Overpowering and integrating the power of the astral spirits was only a matter of time in Yaan’s eyes. Now that he had over a day before his next battle, compared to under an hour like before, he no longer worried about this matter.

Actually, this coming battle didn’t particularly worry him. The only worry were the bizarre and unheard of techniques displayed by these stronger cultivators, but in terms of overall experience, versatility and strength, Yaan didn’t believe that anyone in the 4th level abode could defeat him in a one on one battle.

That was why he chose to fight the strongest lower 4th level abode competitor this time.

For half an hour, Yaan scanned various books, studied different resources and pills, and checked out countless weapons, before deciding on his way forwards. As he did this, he diverted half of his attention to continuing with subduing the astral spirits.

Ever since he finished reading the complete Fiend Transformation technique, Yaan had experienced a big change in terms of his world view of cultivation. In truth, the ‘Fiend Transformation’ could indeed be just that; a transformation into a base demonic body. From there, it was possible for the fiend to follow their own path.

Of course, the technique provided insight into the fiend, into their body, their Yuan Qi, the strengths and weaknesses…and the most optimal cultivation paths that could be pursued by using this fiend body.

Yuan Qi and the body, that was what Yaan initially believed to be his options. He eventually came to have doubts, feeling like vitality was a sort of energy rather than pure body cultivation.

The truth was a mixture of the two. Vital energy was an energy, an energy that served the sole purpose of strengthening the body at all times. Vital energy could even be thought of as the link between energy cultivation and body cultivation.

But most importantly, to mortals such as humans and others, cultivating vital energy was the most tried and true means of developing the body into something which was more suited towards true body cultivation.

In essence, as a fiend, a demon born from a human, Yaan should be striving to cultivate his vital energy to build up his body’s foundation…but he then needed to build up the body itself!

Cultivation was a divergent endeavour, there were countless paths, yet they could be grouped into four principal pathways. This was especially true for those at the ‘Foundation Step’.

The Foundation Step referred to all cultivation before immortality. For any mortal being, they would need to find their own path to progress through the Foundation Step, until they eventually attained Nirvana. At this point, they could go through the final stage of the Foundation Step, the point at which they shed their mortal skin; Nirvana Rebirth. As the stage name implied, this was the process of quite literally being reborn.

Prior to this rebirth, there were an endless number of possible pathways to reach this point. Following rebirth though, all beings would attain something, something shared between them; immortal power.

That was all too far off for Yaan right now of course, but it led to his interest growing in the various paths of body tempering. There were many different means of strengthening the fleshly body, but some of these methods, if attempted without supporting power, would only result in the cultivator’s demise.

Within the Fiend Transformation, there was a path of body cultivation that was clearly valued far beyond any other. The other methods were mentioned, but they were seemingly considered as being supplementary endeavours. On the other hand, the main path was a more pure, untainted, even somewhat natural, method of body cultivation.

As such, it was simply named the ‘Body Tempering Path’.

Since body tempering was often used as a general term to refer to the cultivation of the body, naming a specific pathway exactly this was arrogant to the extreme. However, the more Yaan studied the Fiend Transformation and the body tempering methods contained within, the deeper his awe grew towards the founder of this path.

It was a path that could be directly cultivated by the giant races already suited to body cultivation. It could also be cultivated just as perfectly, by mortal races who had cultivated their vital energy to a certain extent.

For a being of low fleshly power like a human, they almost always needed to transform into a different race entirely if they wished to pursue body cultivation. However, even then, it was likely that their form would not be suited, since the human body was simply too small.

With the addition of vital energy cultivation, however, body tempering as a path became entirely feasible, even for someone like Yaan!

But the point that surprised Yaan the most, was that in the past, he had accidentally and unknowingly already stepped onto this path.

As for the point in time that he first touched upon true body tempering?

It was back in the Heavenly Path Sect, when he consumed the Rank 2 bone strengthening pill. By a stroke of luck, he developed the progressive bones constitution at the iron rank.

Later on, Yaan managed to improve this to the bronze rank. Not only that, but he even, by his own fumbling through this cultivation path, managed to develop the progressive flesh constitution, again to the iron rank.

He even had suspicions that he may have progressed even further than this after his absorption of the vitality from the bloody vortex! Unfortunately, he lacked the time to properly assess this yet, and now was still not the time to do so.

Yaan now understood why he always felt that he should focus on developing his fleshly body, rather than his vital energy. Firstly, vital energy would built up naturally when using body tempering pills efficiently. Secondly, the ‘Body Tempering Path’ was the true core of his physical strength. It was both difficult and a point of pride to take the first step onto this path.

Unfortunately, even now, Yaan could not be said to have taken the true ‘first step’.

Progressive bones constitution, progressive flesh constitution, progressive organs constitution, progressive tendons constitution, progressive blood constitution. By developing these five constitutions and then successfully fusing them together, the body would undergo a drastic change, becoming a vessel of pure physical prowess and potential.

In a way, Yaan was actually hesitant to go forwards with this…he wasn’t truly committed to body cultivation, he would much prefer to return to Qi refining.

“No, that’s not right!” Yaan suddenly sat up and his eyes shone brightly.

“I don’t want to ‘return’ to Qi refining, I simply want to restore my Qi refining! People are always saying that you can only follow a single path, and that’s that, from your beginning until the end of your journey…but why?! I might just be a youngster not even 20 years of age, I might only be a 3-Star demonic body cultivator, I might have only just embarked upon my path of cultivation…but why would any of that be relevant, when I already know what it is I desire?!”

“Why would I follow the sensible advice of others, when my drive to progress stems from exploring the unknown, uncovering the mysteries of this world and the impossibilities that we witness in our day to day lives!”

“I won’t…I will not follow the path that my predecessors have laid out! I will not strictly follow the guidance developed across countless years of success and failures…because such a confined path which cannot be called my own, means nothing to me anyway!”

Yaan was seemingly speaking nonsense to himself, alone in an empty hall, but a determined look flooded his gaze. He had clearly come to a decision.

What choosing paths? What decisions to take or to leave? He would take every path, he would embrace every power, he would explore every truth, he would become the embodiment of a true cultivator!

Whoosh!

With a calm wave of his hand, 3 pills, a potion, and a branch covered in sharp thorns, all appeared in front of him.

It should be remembered that as Yaan revealed these items and showed his intent to begin training, the astral spirits were still not 100% quelled down within him. They were thoroughly suppressed by his mind, but his body was hardly strong enough to tolerate this sudden addition of 18 astral spirits in one go. However…he would live. Given time and a distraction to keep his mind off of things, he would be back in top form within 10 hours at the very most.

Yaan slowly reached out towards the thorn branch. There were 108 thorns on this ‘purple meridian toxin branch’, this was always how the branch of this toxic plant was cut, since its only real medicinal usage was to stab into each of the 108 meridians throughout the body. Yaan planned to do exactly this, using the purple meridian toxin thorns to drastically improve his body’s resistance to poisons and toxins!

His reason for starting with this before anything else, was because successfully tempering his body with the purple meridian poison would improve his resilience when utilising other damaging and dangerous body tempering resources and medicines.

Carefully, Yaan picked up the branch before frowning and putting it back down.

“Too durable and spiky…”

Yaan’s eyes lit up as he pulled out multiple heavy weighted hammers to weigh the branch down, along with an exceedingly sharp knife to cut off the thorns.

One by one, he sliced the thorns away. Eventually, the branch was completely barren, leaving only a stick and 108 sharp cleanly cut thorns on the table below. Yaan put away the branch and hammers, then scooped the thorns up with the dagger.

“Phew…” He took a deep breath, knowing that this wouldn’t be pleasant. Well, such was body tempering, it was often agonising…on the flip side though, these rapid, painful sessions, tended to result in immediately noticeable and tangible results!

Chug!

Yaan chugged the first potion, using it to wash down two pills. As he swallowed the liquid, Yaan acted as quickly as he possibly could.

Ti, ti, ti, ti, ti….

One by one, he stabbed the thorns into precise and expertly located regions within his body. He was currently stabbing a horrendously toxic poison directly into each of his meridians! For a human, such a thing would be fatal, but for Yaan, he was a fiend, not to mention that his dantian was already crippled. Admittedly, ramming the largest thorn directly into his dantian, vanishing into his body, really did hurt like hell.

This was only possible because his Qi refining cultivation had been crippled; attempting this method with a dantian filled with circulating Yuan Qi would just be seeking death.

The potion balanced out the toxic effect of the poisons, keeping the poison localised within the 108 meridians, without so much as touching a thread of anything else.

The first pill had the opposite effect, it actually combined with the near lethal toxins exuded by the thorns, rapidly storming through his blood stream. Yaan grimaced as he allowed the toxic fluid to plow through his blood stream. He was in no danger however, because the second pill protected the blood and blood vessels from being damaged by the toxin in any way.

Conversely, whenever the toxins reached a meridian, it instantly filled it to the brim, then continued to pour in, essentially widening the meridians by way of corroding them from inside out!

After a few minutes passed by, Yaan had managed to force all of the toxins into his 108 meridians. The toxin didn’t only widen and clear out the meridians, but also completely melted the thorn which was within!

At this point, the point at which everything felt fine, Yaan broke out in cold sweat and swallowed a final pill. Without this pill, he would die within 10-20 seconds. Whilst this seemed risky, he had prepared everything needed beforehand, there was no chance of him actually dying here.

The poison that completely filled his meridians was so toxic that right now, a single one of Yaan’s meridians could probably wipe out an entire mortal human town. And yet, Yaan himself was in no real danger, assuming he had carried out the process properly.

The final pill instantly dispersed throughout his body. Just as the toxic mix was about to slowly leak out from the meridians, the pill’s medicinal energy forced it back in, then congealed a gel-like substance over the entrance to the meridian. Even though it was so thick, this ‘gel’ seeped into the meridian walls, reinforcing them 3 fold and ensuring that not a trace of the poison could possibly hope to escape.

Still, Yaan laid down for a full hour, not even daring to move. He was anxious that slightly bumping his arm could release the poison into his body, instantly killing him.

An hour passed by and he seemed to be alive still, thankfully. Despite knowing that he had undertaken this odd process perfectly, he still felt uneasy, balancing his life like this in the hands of various medicines.

Yaan removed a case of pills from his storage ring. There were ten pills, each labelled and described by the old seer woman. They were all pills which allowed body temperers to attempt crazy things whilst holding their body together with medicinal energy alone. This was body tempering; dangerous, insane…exciting.

He didn’t use any of these medicines right now though, because annoyingly, they were all only effective when the user was already in a dire situation.

The first pill Yaan swallowed after sitting up was not from the case, but was actually just a general, normal strength, 3-Star poison antidote. It treated poisons in general, it was an all rounder and helped with all toxins, but wasn’t especially incredible for any one poison. This was exactly what he wanted right now.

A normal antidote like this shouldn’t cause a person any harm, even if they were not actually poisoned. However, this antidote, after spreading all throughout his bloodstream, made contact with the now set 108 meridians. Upon contact, the gel like substance around his meridians dissolved, causing the remnant poison within his meridians which had not been absorbed, to suddenly release into his body!

Yaan swallowed, waiting tentatively with his hand hovering over the box of ten pills. At the hint of his body being unable to resist the remaining poison, he would use one of these ten valuable medicines to quickly stabilise the situation.

Du…

Yaan blinked, then looked down. His reaction was a bit delayed, but he couldn’t be blamed. His entire body was now purple! After two seconds more, the colouration extended everywhere, even his face, neck, eyes, mouth, nostrils…then his internal organs, his bones, his tendons, his flesh and…his blood.

Yaan was now a completely purple person.

Stopping for a moment and thinking rationally, Yaan scratched his chin and pondered.

“So, my entire body is poisoned, completely and utterly, even penetrating beyond the cellular level. In every single cell, zero exceptions.”

He nodded as if he was feeling calm.

“And I feel fine.”

He nodded again.

“How come I feel fine?! This poison is clearly the type used to kill sect ancestors, what the hell has happened to me, I thought I would need to use one of the ten medicines to remove the remaining poison?!”

After calming himself down again, Yaan decided to just sit, and wait.

Thirty minutes later, the time taken for the toxins to wear off, he returned to normal. Almost instantly, his skin regained its ever so slightly pale shade.

Yaan stared at the 10 pills, trying to figure out why he hadn’t needed them. When he read through the old seer’s notes on the materials, his eyes widened and he exhaled deeply.

“I’ve sorted the portions for you such that, assuming you do it right, you’ll be fine. Body tempering is only dangerous because most body temperers are morons. Be smart, take the right doses, and you’ll be fine.”

“Hah…to think it was like that…” Yaan murmured. He shook his head and smiled, still hardly able to believe that his usage of this shocking method to drastically improve his body’s resistance to poisons, had actually been so smooth.

Since the old lady’s last set of sorted ingredients was so effective, he decided to look through the rest, trying to find something that could provide significant improvements within a couple of hours.