"Thankfully", Gong Lu was not anything if he wasn't creative. Especially with coming up with new ways to torture himself! Yay!

First, he began by seeing how quickly he could bring a particle of Force Qi under command. This meant that it went from just floating there to being controlled by him. In order to raise the difficulty, Gong Lu did this in the actual world, because all the Qi particles in the air there were absolutely foreign to him and had never come into contact with his consciousness, as opposed to the ones in his spirit realm, which had already undergone some sort of 'branding'.

This was more difficult than Gong Lu originally realized.

It seemed that each particle of Qi in the air had invisible, weak shackles on them that resisted against the control of any given cultivator. This meant that to draw in Qi, a small amount of Qi had to be expended, too.

And Gong Lu had to be very, very careful about this. As someone who hadn't even condensed a Qi form in any of his spirit realms, Gong Lu's Qi capacity was very, very low. He could stuff the spirit realm full to the brim, but it hadn't undergone much training and was rather small, meaning that Gong Lu had to treat every bit of Qi like it was a precious metal.

Training-wise, it was very beneficial for Gong Lu, who had to push his control to the limit in order to nullify the energy expenditure, but sanity-wise, trying his best in every single attempt, while doable for a few times, was less so on the hundredth time, let alone the thousandth or ten thousandth. But how could Gong Lu escape his fate? He was literally in the womb. It wasn't as if he had anything better to do...

Five days later, Gong Lu had mastered the "art" of controlling outside Force Qi, and made a few realizations.

First, the subconscious taking in of outside Qi that all powerful martial spirits performed was a huge advantage, much bigger than what Gong Lu personally thought. Picture this: a cultivator has squeezed every ounce of Qi inside their spirit realm dead, expended every particle, just for that edge in a particularly dangerous life-and-death battle. They fall unconscious after winning, and they wake up shortly after.

The cultivator has no more Qi left. Not a bit. What did this mean? He could not possibly even begin to recover his Qi, since he had no energy to expend to take in more! The only way to escape from the terrifying barrenness of his spirit realm would be a recovery pill or medicine, that would give them enough Qi directly so that they could start recovering again. And, with no Qi, who could guarantee that they wouldn't lose their life in their plight for recovery pills. Unless of course, one already had recovery pills, but what if the cultivator was robbed before the life-and-death battle that put them in the sstate that they were currently in?

In contrast, if a cultivator had the required rarity of martial spirit, they would just need to personalize and absorb some of the dormant Qi inside their spirit realm that was harvested by their martial spirit.

This situation might seem purely hypothetical and rare, but in the might-makes-right world of Heidas, Gong Lu found it safe to assume that this thing happened a surprising amount of times. How many times, he wasn't sure, but it was a lot, okay? OKAY!?

Another thing that Gong Lu learned was that different methods of taking control of Force affinity particles worked better and more efficiently. For example, tyrannically grasping control of the particles, while a plausible and fast way to do so, was not the best method. Instead, Gong Lu found that gently yet firmly taking control of Qi was his preferred method, and practiced with that, trying to instill it into his instincts.

After this essential part of cultivation was mastered, Gong Lu began to work on the thing that would take up the rest of his time: control over personal Qi.

He wanted to practice condensing, purifying, and shaping Qi endless amounts of time. Gong Lu wanted to be able to mold Qi to his every thought, to have every particle bow to his will and obey perfectly. He wanted to be... the very best, like no one ever was!

Of course, that wasn't as easy as it sounded. First, Gong Lu wanted to try shaping the Qi, as it was the most applicable to battling and Qi usage in general. It was a high proficiency in this skill that would lay the foundation for the learning of martial skills in the future, if Gong Lu's experience reading xianxia novels had not gone to waste.

The practicing methods for this skill were not hard to come up with, but the real act of practicing these methods were incredibly, mind-numbingly, dull.

Despite Gong Lu having the mental ago of someone over 100 years old, and being quite patient as a result, he found the practice of shaping Qi boring beyond anything he had done before.

Sure, trying to come up with insights for shaping Force Qi wasn't too bad at first, but things rarely were. It was at the later stages of practice that things really got tough.

First off, squeezing one's mind dry for new ideas and insights continuously wore down one's sanity and mental stamina very quickly. Hours of mental banging against the wall had yielded little to no results, but no matter how difficult it was, Gong Lu knew that he would eventually reap the benefits and thank himself later.

Secondly, controlling Qi 24/7 was a very difficult thing to do. Gong Lu likened it to, well, doing anything 24/7: not too bad at first, but the issue snowballed. What could be like a small rock in one's shoe originally could quickly and easily turn into a mountain of pressure weighing down on someone. Basically; it sucked.

But thankfully, the results payed off. After a month and three days - yes, Gong Lu was bored enough to count - Gong Lu made a breakthrough: his previously relatively sluggish and slow Qi became sharper and more energetic. gong Lu was suddenly able to control his Qi far, far better, and it almost made up for the perpetual migraines of training.

Next, Gong Lu decided to practice condensing the Force Qi. This was difficult to master, but thankfully, Gong Lu had a lot of already "branded" Qi inside his spirit realm, thanks to his Empyrean Might Titan gathering Qi subconsciously at a rapid speed while Gong Lu was practicing.

Force Qi seemed to easily take to being condensed. As such, Gong Lu had mastered this ability in fifteen days, by practicing creating his modified Guan Daos in as little time as possible, and as efficiently as possible.

Gong Lu now had a bit under half a month to master purifying Qi.

His first step on this path was to learn to more finely detect impurities in the Qi he cultivated. This skill alone took two days, and consisted entirely of pushing himself to his limits in order to sense more and more impurities.

After that came actually taking them out. Gong Lu hypothesized that this job would be especially easy to a surgeon, as the process of purifying Qi was much akin to using highly specialized tools in order to fix a patient. It was just that with Qi, the tool was solely Gong Lu's mind. Nevertheless, the standard of precision remained roughly the same.

Gong Lu spent twenty days to master this skill, and had eight days left, which he did not want to waste. So, Gong Lu basically just wrapped up everything he learned and practice in that timespan of slightly more than a week, and left this important training phase with satisfaction of how it ended, and a mentality to push himself to his limits in the next part.

What was this next part? Why, the actual formation of the condensation of his Qi, the beginning of actual cultivation, the creation of the thing that his whole spirit realm would center around. Understandably, Gong Lu did not want to botch it.

But before beginning this process, Gong Lu decided to get a good sleep(he couldn't say it was a good night's sleep because it was day out, not that he cared. How did Gong Lu now this? Well, the "Yang" affinities, such as Fire, Light, Force, etc. were more active and common during the day, or at least he hypothesized so based on the difference that he had detected between night and day. The only degree of uncertainty that Gong Lu had was that he didn't know which one was night and which one was day, but he could guess to a relatively good degree of accuracy.

Gong Lu woke up with a mental yawn, and, after a few mintures of deep breathing and slightly re-familiarzing himself with Qi, began.

With a crystal clear picture of what he wanted, Gong Lu set out on his task, the most daunting one yet. He decided to work from the bottom-up, condensing and purifying every Qi particle to the maximum before he put it into his Qi form.

Gong Lu knew that every detail of his weapon would have to be perfect, for many reasons. First, it would be very difficult to alter it or change any aspect after it was set, meaning that every choice made and finalized would, while not be set in stone, would be set in something like a very, very hard clay. Second, it would just be convenient. Of course, Gong Lu would have to have his weapon forged or gain a fitting weapon at one point of his life. He did not wnt to explain every detail, and he was never any good at drawing. Both those routes would end up in a weapon that he didn't want, one that he did not like. It would be very simple, however, for Gong Lu to simply call up his Qi form from his Force spirit realm and show the blacksmith, making for a very easy showcase. Third, the more his weapon synergized with his fighting style, nature, cultivation path, and insights, the faster Gong Lu's cultivation would be. His power would also go up. So, with that in mind, Gong Lu set to working on his Qi form.

He wanted a spade-shaped to be on the bottom of his weapon, just in case there was a surprise attack from behind and Gong Lu didn't have time to use the proper blade. This was a relatively small size, so it "just" took him half an hour to form it. The reason it took so long was because Gong Lu had to use his full range of abilities of every Force Qi particle, condensing it and combining it with other Qi particles until it was about to burst, and only doing so after pushing his mind to the limit to remove every possible impurity from each Qi particle. This also meant that each final Qi particle had been purified five times, and contained the volume of five same-sized particles.

With that out of the way, Gong Lu wanted to work on the handle of his Guan Dao. It would need to be just the right thickness, so that it was durable enough to withstand powerful forces, yet small enough so that Gong Lu could properly wrap his hands around it. The length also had to be good so that he could attack his enemies from a distance, yet not be completely vulnerable at close range and be unable to handle the weapon profieciently.

So, Gong Lu worked tirelessly throughout the night in order to perfect the shaft, making it what he believed was just right. He then attached a handle that spanned about 3/4 of the total shaft, giving him enough room to maneuver safely.

The blade was next. This was what Gong Lu believed would be the hardest part. As the lethal part of the weapon and what he would be using, Gong Lu wanted to get it perfectly. One flaw was all that was needed for his exploitation, hence, this part being crucial.

Gong Lu wanted a sturdy blade, one that wouldn't wiggle around when he swung it with force. This would be the main difference between his weapon and most guan daos. On average, the other guan daos would be a lot looser, and when swung with force, the blade would flop. This effect would diminish the force and slicing power behind Gong Lu's attack, and would prove an even large disadvantage when he utilized more and more force against opponents who had higher and higher defense.

Of course, Gong Lu also didn't want his blade to be too sturdy, lest the durability be chipped away extra fast and the blade not be able to withstand impacts. So, he had to find the right balance.

Eventually, with various testing scenarios and a large amount of deliberation and forethought, Gong Lu attached his blade to the shaft. This in itself did not produce much of a reaction, as the weapon was still unconfirmed, but there would be a large, flashy, thing that would happen in Gong Lu's spirit realm soon.

After giving it a few few practice swings, Gong Lu nodded appreciatively and grunted his approval to nobody, before trying to condense the whole thing. It, of course, resisted his efforts powerfully, and Gong Lu ended up not impacting his new Qi form. Eventually, Gong Lu stabbed his guandao into the ground, soliciting a visible flash of light within his spirit realm, and bringing on a lot more changes.

Immediately, Gong Lu's martial spirit grew, gaining even more muscle, and seemingly multiplying in strength. Gong Lu could also feel a whole new source of Qi available to him. Whereas previously, Gong Lu's refined Qi would just float around in the spirit realm, and as compared to now, where he could feel a concrete manifestation of his Qi, there was a huge difference. This wouldn't be the final form, though. Gong Lu, despite having a lot of available, unrefined Qi, had no remaining Qi besides the Qi in his guan dao. This was because, of course, he had not yet cultivated. For clarification, a powerful martial spirit drew in Qi and brought it into the spirit realm, but it did not automatically make the Qi available to the user. Instead, to be able to use his Qi, Gong Lu would have to actually use the method detailed in his cultivation technique in order to "personalize" the Qi and have it available to him at his whim. And, as of then, Gong Lu had used all his cultivated Qi for his guan dao. The guan dao, by the way, would not be Gong Lu's pool of Qi. Instead, his Infinite Force technique detailed another way to create a place to hold his Qi. His Qi form, the guan dao, would instead be sort of like the Source Qi, the purest and most powerful Qi Gong Lu had available to him at the time. In exchange for that power, however, the price of using it would be high: since every particle of Qi was in its peak possible state, and was gathered painstakingly over a large amount of time, it would naturally be just as difficult to re-gather the Qi. Hence, using the Qi that made up the guan dao would be very difficult to recover from, unlike the Qi source that he would use in all other scenarios. Compared to the Source Qi, the Qi from his usual container would be easily gained. Gong Lu pictured it like this: his usual Qi container was like a pool in the ground, with the pool being the container and the water being the Qi. Once that water was used up, it was rather easy to fill the pool back up again. However, it was much harder to grow the pool and be able to hold more water. The former action in this analogy was the action of recovering after the use of Qi, and the latter was cultivating. Also, as a side effect to the spirit realm centering around the Qi form, if the guan dao was completely used up or destroyed, Gong Lu's cultivation would be destroyed. But that would never happen, with a near 100% probability. At least, the part of it being used up. It was actually quite common to destroy an opponent's cultivation by destroying their Qi form, turning them into a waste.

But Gong Lu didn't want to think about such depressing things as that. What he did want to do, however, was work on his second spirit realm and do the same thing as with what he did with his Force affinity. Next up, Gong Lu's Earth affinity.

As he was doing everything for the second time, it was a lot easier. Gong Lu was no longer trespassing into unmarked or unknown territory; instead, everything was familiar. He discovered his Earth spirit realm, sensed the Earth Qi in two minutes, and learned to control it in three.

It took him three days to control his Earth Qi with the skill of his Force Qi, and then... nothing was left to do but form his Qi form. Gong Lu had anticipated that it would take longer to gain control over the completely new affinity, but all that was needed was some adjusting and that was it. Although, there was one thing left to do, when Gong Lu thought about it. He wanted to gain proficiency in using both of his affinities at once, the Force and Earth affinities, in some of the abundance of remaining time. This would be useful in learning and modifying martial techniques, perhaps reinforcing Earth defensive techniques with the Force affinity, or adding an additional unique heft to Force attacks using Earth Qi. Either way, it would be useful. Also, Gong Lu had a lot of time, so much he didn't know what to do with it. Well, he did, but still. And it would most likely be even shorter with the Life affinity Qi!

However, before learning how to use both affinities in conjunction, Gong Lu wanted to manifest his Qi form. This was so that he wouldn't have to take a long break every time his Qi was spent while practicing, and would instead be able to contain Earth Qi a lot easier due to the Qi form adding structure to the spirit realm.

Gong Lu's Unyielding Bastion technique was a lot looser in requirements for Qi form than his Infinite Force technique, with the latter requiring a weapon compared to what Unyielding Bastion needed in terms of Qi forms. It required that Gong Lu formed an animal or object that he resonated with in terms of defense. For Gong Lu, this was really not a choice. He wanted to form a tortoise.

This was logical. Gong Lu's martial spirit was a tortoise, and his cultivation technique would be more effective the more he resonated with it. The only problem was what the difficulty would be.

Tortoises were not only quite large, but they were also animals. Living, breathing, complex animals. Of course, while Gong Lu wouldn't be able to create life with his Qi form, there were still things that he would need to include if he wanted the Qi form to be effective and powerful. After all, the more similar the Qi form was to what the cultivator had in mind, the more real it was, and the more it worked with the cultivation technique, the more powerful that cultivator would be. It was for htis reason that even the Unyielding Bastion recommended that an object be chosen, as an animal was simply too difficult to form correctly. But Gong Lu knew that if he worked painstakingly, and tried his best to create the best tortoise Qi form he could, the results would be good, devastatingly so. Thankfully, it was not as if Gong Lu would have to think up the design of his Qi form from scratch. He had a tortoise martial spirit, an extreely powerful one, in fact, that would serve as the perfect model for his "work of art".

Martial spirits were mcuh more complex than one might believe. They were extremely lifelike, and instead of being some shadow of what they were supposed to imitate, martial spirits were a lifelike copy, good enough that some Heidas philosophers even argued that the world was created as an image of martial spirits, that the martial spirits were the original things, and that everything in the universe was based off of a martial spirit somewhere. That meant that if there was a bear species martial spirit, that martial spirit would contain the organs, muscles, and other body aspects of that bear species.

And the possessor of that martial spirit was able to completely and thoroguhly sense every aspect of a martial spirit, even the internal components. This resulted in Gong Lu's martial spirit, the Universe Tortoise, being the perfect model.

The Qi form would also be incredibly powerful, as it was modeled after the Universal Tortoise, one of, if not the, strongest tortoise species in the universe.

But enough pondering. Gong Lu had to do his job and become stronger!

He had decided that this 'project' would be taken from the bottom up, starting from the feet, moving up to the legs, then the body, head, and tail, and then the shell.

This whole job was not one of creativity or innovation, like the guan dao. No, the Qi form Gong Lu was currently working on was a job of meticulous copying and a grueling test of his Qi control skills. These, thankfully, did not fall short.

It took Gong Lu five days in order to complete the Qi form. He looked it over once, and then made the tortoise roar(normal tortoises were unable to do this, but the great and domineering Universal Tortoise was naturally able to do so. How else would the beast announce its might?). Immediately, the spirit realm changed after a flash of light and became a lot more ordered, essentially what had happened with the guan dao being thrust into the ground(honestly, that act was terrible for a weapon, just terrible, but it looked very, very cool).

Now, with both spirit realms having a Qi form, Gong Lu was able to practice his control.

And thus, after two and a half weeks, Gong Lu was able to control both of his affinities in conjunction. This also boosted his control of them separately by a large amount, which was an unforeseen benefit.

Next was the Life affinity Qi. This was found in record time; 30 seconds, and Gong Lu was able to control his Qi to the proficiency of the others within a couple of minutes. Gong Lu was then to create his Qi form, according to the schedhule he was making right now, and learn three new things: using his Life and Force Qi in conjunction, using his Earth and Life Qi together, and using all three of his affinities at the same time. Gong Lu knew that it would be tedious, but he, in his mind, had no other alternative.

First, Legacy of the Immortal required the the Qi form be an object of nature. This was also quite loose, and Gong Lu knew exactly what he wanted after a bit of deliberation: a jade pillar(yes, this is a antural object - jade is natural! The pillar part is just the shape). Of course, it would not be as simple as that, nor should it be, and Gong Lu was going to use various different methods in order to increase the complexity and reality of the pillar. There was also another reason for his decided pillar shape.

Unlike his other cultivation techniques, Legacy of the Immortal had another requirement for the Qi form: it had to include at elast one of the divine inscirption patterns detailed in the cultivation manual. Each inscription did different things, and it was not only the aptitude that jade had with mystical forces and scriptures in the legends of Earth, but also the space for inscriptions that a pillar had, allowing Gong Lu to put at least three.

It was simple to form the initial pillar, and he modeled it without certain style in mind. The bottom was circular, and had a serpent coiling around it. The top was a square in shape, but had no dragon and instead had four different protruding faces: a dragon, a phoenix, a tiger, and a tortoise.

The column had 12 equally spaced sides, with 3 sides for each different animal at the top. Other than that, on the column, there was nothing else - yet.

After doing this much, Gong Lu decided to work on his inscriptions. The creation of the above form took three days, so Gong Lu had plenty of time. After doing some calculations, Gong Lu found that he could fit six total inscriptions, which was relatively easy to find since they were all the same size. One on every three sides, on the top, and on the bottom. So, to choose these six, Gong Lu had to decide what he wanted out of his Life affinity.

First off, a highly regenerative body. This corresponded to the Everlasting Physique inscription, so that was on. Secondly, a Qi with potent self-healing. That was the Ancient Vitality inscription, so that would also be included in the pillar. Third, Gong Lu wanted to prioritize the speed of the healing, as compared to the thoroughness. This would not mean that he would be unable to recover from deep wounds and severe internal injuries, it would just be more inefficient and would take longer. Instead, his Life Qi would excel at healing external cuts or bruises, those that one would amass at a frightening pace during an intense battle. This was Gong Lu's reasoning: if he had such high defense, the attacks that would manage to break through it would either only lightly wound him or severely harm him and inflict an extreme wound upon him. If it was the former, which would be far more common, then he would be able to heal from it almost instantaneously. If it was the latter, then it would mean that there was a huge power gap between him and the opponent, in which case, healing mid-battle would not be an option, as Gong Lu would have far more important priorities. Of course, there were exceptions, like if Gong Lu was wounded by a criminal mastermind who, after hurting him, went into a long and crazy monologue about how Gong Lu humiliated the mastermind, ruined their life, etc. In that scenario, Gong Lu would appreciate deep-healing Life Qi, but other than those exceptions, Gong Lu would almost never rather have the thorough Qi. It was simple mathematical probability. But, anyways, this type of Qi was mirrored in the Benevolent Rain inscription. But Gong Lu now had three inscriptions left and nothing else that he wanted. Or at least, he would, if not for the rather simple fact that he could repeat inscriptions. So, what would the ratio be? 2:2:2? 1:2:3? After some thinking, Gong Lu eventually decided on two Everlasting Physique inscriptions, three Ancient Vitality inscriptions, and one Benevolent Rain inscription. This was determined by order of priority. Gong Lu had determined that the self-healing aspect would be the most beneficial, since it would sacrifice the ability to do something well that Gong Lu was not planning on doing, healing others, in order to gain a large increment in his self-regeneration ability. This simply emphasized the dramatic yet effectless weakening of something that Gong Lu would never do in order to dramatically augment something that Gong Lu would do a whole lot. Hence, the large amount of Ancient Vitality inscriptions. The amount of Everlasting Physique inscriptions was due to one main thing: healing through physical regneration(one's physique doing the healing instead of the Qi) did not cost Qi. Hence, if he had high bodily regeneration, Gong Lu would not have to use up any Life Qi in order to heal himself of minor wounds. And finally, Gong Lu chose to use a low amount of Benevolent Rain inscriptions because he did not want to penalize his deep healing too much, and already had a high regeneration, so he did not want to sacrifice his somewhat high thorough healing in order to increase his already high surface regeneration to elvels he simply would not need. The Benevolent Rain inscription still gave a useful effect, but not useful enough to waste another one of his six slots on.

Now that he had decided on the type and amount of inscriptions, there was only one thing left for Gong Lu to do: put on the inscriptions!

The Legacy of the Immortal cultivation technique detailed a method to create inscription ink using Qi, which would be used in the writing of the inscriptions on the Qi form. The process was complex, and Gong Lu didn't understand how it worked, but he was able to create the ink after a few attempts and then draw the inscription patterns.

After all was said and done, six days had passed, and Gong Lu was ready to place his pillar on the ground(profane pun not intended) and bring order to his spirit realm.

A thud sounded out as a familiar flash of light appeared and disappeared in a single moment, and his Life spirit realm, the final of his three, had truly begun cultivation.