Chapter 12: Could I be a genius?

Although he really wanted to slack off, after lying around for a while, Mu Yi still got up.

It wasn't some awakening or self-discipline; Mu Yi was simply hungry.

He casually ordered a takeout meal, then Mu Yi picked up the magic book again; the author seemed to enjoy speaking in riddles, not writing everything plainly like a textbook, but instead breaking things down and hiding them in little stories.

As Mu Yi became familiar with the book's content, he also extracted more from it, including the inner qi cultivation method he most desired at the moment.

The author tucked it into little stories from the Military Power Scheme and the Chronicles of the Nine Provinces, and only after cross‑checking the two did he obtain a clear cultivation method.

Though called a cultivation method, it actually boils down to four words.

Eat! Train!

As long as a living being eats its fill, it will automatically start producing inner qi; that is refining essence into qi.

As long as you expend inner qi and then eat your fill, you can restore and increase it; when you can finally sense the so‑called qi feeling, it means you have entered the gate of inner qi cultivation and reached the stage of inner qi entering the body.

The key here is to grasp the qi sense; it marks the huge gap between inner qi being intermittent and being able to wield it as naturally as moving your arms.

As for how to consume inner qi, it's simple: constantly train your body, letting unconscious consumption drain inner qi within, thereby continually strengthening your inner qi capacity.

It's a bit like those news stories where a mother lifts a car to save her child—a superhuman feat; theoretically, that's consuming the body's qi, and if you replenish nutrition well, you'll grow stronger later, but if you don't, you'll likely suffer qi and blood exhaustion and end up bedridden.

Once inner qi capacity increases, the qi becomes denser; above all, you must eat and drink your fill, otherwise you'll end up depleted of both qi and blood.

Besides that, you can have an expert pour inner qi into you to grasp the qi sense, or consume some heavenly treasure to bulk up your inner qi until it's easily perceptible.

"Is food heaven? … Actually, that's quite characteristic of the Nine Provinces."

"Qi sense…" Mu Yi held his breath and focused, trying to mobilize the faint inner qi in his body, but after holding it for a while, he couldn't produce anything.

Mu Yi thought for a moment and felt that his way of opening up was different.

He put down the book in his hand, drew his opening‑mountain blade, activated his Elite Talent, relied on the two specialties' boost, adjusted his stance, then Mu Yi raised the blade high and brought it down heavily.

This time he clearly felt that, at the instant of swinging the blade, inner qi began to spread from his body into both arms, making them stronger than usual.

"I succeeded on the first try—could I be a qi‑cultivation genius?" Mu Yi widened his eyes.

"Gur…"

Blissfully satisfied, Mu Yi put down the blade; he was hungry, and the effect of completely expending his inner qi was even more terrifying than he imagined.

No wonder the note specifically said that either the world's essence qi must be sufficiently active, or you must eat and drink your fill—this thing truly isn't something ordinary people can withstand.

In just an instant, he felt as if he hadn't eaten for days.

He picked up his phone to check the rider's location and saw that only a few meters remained.

"Ding‑dong! Your takeout has arrived!"

"Thanks!"

As the rider knocked on the door, Mu Yi flung it open and snatched the takeout from his hand.

"Please give me a five‑star rating!" the rider blurted out instinctively, then scratched his head, turned, and mounted his little electric scooter.

"Turns out being starving can really make your eyes go red!" the rider exclaimed, shocked—despite having delivered takeout for half a year, he'd never seen such ravenous eyes before.

I don't know why, but I keep feeling a bit dazed; that lingering redness in Mu Yi's eyes gave him an inexplicable palpitation.

"Have you been exhausted from delivering takeout lately? Want to take a day off today?"

Worried that his condition might cause a traffic accident, the rider fell into thought, then decisively chose to lie down and rest—earning money is fine, but if it led to a crash it wouldn't be worth it; fatigued driving is unacceptable.

"Did I forget to turn off my talent just now?" Mu Yi scratched his head, but soon, urged by hunger, he shoved those worries aside and began to feast heartily.

"Weird, am I able to eat more than usual?" Mu Yi gulped down the last bit of his burger, then devoured another at lightning speed.

But Mu Yi didn't feel them sliding into his stomach; instead, it felt as if they had entered another hollow place, another bottomless pit.

That disorienting, twisting sensation made Mu Yi feel as if he had two stomachs.

"... I could still eat ten more!" After a moment's thought, Mu Yi picked up his phone again.

After Mu Yi had eaten and drunk his fill, he stared at today's expenditure of 353 yuan and fell into contemplation.

"Or maybe I'll go buy lottery tickets tomorrow to test my luck with wealth?"

Mu Yi scratched his head; since obtaining Zongwang, his expenses seemed a bit too large, and if this continued, his little treasury would likely run dry.

"Zongwang Prompt: Your inner qi has increased, inner qi upper limit +1, current inner qi 6/6."

Mu Yi felt he still needed to eat, and his appetite might keep growing.

"Never mind, we'll cross that bridge when we get there…"

After thinking for a few minutes, Mu Yi decided to slack off; he figured he'd be fine for a while, and tomorrow he'd swap those burgers for rice, steamed buns and vegetables, which should save a bit more.

What matters most right now is to grind on Zongwang!

As long as he has the fighting power of a compatriot of the motherland, does he still need to worry about a little money?

Night fell.

Mu Yi sat at his desk, combined the fragmentary information he currently possessed, and made a perhaps not yet mature "career plan."

It included training the body, eating and drinking one's fill, and clocking in for work in the Goblin Disaster‑Simple Difficulty dungeon at the set time each day.

In his current understanding, the profession of warrior leans toward combat when one lacks a great power, but it is mostly idealistic.

Although bodily strengthening still follows basic energy laws, many things—including swordsmanship mastery—are overly idealistic, even just a feeling.

This leads to the warrior's career path being a chaotic mess, with too many ways to approach it.

And for now, all Mu Yi can try to master is Military Formation—simply the brute‑force route.

"Maybe I should try clearing it without using my Elite Talent?" A new idea popped into Mu Yi's mind.

No matter how you look at it, Elite Talent is like a time bomb—powerful indeed, but one slip and it self‑destructs; Mu Yi doesn't want to experience that loss of reason again.

"They're just a bunch of weak goblin chickens; I should be able to handle them, right?" Mu Yi thought confidently.

After all, he's cleared it before, so the difficulty probably feels about the same!