What to do if you find out that you are a cannon fodder in a cultivation novel?

The classroom was silent. Everyone was reading at their desk. Teacher Wei was sitting at the tea table sipping some of her favorite tea. She was facing the door that she left open to let the breeze in. This afternoon felt like a pleasant cool summer day. 

It did not take me long to finish the beginner book. I took some notes about the position of secondary meridians that I did not know about. I would need them to improve my night cultivation sessions. For now, I chose to read the intermediary book. While the beginner book was like an overview, the intermediary book explained each section in more detail and added a few more concepts. Some I understood right away and some took a bit longer to place. For those, I had to recall my past memories to try to figure it out by myself or ask teacher Wei

I want my spiritual energy to flow constantly like blood flowing into my veins. However, blood moves thanks to my beating heart and the veins are its already defined path. To do so, I had to set everything from scratch; a path, orientation, speed, even the thickness of the spiritual veins. As kids starting cultivation, we do all that intuitively but not perfectly. Eventually, our bodies get used to it and the spiritual energy would move automatically on its own until we changed something during breakthroughs. 

Bai’s family technique focused on purifying spiritual energy. Only when the spiritual energy was pure enough that a path could be set. In my first life, my spiritual energy was very pure and concentrated around my heart. By the time I had to create a path, I was too old to get an effective one so I reached a bottleneck. It was the weakness of this technique that the Bai family bypassed by taking some high quality pills that I was never able to get.

The usual cultivation technique would focus on creating a path first than increasing spiritual vein thickness and speed. The purifying part comes at the end. It was known that removing impurities accumulated over time with this technique was extremely difficult. Most rich cultivators would use detoxifying pills, spiritual water, and arrays to purify their spiritual energy. However,  that was less effective than Bai’s family technique.

Whichever method was used would mean spending a lot of money on pills and other aids to improve in levels. This was why poor cultivators could not increase their level as fast as wealthy ones. Alas, hard work, genius abilities or wealth were not enough in this world. You need all three and a lot of luck to reach the top.

As of now, I knew how to purify my spiritual energy effectively and, luckily, I was still young enough to create a path. The best way was to start with the main path, increase its thickness slowly over time then add secondary routes following what I learned today¹

about meridian main and secondary paths. I had to read a lot more before starting though. Meditating at the Yu residence would not be safe anyway so renting one of those cultivation rooms or learn how to set protection arrays were one of my priorities too

Wait. What did I say before? 

I want my spiritual energy to flow constantly like blood flowing into my veins. However, blood moves thanks to my beating heart and the veins are its already defined path. To do so, I had to set everything from scratch; a path, orientation, speed, even the thickness of the spiritual veins.

I wrote down that part and started doodling. What if I had something like a beating heart for cultivation? An engine that could circulate spiritual energy automatically on a set speed and rotation. This would save the initial time for my body to get used to moving my energy without meditation.

How about adding a purifier to that engine similar to Bai's technique? It would be used to purify the spiritual energy during rotations... Mmm. Meridian's path passed by the Dantian to replenish the spiritual roots. If I used the Dantian like a heart, my roots would be the engine…  food for thoughts²Author theory: Dantian contain the spiritual roots while meridians are the paths for spiritual energy. 

For now let’s read the last book. I still had a lot of time before the end of the school…

The advanced book was even easier to understand. I deduced most of its content after reading the first two books so I went back to them in case I missed something. I took my time redrawing the Dantian and meridians path adding the secondary ones too. Then I used a spell to make multiple copies to doodle on top later on. This was a spell I learned from master Huo in my first life. It was very easy to use and very helpful!

By the time I had my desk cleaned, - it was full of discarded paper - it was time to leave. Tomorrow was the school's weekly day off and I was unsure if I should go to the library to deal with my increasing 'to do list' that day. Let’s decide later but what was sure was that I would sleep in tomorrow morning!