Chapter 27：Muscle Tempering 9th Realm

Alex practiced both methods of moving multiple objects with Qi.

The first one was where he would individually wrap the object with his Qi, and move them separately.

The second one was where he would wrap all the objects with his Qi at once, and move the objects with Qi.

He found pros and cons for both of these methods. The first one allowed him to move multiple items in multiple ways. He could move one item horizontally, while spinning the other one, and at the same time revolving another item around his body.

The problem with this method was that, it took a lot of concentration.

The second one didn't require any concentration at all. As long as he wrapped the items with his Qi, they easily moved to his commands. But, he could no longer move them individually, and could only move them in one single way.

Alex decided he would learn both way of manipulating items with Qi. He went outside and brought larger stones and started to practice.

He practiced for about 2 hours or so before stopping.

By now, he could easily pick up 2 kilograms worth of items at once, and move them around on his command. When separated, he could pick up 3 different items, each about 500 grams, and move them all individually.

He was very quickly becoming proficient at the task. After 2 hours of doing this, his Qi went down to about half it's original amount.

He then stopped and brought down the lantern. It was time to learn Flame Mastery.

He took out the cover, and looked at the flame hidden within it. Moving the Qi according to the dictation of Flame Mastery Scripture was a muscle memory to Alex.

Without even thinking about it, he started to move and manipulate the fire. With one thought, he changed the shape of the fire into a cube.

"So fast." He was surprised. He had changed the shape of the fire in less than a second, when it should have taken him about two. He changed the fire into other different easy geometric shapes.

It changed very quickly. He put in more Qi, and the size of the fire started to change as well. He quickly increased the fire to half a meter in diameter.

He looked at the massive flame in front of him. Then, a thought came to him, 'Can I split this fire into two?'

He slowly willed the fire to create a divide in its middle. The fire was surprisingly not resisting him at all. Within a few seconds, he managed to split the fire into two.

He let go of one of the half, and it returned to being the lantern flame. He now had another piece of fire floating in front of him to play with.

He tried to split that fire, once more and started to manipulate them separately. He was trying to use his Qi manipulation method to control the fire. It worked.

He let go of the fire, and it disappeared. A confused look had now appeared on Alex's face.

"Too easy. It's too easy. The fire wasn't this easy to manipulate yesterday. It was taking me about 2 seconds to change it's shape, but now I can do it in less than 1? What changed?" he started to wonder.

"Could it be? My new Qi?" he looked into himself to see the vigorous and hot yang qi. "Hmm… my qi seems to align well with fire. Is that why it suddenly got easier?" he thought he cracked the code.

He went back to practicing. It had taken him 3 hours of practicing to go from full Qi to no Qi yesterday. But somehow, it took him over 5 hours to go from half Qi to zero Qi today.

If he hadn't wasted so much of his Qi trying to futilely move around multiple objects, and instead just practiced Flame Mastery, he didn't doubt he could go on for the entire night.

Now that he was out of Qi, he decided to cultivate. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Before he knew it, he was subconsciously cultivating, while his consciousness had fallen asleep.

He woke up early in the morning at around half past 6. He opened his eyes and saw the mess of stones, and lantern in front of him.

He hung the lantern back up to the ceiling, and threw the bunch of stones outside. He opened his status once more. This time he wasn't surprised he had cultivated over night.

This was a normal phenomenon to him now.

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[Player Name: Yu Ming

Cultivation: Muscle Tempering 7th Realm (40,000Qi : 100%) [Breakthrough]

Body: Sun God's Divine Yang Body

Talent: God

Spiritual Roots: 5 elements Yin-Yang roots

Cultivation Method: Starry Sky Qi Absorption Method

Qi: 87909

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'So the leftover from yesterday helped, huh.' He thought. While his Qi had turned to Yang Qi, it still said Qi on the status page. He hit the [Breakthrough] button and broke through to the 8th realm.

He was about to close his status when he realized he could breakthrough once more. 'Oh' he was happily surprised. He clicked on the [Breakthrough] button once more.

The requirements from 7th to 8th realm was 40,000 Qi, and from 8th to 9th realm was 45,000 Qi. But, for some reason, the requirement for Muscle Tempering 9th Realm to Bone Tempering 1st realm was 100,000 Qi.

'Is that because they are two different major realms, and not minor separation in between the realms?' he wondered.

He had just gone through 2 different breakthroughs and was feeling amazing. He felt more strength in himself than before. The amount of Qi had increased as well.

If he wanted to, he could probably go a full 12 hours of Flame Mastery training and not lose all of his Qi.

He once again looked at the time, realized it was nearly 7 AM and hastily logged out.