Only when a cultivator breaks through to the mid-stage can they give rise to a spiritual sea in their mind, birthing spiritual sense. Spiritual sense is the foundation of a cultivator’s strength—whether using spells or activating magical artifacts, all require the control of spiritual sense. At the mid-stage of Spirit Gathering, you can already rely on various artifacts to transcend the realm of ordinary humans. From the mid-stage onward, the spiritual energy you absorb into your body basically no longer needs to temper your flesh; you only need to continuously condense and strengthen your spiritual sea, catalyzing more spiritual sense.

The purpose of early-stage cultivation is to give the cultivator a somewhat stronger physique, laying the foundation for this path against the heavens. If your body isn’t up to par, you’ll get tired and hungry after just half a day of cultivation? That’s just nonsense.

Most cultivators, once they start cultivating, can go for ten days or half a month at a time, all thanks to the physical foundation built during the early stage of Spirit Gathering.

After the early stage, unless you’re taking the specialized path of body refinement, there’s no need to deliberately temper your body anymore. The dramatic physical transformation that comes with each breakthrough is enough to handle most situations—including not needing to eat, going for years without sleep or rest. As long as you reach a high enough realm, the immense power of heaven and earth during breakthroughs will automatically improve your body to that level.

Although compared to cultivators who specialize in body refinement, your physical quality is still worlds apart, specializing in body refinement is not something ordinary cultivators can pursue. Not only is it difficult, but advancing in realm is extremely hard, and it also requires constantly seeking out all kinds of rare treasures to temper the body, allowing it to absorb and transform. If a body refinement cultivator achieves mastery, their combat power is naturally far more terrifying than that of ordinary cultivators. But all these requirements mean that unless you’re born into great wealth or have extraordinary luck, you simply don’t qualify to walk that path.

What Brian Carter needs to do now is first enter the early stage of Spirit Gathering, using the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to strengthen his body. Once his physique is strong, even if his mental capacity isn’t enough to use spiritual sense for learning, he can still rely on sleepless, tireless effort to tackle all kinds of academic challenges.

With a strong body, he can completely treat these four months as five, six, or even seven months to use!

……

Half an hour later, in the boys’ dormitory of the county’s No. 1 High School, in the empty and quiet dorm room, Brian Carter lying on the bed suddenly opened his eyes and sat up, his body emitting a crisp series of bone cracks.

Clenching his fist, he could even feel that his strength had subtly increased compared to before.

This feeling filled him with emotion.

In his previous life, after obtaining the inheritance of that unknown cultivator and stepping onto this path against the heavens, it took him five years just to get started. If you count the time spent studying the texts of cultivation manuals, it was nearly six years. He had painstakingly explored and experimented alone, taking so many years just to find the right way to get started.

But reliving his life, it only took him half an hour to complete the process of his previous life.

Was this joy or sorrow? He actually didn’t know.

“It’s just the beginning. Next, I still need to stabilize my foundation. At the entry stage, I need to find a quiet place where I won’t be easily disturbed by outside things. Later cultivation can be done anytime, anywhere, but the spiritual energy in the mundane world is too thin… If I were in the Spirit Domain, a few months would be enough for me to reach the mid-stage. Unfortunately, going there now would be suicide.”

Brian Carter’s aptitude isn’t bad, but no matter how good your aptitude is, it depends on the environment. In his previous life, it took him three years to cultivate from entry to the peak of the early stage. If he were in the Spirit Domain, even in a remote area with thin spiritual energy, it would only take a few months at most.

Now he has no ability to go to the Spirit Domain. Wanting to go there is not something ordinary people can achieve.

Since going to the Spirit Domain is impossible, he has to endure this slow pace outside of it. Although he’s helpless, reality doesn’t give him many choices.

Even though he’s living again and knows many things in advance, he actually doesn’t know much about the mundane world, because in his previous life, he spent those years in the mundane world basically closed off and indifferent to the outside world. Later, after entering the Spirit Domain and fighting for years, he inevitably had to interact with people, so he learned quite a few rumors and such. For example, thirty-seven years later, an ancient ruin in the Spirit Domain would be discovered, attracting many true cultivators and above to explore and divide the treasures. This would only be discovered thirty-seven years later. If he went now, he could almost monopolize the treasure land. But the problem is, he can’t go—he doesn’t have the ability to enter the Spirit Domain!

There are many other things like this. The situations are all similar. The treasures he knows of or the events that will happen in the future are mostly within the Spirit Domain.

“Forget it, there’s no point thinking so much. I’d better go eat something to fill my stomach, then spend more time cultivating. This body has just entered the path, and the changes aren’t obvious yet. I still need to absorb more spiritual energy to refine myself.”

After sighing, as soon as Brian Carter got out of bed, a strange thought suddenly flooded his mind.

His expression changed instantly, and he stood there warily, looking around. After more than ten breaths, he suddenly frowned, reached up to hold his forehead, his eyes full of bewilderment.

“What’s going on? Why did such a strange feeling suddenly appear in my mind? This feeling… it’s like a voice is calling me to go somewhere?”

He had just looked around and found no one else nearby, but in his mind, a constant wave of intent was surging, as if someone was calling out to him, urging him to go somewhere.