Outer Disciples no longer needed to attend morning lessons, and their Spirit Fields wouldn't be assigned until the afternoon.
Xiao Chen slept until he woke naturally, then opened the *Qi Nourishing and Breathing Technique* and decided to try cultivating with it once.
He first performed a Minor Circulation of the *Basic Breathing Technique* to get a feel for it. Then, following the new Heart Method, he drew the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi into his body and attempted to condense Magical Power.
Unexpectedly, the moment the Spiritual Qi began to flow, Xiao Chen felt as if he had perceived a completely different world.
A massive amount of Spiritual Qi surged into his Meridians. The rush was so fierce it caught him completely off guard.
'The effect is this good!'
For the first time in his life, Xiao Chen felt the surrounding Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi was so abundant—easily more than ten times what he was used to.
More importantly, the speed at which the Spiritual Qi flowed through his Meridians was also clearly and extraordinarily fast.
Despite the disadvantage of it being his first time using this technique and being unfamiliar with the new route, a Minor Circulation that should have taken an hour, he completed in less than ten minutes.
And he even felt that this speed was far from his limit. With practice, he could be at least thirty percent faster.
In other words, the practical effect of the Featherweight Augment's tenfold cultivation speed was that it allowed him to rapidly cycle his Cultivation Technique ten times in the same amount of time it took others to do it once.
'This enhancement is brutally simple.'
In this state of high-speed cultivation, Xiao Chen could feel himself making tangible progress.
By 1:00 PM, Xiao Chen had already cycled the *Qi Nourishing and Breathing Technique* a full hundred times, completely familiarizing himself with this new Cultivation Technique.
He had converted all of his original Magical Power.
'I heard before that it usually takes the other senior brothers ten days to finish converting their original Magical Power.'
'But it only took me half a day. By my calculation, that's twenty times the efficiency.'
'Could I actually be a genius?'
Xiao Chen was in disbelief as he felt his brand-new Magical Power.
It wasn't until he went to the Spirit Fields that afternoon that he realized the reason: the workload for Outer Disciples was much heavier.
Servant Disciples were only responsible for two mu of Spirit Fields each because of their limited abilities.
Outer Disciples, on the other hand, each had to manage five mu of Spirit Fields to provide the Sect with various types of Spirit Rice or Low Tier Spirit Medicine.
Only by becoming an Inner Sect Disciple in the future could one be free of these mundane tasks and focus solely on cultivation.
Under normal circumstances, a disciple at the fourth layer of Qi Refining would only have about six strands of Magical Power in their body.
Casting the Small Cloud Rain Skill five times would nearly deplete it, so the conversion process was naturally very slow.
This also had a significant impact on their daily cultivation.
But now, with his tenfold cultivation speed, he had a time advantage, avoiding having his cultivation efficiency dragged down by work.
In reality, the benefits he gained far exceeded just a tenfold increase in cultivation speed.
Moreover, after spending two hours tending to the five mu of Spirit Fields, Xiao Chen sat down on the spot to meditate and restore his Magical Power.
Sure enough, because his speed of absorbing Spiritual Qi had increased, even the recovery speed of his Magical Power had become faster.
The side effects of this Augment were far more powerful than its literal description implied.
For the next two months, Xiao Chen immersed himself in the world of cultivation, unable to pull himself away.
Unlike the other disciples, who wasted a great deal of time every day on things like tending their Spirit Fields and recovering Magical Power, Xiao Chen's time management was frighteningly efficient. He could even find time to cycle his Cultivation Technique once during breaks while inspecting his Spirit Fields.
Under these circumstances, he could feel tangible progress every day. He was so addicted to cultivating that he couldn't even be bothered to interact with the other disciples in his division.
As a result, it wasn't until Steward Chen gathered everyone for a routine experience-sharing session that Xiao Chen realized there were actually quite a few people in the Second Division.
"Today is our division's regular summer exchange meeting. If you have any cultivation problems, feel free to discuss them."
Steward Chen was young and promising, also holding the position of Instructor for the Second Division.
He had taken the initiative to change the public Daoist Skill lecture, held once every six months, into a division-wide exchange meeting held once every quarter.
He did this to help the division's disciples speed up their cultivation, striving to nurture stronger disciples and earn rewards from the Sect.
Participating in such an experience-sharing meeting for the first time, Xiao Chen had originally planned to study hard.
But as he listened, he realized something seemed off.
He wouldn't have even been aware of many of the problems if the other disciples hadn't brought them up.
For example, the issue of Spiritual Qi dissipating. This was because cultivation is like rowing a boat upstream; if you don't advance, you fall behind.
The Spiritual Qi absorbed into the Dantian on the first day would dissipate until it was almost gone by the time you woke up the next morning if it wasn't refined into the Meridians in time.
Starting the refinement over was a hassle and a waste of time.
Because of this, everyone had come up with various methods, adjusting their time allocation during cultivation to balance the processes of absorption and Refinement.
But Xiao Chen was different. It only took him a Quarter Hour to fill his Dantian with Spiritual Qi, after which he could focus solely on refining it.
The other problems were more or less the same.
In short, his efficient cultivation process masked almost all of these transitional issues, so much so that after listening for a long time, Xiao Chen found he couldn't use a single one of their techniques.
Others might advance ten zhang in a day and feel terrible even if they only regressed five zhang at night.
He, on the other hand, advanced a hundred zhang in a day. Even if he regressed ten zhang at night, he was still far ahead.
Fortunately, Xiao Chen's time wasn't entirely wasted.
As the exchange meeting neared its end, a senior brother mentioned that he had recently tried taking a Qi Nourishing Pill to break through to the next Realm, and the effect was remarkable.
He also introduced a technique for better absorbing the Elixir's effects.
Coincidentally, Xiao Chen still had the Qi Nourishing Pills he had gotten from the Jiang Family.
After returning, he followed the senior brother's method and took the Qi Nourishing Pills consecutively. As expected, there was some effect.
Although he didn't experience the rumored threefold increase in cultivation efficiency, which left him a little disappointed, on the ninth night, while performing his routine cultivation before sleep, inspiration struck. With the help of the Elixir's power, he successfully broke through to the fifth layer of Qi Refining.
In just two and a half months, he had achieved what took other Cultivators two and a half years.
Another two and a half months passed like this.
Xiao Chen not only stabilized his Cultivation but even felt he was already approaching the sixth layer of Qi Refining.
So, he went to the Merit Hall on his own initiative and spent the high price of five Spirit Stones to redeem a bottle of Qi Nourishing Pills.
Then, on his way back, he attended the evening's autumn exchange meeting.
Xiao Chen had no intention of hiding his breakthrough.
The main reason was that he didn't yet know any Concealing Breath Skills.
As Xiao Chen walked into the division hall with the Cultivation of a fifth-layer Qi Refining disciple, Steward Chen, being a Foundation Establishment Cultivator, noticed it immediately.
He shot to his feet with a SWISH. "Xiao Chen! When did you break through?"
"How could you break through?"
"No, I mean, how could you break through so quickly? Did you also find some kind of Treasure of Heaven and Earth?"
When Steward Chen shouted like that, the other disciples of the division also noticed Xiao Chen.
Instantly, their mouths fell open in astonishment.
This Junior Brother Xiao, who had just introduced himself as a newcomer at the last exchange meeting, had actually broken through to the fifth layer of Qi Refining in just half a year?
Everyone was deeply shocked. One by one, they scanned Xiao Chen from head to toe, as if they were looking at a monster.