[NR] Calm Cultivation - Chapter 486 (Patreon)

Jason stretches and yawns. He had been clearing out his meridians for a few hours now and the progress was nothing to sneeze at. Though he was still in his prime for initial cultivation.

Way too many stories he has read made it sound like you have to begin cultivating as a young child. Now, Jason would never deny that doing so helps in some regards. It certainly makes the body forging go easier if done during puberty.

However, unless you are training in a body tempering art, cultivation is mental and spiritual. Not to say that there isn’t a cut off point, but that age is around 35, a point that Jason now knows to be when the brain stops actively growing. Which, thinking about, makes the cut off point make a whole lot of sense.

Though in his last life, the actual cut off for sects was 30 because you have to have at least a few years left to make use of. There were even some families under his old sect that would only allow their people to try and join at 30. That way, they can contribute directly to the family and insure the bloodline continues before focusing on cultivation.

Jason didn’t have to worry about any of that right now. While he had missed the prime age to assist his body’s growth, he had still used the proper exercises to make sure he could work on it later. Though it also helped that all the hydroponically grown plants and lab grown meat was basically free of impurities.

Not actual physical contaminants, mind you. Though the near complete lack of heavy metals certainly helped. No, rather spiritual contaminants. Those being especially prominent in meats.

Of course, calling them contaminants isn’t exactly fair, and Jason knows it. They’re just the remnants of the gathered power the food had when alive that can’t be digested by one’s own power. Meat being particularly bad because even herbivores eat plants and so you get into bio-magnification.

Animals just go and eat everything willy-nilly and end up gathering all the impurities. It is enough to make some people vegetarian. Not that Jason cares one way or another about meat, he just enjoys good dishes whatever the source.

So, without having to worry about impurities? He has eaten more than a few strange things over his new life. Not that the stuff is free of impurities, mind you. The fact it is physically growing is enough to form them.

As for what impurities do? Well, as Jason finishes a few stretches, he settles back into one of the areas they gather. He isn’t even a third of the way through clearing all his normal meridians and yet without the additional impurities that would normally come from food; it is going exceptionally fast.

Beyond making the early stages hard, impurities also make cultivation harder in general as they represent power within yourself that isn’t under your control. Too many can even cut a person off from being able to cultivate at all. This is because to start cultivating in the first place, you need to be able to move your power. In turn, having too many impurities is like someone new to working out starting with too much weight.

Of course, Jason is sure that there are all kinds of other problems related to them. For now, though, they aren’t a problem, especially since it isn’t like he has any pills or potions to add onto his burden. All he needs to do is work on his normal meridians.

One scoop at a time, removing the blockages from each one to allow the free flowing of power through his body. While it is true that without the meridians, you can still cycle power, that is like saying electricity can flow through the earth. It does, but you’re going to have a much better and more directed result if you lay down a cable.

Plus, they can handle more power. After all, even if the power can flow through something, that doesn’t mean that something comes out unharmed. Meridians are to cultivation what the wiring of a house is to electricity.

Though Jason really hopes that he can manage the extraordinary meridians as well. He doesn’t know what effect they’ll have, but just the addition of eight more meridians would almost double the power he can handle. That alone made opening even a single one an important event in his old sect as it meant having a cultivator able to overpower any normal loose cultivator and any regular members of their enemies.

More hours pass like this, with Jason focused on clearing his meridians while his mind wanders. Memories of the past and present dance in his head, while impurities spill out of his body, nearly imperceptible. However, only nearly.

While spiritual in nature, just like with energy, enough of it concentrated can be seen. Except, unlike with something like heat where the result is a glow, the spiritual impurities instead seem to suck the light out of the air. They might be satisfied with existing within things, but once outside of the body of a being or at least a liquid material, the impurities suck in power to try and maintain their existence.

Though without a critical mass, it is doomed, winking out of existence as it loses the battle. This creates an effect like someone has thrown reverse glitter around Jason. As if black dust was floating off of him.

Not a lot, but isn’t technology great? The cameras in the living room are more than good enough to catch this happening. Good thing privacy laws got a good kick in the rear at one point or a bunch of people would be analyzing things as soon as it happened.

Instead, Jason’s mom simply got a notification and after a quick look, she marked it to be saved. Sure, she isn’t going to be selling it off to her company or the government. That doesn’t mean she isn’t curious, though.