Chapter 261 – Cat Dad's New Toy, PUTA!
Commanding Qi strands to move outside one's body was an easy task. Xiaomao had done it before, so he was familiar with this technique.
However, what came next troubled them.
"Next, Shrink your Qi strands and command them to become one with your skin, mew!"
"Eh? Shrink? Not destroy and turn them into mist?"
Jungwoo and Xiaomao were confused. They saw how the dummies and shadows exploded their Qi strands into a fog.
"Fool! Don't just destroy it like how you explode things. Shrink and compress them to the point that you can't shrink them anymore. I want to see you compress one thousand Qi strands into a tiny droplet."
"…"
Xiaomao and Jungwoo did so as they were told.
30 minutes later, they sweated bullets. After they had compressed 200 Qi strands together, they barely managed to control the ball of Qi in front of them.
Mir continued, "Remember this process. At the second stage of cultivation, you refine your bone marrows with your Qi and enable it to regenerate Qi strands. In the third stage, you learn about opening meridian channels, which is your nervous system. You circulate your Qi through the nerve instead of using your blood vessels for efficiency."
"Wait," Xiaomao gulped, "I only learned Mimir's bone refining technique. I haven't tried the meridian thingy, yet."
Mir facepalmed, "You're level 460. Your cultivation is the 4th stage, but you knew nothing about Meridians? How the hell did you advance this far, mew?!"
"Err, catopus evolution material perks and grinding, munya?"
Mir double-facepalmed, "This is why your foundation sucks! You're like a baby in an adult's body. You don't know how your body function, mew!"
"Then, teach me, please."
Mir took several hard and deep breaths in frustration, "Okay. I'm going to give you another crash course about Bone Refining and Meridian Opening. I'm sending you back to your pocket dantian, mew!"
"Yay!"
"Don't [Yay] me, you son of a pervert!"
Mir slapped Xiaomao's face with her paw, knocking him unconscious in one hit.
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= Xiaomao's Pocket Dantian =
Unlike the last time, there was no opponent to fight. Xiaomao sat alone on the grassland, listening to Mir's lecture.
An hour later in the pocket dimension's time, Mir sighed, "Now, try it. Refine your freaking bone marrow."
Xiaomao nodded and closed his eyes. Then, he realized that he couldn't feel his Qi.
"Erm… can you allow me to use my Qi? I can't feel it here."
"Try again. Normally, you should be able to use your Qi here. But since it's your first time, it might take a while to adapt to the new environment. For now, just treat it like a simulation. When you cultivate, your real body also cultivate but at a faster rate. Even though you can't increase your Qi here, it's better to do it whenever you are free."
With the confirmation, Xiaomao believed that he might be able to use his Qi here. He tried again.
For 30 minutes, he couldn't feel anything. However, hard work always rewarded the hard workers when they least expected. His body reacted to his mind, and Qi began to move.
In reality, it was his real body that did the work. Because of the different time flow between the real world and the pocket dantian, it took a while for the body to react to the brain signals.
"Good. Remember that the pocket dantian is a small universe inside you, mew. Whatever you do inside, it affects your body, your instinct, and your mental strength. Your consciousness is like water while your body is a container, mew. So far, you've been strengthening your container but not the water. Now, you will refine the water inside the container, making it smaller and more efficient without occupying too much of the container. Then, you can have more rooms to grow, your body won't be burdened, mew."
Although Xiaomao didn't understand everything Mir said, he focused on circulating his Qi through his bones and spinal cords. So far, he had already mastered this technique when he cultivated in the mountain, but doing it in the pocket dantian was different. Xiaomao found another area inside him that required thorough cleaning.
Dark lukewarm sweat came out from Xiaomao's pore as the impurity in his soul was removed. The impurity came out and gathered in Xiaomao's shadow.
Mir's lecture continued, "Removing impurities in your soul is different from removing them from your body, mew! Everybody was born with two things from birth – Soul, and Container. The soul is your consciousness body in your pocket dantian. The container is simply a vessel to the soul, aka your physical body, mew! Whatever impurity that your body intakes, your soul gets affected. Therefore, cultivating your real body isn't enough. You need to purify your soul as well! Once your soul is impurity-free, you will find yourself having a sharper sense, and your reaction speed will drastically improve, mew!"
The lecture went into Xiaomao's left ear and exited his right ear. He was absorbed in meditation and cultivation that he stopped paying attention to his surroundings.
A month in the pocket dantian went by. Xiaomao finally opened his eyes and stopped cultivating.
His body felt a lot lighter in the pocket dantian. Meanwhile, his movements created a wisp of faint mist, which came from his skin and pores.
"Good. Now, you can say that you're a true 2nd-stage mortal cultivator, and your lifespan should be about 200 years. Next, we'll hop back to the real world and check your progress, mew!"
Mir pulled Xiaomao's consciousness back to the real world.
Xiaomao's consciousness returned to his real body once more. As for Jungwoo, he already returned to his pocket dantian to redo the stage-1 trial with a million-man army to test his new abilities.
On the bed, the dark and sticky water dirtied the clean sheet and the bed. Its odor smelled like a dead body.
Mir shook her head and pulled the dirty furniture into her shadow. She left the room empty for now.
"Try moving around, Xiaomao. Think of what you did to your consciousness body and redo it with your real body. Since you completed it once, you can easily do it the second time, mew!"
Xiaomao nodded and repeated the circulation technique, moving his Qi through his bone marrows.
The same thing occurred. In an hour, Xiaomao's skin and muscle shrank as the impurity that he had been collecting was removed from his bone marrows. However, they gathered in Xiaomao's shadow and formed a humanoid black slime with an eye.
Xiaomao snapped open his eyes and looked down as he sensed something odd. He looked down and found a dancing shadow of himself, moving and wiggling like a watery slime.
"Wait a minute. What the hell is this, munya?"
"Your future black wing, mew!"
"Black Wing?"
"We'll delve into that topic later. For now, I'll go through the meridian opening method and let you try it."
"What about the aura thingy, munya?"
"It will come out naturally once you understand the basic."
"…"
Xiaomao still had a long way to go to build his perfect foundation. The training resumed, and he meditated again, redoing the bone refining method in front of Mir.
Because Xiaomao had so many things on his mind, he didn't notice that the compressed Qi earlier, which Xiaomao had dispersed from his body, already transformed into a faint layer of mist around his skin. Mir glanced at it and giggled, keeping it a secret from Xiaomao.
.
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= Slave Dungeon, B7 Boss Room =
Undine visited Meowmeow in the treasure room. She knelt and gave reports.
"Sir, Odin's henchmen are gathering on the island east of us. Our scouts reported that they are preparing to raid our dungeon. About 50,000 players are also taking part in this."
Meowmeow, in his cat form, yawned and laid on his back as if it was trivial. He gazed at the 3D dungeon map and dully asked, "Who's their leader, munya?"
"Valkyrie Guild's Joan, sir."
"Ah, that wench. I should have killed her after the Great Reset. What a blunder, munya. What's the average level of the players, by the way, munya?"
"About 100-200, sir. Only a few surpass 200."
"Only 1st-stage and 2nd-stage cultivators at best? This world's standard is so bad, munya."
Meowmeow pointed his finger at the B1 floor.
"Tell the mermen not to confront them, munya. Let them come into our dungeon. I don't think anybody can break through the B1 floor, munya."
Undine broke a sweat as she was afraid that Joan and the immortals from Asgard might be too much for the dungeon's residents to handle, "Sir, what if Joan comes here herself? Isn't she a 37-star constellation immortal? Her level is 3700."
"Trashy constellation immortal, munya! They are too dependent on levels and stars so much that they ignore the essence of cultivations and immortals. A proper 3-star STELLAR constellation immortal can easily wipe the floor with her, munya!"
"But no one is walking the path of Stella Star Immortal here, sir."
"Really. The standard of this world sucks, munya," Meowmeow got up and hopped on Undine's head. The next moment, both of them teleported to the B1's boss room, where Torrent and the mannequin factory were.
Meowmeow walked toward one of the machines in the backroom. He put an ingot and a drop of his blood on it. Then, he pushed an orange ingot into the automaton machine.
The treadmills carried the ingot into a smelter deep inside. The smelter machine turned the orange ingot into liquid and poured it into an energy tube.
Undine panicked, "Sir! What did you put in the machine?!"
Meowmeow scoffed, "Refined Entity Ingot, munya!"
"E-Entity Ingot?! Isn't that one of Xiaomao's evolution materials?"
"Yup! But that's not just a piece of gem. It's a freaking smelted ingot, munya! It costs a hundred entity crystals to make that!"
"W-What?!"
RUMBLE
A huge-3D printing machine consumed the liquid and moved the 18 needle arms around, printing a mannequin from six directions. Five minutes later, an orange mannequin with cat ears, a tail, and cat paws was completed.
Like the predecessors, the newly created mannequin had no face. However, its level was higher than Undine.
"Your name will be Gata, and your title will be Puta Slayer, munya!"
DING
<strong>Gata, Puta Slayer, Level 4,000</strong>
A cheeky mannequin was born that day. The faceless cat doll immediately dipped her hand in the pool of Torrent's blood in the nearby tank and drew a cute [UwU] on her blank face. Then, she uttered her first word.
"PUTA!"