Chapter 85: Cultivation Engineering
After he woke up and cleaned himself off, Paike was fixated by what he saw in the mirror.
The changes were both more subtle and more extreme than they had been for all the jumps in the first realm of his physical cultivation. Apparently he had been wrong that he was about to take the next step and instead had been on the verge of advancing to the second realm.
Each method of physical cultivation was pretty different, and his stages apparently were big enough jumps that he only needed a few before he was up to the next realm. He had heard of methods like the Gentile Lotus cultivation that might have seven or eight stages in the early realms. Maybe even hundreds in the later realms.
Any of his cultivations could never be considered gentle or gradual. He wasn't elegant, but rather brutal and straightforward. From ripping apart his dantian to progress or crushing things with brute force in his fights, Paike didn't suffer distractions from his progress.
That was part of what had him so confused about what he saw in the mirror. The previous stages had left him bald, with tiles under his skin. This was almost the opposite.
Perhaps it was from his physical cultivation finally matching his spiritual, but he looked more balanced. His hair had grown so he had long flowing black locks that reached just past his shoulders. Almost as noticeable was that his facial features had shifted ever so slightly. His cheekbones were a bit more prominent, his chin just a bit better proportioned. Overall, just a bit more handsome.
His muscles and shoulder width stayed about the same, but he noticed that his waist was more slender, so he adjusted his robes slightly to get them to fit right.
It was as if most of the changes that had come from spending time as a mortal before awakening had been washed away. Even his skin was whiter.
He was still recognizable, but the changes were obvious.