The Legendary Janitor

F*ck, how did a perfectly good table suddenly have a hole in it?

Mouth agape, Di Tou tried to process what was happening.

Err… This didn\'t seem like it would buffer out, should he buy a new table? Would Mu Di Bai believe him if he said there was always a hole there?

Also just what the f*ck had happened? It wasn\'t like the table had splintered or cracked. There just simply wasn\'t anything where there used to be something before.

What the f*ck was Qi made out of? (Oh Di Tou, you innocent child.)

Making a mental note he should visit the carpenter again to try to get a similar looking table, Di Tou dismissed the thought from his head for the moment.

Rethinking over the information, Di Tou had a slightly better sense as to how to use the Qi, for the most part it would respond to his command, and even if he stood still he could emit bits of Qi from any parts of his body.

Of course, as he was unpracticed, this was somewhat difficult. Generally speaking, Di Tou found it easier to use and emit the Qi in parts of his body that he was more familiar with, or could imagine more clearly.

So his hand for instance, was an easy exit. Slightly harder would be his mouth, and then his elbow. Then the hardest would be something like out of the center of his back or the top of his head, places that he couldn\'t really imagine properly, or sense normally.

Essentially it seemed like the difficulty wasn\'t in relation to any particular spot on his body, but how well he himself was familiar with it. Assuming he lived a life in third person, or for some reason had a holistic image of his entire person in his mind, the Qi could be emitted anywhere with ease.

Next, the Qi, cycling through his body would create a natural strengthening effect over time, but this was very gradual. If he wanted to complete Body Tempering, for instance, relying only on this effect it would probably take well over a decade. In practicality the main benefit was that over time his body would become more acclimated to the Qi, which would allow him to release and use greater densities of it faster and more efficiently, as well as making his Foundation realm smoother when he tried to integrate his Qi & body as one.

Then a temporary problem he was dealing with was that he didn\'t have much Qi. He only had the one strand, which after splitting earlier seemed to have gone on cooldown. Similarly, as the Qi had to travel from it\'s origin strand to his hand earlier depending on where the Qi was in his body it would take different amounts of time to release. Of course, it was all a matter of milliseconds, but in the case of life and death fights, that could make or break one\'s life.

The majority of cultivators dealt with this by keeping their Qi in near the center of their body the majority of the time, or in their Golden Core after they developed later on in cultivation. Of course, Di Tou\'s cultivation would be a little different, but I\'ll leave that for later.

Lastly, after his Qi left his body it became much harder to control. The little puff of Qi he had emitted earlier, for instance, he couldn\'t really control the trajectory of once it had left his body. At best, he wouldn\'t harm himself if he stood in its way, and that\'s about all the control he had at the moment. Of course, as he got more familiar with the Qi it would become easier, as well as if he used a medium… say a broom.

Or… a more traditional weapon like a sword would be a more common choice but, for some reason when Di Tou imagined using his Qi through an object, the first thing that popped into his head was the straw broom.

Anyways, now that he had Qi, he should be a lot stronger right!

With great excitement, Di Tou pulled up the [Reflection] scroll again.

<-( )========================( )->

Strength – 11

Dexterity – 11

Intelligence – 11

Spirituality – 11

<-( )========================( )->

…

"I must be misreading things… haha, yeah that\'s it."

Rubbing his eyes, Di Tou took another look at the scroll, and…

It was still the same, all 11s.

Di Tou was confused, wasn\'t he supposed to get a huge power up after going up a level in cultivation?

Wasn\'t the whole point of making a breakthrough in combat? Your strength would suddenly double and then you\'d be unrivaled on the battlefield!

Why did it seem… so underwhelming?

Well, this has to do with the era of cultivation we\'re in.

Di Tou\'s imagination, and the common trope in many novels that barriers of cultivation are insurmountable and result in a massive increase of strength wasn\'t incorrect, it was simply based on an outdated way of cultivation.

In fact, this is how it was once upon a time.

A long time ago, going from the Body Tempering realm to the Qi Condensing realm, the cultivator would try to form their entire system of Qi at once. Only people who were incapable would receive a strand of Qi from someone more senior, as that would \'limit their potential.\' As you can see, it was almost an entire one eighty from the modern form of cultivation in which the focus was on first obtaining a single strand of Qi and taking it in before nurturing it, splitting it, then nurturing it again.

To use a metaphor, it was like trying to become a professional racer the moment you finished learning how to walk properly. By skipping all the steps in between, obviously the difficulty, immediate increase in power, and death rate were all significantly higher. This made breakthroughs all the more impressive and impactful, being able to change the tides of a battle.

The current age of cultivation on the other hand, focused on each stage as a whole. After one finished body tempering, one would start the first step of Qi Condensing, finish that and start on the first step of Foundation. You can imagine it like doing math workbooks. One came after another, each one ramping up the difficulty over time within the stage, rather than having a giant jump between stages.

This lead to a rather dull and gradual increase of power compared to old-style cultivation, but allowed for more people to cultivate and made cultivation much safer, decreasing the strain on resources and treasures.

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