Body Cultivation Hurts - Chapter 19

He’d expected a nice bonus from the system, but what Nathan found waiting for him when he checked the terminal in Googee’s shop exceeded his expectations.

Achievements

Region Boss defeated.

Solo kill.

Within first week of initiation.

Congratulations!

Total Points Awarded: 200,000

~

Selling the region boss’s corpse had got him an extra 40,000. With what he’d been awarded when the communist had attacked him, he had over 278,000 points. There was even a bonus 5,000 from killing the salamander boss. He’d never expected he’d have so much this early on. It was so unexpected that he spent the next hour exploring the system store.

What he found wasn’t surprising, but the time wasn’t wasted. Any upgrades that might improve his physique were simply far too expensive or it was far too early to make use of them. After a person’s initial evolution, that’s just the way it was. It would take the system more energy to make the improvements, so they cost more. There were also items that could help him, but he decided against spending the points until he needed them. Which would be soon.

He'd planned on doing some training with Kyle at the end of the week anyway. With the extra points, he could afford a larger cultivation chamber and invite more people. He immediately thought of the Takao Clan and Master Ma. Once he had the Contact System unlocked, he was going to reach out to some of the people he was already used to training with, and a few others. He might as well turn it into a large training camp.

The last stage of Body Cultivation required something very specific for nearly all forms of cultivation. That was why the timing was perfect. It would give him a few days to temper himself with poisons and get to large success. Then…

He decided to send Yuma Takao a message with the general details of what he was planning with a formal invitation attached. He had no doubt they’d be able to build a firm foundation without him. With his help, not only would it be thorough, but they could do it in record time.

He started listing a few famous American mixed martial artist, grapplers, and athletes he knew would become rankers that he also knew were descent people. He almost considered unlocking the Contact System right away but decided against it. Everything in its own time.

Just because he didn’t make any major purchases didn’t stop him from leaving with a few things from Googee’s shop. She’d sent the poison sacks directly to his Personal Chambers, with a plethora of other poisons he’d soon temper himself with. He had a new set of clothes made of fire-resistant materials. His top was a sleeveless shirt, and bottoms were athletic shorts. He still had a dual pack that covered his back and front. It was time to head home, but not to rest. His cultivation wouldn’t advance by itself.

***

Standing in his Personal Chambers in nothing but boxer briefs, Nathan thought back to the old world before making his purchase. He’d been disconnected from it for more than ten years, even if he’d been brought back. That didn’t mean he’d forgotten the horrors of cancer and radiation treatment. He’d had a grandfather who’d gone through it, but that was a distant memory. Now that the technology existed to make cancer a thing of the past, he couldn’t help but feeling a little morose.

“Purchase Radiation Tempering.”

His surroundings faded and he appeared in a dimly lit room. There were vents covering each wall. He was basically standing in a man-sized microwave. It wasn’t designed to cook him, however. Only subject him to radiation evenly throughout the body, affecting every organ, leaving him with a major case of radiation poisoning without killing him outright.

There was no chime or push of a button. An electrostatic hum surrounded him. At first, he felt nothing. Then a little heat. The radiation chamber finished its job before the headache came.

The weakness and trouble breathing came on all at once. He didn’t even realize he’d been transported back to his room before he found himself on his knees leaning against the toilet and emptying his stomach.

Crawling to the shower, he turned it to a medium heat and slowly pulled himself into a meditative position. Then he did the only thing he could and focused on his breathing technique. He sat there for hours. His biggest challenge was forcing himself not to lose consciousness. The danger of so much radiation went beyond his exposure to the Putrid Undead Cannibal’s poison. Radiation could affect your very DNA, making recovery before Initiation nearly impossible. Even now, if he did recover but stopped advancing his cultivation, his lifespan would be cut drastically. That was the point of tempering. To break down every part of the body then repair it with the help of qi. Why should his DNA get a break?

As soon as he started to feel a little more energized, he slowly forced himself to stand. It was only the rich qi he was breathing in that allowed him to make it to his feet. He was far from being out of danger.

Turning the shower off, it took him more than ten minutes just to dry himself off with a towel. He considered finding a place on the mat to stretch, but knew if he sat it would be too easy simply to fall back and rest. This stage of tempering didn’t just require him to be subjected to poison. It required physical exertion while recovering.

He made it to a heavy bag, leaning heavily against it. He thought better of putting on gloves to protect his hands and wrists. Breathing hurt. Rolling his hands into fists, he took in a deep breath, then threw his first punch.

It was a left hook to the body. He was weaker than even before initiation. Then he threw a right. He kept them low, but explosive. He then breathed and let his body recover. There were many seconds between each strike.

The more he exerted himself, the long his recovery would take. If he wanted to get the most out of this experience, then he’d have to push himself as hard as he could.

The memory of death drove him to push himself off the bag. Taking the right stance left him winded, but he didn’t stop there. His shin kick to the lower segment of the bag had little power, but his form was solid. Still in damp boxer briefs, he threw another kick.

He kept it even, striking as often with his left side and his right. All he threw were power shots. He was working his body, not perfecting technique.

The more he moved, the more qi flowed through him. Breathing was difficult on its with radiation sickness. The exercise opened his lungs up a little, but the difficulty only increased.

Half an hour later, his limbs felt like jelly. Striking was a decent full body workout, but there were some muscle groups it worked better than others. He headed toward the kettlebell rack. He didn’t think he had the fine motor skills to load a barbell, so he went with the next best thing. The heaviest kettlebells were on the ground by the rack, but he wasn’t sure what his body could take. If he pulled something, it would only make this process that much harder.

Starting with a 50-pound kettlebell, he bent low and dragged it back so he wouldn’t smack his head on the rack. He formed up and did his first deadlift. He found himself dizzy as he reached the peak of the lift. At first, he didn’t even do full deadlifts, but reached just down past his knees to do the Roman variety.

He did five reps before almost losing his balance. Sitting the weight back down, he rested with his hands braced against the rack. When he was ready to move again, he left the 50-pound kettlebell where it was and moved over to the 100. Neither weight would he consider heavy for this exercise before initiation. Gripping a kettlebell with two hands could often be more difficult than lifting the weight. These had a wide grip handle, so his fingers weren’t scrunched together.

He was able to do a full set of ten this time. The first weight was too light to make the balance easier. By the time he was done, he was completely sapped of strength. He leaned heavy against the rack again, until he could move and dragged his feet back over to the heavy bag.

This continued going back and forth throughout the night. As he recovered from the radiation, he became more active. He lifted heavier weights, and soon added a variety of Olympic lifts to his circuit.

Once his exhaustion improved, he moved on to ground exercises for grappling and bodyweight exercises with little rest between them. It was still a few hours from morning when he let himself lay down on the mats. He didn’t bother getting cleaned up to sleep on his bed. He just made sure he was close to his qi ventilator. Despite everything he’d been through the day before, he only slept four hours.

When he woke up, he was much closer to the sixth stage of the body realm. It would take more than radiation poisoning to force his advancement, however.

The trouble with poison was that there were far more things that could kill a person than most might realize. When asked, most people think of a chemical compound or drugs, but even water can be considered a poison in the right amount. Dosage matters. That’s only the beginning.

There are organic poisons like venom, the kind secreted from animals, and toxins, those from plants, and to confuse it even further the terms can overlap in meaning depending on the context of how it’s used. There are also inorganics, elements, biological, and synthetic poison types. To get the most use of his tempering, Nathan needed to make use of them all.

As with the Putrid Undead Cannibal’s poison, what he needed was the right dosage of most every poison to the level of toxicity, but not so much to make them deadly. There were also the different body systems poisons affected. The most dangerous were those that attacked the nervous system, because too much would make it impossible for him to practice his breathing technique. Those that attacked the cardiovascular system were the most morbid because of their tendency to make a person bleed uncontrollably and vomit blood. Just as deadly were those that attacked the digestive system, the kidneys, and liver. However, they were also the easiest to recover from because he didn’t lose his ability to take in qi.

There was a reason he had chosen radiation sickness first. It permeated every system of the body. His recovery had strengthened every part of him. Next, he would move on to poisons toxic to the kidneys, liver, and digestive system. He should recover much quicker than before, but there were a lot of them—everything from dangerous amounts of aspirin and ibuprofen, to arsenic and alcohol poisoning.

He relied on the system to calculate doses. What’s more, most of these he’d have to swallow. Before anything, he took a nutrition pill. Unlike dietary science before initiation, the Monarch had brought with him much more advanced tech. This pill would supply him with what his body needed for the next couple days without him having to eat. It wouldn’t exactly make him feel full, but he wouldn’t have to worry. He chugged a few mouthfuls of water before taking the pill. Then he started to work out. He would let his body digest the pill over the next hour before getting started. He didn’t want to expel it from his stomach before it was able to do its magic.

When the time had come, he swallowed the first poison tablet the system had prepared for him. He hurried over to the heavy bag before its effects kicked in. This was going to hurt.

There was a reason he hadn’t eaten breakfast. He was dry-heaving before he’d recovered from the first poison. The one thing a nutrition pill couldn’t do was replace liquids, so he was careful to take in enough water and electrolytes before swallowing the second poison.

His recovery speed for these poisons that directly attacked certain bodily systems was much faster than the all-encompassing radiation poisoning. The first took him about an hour, then each one that followed took a little less time than the one before it. Outside of vomiting and uncontrollable stomach cramps, he continued his circuit training. The most important thing was to continue his breathing. He’d moved the qi ventilator to his exercise area to give him a better concentration of qi. By noon, he was recovering from most poisons that attacked his organs in ten to fifteen minutes.

It was probably impossible to temper himself with every poison known to man, but that wasn’t necessary either. He just needed to attack each system’s major weaknesses. The qi would take care of the rest.

Later that afternoon, his internal organs had been tempered by dozens of poisons to the point that what should’ve been a toxic level wasn’t enough to affect him. It was time to move on to the cardiovascular system. The Putrid Undead Cannibal’s poison had done this already, but there was still more for him to do.

And so, he made clinical use of the system in a way it likely wasn’t designed to be used. The difference this time was that most of the poisons were injected into his blood stream. A few could be ingested, but the rest were either sprayed directly over the surface of his skin, or he entered a system-made gas chamber.

Suffice it to say, working out when your cardiovascular system is being ravaged is nigh impossible. He had to make sure his blood cell count was high enough before administering the next poison between bouts. Thankfully, his recovery speed improved exponentially with each dose. Before he was halfway through this poison type, he broke through to the sixth stage.

He’d calculated that the nutrition pill wouldn’t last the week it was said to last, but it had been twenty-four hours and the system was already telling him to take another. The reason, his body had used it up to rebuild his body so many times.

He allowed himself an hour of rest as his body digested the pill. He’d just broken through, so sleep was out of the question, but he still made himself lie down as energy flowed through him. It was the rest he needed. Not for his body, but for his mind.

His body tempering hadn’t been nearly at this level in his first life. He’d done enough research to temper with neurotoxin, cytotoxin, and hemotoxin, but that was the extent. For most, that would’ve been enough, but sufficient wasn’t good enough. Not this time. Soon the insanity would be over. It would take an entirely different kind of insanity for him to go from large success to the Blood Realm.

When his time to let the nutrition pill digest was finally done, he got up and had the system port him back to the gas chamber for the next poison.