Chapter 6: Body Tempering Bottleneck
Returning to Yun Mei's room, Xiao Yichen gently pushed the door open to see the beauty still unconscious on the bed, and wasted no time.
He walked to the bedside, gently propped Yun Mei up against the head of the bed, opened the medicine bottle in his hand, and let a pill emitting a faint, delicate fragrance drop into his palm.
Sitting slowly beside Yun Mei, he gently placed the medicinal pill into her mouth. The moment the pill entered, it instantly transformed into a pool of purple spiritual energy liquid, flowing down Yun Mei's throat into her body.
In no time, Yun Mei's body began to emit a faint glow. The external wounds on her exposed skin were healing at a speed visible to the naked eye, forming scabs and falling off shortly after. Yun Mei's brows were tightly furrowed; physical injuries were easy to treat, but internal injuries must be quite a torment.
Gently laying her back flat on the bed, Xiao Yichen slowly walked out of the room and headed toward the waterfall.
"Wasted a whole day. Sigh, women really get in the way of things... Such a hard life..." He shook his head, and his pace gradually quickened.
Soon, he arrived inside the valley, did a simple warm-up, and ran toward the boulder beneath the waterfall.
An hour later, Xiao Yichen slowly stepped down from the boulder, his brows slightly furrowed. By now, he could move around quite freely under the impact of the waterfall. Not only had his physical constitution been enhanced, but the stability of his lower body had also become extremely solid through this day-after-day cultivation. However, his cultivation realm refused to take even a single step forward.
"Continuing like this is no solution either. Who knows when I'll be able to break through to the Body Tempering Realm? I always feel like something is still missing."
He had been stuck at this bottleneck between a mortal and an immortal cultivator for some time now. He was just that tiny bit away from a successful breakthrough, yet he had no idea where to look for that missing piece.
"Sigh, looks like I'll have to find a chance to visit the Scripture Pavilion. If I drag this out any longer, I'm afraid I'll remain stuck at this bottleneck forever." Shaking his head, Xiao Yichen charged toward the boulder once again. Although the progress was no longer very obvious, it could still slightly enhance his physical constitution after all.
Just like that, he went through a set of calisthenics under the waterfall before leisurely returning to his own room.
Stepping into his room, the moment he reached the bed, a figure lurking in the shadows pounced on him and knocked him onto the bed. Xiao Yichen sighed inwardly; he didn't even need to guess—it was definitely Yun Mei who had woken up.
Sure enough, when he cleared his vision of the bewitching figure on top of him, Yun Mei was currently lying across his chest with a bright smile, her arms tightly wrapped around his waist.
"Senior Sister, your injuries have just healed, you need to rest and recover properly," Xiao Yichen said softly. This Senior Sister, who was less than three years older than him, always loved to tackle him to the ground at the slightest provocation whenever it was just the two of them. Her personality was just like an immature child showing boundless excitement when faced with something she loved.
In truth, after spending so much time together, it was impossible for Xiao Yichen to say his heart wasn't moved. In his previous world, he had never received such a bold and direct expression of affection from any girl since childhood. Coupled with the fact that Yun Mei, whether in appearance, cultivation, or her attitude toward him, was identical to a young girl in the honeymoon phase of love, how could he not like such a perfect partner?
His heart felt as if it had been heavily clutched, filled with an indescribable sorrow. "If only you didn't treat me as a cauldron, how wonderful that would be." He sighed softly in his heart, gently stroking the beautiful hair of the beauty resting on his chest.
The two of them lay in bed in silence without a word. From time to time, Yun Mei gently rubbed her head against his chest, and time seemed to have stopped at that moment.
Early the next morning, Xiao Yichen awoke from his sleep to find the space beside him already empty. He had no idea when Yun Mei had left. He slowly got up and smoothed out the wrinkles on his clothes; he had simply fallen asleep like that last night without even taking them off.
Opening the door, he walked slowly toward the Scripture Pavilion within the sect. Along the way, nothing out of the ordinary happened. Senior sisters sat together discussing the difficulties they encountered in cultivation, while senior brothers stood closely beside them, practically holding knitting yarn in their hands to knit sweaters. He let out a soft laugh."This sect where women are superior and men are inferior is really interesting. I suppose women in the ancient Dragon Country in my former world were just like this." Refusing to look at this group of househusbands any longer, he continued walking forward.
Soon, he arrived at the entrance of the Scripture Pavilion. Looking at the building rising tier upon tier before him—a total of nine stories—he could not help exclaiming in his heart, "Just how many manual techniques and secret texts must be in here? Even nine stories can't hold them all." Suppressing the shock in his heart, he strode toward the doors, only to be blocked by two senior sisters.
"Junior Brother, you're a mere mortal, what brings you to the Scripture Pavilion?" one of them asked him.
Hearing this, Xiao Yichen suddenly remembered that as the most important place in the sect, the Scripture Pavilion was not somewhere he could enter so casually. He certainly couldn't say that he was about to break through the Body Tempering Realm and had hit a bottleneck; wouldn't that expose everything completely?
Just as he was frantically racking his brain for an excuse, a girl's voice sounded from behind him: "Let him in. He's here to fetch the manual that Senior Sister Yun reserved earlier."
Hearing this, Xiao Yichen turned his head and saw Liu Qingqing smiling at him, revealing her cute little canine teeth. Upon hearing this, the two female disciples on guard naturally stepped aside. While Xiao Yichen was still in a daze, Liu Qingqing gave him a push from behind, urging him to hurry inside. So as not to arouse suspicion, he had no choice but to enter the Scripture Pavilion along with Liu Qingqing.
"Thank you, Senior Sister Liu," Xiao Yichen whispered to Liu Qingqing beside him.
Hearing this, Liu Qingqing merely looked at him and smiled, saying nothing more. Reaching the stairwell, Liu Qingqing waved at him, signaling that she was heading up first. Understanding her intention, Xiao Yichen nodded and waved back; there was no need for him to go to the upper floors right now.
Walking over to a wooden bookshelf nearby, he began to search carefully for the books he wanted. But the Scripture Pavilion was simply too vast, and after searching for the better part of the day, he finally managed to find an introductory guide to cultivation, with a very straightforward title: *Guide to Cultivation Basics*.
With an excited heart, Xiao Yichen opened the book. It recorded detailed descriptions of each stage along with some insights on breaking through to the next realm.
"They say 'houses of gold are found within books'—and it's really true."
With an excited heart, he quickly flipped to the page on mortals breaking through to the Body Tempering Realm. It was densely packed with a bunch of nonsense, leaving him utterly speechless.
"Why are these books just like the ones in my previous world? A perfectly simple term gets translated by experts into a bunch of sentences nobody can understand. It's completely pointless."
Grumbling aside, he still had to read it word by word, afraid of missing any crucial detail. Finally, upon turning to the last page of this chapter and reading the final paragraph, he found the key to the breakthrough, which read:
"The Body Tempering Realm, being the most foundational stage in the cultivation system, allows mortals to infinitely approach the Body Tempering Realm in a short time through physical training. However, the vast majority of mortals fail to truly break through in their entire lifetimes simply because the methods of body tempering in the mortal world are far too simplistic. For true cultivators, body tempering requires not only physical exercise, but more importantly, the aid of external forces to hammer and beat the body. With the help of external objects, one expels excess impurities from within while continuously tempering the flesh and bones. These external objects can be spiritual energy or certain powerful energies of the natural world..."
Seeing this, Xiao Yichen finally understood where the problem lay. Right now, he was just blindly training every day, but it was completely impossible to make any further progress. If he wanted to advance further, he had to find some powerful energy to temper his physical body.
Putting the book back in its original place, Xiao Yichen scratched his head repeatedly, thinking to herself in his heart: "Where am I supposed to find this energy? According to the records in the book, most cultivators who break through to the Body Tempering Realm do so with the help of their own master, using spiritual energy as a tool to continuously temper their flesh. But in my current situation, I wouldn't dare let Senior Sister find out. What should I do? What on earth should I do?"