Taking out from the bag, he observed the last two items he was given by Zhou Xueqin, the disciple that worked in the Affairs Hall.
They were two books which contained the information he needed to progress in the Blood Qi Realm.
"Introduction to Blood Qi Realm."
He took the first one and started reading it as he didn't have anything else to do for the day.
From the introduction elder Zhao had given, they wouldn't need to complete the daily task they had chosen until tomorrow.
After an hour of reading, Ling Xu had finished the first book.
"This book explains even deeper the stages from the Blood Qi Realm, giving me information I didn't have before, even after reading on the library at Lesser Crimson Town."
There were repetitive things he already knew, such as that the nine stages of the Blood Qi Realm are divided into three parts, which are low, middle and high. And that every one of these are formed by three stages.
The low stages are for refining the muscles, the middle stages for refining the organs and the high stages for refining the bones.
But there was also useful information that contained the purposes of why they were divided into low, middle and high stages.
For the low stages, you refine the muscles to increase the strength of the human body to their limit, surpassing what a normal human without awakening their blood qi can do.
When you reach the third stage, with the increase in strength of the body, you are able to leave an imprint of the hand on a rock.
Refining the muscles of the body first has its reason and that is that each time you advance a stage and your muscles become stronger, the reserves of blood qi increase.
In this way, when you enter the fourth stage of Blood Qi and have to start refining the organs you are able to refine them.
After all, refining the organs uses more blood qi because they aren't like the muscles and are weak to strong energies like blood qi.
If the control of your blood qi isn't very high and you refine them harshly, they could be damaged.
So the best way is to slowly refine them, which makes the use of blood qi increase several times compared to refining the muscles.
Once you start refining the organs, as Ling Xu has already noticed, the skin is also refined. In this way, when you reach the sixth stage, your skin become as strong as steel and you are able to resist the attack from low grade semi-treasures.
This is for most people as not everybody is able to undergo a blood exchange and even less a second when refining the organs.
Ling Xu also found out that when you transform the muscles, organs and bones of the body, after going through the blood exchange, the name of these stages is called just like on his status panel.
So when ordinary cultivators who weren't able to reach the peak of the third stage of Blood Qi reach the sixth stage, they are only able to resist attacks from low grade semi-treasures.
This is because when one undergoes a blood exchange the quality of their blood qi increases a lot.
This is essential for the refining process as it increases several times the degree at which you advance through the stages, and it also determines how far you can refine the body before breaking through the next stage.
Ling Xu for example was able to go through two blood exchanges already, increasing the strength of his skin and the rest of the organs to another level.
And because of the completion of his Blood Thread Transformation technique, he was able to bring their refinement to their limit, making him able to resist the attack from high grade semi-treasures from someone with the same level of strength as his.
Also, refining the organs increases the endurance of the body and once you enter the seventh stage of Blood Qi you become immune to heat and cold.
Then, after refining the muscles and organs once the amount of blood qi reserves has reached a certain threshold, comes the refinement of the bones.
The reason why it comes last is because although the bones are very strong and don't need to be so carefully refined as the organs, the difficulty of refining them is even harder.
That is because the refinement of the bones needs a higher reserve of blood qi because you can only refine them every time the blood qi seeps into it. This is extremely hard as every time you use your blood qi only a small amount permeates the bone.
And the higher the level of purity of your blood qi, the deeper it enters into the bone, increasing the quality of the refinement and your strength in the same stage.
Because of this, Ling Xu has been able to progress even faster than when he refined his organs, as he had already increased his blood qi purity to its limit.
Now, he felt that he was just one step away from transforming his blood qi which would increase his strength even further.
He also read that when he refined his bones, he was increasing their density.
So not only did the strength that his fists carried increase but even the strength of the attacks he could receive, as they became tougher than before.
And once you reach the ninth stage of Blood Qi you become immune to most diseases and your lifespan increases, making you able to live for a hundred years.
Apart from this, it is also mentioned in the book that to go through the third blood exchange you need to reach the bone marrow.
This is the part that the quality of blood qi matters the most, because if the purity isn't high enough the blood qi won't seep deep enough to refine the marrow in the deepest part of the bone.
By now, Ling Xu hasn't heard of anyone at Lesser Crimson Town who managed to refine their bone marrow to their limit and transform it, reaching the peak of the ninth stage.
Even Xie Lan had only managed to undergo the second blood exchange after a lot of difficulty, as he had to absorb several blood condensing pills before completing the sixth stage of Blood Qi.
Even then, with his cultivation talent and his high amounts of resources, he was barely able to reach the peak of the sixth stage.
"I haven't even entered the eight stage of Blood Qi so I shouldn't' think that much about reaching the peak of the ninth stage. After all, it will take me at least several weeks before I advance to the ninth stage."
Apart from the information on the Blood Qi Realm, Ling Xu also found in the second part of the book the same cultivation technique that he was using to refine his body.
"I can't believe my Basic Blood Circulation cultivation technique which I learned with the system's guidance, is also the most common method to refine the body in the Skyless Realm, this shouldn't be a coincidence."
The similarities between the system and missions, when he was on Earth, and the things he is learning at Skyless Realm are starting to increase more and more.
Although they are still just a few small coincidences, several doubts are forming inside Ling Xu's mind, making him wonder about the system's origin and the reason behind its appearance.
After all, he could still see the status panel from the system and he had even found out that the rest of the people on Skyless Realm also had their own status panel.
"The more I know the more mysterious it seems to be, I wonder if I will ever be able to understand its purpose and the reason why I got the Existence Shadow Will cultivation technique."
Putting down the Introduction to Blood Qi Realm book, Ling Xu picked up the second one.
He read its title, Three Purities Sword Technique and instantly understood that this book was the manual for a sword technique.
…
After reading for several hours, Ling Xu had finally reached the end of the manual.
"This manual is several times more difficult to understand than the previous one."
Feeling exhausted, after reading for a long time, Ling Xu could finally relax and organize his thoughts on the Three Purities Sword manual.
"Three Purities Sword is the basic sword technique to help build a strong foundation from the ground in the way of the sword. It teaches the three most simple and crude movements of the sword which are vertical slash, horizontal slash and thrusting. Turning them into an harmonized flow of continuous attacks which are naturally connected."
In the manual, he read about the different levels of mastery that this sword technique had and the ways to advance into a more complex use of the sword, merging into several variations that originate from the three basic sword movements.
And be it another more coincidence, these stages of mastery where the same as the ones used by the system: entry, small success, proficient, great success and perfection.
Ling Xu was eager to start practicing the sword technique but he looked through the gap in his room and could only see pitch dark outside.
It had been a few hours since the sun set had set and if he wanted to start practicing now he would have a hard time doing the stances.
Fortunately, inside his room there was a candle he had been using to read even during the day as there wasn't a window to let the light pass through.
"Now that I know it's already night, I'm feeling very tired. I should get to sleep and start training in the sword manual tomorrow morning."
He was about to sleep as his eyes were closing, when suddenly he felt a movement from within his body.
To be more specific, he felt the path between his eyes opening.
After Ling Xu had used the enlightenment opportunity from the system and his own enlightenment enhanced the process, several days had already passed.
If he counted the three days he was on Earth after the mission ended, and added the four days he had been here, it made sense that the path opened once again.
"I don't have any technique I can use this enlightenment on, after all I haven't even started practicing on the sword so I don't think it will help me a lot if I focus on comprehending it now. I should wait until my body gets accustomed to it so the effect of the enlightenment is greater."
Feeling tired and with the notion that if he used this opportunity now it would go to waste, Ling Xu thought of something.
"It should be possible to postpone the enlightenment until I want to, right? If the path I feel in my mind allows me to choose where to focus my enlightenment on, following my will just like the golden shadow energy that came from it, it should also let me use it whenever I want and not in the movement it opens."
Ling Xu felt that his logic made sense so he waited for a few minutes to see if he didn't directly enter the enlightenment, trying to communicate his intent of not using the energy that would make him fall into enlightenment now.
After half a stick of incense passed, he was sure that he didn't need to use it at the same time the path opened as he didn't feel any sign of the energy entering his body.
So, he fell asleep right away.