goal wasn’t just to copy a preexisting answer. He needed to innovate, to find a better solution through repeated experimentation.

He took a folded piece of white paper from his robes and smoothed it out in his hand. Three medicinal formulas came into view.

These were the formulas for Support Cultivation recorded in the Body Refining Technique manual.

According to the manual, all three formulas were meant to support the practice of the Body Refining Technique. The text also noted that with frequent use, resistance would develop, and their effects would gradually diminish.

The three different formulas were simply alternatives to be used once resistance to one had formed; none was inherently superior to the others.

Chu Mu had studied the formulas for a long time. Before, when his knowledge of medicine and the human body was still shallow, he couldn’t see anything wrong with them and had considered them to be Spirit Elixirs.

But now, with his accumulated knowledge—which could be considered a foot in the door of medicine—he could see that these three formulas were not particularly brilliant.

He even felt he could concoct formulas of this level himself.

They were nothing more than a pile of nourishing herbs combined with a few supplementary ingredients to neutralize their properties.

The handling of the negative side effects from the herb combinations was crude, and the nourishing properties of the main ingredients weren’t fully utilized.

Chu Mu even felt that several of the herbs were completely redundant. Not only were their effects minimal, but they also hindered the overall efficacy of the formula.

However, even though he could see the flaws in the formulas, he wasn’t capable of improving them at his current skill level.

In his two-plus months of studying medicine, with so much Spiritual Radiance Value invested, he had thoroughly read dozens of medical texts, if nothing else.

With such a vast accumulation of knowledge, who couldn’t talk a good game on paper?

Although he couldn’t be sure if his assessments were correct, Chu Mu had a strong, certain feeling that these three formulas were not original to the Body Refining Technique.

In fact, the original version of the Body Refining Technique probably didn’t include them at all.

The copy of the Body Refining Technique he had obtained had clearly passed through countless hands, and who knew how many people had studied and tinkered with it.

Adding a few less-than-brilliant support formulas seemed plausible.

After all, a truly brilliant person like Elder Li would hardly bother to specially devise a mundane formula for someone at his stage of Qi and Blood Cultivation.

"There’s no end to learning..."

Chu Mu shook his head and sighed softly. With his method of study, boosted by the heaven-defying assistance of Spiritual Radiance, his two-plus months of learning were probably equivalent to several years of effort for an ordinary person.

Take the apprentices at the Medicine Hall, for example. In over two months, he had seen almost no progress from them. He, on the other hand, had gone from a complete novice to what Elder Li called "having a foot in the door."

Even so, Chu Mu still felt it was far from enough. He was a long way from being able to meaningfully boost his martial arts path.

The sea of learning is boundless. Right now, the path of understanding the body and medicine seemed equally endless!

He still couldn’t fully grasp mundane medicines, let alone aged herbs that had surpassed their normal growth cycles.

From what he knew so far, Chu Mu guessed that the Extraordinary of this world must have deeper methods for utilizing medicinal herbs.

’For instance, traditional Alchemy... or the Magic Potions of Western Fantasy Wizards...’

’That mysterious Elder Li has very likely reached this level.’

Chu Mu even felt that Elder Li seemed to be cultivating him, guiding him down this path.

Otherwise... the other apprentices at the Medicine Hall were clear proof that Elder Li couldn’t care less about the master-disciple relationship born from a monetary transaction.

He let them run wild. The so-called disciples were nothing more than a few extra hands to order around.

But with him, despite the same monetary transaction—an exchange of equal value—his treatment was worlds apart from that of the other apprentices.

Chu Mu gazed at the distant mountains, his eyes flickering. It was a long while before he seemed to return to his senses.

He moved his bamboo basket and tools from the large rock, stood alone for a moment, and closed his eyes. Once his mind was calm, he assumed the Pile Skill stance, and his Qi and Blood Cultivation began here in the mountains.

The mountain wind brushed his face, its cool touch caressing his body. The rustling of leaves filled his ears as Chu Mu lost all sense of self, completely immersed in his Qi and Blood Cultivation. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Even if it was a slow, grinding process, and even if the progress was minimal, that was only in comparison to the stark numbers on the Light Curtain Panel.

The actual, real-world gains seemed to justify the day-in, day-out bitter training.

After several months of Qi and Blood Cultivation, his former frailty was long gone. The Sword, weighing several pounds, felt like an extension of his arm, and he no longer felt any lack of Power.

If not for the clear data displayed on the Light Curtain Panel, Chu Mu estimated he would probably be quite pleased with his rapid progress in Qi and Blood Cultivation.

Instead, he was anxious, staring at the snail’s pace of progress where a full day of hard training barely yielded a single point of Skill Level.

’My Qi Blood... does seem a little more active than usual...’

After about a quarter of an hour, Chu Mu slowly opened his eyes, a hint of confusion in them.

This wasn’t his first time cultivating in the mountains. He had never neglected his Qi and Blood Cultivation on his previous trips, either.

It seemed... when he cultivated here in the mountains, his Qi Blood was slightly more active than when he practiced in Nanshan Town.

Once might have been a fluke, but for it to happen several times in a row, without exception, it clearly couldn’t be a coincidence.

’Is there something special about the mountains?’

Chu Mu scanned his surroundings. He was encircled by mountains. Aside from the wind rustling the leaves and the occasional cries of birds and beasts, there was nothing else.

Desolate... cold and private.

’Is it the relaxing environment... or the absence of people?’

Chu Mu pondered this. The increase in his Qi Blood’s activity was only slight, so its effect wasn’t that significant.

But what Chu Mu cared about more was the true reason behind this change.

’If I can find out what makes my Qi Blood more active... if I can grasp this external force, utilize it, and even develop it further...’

’It would naturally be a great boon to my cultivation path...’

...