It wasn't a long walk back to his 'home' by any means. Jin Chenxi even in his usual starved condition he was more than able to walk from the market area of the city back to the slums with relative ease. In his current condition, however? beaten and broken, it would be a challenge.

Well, it was a challenge Jin Chenxi was more than willing to take pain was a constant companion of his and he was more than willing to take a walk with it if it meant not dying in a dirt alley.

He made sure to stay away from the main streets, however. The guards wouldn't take well to a blood-soaked dirty beggar boy limping down the main street, scaring the honest citizens. They'd probably gut him like a fish.

It took twenty minutes longer than usual to get back to his shoddy shed of a home.

 But it didn't matter what it looked like really.

This damp shed in a dark corner of the slums was still the safest place in the world available, to him at least.

Jin Chenxi stepped into the shed a smile on his face, a smile that hasn't left his face since he awoke even though all the pain.

He could finally cultivate, for the first time in two years he could rise and walk the path again. And it was still morning.

Sitting down in the best lotus position he could manage; he began to think.

There was an infinite number of paths that he could walk down. Most of them he couldn't even imagine.

There was only one path that he would avoid entirely. His old path the path that the Jin family forged through many generations of genius sacrificing themselves so their descendants could prosper.

No, that path had failed. Jin Chenxi would walk a different path, his path.

At that thought, an almost manic grin blossomed on his face.

"my own path huh," Jin Chenxi said quietly to himself.

"I like the sound of that"

And so Jin Chenxi began to breathe and his Meridians responded allowing the Qi in the surrounding in.

Jin Chenxi may technically have been at the peak of the foundation realm, his muscles and organs had all been reformed with the aid of Qi, after all.

But they were starved without a constant supply of Qi.

So, his internal organs and muscles had deteriorated, it was a slow process but if his Meridians hadn't healed today, and instead in another two or three years he would have started to atrophy.

In simple terms, though Jin Chenxi was hungry, and the Qi in his surroundings was an all you can eat buffet.

The flood gates were opened, and the surrounding Qi rushed into him. The difference was immediate he felt powerful, it was an intoxicating feeling.

It was understandable truly why most cultivators are violent brutes or obsessive training nuts.

The rush he felt from the Qi rushing around his Meridians powering his starved body demanding that he move to demand that he use it.

It took all the willpower had to regain control of the Qi flooding his system he needed to brake though right now.

And to do that he needed control.

Jin Chenxi began to cycle the raging Qi in his system attempting to wrestle control.

Though with his missing arm it would be impossible to complete a full cycle he would make do.

Time flowed on as he sat there slowly calming the wild Qi hours upon hours must have past until as day became night a small amount of Qi flowed into the Middle Dantian.

Jin Chenxi's eyes opened an unnatural glow emitting from his molten gold eyes an exhausted smile on his face and sweat drenching his form.

He had done it.

The first step. The Internal realm. The realm of control.