Under One Person: Starting with the Dual Cultivation of Body and Soul

Even with the combined aid of ointments and medicinal baths, the body still needs a recovery period after the physical training.

During this period, Li Chang'an mainly focused on meditation and spiritual practice.

He continued to maintain the state of reversing the cycle of birth and tempering his spirit, and began his cultivation of the three points in a straight line.

Time passed little by little.

During this period, the Li family visited him several times.

When the Lunar New Year arrives, he will return to the Li family to reunite with his relatives.

After the New Year, he returned to the Lu family to learn his craft.

It is worth mentioning that Lu Jin personally picked up and dropped off Li Chang'an every time he traveled to and from his hometown.

This was not Lu Jin making a mountain out of a molehill. Although the Lu family was kind to others and had no enemies in the industry, the Li family was different.

Li Cheng, the patriarch of the Li family, used to go out every day decades ago with his sword to hunt down the Quanxing demons, making a lot of enemies in the process.

Lu Jin dared not gamble that the Quanxing demons he had grudges against would show leniency to Li Chang'an out of consideration for him.

He would never give those guys the slightest chance to retaliate.

And so, two years passed in this daily routine of spiritual practice.

The following year, Lu Jin stopped Li Chang'an and Lu Lin's physical training courses.

After all, the Sanyi Sect is not a sect specializing in external physical training. Once the physical strength has been honed to a certain level, it is difficult to produce any substantial improvement by relying solely on external physical attacks.

If one wants to continue down this path, one must practice specialized external martial arts techniques, which is undoubtedly putting the cart before the horse.

However, although the external physical training stopped, Li Chang'an never stopped honing his spirit and energy.

In the past two years, he has made great progress in both sexual cultivation and life cultivation.

In terms of physical development, although he is not very old, his body is very well developed and his height is already far beyond that of his peers.

If you take off that oversized training uniform, you can see his well-defined and muscular physique.

His muscles were not bulky or exaggerated; they were smooth and powerful, like an agile little leopard. Even without using Qi, he could leap several meters high with just his physical strength and easily lift hundreds of kilograms of weight.

Compared to the obvious external manifestations of life cultivation, Li Chang'an's improvement in sexual cultivation is somewhat subtle.

Because the Sanyi Sect's methods do not include techniques for manifesting the Yin or Yang spirits, Li Chang'an finds it difficult to quantify the strength of his sexual cultivation.

But he could clearly feel the progress.

Previously, he needed to constantly reflect on himself, and whenever a delusional thought arose, he had to quickly recognize it and then stop the thought.

But now, fewer and fewer delusions arise in his mind.

Instead, his true nature became more apparent, revealing more of his genuine emotions.

This genuine nature is inherent and can be satisfied without external feedback.

Just like some mathematical geniuses, they don't need fame or fortune, nor do they need praise from others. They only need to immerse themselves in the world of numbers and formula derivation that they love, and seek inward, to obtain immense joy and spiritual satisfaction that is difficult for ordinary people to understand.

Li Chang'an is in the same boat now. He is immersed in introspection, and his whole being exudes a kind of inner peace.

In this tranquil state, the agitation caused by maintaining the reverse life state for a long time is greatly reduced, and he can maintain that life-forging state for a longer period of time.

At the same time, his efficiency in cultivating Qi also greatly improved, because although Qi is hidden in one's destiny, it is ultimately the nature that controls Qi. When one's nature cultivation is strong, Qi will naturally become stronger.

In addition, in that same year, some personnel changes also occurred in the Lu family. Lu Linglong, who was as talkative as a lark, left home for the capital.

Lu Linglong was originally a lay disciple of Baiyun Temple, and in principle, she should have gone to the capital to learn martial arts long ago.

However, due to her young age and some special reasons regarding her abilities, Lu Jinnian was unable to leave home. Therefore, she invited her friend, Fang Dongtian, a high-ranking priest from Baiyun Temple, to teach her at the Lu family for several years.

Now that Lu Linglong's temperament has stabilized, Lu Jin is relieved and has sent her to the capital to study and learn her craft. She will only come back to visit during holidays and winter/summer vacations.

With Lu Linglong gone, only Lu Lin and Li Chang'an remained in the Lu family compound to cultivate, making it quite deserted.

In the first year after Lu Linglong left home, Lu Lin, under Lu Jin's guidance, successfully broke through the barrier and entered the first level of the Reverse Life Realm. She gained the ability to transform her body with Qi and the strength of a dragon and tiger, and every move she made had the power to split rocks and shatter monuments.

Speaking of which, Lu Jin was around the same age when he mastered the first level of Reverse Life, and Lu Jin was a genius of the Sanyi Sect at that time.

Lu Jin was overjoyed for several days after Lu Lin successfully broke through the barrier. Subsequently, he transmitted the complete Qi circulation trajectory of the first level of Reverse Life to Li Chang'an, hoping that he would strike while the iron was hot and follow in Lu Lin's footsteps to complete the breakthrough as well.

Although Li Chang'an was two years younger than Lu Lin, as his master, Lu Jin had some confidence in Li Chang'an's cultivation foundation. He knew that the boy's foundation was terrifyingly strong, and the first level would definitely not be difficult for him.

Unexpectedly, after obtaining the specific Qi circulation route, Li Chang'an acted as if nothing had happened, delaying his attempt to break through the barrier and continuing his daily practice as usual.

Lu Jin was puzzled, so she took the opportunity to ask him the reason.

Li Chang'an replied, "The time is not yet ripe. The foundation of my life is not yet solid enough; it needs further tempering."

Lu Jin was puzzled. This kid's cultivation level had clearly reached that point, so why did he insist that his foundation was unstable?

However, as the saying goes, the master leads you through the door, but the practice depends on the individual.

Since Li Chang'an was unwilling to break through the pass at this time, Lu Jin did not try to persuade him any further.

Li Chang'an continued his steady cultivation.

Flowers bloom and fade, spring goes and autumn comes, and two more years have passed.

On this day, just like in the past few years, Li Chang'an sat cross-legged in a cave on the back mountain, using the cave's dim environment to enter a state of being a living dead, tempering his own life.

Having cultivated for so long, Li Chang'an had gained some understanding of his current state.

This so-called state of cultivating oneself as if one were dead is not his original creation.

There are precedents in history.

Those who frequently read Jin Yong's novels know that in the novels, there is a Tomb of the Living Dead on Zhongnan Mountain, and there is a Little Dragon Girl in the Tomb of the Living Dead.

Of course, Xiaolongnu is a fictional character, but there is indeed a Tomb of the Living Dead on Zhongnan Mountain, which was created by Wang Chongyang, the founder of the Quanzhen School of Taoism.

The Quanzhen School has many branches.

According to their founders, they are divided into the Five Patriarchs of the South and the Five Patriarchs of the North.

The most famous of the Five Patriarchs of the South was Zhang Boduan, also known as the Master of the Twenty-Four Heavenly Valley. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the source of the Jia Shen Rebellion.

The most famous of the Five Patriarchs of the North was Wang Chongyang, also known as Chongyang Zhenren.

Wang Chongyang called himself "The Living Dead," and the purpose of building the Tomb of the Living Dead was not for romance, but for cultivation.

Li Chang'an felt that his current method of cultivating in this deep and quiet mountain cave, treating himself as a dead man, was similar to the cultivation in the Tomb of the Living Dead by the founder of the Quanzhen School.

Of course, Li Chang'an would not dare to claim that he had truly reached the level of the True Man Chongyang; he had only touched upon this state through the awareness of his intermediate state.

The benefits this state brought him were unimaginable. His life cultivation improved significantly. After reaching a certain level, the Qi in his back was like the water level in a reservoir, having overcome a certain bottleneck.

There were no strange phenomena from the sky, no violent outburst of true qi, and not even a trace of painful struggle or hesitation!

The white qi within Li Chang'an's body calmly traveled a complete route, constructing a mysterious and profound ritual within his body.

The moment the ritual was completed, the reversible white qi within his body surged forth like a tidal wave, instantly permeating every inch of his skin and flesh, from his pores to the tips of his hair.

In recent years, Li Chang'an has been engrossed in cultivation and found going to the barbershop too troublesome, so he has never cut his hair and has let it grow freely. Now his hair has grown to his waist.

At this moment, her waist-length black hair moved without wind, gradually fading from black at the roots to a crystalline white, like frost and snow.

This white is not the dry, frizzy, dead white produced by commercial hair dyes.

Instead, it was a vibrant, flourishing, jade-white color where every strand of hair shimmered with a faint, ethereal glow.