The stealth-tracking expert Wolf Scott may be dead, but there’s still a chance, however slim, that Duncan and Grace Foster might stumble upon his hiding place by sheer luck. The odds are low, but it’s a risk that can’t be ignored. Only by restoring his battle energy and stamina to their peak as quickly as possible could he hope to resolve this crisis. Only strength is the true foundation for survival in this world. If he possessed gold-level cultivation, he wouldn’t have to fear anyone at all.

……

Chapter Three: The Theory of Battle Energy

Once William Reed’s breathing slowed and deepened, his bodily functions began to operate in an orderly fashion. Through breathing, he extracted energy stored as sugar and fat from the food he’d consumed, replenishing his stamina.

According to the theory of battle energy in the Tianlan Empire, stamina is widely stored in every life factor within the human body. It is innate, and serves as the most direct source of power for all human activities and movements, including running, fighting, breathing, heartbeat, and so on.

Stamina can be gradually increased through continuous training. Whenever it is depleted, the body automatically converts stored sugars and fats into stamina through breathing. During regular meals, aside from the energy needed to sustain life, any surplus is converted into sugar and fat for temporary storage.

In this way, a perfect cycle of human activity is formed.

But this is not enough—far from it. This alone only makes one an ordinary person. Stamina, though it can be increased through training, is still too limited. A single battle or a bout of intense running can quickly burn it away. Moreover, as stamina increases and the body grows stronger, it is consumed even faster.

It’s true that breathing can convert backup energy, but the conversion rate is too slow to meet demand.

Thus, battle energy emerged. Battle energy is a higher-level extension of stamina, existing in a gaseous form and usually stored in the dantian, or “sea of energy,” in the lower abdomen. When needed, it can rapidly spread throughout the body, ignite, and transform into a massive amount of stamina, granting the body explosive power. Because it enables people to unleash great combat strength, it is called battle energy.

After thousands of years of research on the continent, the understanding of battle energy has become very clear.

The source of battle energy is not the heavens and earth, nor gods or demons, but the human body itself. The body is composed of countless life factors, with stamina hidden within them, and, interestingly, existing as individual units. Scholars of battle energy theory call these stamina factors.

Through a special breathing-based cultivation method, humans extract these latent stamina factors, and by activating the life factors, combine three stamina factors into a complex battle energy factor. These battle energy factors are then stored in the sea of energy.

A large collection of battle energy factors is called battle energy. Battle energy can ignite instantly, forming a surge of stamina factors that give the body tremendous explosive power.

Moreover, although battle energy is extracted from life factors, it can circulate within the body and resonate at key points, burning and stimulating the life factors in return, thereby strengthening them and allowing the body to continually break through its limits and grow ever stronger.

Thus, a truly perfect internal cycle is formed. Humans absorb energy from food to sustain life, store surplus energy as sugar and fat, convert sugar and fat into stamina through breathing, extract stamina via life factors and condense it into battle energy, which in turn strengthens the life factors. As the life factors grow stronger, they can convert energy even faster and make the sea of energy more robust, allowing it to hold more battle energy.

This is the most basic process of cultivating battle energy, and the fundamental reason why humans grow stronger through cultivation.

Of course, what’s described above is only the most basic, most primitive form of battle energy cultivation. Humans have long since learned to incorporate certain natural elements from the world into their battle energy, causing it to undergo qualitative changes and become even more powerful.

The family’s inherited battle energy technique that William Reed practiced, the Three Transformations of Heavenly Thunder, fuses the free-floating thunder elements in the world into battle energy, forming thunder-attributed battle energy.

Sitting cross-legged in the snow pit, he circulated the Three Transformations of Heavenly Thunder technique over and over. With each deep, slow breath, he combined his stamina with the omnipresent thunder elements, forming thunder battle energy and merging it into his sea of energy.

Heavy snow fell, and in just three hours, the snow on the ground had thickened by more than half a foot.

Boom~

William Reed burst out of the snow, sending it flying as he leapt up. At this moment, the energy around him was as sharp and vigorous as an exposed blade. In his pitch-black, bright eyes, faint sparks of electricity flickered. All his exhaustion vanished, replaced by a sense of boundless power at his disposal.

Of course, this was just an illusion—a result of his improved cultivation and the inability to fully restrain his surging energy.

A feeling of exhilaration surged in William Reed’s chest, and he couldn’t help but want to laugh out loud. Life-and-death trials truly are the best way to cultivate. In just these three short hours of recovery, not only had he returned to his peak, but he had also made further progress beyond his previous limits.