Jun Li fell back onto her new bed and looked around. It was an odd thing for her, having not only a bedroom to herself, but a whole house.

  Mentally exhausted from the entrance test and tour through the Sect, Jun Li was idly fluttering the sleeves of her new robes, marveling at how soft they were.

  After spacing out for a few minutes, Jun Li finally snapped out of it and sat up. ‘I can’t be slacking off on the first day, I came here for a reason!’

  Opening the Glass Cloud Manual she had received earlier in the day, Jun Li began to study its contents. The Manual itself was divided into a number of sections, and the section that Jun Li drew her attention first was the Martial Art, as she had no meaningful combat skill to rely on whatsoever.

  Looking through the book, Jun Li eventually found her way to the section describing the Martial Art, the ‘Billowing Glass Palm.’ The pages of the book rather thoroughly describe various combat maneuvers, mostly striking in nature.

  Alongside the wordy descriptions, Jun Li saw various illustrations depicting these maneuvers in motion, however…

  ‘This… is completely indecipherable…’ The longer Jun Li read the book, the more her face contorted into confusion.

  The descriptions of the maneuvers were long-winded and flowery, and the illustrations that depicted them were too few and far between to offer any meaningful understanding of the motions involved.

  At this point, the manual seemed so unusable that Jun Li momentarily felt completely lost.

  ‘Ahh, come on, one thing at a time, I’m sure I can figure this out…’ Turning her wandering attention back to the book, Jun Li gathered herself and slowly dissected each sentence as best as she could.

  It took well over an hour, but she was eventually able to decipher one of the maneuvers enough to start practicing it. Behind her house, there was a small clearing, walled off so as to allow privacy and prevent distraction.

  In this small yard, the Sect had provided a metallic training dummy, with thin lines depicting Meridians and small dots marking prominent pressure points.

  But Jun Li was not yet ready to strike the training dummy. What came first for learning any Martial Technique was directing Internal Qi through the Meridians in the proper sequence.

  Closing her eyes, Jun Li put her hand forward and began by pushing Qi down through the Major Meridians in her arm, down through the Minor Meridians at the back of her hand. ‘The next part is… the fron- ‘

  In the middle of Jun Li’s thought, a sharp pain shot through her hand, causing her to instantly lose focus and drop to the ground, cradling her hand. For a moment, Jun Li couldn’t move, her face pale and streaked with sweat.

  As she gathered herself and checked her hand, she saw bruises had formed in a pattern, following the path of the Minor Meridians she had forced Qi into.

  Though shocked, Jun Li had made a theory on what had gone wrong. Either she had pushed too much Qi into Meridians too weak to contain it safely, or she had been too slow in saturating the next set of Meridians, thereby causing a destructive imbalance of forces in her hand.

  After considering for a moment, she realized both theories were true.

  During her Qi Circulation practices, Jun Li had primarily circulated Qi through her Major Meridians, as including the Minor Meridians would exponentially increase the required time for a full circulation.

  Seeing how fragile they now were in comparison to her Major Meridians, she realized how much of a mistake neglecting them had been.

  Sitting down, Jun Li began her Qi Circulation exercises again, this time taking it much slower, and allowing the Qi to permeate every Minor Meridian before returning to her Dantian.

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  It was a painful experience at first, each Minor Meridian being so fragile that Jun Li feared damaging them with each cycle.

  Eventually, that pain subsided, and the Minor Meridians had become flexible and sturdy enough for Jun Li to circulate her Qi at a steady pace, without slowing down in fear of hurting herself.

  After a few hours, Jun Li had completed ten complete rounds of Qi Circulation, and the sun had begun to set.

  Cautiously, Jun Li pushed Qi into the Minor Meridians that had previously bruised her hand.

  She didn’t aim to follow through with the full technique this time, and simply saturated the Meridians with a small amount of Qi, less than half what she had tried the first time. This time, even after holding the Qi there for a moment, Jun Li experienced no pain.

  Going further, she poured even more Qi into the Meridians, only to stop almost instantly as pinpricks of pain began to manifest.

  ‘I suppose they won’t just catch up to my Major Meridians after only a few hours…’ Jun Li let out a sigh before realizing how much time had passed.

  She found it hard to believe that just this morning, she journeyed away from the orphanage she had spent her whole life in.

  Yet despite how alien her surroundings felt, she hadn’t lost her appetite and had begun to feel a bit of hunger now that the evening had come.

  Her new home had a cooking space she could use to boil some water, and a small store of rice, so she had enough on hand to eat. But right now, she didn’t want to waste time on preparing food.

  Jun Li made her way back inside to find the sack she had carried from home, which still contained some fruit. Inside, she also picked up the Glass Cloud Manual, so she could continue to study while eating.

  Figuring it would take her a while before her Minor Meridians were flexible enough to comfortably practice the Martial Art described in the Manual, Jun Li began studying another section.

  Looking over her options, the ‘Movement Technique’ interested her, but she decided it would be more practical to start by learning the ‘Cultivation Method’ described near the start of the book.

  Slowly reading through, Jun Li found that the manual described several levels of Cultivation, the first of which, and the stage she currently existed in, was the ‘Qi Condensation’ stage.

  The Cultivation Method claimed it was capable of guiding Cultivation from the start of the Qi Condensation stage to the initial steps of the next great realm, the ‘Crimson Palace’ stage.

  Reading on, Jun Li’s face went stiff, realizing the description of the Cultivation Method was even more impenetrably esoteric than the Martial Art was. ‘This damn book… why don’t they just use those Jade Slip things to teach this stuff…’

  Even though she felt frustrated, she pressed on, slowly decoding the book as best as she could. Despite her awful first impressions, she didn’t find it too difficult to understand at a basic level, helped considerably by how condensed the description of the method was, less than half the length of the section describing the Glass Cloud Palm.

  Breaking down what she had read, Jun Li identified three steps to the Cultivation Method of the Glass Cloud Manual.

  Firstly, a series of meditative exercises, made to draw in Qi of a certain aspect, in the case of this Manual, Cloud Qi, as it is supposedly highly compatible with the techniques of the Glass Cloud Sect, unsurprising though that may be.

  Secondly, a method for refining Qi inside the Dantian, in this case, compressing all Qi in the body into as dense a sphere as possible, before decompressing it and performing a full loop of Qi Circulation before repeating the process.

  And thirdly, a method for Qi Circulation itself, specifically a route for the Qi to travel that maximizes the benefits to Meridians relevant to the Techniques of the Glass Cloud Sect.

  Reading this, Jun Li felt a bit foolish at having skipped forward to the Martial Art, simply assuming her basics were solid enough. ‘Ahh, if only I didn’t act in such a hurry, I could have gotten twice the results with half the efforts…’ Regardless of how she felt, Jun Li could only try and move forward.

  Having long since finished her meager meal, Jun Li stepped back outside, this time to Cultivate properly, perhaps for the first time in her life.

  Outside, Jun Li gently swept her arms in a wide arc, slowly bringing them down from high. According to the Manual, the correct movements, breathing, and state of mind could draw in ambient Qi.

  Jun Li slowly circulated her Qi, breathed deeply and steadily, and tried to center her thoughts on the motion of the clouds above. Within a few minutes, a faint tuft of Qi had condensed, tumbling down from the sky to Jun Li. ‘Already? My Cultivation at the waterfall really was that inferior, huh?’

  Inhaling the wisp of Qi, Jun Li began to guide it to her Dantian, while trying to maintain her movements. With her new Cultivation Method, Jun Li could theoretically absorb a surplus of Qi at once and then refine it all at once.

  Furthermore, the process of refining Qi described in the Manual doubled as an effective method to strengthen the Meridians, as Qi Circulation was a step in the process.

  Jun Li was overjoyed by how smoothly she was able to adapt to this new Cultivation Method. ‘At this rate, I might even be strong enough to properly use that Martial Art in less than a month.’