Chapter 4: The Initial Stage of Gathering Spirit

  (Ps: Continue to ask for collection, ask for recommendation, new book rush ranking is very important.)

  "Ding ding~"

  "Whoosh~"

  …………

  A few hours later, as soon as the last self-study bell rang in the afternoon, the classroom of Class 3-5 of Yanhe County No.1 High School was filled with noise and the sound of desks and chairs being roughly moved. Some students rushed out of the classroom at the first moment, while more people were either chatting and laughing while packing up their books, or quietly putting them away on their own.

  In the back row of the classroom, Guo Zhengyang also put down his book and rubbed his temples in distress.

  "Zhēng yáng, zǒu bù?" He stood up with a big laugh from his side, Zhang Hang.

  "You go first, I'll sit for a while." Guo Zhengyang waved his hand, indicating that Zhang Hang didn't need to wait for him.

  "I'll take off first, haha, don't think too much about it, some things will happen naturally." Zhang Hang was stunned, patted Guo Zhengyang's body lightly with his hand, and then turned to run out of the classroom.

  Kuang Zhengyang sat still in his seat, not moving at all, until the classroom was almost empty, then he suddenly let out a low sigh.

  It's easy to say but hard to do.

  At noon, he was not talking nonsense, but a heartfelt oath.

  Going back fifty years ago, his biggest goal now is no longer to cultivate what realm, nor is it to rush after the Great Way as soon as possible. His greatest goal is simply to study well.

  His father left with great disappointment, while his mother, who spoiled him to the extreme, also had a hint of loss in her gentle eyes before she left. This was the root of his greatest pain in life. This pain far exceeded the frequent pursuit by monks or demons in the spiritual realm, and the years without a place to settle down were even more intense.

  His greatest conviction now is that he hopes to hand in a satisfactory answer sheet that will surprise his parents in a few months, even if such an answer sheet has no help for his cultivation, but this is the pursuit of his previous life.

  In his previous life, even if he reached the realm of a true person, he already had strength far surpassing that of ordinary people, and he already had the capital to look at ordinary people as ants. However, some regrets could only be realized in daydreams, and after waking up from those dreams, he would either cry loudly or stare blankly for half a day.

  Now there is a chance to change, and now there is a chance to fulfill one's wishes. What touches Guo Zhengyang the most is this.

  It is now February and there are still four months before the college entrance examination. He also has confidence in realizing his long-cherished wish.

  So from noon till now, Guo Zhengyang has been studying hard, listening carefully in class and diligently reading his textbook during self-study.

  He had put it down for too long, and now he suddenly picked it up. Even if he was careful, whether it was the teacher's lecture or the text in the textbook, it seemed like a heavenly book to him, completely bewildered and without any clue.

  What if he was a real-life master? The things that masters learn and what ordinary secular colleges teach are worlds apart.

  He has found that with his rebirth, his memory and understanding of knowledge have improved a lot. This may be the result of years of practicing and studying, or it may be because he returned with the soul from thirty years ago, making his soul stronger. However, no matter what, he had forgotten all the things in books before, so learning is still very difficult for him.

  He doesn't even know how to get started with many basic things.

  "Do I still have to review from junior high school knowledge? With only four months left, I have to re-study the six years of junior and senior high school courses, so many subjects..."

  Kuang Zhengyang is a liberal arts student. Some subjects in junior and senior high school are not closely related, such as language and literature, which can be memorized by rote, but some things really need to be learned from scratch, such as English and mathematics. He has forgotten all the knowledge he learned in junior high school, so when he looks at these textbooks now, it's like reading a heavenly book.

  But if reviewing from junior high school knowledge, is there enough time?

  Even if he felt that his ability to learn and master knowledge was much stronger than before, he was still an ordinary person after all. Fifty years later, the soul returned, but not everything fifty years later had arrived at the present moment.

  Fifty years later he is a real person, with spiritual knowledge, ordinary knowledge can be mastered at a glance, but now he is just an ordinary person, still needs to read, understand and memorize.

  "Textbooks can wait, let's find a place to cultivate first. Let's gather the spirit and enter the body. With cultivation, everything will become easier. Even if it takes mid-term gathering of spirits to give birth to spiritual awareness, early-stage gathering of spirits is just tempering the body, but having a strong physique is also a capital for learning."

  After a sigh, Guo Zhengyang silently got up and walked out of the classroom.

  Now it's really necessary to find a place to cultivate first and then set foot on that path.

  Even in this mundane world where spiritual energy is scarce, the difficulty of cultivation is more than ten times that of the Spiritual Domain. Normally, he wouldn't have been able to advance from the initial stage of gathering spirit to the intermediate stage in just four short months, but having a strong and healthy physique also greatly aided him in achieving his goals.

  Master's cultivation, gathering spirits into the body to stabilize, is the initial stage. In the initial stage, absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, and its function is only to cleanse a person's physical body. As the physical body is cleansed, your physical quality will become better and stronger step by step. Even if it's just an ordinary gathering spirit at the peak of the initial stage, you won't need any martial arts skills, but can still knock down dozens of ordinary people with strong physical quality.

  When a cultivator breaks through to the middle stage, they can give birth to their spiritual sea and spiritual consciousness in their mind. Spiritual consciousness is the foundation of a cultivator's power, whether it's using techniques or controlling spiritual devices. By the middle stage of gathering spirits, you can already rely on various objects to transcend the category of ordinary humans. From the middle stage of gathering spirits onwards, the spiritual energy absorbed into your body basically no longer needs to be cleansed from your physical body; you only need to continuously condense and expand your spiritual sea, catalyzing more spiritual consciousness.

  The initial cultivation is to make the cultivator have a slightly stronger physique, laying the foundation for this against-the-sky path. If your physique isn't up to par, you'll get tired and hungry after sitting down to cultivate for just half a day, that's just nonsense.

  Most cultivators' initial practice period is just over ten days or half a month, relying on the physical foundation laid down by the initial Ling Qi.

  After the initial stage, unless you are a cultivator who specializes in refining your physical body, there is no need to deliberately temper and refine it. The improvement brought about by the drastic change in your body each time you break through will be enough to cope with most things, including not eating or sleeping for years on end. As long as you break through to a sufficient realm, the heavenly power will automatically improve your physical body to that extent during the breakthrough.

  Although this is still far inferior to the physical quality of a dedicated body cultivator, cultivating the body alone is not something that ordinary cultivators can pursue. Not only is it difficult, but the difficulty in advancing one's realm is also extremely high, and one must constantly seek out various rare treasures to temper their body, allowing it to absorb and transform... If a body cultivator achieves great success with their physical body, their combat strength will naturally be more terrifying than that of an ordinary cultivator. However, various conditions restrict this path from being accessible to those who are not born into wealth or have heaven-defying luck; you simply don't qualify to take that road.

  Guo Zhengyang now needs to do is to first enter the initial stage of gathering spirits, using the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to strengthen his body. After his physical strength increases, even if he doesn't have enough brainpower to use his spiritual awareness to learn, he can still rely on his tireless efforts to overcome various difficulties in learning.

  His physical strength has increased, he can completely use these four months as five months, six months or even seven months!

  …………

  Half an hour later, in the boys' dormitory of County No. 1 High School, in the empty and quiet dormitory, Guo Zhengyang suddenly opened his eyes and got up from the bed, and his body also made a crisp cracking sound.

  He clenched his fist and could feel his strength increase by a fraction compared to before.

  This feeling also made him feel deeply moved and nostalgic.

  In his previous life, he had inherited the legacy of that unknown cultivator. After coming into contact with this unorthodox path, it took him only one entrance to spend five years on it. If you add up the time spent studying the texts of the ancient tomes, it would be close to six years. A person who worked hard to explore and try, using so many years to find the right way to enter the door.

  But reborn for half an hour, he went through the process of his previous life.

  Is it sorrow or joy? He was somewhat uncertain.

  "Just started, need to consolidate next, when starting out, need to find a quiet place, can't be easily disturbed by external things, later cultivation can be done anywhere anytime, but the secular spiritual energy is too thin... If in the spiritual realm, a few months would be enough for me to enter the middle stage, unfortunately going there now would be suicidal."

  Guo Zhengyang's qualifications were not bad, but no matter how good the qualifications are, they also depend on the environment. In his previous life, he had entered the door and cultivated to the early peak in three years. If it was in the spiritual realm, even if it was a remote and barren land with thin spiritual energy, it would take at most a few months to achieve.

  He doesn't have the ability to go to the spiritual realm at all now, wanting to go to that place is not something an ordinary person can do.

  It's impossible to go to the spiritual realm, and outside of it, he has to endure this slow pace. He is helpless, but reality doesn't give him many choices.

  Although he was reborn once, and could know many things in advance, he didn't understand much about the secular world. In his previous life, he had been in a state of self-closure and indifference to the outside world for many years. Later, after entering the spiritual realm for many years, he inevitably came into contact with people and knew some rumors, such as the discovery of an ancient ruin within the spiritual realm thirty-seven years later, where many True Person-level experts went to explore and divide the treasure. This was something that would only be discovered thirty-seven years later, but if he were to go now, he could almost monopolize the treasure. The problem was that he couldn't go, lacking the ability to enter the spiritual realm!

  There are many other cases similar to this one. The treasures he knows about or the events that will happen in the future are mostly within the spiritual realm.

  "Never mind, thinking too much is useless. Let's go eat first and fill our stomachs, then we can spend more time cultivating. This body has just begun to transform, the changes are not obvious yet, and it still needs to absorb more spiritual energy to cleanse itself."

  After a sigh, Guo Zhengyang had just gotten out of bed when a strange idea suddenly surged through his mind.

  This suddenly changed his complexion, standing locally vigilant and looking left and right, until more than a dozen breaths before frowning fiercely, stretching out his hand to support his forehead, with an eerie color in his eyes.

  "What's going on? Why did this strange feeling suddenly appear in my mind, it feels like there's a voice calling me to somewhere?"

  He had just taken a few glances, and he already discovered that there was no outsider around him. However, in his mind, a thought wave was surging constantly, as if someone was shouting at him to go somewhere.

  The idea was not strong at first, it just startled Guo Zhengyang for a moment, but after he carefully sensed it, the feeling became stronger and stronger. In a short moment, he couldn't help but rise up with a strong desire in his heart, as if he really wanted to hurry to a certain place along the guidance of this idea, as if there was something very important waiting for him there.

  Once missed, he will regret it forever!