"No, I have to take care of these vines first. Taking pills just to fill my dantian is a waste."
He sat down on the earthen ground and tried to cultivate again.
Seconds passed and when it hit the minute mark, he still didn't enter cultivation.
Trying again, two more minutes passed and he was still struggling.
When he opened his eyes, they instantly jumped to the pill bottle.
But in his mind, the issue wasn't just these pills. The demon cultivator shook him. Even though he felt safe thinking of these patrolling cultivators and inspecting elders, he couldn't feel entirely safe. It was like hearing in the news about a murder that happened on your street. Even though the murderer was caught, you still feel anxious.
"Never mind, I can't cultivate right now, and I can't take these pills. Let's relax for a moment to calm my mind."
He walked back to his hut and looked at the gardening tools on the shelves.
"This pair of scissors should be enough. Although it's not a spiritual weapon, it's made from hundred-refined iron, which is the material used in the weapons of mortal martial artists.
Trimming vines with these should be perfectly fine, even if they're Spirited Plants."
Taking the scissors, he started by inspecting the first row of the east field, planning to go east to west.
Sitting in front of the first vine, he didn't take out the trimmer directly. Instead, he opened his notebook and started writing again, "East Field, First Row, First Vine. The issues: it's a foot too long on the right, half its leaves are hidden in the middle, and small insects are gnawing at the leaves facing out."
Having analysed the issue, he went on to solve it.
He trimmed the vine at the right end and cut off the useless branches. Looking at the insects, he didn't do anything and stood up, walking to the next vine.
Doing the same again, he analysed and wrote down the issue and then solved it.
One vine after another followed.
After doing ten vines, he stopped, "It takes me one minute to analyse and write it down, and another minute to solve the issue, since I'm mostly focusing on cutting the useless part.
This means in an hour, I can trim a total of thirty vines right now…
It's a bit slow but not too bad.
I will write down my analysis for every vine this time, which should give me a lot of data to understand the different issues in every row. After a second and third full analysis, I should be done. By then, based on my current speed, I should be able to complete one row per hour.
I can already see that my speed is getting faster, so by then, I should be able to roughly cut one or two rows of vines in an hour."
He continued to draw conclusions and make guesses based on what he saw and experienced.
After thirty vines were cut, he felt a bit tired. Though there was also a look of gratification on his face.
Looking at the vines he trimmed, they seemed a bit greener than the rest.
"It doesn't matter whether this is a delusion or not, after some time, they really should become greener!" he said while looking at the withered yellow grapes. It was late autumn after harvest, so this state was actually normal.
"Grapes, like most plants, enter a time of slumber at the end of autumn until the start of spring, just like now. This time is the optimal time for trimming to not harm them. Afterward, the vine should be allowed to grow fully.
This means…
I won't be able to see the effect of my trimming for several months."
A sigh escaped his lips but he calmed down quickly. It was fine. He had been gardening for some time and knew the time it takes to grow a plant.
At least these were grapes with a cycle of one year.
Trees, on the other hand, would take much longer.
After an hour of trimming, he felt his mind calming down.
Although he would still glance at his spatial bag from time to time, he had accepted the fact that it wasn't time yet.
He sat in the centre of the field, starting his cultivation.
This time he entered cultivation in the first minute.
As spiritual power entered his body, he felt a warm current spread all around.
Cultivation was strenuous on the mind but comforting to the body.
The feeling of his spiritual power growing and his dantian filling was the greatest he could think of!
In the stage of Qi Refining, a cultivator gathers outside spiritual power and refines it into their own.
This spiritual power gathers in their dantian. The stage is split according to the percentage of the dantian being filled.
There are many interpretations of the dantian in the world – some say it's a sea, others say it's a world where one builds towers, some say it's a sphere…
The exact cultivation depends entirely on these interpretations. Some are easier to fill but create an unstable foundation, others are difficult to fill and too few people manage to fill them in the end, forcing them to stay in the same stage forever.
Among all these interpretations, there is one that has become the standard of evaluation.
Most cultivators take this path. For some it's difficult, for others it's easy. It has a stable foundation and the difficulty of cultivation isn't too high. Because there are various different aspects of cultivation, even genius cultivators take this stable approach to focus on different aspects.
This approach is called the 'Four Bowls of Qi' –
One imagines the dantian as an enclosed space, and inside, there are four bowls of spiritual power, stacked upon each other.
Cultivation is the process in which one manifests these four bowls slowly. After manifesting them from illusory to reality, they can hold spiritual power to be used freely. While cultivating is slow, gathering and replenishing spiritual power is a lot faster.
The top bowl represents the early stage of Qi Refining. It contains 10% of the total amount of spiritual power in the dantian. Every 3% is one minor stage, and finally, manifesting the last 1% allows one to reach the peak of the early stage.
At this stage one has to refocus their mind, leave the manifestation alone, create a stable construct, and build the second bowl below the first. It's a hurdle of comprehension and precision, requiring extreme caution and time.
The second bowl contains 30% of the total spiritual power, and the third bowl contains 60% of the total spiritual power.
Lingyu didn't know about the fourth bowl. That was a secret hidden by the cultivation sects. Without having an inheritance, it's impossible to reach the peak of Qi Refining.
After decades of cultivating, these rogue cultivators can still find a way to reach the peak stage. There is no right or wrong, just faster and slower ways of manifesting the bowl.
Unfortunately, at that time they won't be able to continue cultivating.
These cultivators who reach the peak stage usually have above average talent. While it's not enough to guarantee an entry into a sect, it's still better than many other cultivators.
In the end, the chance they find a disciple to pass on this knowledge who will be able to reach the late stage, or the chance that their descendants can achieve it, is rather low.
In this way, over generations, this secret is still a secret kept from the majority of Qi Refining cultivators.