Who Said A Mosquito Can't Cultivate?

"Neigh!" Just as I was about to absorb some qi to transform into hammers that would allow me to progress in my body cultivation, I could not help but pick up the sounds of a horse neighing through my antennae. At first, I was quite confused as to why I heard those sounds, but then remembered what happened a while ago.

"I forgot. We killed the bandits, but we didn't kill the horses," I muttered inwardly as I wondered about what to do next with three horses. Of course, I could go ahead and suck them all dry, but a horse would allow us to arrive at Red River Town faster. Well…now that I think about it, we wouldn't have a need for three horses, so I'll suck two dry and leave one horse for Yang Bailian to ride on.

But the question now is…does she want to use a horse? She's practicing her movement technique, so it would be more beneficial for her to continue walking rather than rely on a horse to travel all the way to Red River Town. I don't know how much mastery she would attain once we arrive, but at the very least, I think it would reach near Expert level.

And so, with the horses in mind, I circulated a bit of my qi to shout my question out towards Yang Bailian. Well, not exactly shout it out, but say it in a loud enough volume for her to hear. I don't really want to fly towards her right now, I'm quite comfortable where I am.

"Hey uh…Yang Bailian, what do we do with these horses?" I asked in a slightly loud tone, somewhat distracting Yang Bailian from practicing her movement technique as she stopped in an abrupt manner. Not long after, she looked at the three horses that was within the vicinity, looking towards my direction afterwards. She did this for a few times before looking at me and saying, "You know, the way you call me is quite stiff."

"What about it? Do you want me to call you with a specific nickname or something?" I asked since I seriously did not know what to call her. Since she could call me Bell any time she wanted, I can't call her by her full name, it would make me feel distant from her.

Wait a second…why do I care about this?

"Yeah, I do." She nodded her head as she continued, "You can call me Bailian, or Bai'er, or whatever."

"Sure, sure, sure," I answered back with indifference, although inwardly, I was keeping a note of these nicknames. What? It feels awkward to call her by her full name, okay? Anyways, I continued to talk.

"So…what do we do with the horses?" I asked once more, with her placing her thumb and pointing finger under her chin as she pondered not long after. It took her about ten seconds of ponderation to reply, answering back with, "Could you check if these horses are Rank 2 at the very least? If they're Rank 2 horses, then we would have no need for my movement technique."

"Are you telling me that you can run faster than a normal horse at the Basic level of mastery with that technique?" I questioned her after deducing a few things through her words, wondering if that was the case. Fortunately, she shook her head, implying that she couldn't run faster than a horse. But once she opened her mouth to reply to my question, I instantly knew that she was going to use it as a way to train herself.

"Of course, I can't. Horses are meant to travel far distances, while us humans, although we can also travel very far, we can't travel as quickly as horses," she replied. "But remember, as cultivators, we can eventually exceed the speed at which horses travel, all it takes is time."

"In other words," I decided to just say it outright as it seemed that she was beating around the bush. "You want to use our travel to hone your mastery over the Ten Gale Steps technique?"

"Since the opportunity is here, why not?" she answered back, shrugging her shoulders. Fine, let's have it her way then.

'Ranged Absorption!'

Whoosh!

Since the horses were not far away from the tree I was comfortably laying down on, I activated my ranged absorption technique, easily s.u.c.k.i.n.g up the blood of one horse until it was bone dry. Of course, since the two remaining horses saw one of their brethren turn into an emaciated corpse within seconds, the two of them could not help but run away thanks to their instincts. Fortunately, Yang Bailian was there, slapping the two horses hard enough on the noggin from left to right to make them dizzy and fall unconscious.

Thud. Thud.

As she looked at the emaciated corpse that was created by me, she looked at the tree where I was laying down, and asked, "So…what rank is it?"

"Do you think I could see the ranks of animals?" I asked her, wondering where she had the courage to believe that I could see ranks. Although I did have the ability to find out ranks, I don't want her to rely on me even more.

"Well…" Yang Bailian pondered over her reply for a bit, opening her mouth a few seconds later. "Judging on how hasty you s.u.c.k.e.d that horse's blood dry, I have a strong feeling you do."

"Congratulations," I replied in a monotonous tone. "You win nothing at all."

Not long after, I added, "Anyways, these horses are your average Rank 1 horses. What do you plan to do with them? Do you want to eat some horse?"

"No thanks, I'm quite full," Yang Bailian shook her head as she replied. Maybe she just didn't want to taste horse meat? Well…horse blood is incredibly delicious, so horse meat would be delicious as well, right? But since she didn't want to eat horse, I guess I'll have to leave the horses for now.

"Anyways, you can do whatever you want with the horses," she added while I was thinking about horse meat. And so, I looked at her with slight surprise for a short bit as she continued to practice her movement technique, leaving the two horses alone.

Well then. I won't say thank you to you right now since that's a waste of qi, but I will thank you for giving me more blood points to work with. Speaking of which, the horse I s.u.c.k.e.d a while ago gave me around 900 points. And me s.u.c.k.i.n.g the two remaining horses without hesitation not long after, I now had around 2700 points of blood inside my storage.

Now you might be wondering, what am I going to do with the blood points? In essence, I'm going to be enhancing my speed of qi and body cultivation. To be more exact, I'm going to craft up a Soul Physique, as well as an Earth physique!

Whoosh!

And with that, I brought up the Physique section of the system, looking at the two physiques I had already, Space being at the Lesser level, with Blood being at the Inferior level. Speaking of physiques, the effects had changed ever since the qi gathering and meridian section of the system was replaced with cultivation. Not only that, the boost they gave was also replaced, being increased by a great degree.

Since Space was at the Lesser Level, it gave a boost of 25% to the absorption rate of qi of the Space element, as well as efficacy of Space-based martial techniques. As for Blood, since it was at the Inferior level, it only gave a boost of 20 percent, which is still a lot when comparing it to before.

Anyways, I shouldn't delay this any further.

"System, I would like to craft a third elemental physique," I commanded the system, a screen appearing in front of my field of vision not long after.

________

Please choose an element to specialize in:

Basic Elements:

Fire

Water

Air

Metal

Wood

--------

Special Elements:

Soul

Earth

________

Well then, it seems that the system was one step ahead of me by the looks of it, allowing me to choose the Soul and Earth element before even being able to ask the system about it. So…does that mean the system is telling me that the two cultivation techniques are really inclined towards the Soul and Earth element?

Anyways, I first picked up the Soul element, forming a Useless level Soul Physique as the system deducted 1000 points of blood from my storage. Speaking of which, didn't the Blood Physique deduct a thousand points as well? I guess it costs a thousand points to craft another elemental physique then.

Also, since the Soul Physique was at the Useless level, it only gave a 5% boost to the absorption rate and skill proficiency. Of course, the Earth Physique I'm going to obtain is going to have the same level of boost as well.

Ding!

'You have created a Useless level Earth Physique! Current boost: 5% boost to absorption rate of qi of the Earth element, 5% boost to efficacy of Earth-based martial skills.'

Was I satisfied with such a small boost like that? Of course not. And so, using up as much of the 700 points I was left with, I had successfully upgraded the two skills to the Untapped level, obtaining a 15% boost for the boost of them. Although I would've liked it for the two physiques to at least reach the Inferior level, I did not have enough blood points to do so as it costed around 1000 points each to upgrade to the next level.

Also, even if I wanted to, I could not even see any animals within the vicinity, probably because they were all killed by the bandit dens nearby. Speaking of bandit dens, will the comrades of those bandits we killed try and find the culprit who killed them? Hmm…judging by their morality, I'd probably guess that they'll call it the bandits' bad luck for getting killed.

Okay then. I already have a Soul and Earth Physique, let's see how much boost they actually give when I'm cultivating. Let's start with qi cultivation first.

Blank. Tune. Succ. Store.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Well, well, well, color me impressed. Although the Physique section of the system told me that it was just a 15% boost, it actually didn't feel like a 15% boost. It felt more like a 16% boost. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding.

Nonetheless, the Soul Physique was able to increase the amount of qi I could pull from the surroundings, as well as slightly speed up the rate at which my soul split in two. I wonder if having a stronger Soul Physique would allow me to achieve a second soul before reaching the Palace Formation realm?

Anyways, time to try out the boost from the Earth Physique in cultivating the body.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Since the Soul Physique was increasing the amount of qi I could pull in at once, it meant that I could form more hammers at once as well, which was creating a synergy of sorts while cultivating the body. Anyways, with that single absorption of qi, I was able to make around 400 or so qi hammers, allowing me to hit myself with 100 hammers 4 times consecutively. Yes, I'm still following up on the promise that is to hit myself with 100 hammers instead of 50.

Then again, I was slightly disappointed at the number of hammers I currently had, so I absorbed some qi a couple of times afterwards, increasing the hammer count to 1500. There we go, some decent numbers.

And so, I manipulated all of the hammers as one group as I urged them to head towards the layer of skin from the inside, because I still couldn't actualize my qi. Only qi that was actualized by me could be controlled by me, which meant that gathering qi around me and using that as the thing hammering on my skin was not possible yet.

Anyways, 100 hammers at once in 3…2…1…

Bang!

Ouch! That kind of hurts…somewhat. Huh. Now that I've gotten used to being hit with 50 hammers simultaneously for a long time, it seems that my pain tolerance has increased by a lot, allowing me to even take 100 hammers at once without cursing out in pain. So…should I use 200 hammers this time?

Hmm…why not?

Bang!

OW. OKAY. NOW THAT HURT.

Ding!

'You have successfully broken through to Skin Tempering Stage 2.'

'Constitution +0.1'

…

Was hitting myself with 200 hammers at once worth it?

Since I broke through to the second stage of Skin Tempering, yes.

Am I going to use 200 hammers from now on?

Since I broke through to the second stage of Skin Tempering…yes.