He began to move energy from his body to his root of life, trying to condense and refine it.
First, he tried simply putting a lot of spiritual energy there... it didn't work. Next, he tried moving the energy in circles, forming shapes with it, taking it out, and putting it back into the root...
Nothing worked.
At one point, as he watched the spiritual energy emanating from the herbs, he wondered whether it was like a container.
As it flowed out and into his spiritual body, the healing effects took hold, consuming some of the spirituality there.
'The bleeding has stopped...' he thought, relieved and extremely happy that it had worked, but he was so captivated by the spiritual energy inside that he didn't stop to celebrate.
Those spiritual herbs had an incredible amount of spiritual energy, but at some point, he began to feel a strange sensation of fatness.
He felt his belly slowly growing, which made him frown.
'What's going on?' He shifted his attention away from the spiritual energy and focused more on his own spiritual body, which was sitting on the dantian.
'What the hell is that?!'
His spiritual body had gotten fat!
'Shit, is this healthy? It has a huge belly!'
Seeing how identical the spiritual body was to his real body, he went out to make sure his body wasn't like that... he sighed in relief when he saw that it wasn't, but suddenly...
[Danger!]
[Danger!]
[The Host's Spiritual Body is suffering from Spiritual Saturation]
[Expel the energy or do something with it, if you don't want to die in an explosion!]
The system's danger messages alerted him, though he initially didn't understand what was happening. But then, a terrible urge to vomit hit him from within, and something rose up his throat.
He couldn't stop it; it came with the force of many horses and shot out of his mouth, spraying the floor.
A sudden dizziness struck him, but he managed to see clearly...
'It's the herbs!'
Then he understood.
The spirituality emanating from them was about to kill him; his spiritual body was weak, barely at the initial stage of the Body Strengthening Realm. If things continued like this, he was going to die.
"Shit!" He closed his eyes, still feeling that terrible feeling of fullness. His body fell into chaos, while his dantian and spirit were flooded with an absurd amount of spiritual energy.
'What should I do? How can I expend this spiritual energy?'
He thought about attacking frantically to use up his spirituality, but then he remembered where he was. Attacking over and over again would alert his enemies, and he would die, which would be just as bad.
Besides, he didn't have a cultivation technique that would allow him to dispel a lot of spirituality quickly, so he could only rely on his poor fighting skills.
He quickly dismissed that, allowing his brain to focus on other ways.
Meanwhile, he felt terrible pain throughout his body. It was as if his veins were about to burst; as if his bones were being pressed against rock...
That's when he remembered a way.
'Refine and Condense!' he thought.
It was the only alternative he had. Refining and condensing energy consumed spirituality. Even if he used it all up and then had to go through a slow process of absorbing new energy, he didn't care!
It was better to take longer than to die.
He refocused on his dantian and looked at his life root, ready to refine and condense...
The problem was that he had no idea how to do it.
But he didn't give up. He tried again and again, in different ways, trying to understand how to do it.
Meanwhile, his discomfort was growing. Even though he had vomited most of those herbs, the spiritual energy was still enough to explode him, because, although very little, his life root continued to generate new energy.
At one point, he felt a strange blow inside his body and was startled, thinking he was going to explode at that moment, but fortunately, that was not the case.
Although it was close.
The blow he felt came from a strange "tumor" or "bulge" that had appeared on his right arm, and the same thing happened in other areas.
He was in danger, but he decided to ignore it. When had he not been in danger? But he always remained sane and thought clearly, so he could find a way out.
His life on earth was full of constant danger, but he never abandoned his sword, let alone his mindset.
Returning to his roots, he frowned.
Suddenly, something occurred to him.
When you refine something, the first step is to put it through chemical or physical processes. There are methods like distillation or electrolytic refining used for that.
Obviously, you can't use those methods to refine something spiritual. But the concept of refining can be the same, only normal methods are replaced with spirituality.
'If that's the case, I would just have to move a lot of spiritual energy to the specific place.'
He tried it. He moved all the spiritual energy he could to his root of life.
But nothing happened.
'What if I move it constantly?' he thought, and did exactly what he had imagined.
He moved the spirituality as fast as he could in all directions in his life root.
Nothing happened either.
He was lost in thought. The essence of spiritual refinement was difficult to grasp when you hadn't heard of it, but if you wanted to refine something, you had to sprinkle "something special" on it.
Therefore, this option seemed quite viable.
Now, why wasn't anything happening?
His eyes lit up. 'I see. What's missing is the condensation process,' he thought, clinging to the idea that this was the right way.
Now, condensation is basically the process of solidification and purification.
'I can't heat the spirituality, let alone cool it down. How do I do it then?'
Thinking of alternatives, he remembered the method used by blacksmiths. Generally, they heat metal to high temperatures, then hammer it repeatedly to shape it and remove impurities.
Suddenly, it occurred to him to strike his spiritual energy against his other spiritual energy again and again, forming two armies within himself...
'I don't think so... right?'
He slowly looked at his life root with suspicion and intrusive thoughts.
He was undecided.
If this went wrong, he might be finished.
'To hell with it if it goes wrong, I'm already in serious trouble anyway. I have no other choice!'
He gathered his courage and manipulated the spiritual energy within him to raise two huge waves, one on each side of the root of life, which kept moving, making it more complicated.
Even so, after gritting his teeth and praying in his heart that this would work, he made the two waves crash into each other.
SWOSH-
An imperceptible sound seemed to ring in his ears, although it was only an illusion of his senses, given his fear of the unknown. But soon the two waves crashed heavily and repelled each other.
The waves were still strong, so they continued to crash, and under Xiaotian's manipulation, the crashes grew louder and louder.
'No...' He sighed when he saw that nothing was changing, but suddenly he noticed something strange and had to stop in his tracks. 'Hm?'
The spirituality he used to crash the waves... was diminishing.
'Is it being depleted?!' His eyes lit up.
It was being depleted!
Although it wasn't too much, it was working!
The clearest proof of this was a new spirituality slowly emerging in his dantian. He also began to feel that his body, although very, very slightly, was getting stronger.
His cultivation, although very little, was growing!
He tried several more times, until, above the dantian, the number that only he could see changed dramatically.
1.9%...
2%...
It was rising slowly, but it was rising!