After four days of sitting in bed and meditating with the Standing Tortoise Manual, Andric felt a surge of energy pulse through his body. In a split second, the spirit energy inside him became more powerful, and it flowed quicker. He knew he had reached the third stage of the Human realm.

For ordinary townspeople of Einburg, the first stage of the Human realm required between two and six months to reach. Then, the second stage of the Human realm required between four and twelve months to reach. After that, the third stage of the Human realm would require between eight and twenty-four months to reach. In the history of Einburg, none of the natives had reached the third stage of the Human realm in under a year, but Andric had done so in less than a month.

Andric thought for a long time about the fight between him and the four boys. If he was stronger, he could’ve protected himself, but then Audovacar would just need to bring stronger reinforcements. One of Audovacar’s older brothers was at the fifth stage of the Human realm, and he had strength equal to what Andric might have at the seventh stage of the Human realm.

Clearly, Andric needed to get stronger, faster. At his current speed, he might only advance one more stage before leaving Einburg. If he couldn’t even protect himself from four youths, there was no way he would be able to protect himself from the dangers of the outside world. For a long while, Andric thought about how to make himself stronger, quicker.

The next day, Andric laid in his bed, using Spirit Sense to envision the meridians inside his body. At the moment, he could only ‘see’ his heart-lung meridian and his lung-diaphragm meridian. The pathways continued past the meridian points, but they were clogged with debris, and Andric couldn’t see the meridians that were supposedly at the ends.

Meridians were something Andric hadn’t seen in his previous life. Although Andric had destroyed and rebuild his body in his previous life several times, he had never discovered meridians or spirit energy. As a test, Andric cut off his left arm and disintegrated it, then grew himself a new one. When the new arm grew back, Andric couldn’t sense any meridians inside.

Andric thought back to when Instructor Hubert opened his meridians. Each time, Instructor Hubert stabbed Andric’s body with his finger, then sent out a pulse of spirit energy. The spirit energy invaded Andric’s body, disrupted the clogged meridians, and dissipated. A few hours afterwards, Andric’s meridians were clear. The process was similar to unclogging a pipe using a stick, except Instructor Hubert never retracted the stick.

Andric tried stabbing himself above one of his clogged meridian pathways, but he couldn’t release any spirit energy. He tried surging the spirit energy inside his body toward the clogged meridian, but nothing resulted from his efforts. After those failures, he tried combining the procedures. He pressed down on his meridian pathway while flooding that area of his body with spirit energy. Again, nothing beneficial happened.

After a while, Andric began to think that he couldn’t unblock his own meridians because the debris inside his meridians wouldn’t react to his own spirit energy. He theorized that a separate party needed to use their spirit energy to unlock his meridians. If so, it would support the explanation that martialist needed to fight to open their meridians. If it was possible to open their own meridians, martialists would constantly be engaging in self-harm.

Andric’s magic regrew his limb to the exact state it was in before he disintegrated it. Even his spirit energy existed inside it, thoroughly puzzling Andric. He tried moving his spirit energy with a separate spell, but no effect was realized when the spell hit his arm. When using spells, an effect could fail to realize if there wasn’t enough mana or thought energy, and Andric knew this, so he tried again while overloading the spell with mana and thought energy. The results were identical.

For a few more days, Andric did nothing except test the properties of his spirit energy. He learned several things. Firstly, his spirit energy didn’t regrow with his lost limbs. Actually, his spirit energy was entering the new limb at a rate that Andric almost couldn’t see. When he purposefully concentrated his spirit energy in his right hand, he could see a deficit in his newly created left arm.

At the same time, Andric also learned that he couldn’t move all the spirit energy inside his body. Although he could move the majority of it, a tiny amount stayed behind. This tiny amount became more apparent when Andric compared the spirit energy contents of his shoulder and his arm when he regrew his arm. After his arm was regrown, spirit energy flowed into it, and Andric lost a tiny amount that was gathered inside his right hand. Over time, Andric lost more and more spirit energy, and he needed to enter a state of meditation to replenish it.

Secondly, Andric learned how to sense the locations of his meridians and the pathways between them. When he regrew his limbs, his spirit energy would flood into them, but the spirit energy couldn’t enter the areas where his meridians were clogged. Andric took a huge risk and cut out his flesh around his lung-diaphragm meridian, then regrew the area, and the new lung-diaphragm meridian was as clear as the old one.

Andric repeatedly cut away his flesh and grew it back, and he eventually learned the locations of his meridians. The system of meridians inside the human body consisted of twenty-four major meridians and thirty-six minor meridians. The thirty-six minor meridians were spread throughout his body, and they were only notable as being larger than meridian pathways but smaller than major meridians.

The twenty-four major meridians included the heart-lung meridian, the lung-heart meridian, the lung-diaphragm meridian, the diaphragm-lung meridian, the heart-diaphragm meridian, the lung-lung meridian, the heart-brain meridian, the lung-brain meridian, the diaphragm-liver meridian, the diaphragm-stomach meridian, the liver-stomach meridian, the liver-gallbladder meridian, the liver-kidney meridian, the stomach-pancreas meridian, the stomach-kidney meridian, the gallbladder-kidney meridian, the pancreas-kidney meridian, the kidney-kidney meridian, the liver-intestine meridian, the stomach-intestine meridian, the gallbladder-intestine meridian, the pancreas-intestine meridian, the kidney-intestine meridian, and the intestine-intestine meridian.

A few more days passed while Andric repeatedly destroyed and regrew his body. His magic prevented him from feeling any pain, and he had already removed any emotional attachment toward his body since long ago.

If any martialist saw the lengths Andric went to during his experiments, they would go pale. In the history of the martial way, no martialist had ever destroyed and rebuilt their body so many times. Although it wasn’t impossible to regrow entire bodies with certain martial techniques, it wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t pleasant. Andric went to great lengths for small discoveries, because the chance of finding a large discovery was non-zero. As long as there was a chance, Andric was willing to pay the price.

Andric’s spirit energy reached the third stage of the Human realm long ago, and it wouldn’t drop to the second stage of the Human realm outside of unusual circumstances. Unfortunately for him, repeatedly disintegrating his limbs and regrowing them was a very strange circumstance, and his stage did drop by one. Nonetheless, in a few days time, he increased it back to Human realm third stage. From then on, he always replenished his spirit energy to full before cutting something off.

The gap between Human realm second stage and Human realm third stage wasn’t large, but Andric could feel a huge change whenever his stage switched between the two. Losing a stage was like coming down with a cold, and gaining a stage was like dropping a weight. In some ways, the power gain was addicting. Andric could see why some martialist would sell everything they owned to have just a chance at increasing their stage.

A little over two weeks passed, and Andric made an enormous discovery. He found, when he disintegrated his unclogged lung-diaphragm meridian and the connecting diaphragm-lung meridian and then regrew them, the pathway toward the diaphragm-lung meridian would become slightly unclogged. The unclogging effect wasn’t anywhere near the level that Instructor Hubert’s spirit energy attacks could invoke, but it was noticeable after half a dozen repetitions. Andric estimated that it would only take him a few thousand repetitions to fully unclog the diaphragm-lung meridian.

Only a few days remained until the next merchant caravan arrived in Einburg, but Andric was on the cusp of a great martial way discovery. He hypothesised that his spirit energy filling his unclogged lung-diaphragm meridian and rushing through the meridian pathway toward the clogged diaphragm-lung meridian was causing the slight amounts of debris to dislodge, and he devoted his last few days in Einburg to confirming the hypothesis.

The first step was to gather his spirit energy above his right lung. He placed it near his shoulder, where only a minimal amount would be affected by the next step.

The second step was to disintegrate his flesh under his heart, against his diaphragm, and between his left and right lungs. He used a spell to temporarily supplement his need for those organs, so it wouldn’t matter even if he removed them entirely. His body stopped breathing, but the mana inside his spell converted into oxygen, which then spread throughout his body. He completely suppressed his urge to breathe, and he continued with the next step.

The third step and fourth step needed to happen in quick succession, allowing as little time between them as possible. For the third step, Andric regrew the flesh he had previously disintegrated. Pieces of his lungs and diaphragm grew back, along with the meridians that covered them. The next instant, for the fourth step, Andric released the spirit energy he had gathered near his right shoulder.

The released spirit energy rushed to fill the void that was his lung-diaphragm meridian. It entered the open cavity, then continued to flow until it hit a barrier. The meridians and meridian pathways were like lakes and rivers. As water flowed from the raging river into the empty lake, it couldn’t help but pick up sediment along the way. When the spirit energy hit the clogged diaphragm-lung meridian, the spirit energy rammed into the debris that clogged it. Once the debris were moved, they dissipated, and the meridian pathway toward the diaphragm-lung meridian from the lung-diaphragm meridian became slightly unclogged.

The process of unclogging a meridian pathway by a thousandth of a percent required for the entire meridian pathway to become unclogged took under a minute. By spending every minute of the day working on unclogging his meridians, Andric theorized that he could unclog one or two major meridians per day.

Andric tested his theory for two days straight. During that time, he refused meals from Alda and stayed laying in his bed, continuously. In the end, he found that the debris closer to the meridian were more compact than the debris further away from it, and the amount of debris removed with each destruction-regrowth cycle lowered each time. In a full fifty hours, Andric only managed to reach four-fifths of the way toward his diaphragm-lung meridian, and he estimated that one day more day would be all he needed.

But, right as his third open meridian seemed in reach, Andric stopped. He considered his actions, and he reminded himself of where he was. If Instructor Hubert used his Spirit Sight on Andric, he could potentially see Andric’s newly opened meridian, and Andric didn’t want him to ask any questions.

With only two days until the merchant caravan arrived, Andric put an end to his experiments.