A Super-Efficient Cultivation Method

Hou Xingyue was panting heavily, his cheeks flushed and sweat pouring down his face, looking as though he had just finished a desperate sprint. His eyes were red and severely bloodshot, framed by heavy dark circles that made it screamingly obvious he hadn’t slept a wink.

Seeing his ghostly appearance, Lin Shao was startled. Fearing that the boy had wrecked his own meridians, he asked hurriedly, “Are you alright?”

Hou Xingyue nodded, then shook his head. Having run too fast, he was still gasping for air, unable to form a coherent sentence.

Nodding and shaking your head? Are you okay or not?!

Lin Shao hurried inside, poured a cup of cold water, and handed it to him. Hou Xingyue practically inhaled it, finally catching his breath. In a trembling voice, he whispered, “Boss Lin… I… I broke through…”

“Broke through what?” Lin Shao asked. Seeing the boy’s sheer panic, his mind briefly wandered to a much weirder, more physical interpretation of “breaking through a passage.”

Hou Xingyue swallowed hard and whimpered, “My spiritual meridians.”

“Oh, you opened a spiritual meridian. That’s a good thing.” Lin Shao offered a casual compliment. He remembered that he had opened his own fifth meridian last night, and he hadn’t lost his mind over it.

Kids these days. Way too restless.

“Is it… really a good thing?” Hou Xingyue’s racing heart slowly began to settle. Because the situation was so utterly bizarre, he had genuinely thought he was dying. But seeing Boss Lin’s completely nonchalant, casual demeanor, it became clear that this wasn’t an issue at all to a master.

“Of course it’s a good thing. Since when is opening a meridian a bad thing?” Lin Shao chuckled, taking a sip of his own water.

Hou Xingyue scratched his head and let out a bitter, awestruck laugh. “As expected, everything was within Senior Lin’s calculations. I’m just too pathetic. I was so excited last night I couldn’t sleep. After all, opening all Twelve Primary Meridians in a single night… I’ve never even heard of such a thing in legends.”

“Pfft—Cough, cough!“

A mouthful of water choked straight into Lin Shao’s windpipe. He coughed violently, frantically waving a hand to assure a panicked Hou Xingyue that he was fine. Wiping his chin, his eyes widened. “You opened how many?!”

“All Twelve Primary Meridians are completely open,” Hou Xingyue replied honestly. “Excluding my single innate spirit meridian, I opened eleven of them.”

Eleven… Lin Shao’s eyelids twitched uncontrollably. It took him ten grueling days of intense focus to clear a single meridian. Hou Xingyue had cleared eleven in a single night. This gap was getting a little hard to accept emotionally.

“Boss Lin, is my situation… normal?” Hou Xingyue asked weakly.

Normal? Is that even a real question?! Lin Shao barely suppressed a curse in his head. A guy with a baseline talent of exactly one meridian clears the remaining eleven major pathways—excluding the Eight Extraordinary Meridians—in a single night. If you walked out onto the street and told someone that, twelve out of ten people would think it was a joke. Two hundred percent of humanity would call you a liar!

He knew the “Knowledge Pursues Man” method was highly efficient, but this was breaking the laws of physics!

This time, it was Lin Shao’s turn to take a deep, stabilizing breath. He knew Hou Xingyue had no reason to lie. If he said all twelve were open, then all twelve were open. Not a single one missing.

He’d have to wait for Mu Li to wake up and ask her. This reality was too absurd for him to make a judgment call.

“What exactly happened last night? Did you feel anything strange while using the technique?” Lin Shao asked, unable to contain his curiosity.

Hou Xingyue looked back with a shudder. “It was an incredibly eerie feeling. The moment I recited the chant and entered a meditative state, I felt like my entire body was covered in insects. Like microscopic caterpillars crawling all over my skin. It was intensely itchy, stinging, and deeply revolting.”

“To be honest, I was terrified. I wanted to stop halfway through. But then I remembered what you said about leaving no regrets, Boss Lin. I told myself: ‘If you can’t even endure a few bugs, what right do you have to pursue the Young Miss?’ So, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stay still.”

“Then, I felt those insects burrowing straight through my pores into my flesh. It felt like being pricked by thousands of tiny needles all at once. The cumulative pain almost made me pass out.”

“But once I survived that wave and they got inside, it actually became comfortable. It turned out those ‘insects’ were the Heaven and Earth Origin Qi itself. The moment they entered my body, they didn’t even need my guidance. They automatically gathered into a massive torrent, surged along my innate meridian, and condensed into True Qi. Then, they violently slammed into the blockages in my other meridians, blasting them wide open. The exact moment a blockage shattered felt incredibly euphoric—like a severely stuffed nose suddenly clearing up instantly.”

“After that, it was a cycle: a wave of needle-like pain as the bugs entered, followed by a wave of pure ecstasy as a meridian cleared. My consciousness became foggy. The influx of Qi and the breaking of blockages were all handled entirely on autopilot by the technique. By the time I snapped out of it, it was the middle of the night. I checked my internal state, and all Twelve Primary Meridians had been cleared and transformed into active spiritual paths.”

Hou Xingyue offered a weak, tired smile. “I was ecstatic, but I was also terrified. I genuinely thought I wouldn’t live to see the morning sun. I didn’t dare sleep, and frankly, my adrenaline wouldn’t let me anyway. I just sat there until dawn and ran straight here.”

Listening to the description—especially the part about insects burrowing into the flesh—Lin Shao felt a cold chill run down his spine. He knew exactly what those “insects” were: active, rogue knowledge latched onto the Origin Qi. Right now, a massive colony of sentient, parasitic knowledge was nesting inside Hou Xingyue’s body. Just thinking about it was deeply unsettling.

According to Mu Li, as long as he didn’t try to break through to Level 4, it shouldn’t cause fatal harm. Still, caution was paramount.

Lin Shao looked at him seriously. “You need to monitor your body very closely.”

Hou Xingyue’s expression turned solemn, and he nodded firmly.

Deciding to leave the heavy technical analysis for Mu Li later, Lin Shao changed the subject, a knowing smirk returning to his face. “So, how did your chat with your Young Miss go last night?”

Instantly, Hou Xingyue’s eyes lit up like stars, his exhaustion momentarily forgotten. “It went amazingly well! I told her I was studying cultivation techniques under you, and that I had learned the ‘Knowledge Pursues Man’ method. Just like you predicted, she was incredibly fascinated! We discussed it for a very long time. Since joining the pavilion, I’ve never spoken that many words to her in a single day!”

“When she found out I was using such a dangerous method, she was genuinely worried about me. She strictly ordered me to be careful. What’s more, she explicitly told me to contact her at the exact same time tonight to give her an update on how it feels to cultivate with it!”

Lin Shao nodded approvingly. “Well, you’re going to give her a massive surprise tonight.”

Thinking about how shocked the icy Young Miss would be when he reported his current status, the corners of Hou Xingyue’s mouth curved up uncontrollably.

“Boss Lin, let me clean up the shop first. Once the Boss’s Wife wakes up, I’ll head out and buy breakfast for you both!” Full of endless gratitude toward Lin Shao, Hou Xingyue threw himself into his chores, wiping down the counters with absolute meticulousness, ensuring not a single speck of dust remained.

Lin Shao judged the time by the angle of the sun, then walked over and used his foot to nudge the fat parrot sleeping soundly under the desk. Ignoring its angry, vulgar squawking, he ordered it to go upstairs and wake Mu Li.

“Don’t worry, it’s fine,” Mu Li said calmly after listening to Hou Xingyue’s report. “As long as you do not attempt to break through to Level 4, no major problems will arise.”

Hou Xingyue bowed gratefully, grabbed a double-layered insulated thermal lunchbox, and eagerly headed out to buy breakfast.

Lin Shao watched his retreating back and let out a low whistle, deeply amused. “Talk about a broken cultivation method. What do you mean ‘helping him catch up to ordinary cultivators’? Do ordinary cultivators possess even a tenth of his speed right now?”

He turned around, preparing to tease Mu Li, but stopped when he noticed that the unblindfolded Mu Li had her brows knit into a tight, rare frown.

“This isn’t right,” she muttered softly to herself. “It is entirely too fast.”