Raising Ducks for Daily Rewards-Chapter 36: Bottleneck

"It’s been over three weeks since I got stuck at 3.99%..." Fengyu looked at the progression panel in front of him.

[Cultivation: 3rd stage of Qi Refining]

[Cultivation progress: 3.999% (0.026%), +0.21%!]

When his cultivation reached the limit of the third stage, it suddenly stopped.

He still gained cultivation daily from the egg rewards, but it seemed to be stored up.

Sitting on his futon, he lowered his consciousness into his dantian –

There, he saw the common bowl structure of Qi Refining.

"In the world, there are many ways to construct your dantian, some are better but require longer cultivation, others are worse but are quite fast.

After many years, the common method has become the Four Qi Bowl Dantian – create four Qi Bowls in the Qi Refining stage. Each bowl represents the foundation of cultivation and how much spiritual power your dantian can hold, which allows one’s foundation to be stable even when the spiritual power is depleted.

The task is to create a new Qi Bowl per minor stage.

When I cultivated to the third stage, my first bowl was fully constructed. The spiritual power instead took the shape of an illusory bowl above, and when I was rewarded, wisps of spiritual power joined the process.

Now my mid-stage bowl has been constructed for a tenth, which fits perfectly for the fourth stage of Qi Refining.

My task is to refine and solidify the spiritual power to become permanent.

I thought with the rewards, I could skip this step and have the spiritual power directly construct my second bowl..."

But when he thought of this, he shook his head.

Maybe if he used those useless cultivation arts in ancient times, where the Qi Refining stage was called the Qi Gathering stage.

At that time, the concentration and amount of spiritual power were the way they measured cultivation stages...

In the records I read, it’s said that their foundation was extremely weak but not easy. It had its own difficulties but was still weak. How could this compare with the Qi Sea Dantian, the lowest and worst dantian nowadays? But even that has the strength that cultivation is extremely fast. Though the resulting cultivator will likely never be able to reach the Foundation Building stage.

Alas, the foundation is great but the difficulty is very high..." Fengyu shook his head and used his consciousness to force his spiritual power into a standing motion.

While it was in the illusory form, it wasn’t stable at all.

It would sway and fly, some spiritual power would suddenly fly out and then back in.

To advance, he would have to force the spiritual power to take a stable position and slowly absorb spiritual power from outside to fill the bowl.

In this way, the illusory bowl will have the pressure of spiritual power, forcing it to take shape.

This process is slow and difficult.

And the spiritual power had to be ’fresh’ and unrefined spiritual power from the outside. Only such spiritual power could put pressure on his bowl. If it was his own spiritual power, then it would ignore the illusory bowl and instead flow smoothly into his early-stage bowl.

Looking over to 26 small wisps on the side of his bowl, hovering in the air, he smiled.

"At least this saved cultivation means that I won’t lose out."

He continued to cultivate, absorb spiritual power from outside and throw it on the qi bowl like a heavy stone, while also using his consciousness to force the spiritual power to remain the same.

Time passed, and when it reached an hour, exhausted, he left his dantian and looked outside again.

"Breaking through is an extremely difficult exercise. It’s like I’m hammering my own dantian with spiritual power, having to be extremely precise with everything.

At least it looks like I’m making progress..."

Looking at the dantian now, one could see that the centre of the bottom had already become somewhat stable.

"Based on my speed, it would take me around three to nine months to break through."

A bowl, after all, became larger the higher one went. But Fengyu could only use the same amount of spiritual power every time.

So while it might be easy to harden the bottom of the bowl, hardening the walls would become more difficult.

He could only continue cultivating and hope that it won’t be too difficult.

"Hmm, the whole early stage of Qi Refining is actually just 3%. Starting from the mid stage, the dantian explosively expands by 10% on average per stage. This means the fourth stage will range from 4% to 10%, the fifth stage will be 10% to 20%, and the sixth stage will be 20% to 35%.

Then comes the late stage, where the difference will be 20% per stage – the seventh stage is 35% to 50%, eighth stage is 50% to 70%, and ninth stage is 70% to 95%.

The last stage, the peak of Qi Refining, is only 5%, but it’s said that the difficulty of constructing that Qi Bowl is the highest... I wonder why that’s the case."

He thought about it and realised that he would have to expand his egg business a lot to cope with such a huge need in cultivation.

"If I went with my current speed, then I would take at least twenty years to reach the fifth stage – which is unacceptable. It’s no wonder so many people resort to using pills even though they contain poison.

After all, cultivating normally with low roots will simply accomplish too little. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

I really wonder how fast cultivators with better roots cultivate..."

Although he was curious, he didn’t wish to know. After all, comparison is the killer of joy.

"I would need at least ten Spiritual Ducks to cultivate fast enough in the mid stage, and possibly even more in the late stage.

With the spiritual power of the mid-stage, I should be able to raise more ducks.

I will have to find a solution to balance my abilities and the amount of high-quality Spirited Eggs I can sell without evoking suspicion...

Fortunately, they don’t know my spiritual root talent, so at least I have an excuse for why I don’t take pills..."