After seeing Elder Mu Wan off, Mu Chen went back to his cultivation room and immediately sat down crossed legged with his sword across his lap, practicing natal breathing. Although the injury he received during his confrontation with Elder Mu Wan was not serious, it was still best to stabilize it first.

Mu Chen's spirit root was damaged, so he could no longer properly sense and control the spiritual qi around him for absorption. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that his sensitivity and control of spiritual qi had dropped by a hundred times. Due to poor control, Mu Chen could no longer guide the surrounding spiritual qi through qi channels into the dantian. Even if he somehow managed to guide some spiritual qi to the dantian, he couldn't hold it in there. His dantian was abolished, so the spiritual qi would just leak outside.

Fortunately, although Mu Chen could no longer control the surrounding spiritual qi, his body could still absorb the spiritual qi for healing and nourishment. Mu Chen guessed that it must be because he had once gone through the foundation stages of cultivation, his body had already adapted to the process and developed some form of instinct through years of training.

Mu Chen continued with his breathing exercises. Every time he took in a breath, rich spiritual qi would be drawn in, nourishing his body and repairing his internal injury. Under its effect, his internal injury soon stabilized.

After a couple of hours, Mu Chen opened his eyes. His internal injury had completely healed. 

"I need to speed up Tendon Transformation. The family tournament won't be easy. I will likely be challenged by someone who is in the Spirit Gathering realm." Mu Chen couldn't help feel a bit frustrated. After what happened today, he realized that things wouldn't go as smoothly as he would have hoped.

Qi Sublimation, Blood Condensation, Tendon Transformation, Bone Forging, Meridian Opening, and Fragmentation Boundary were collectively called the Foundational Establishment stages. One needed to build a stable enough foundation before you can open up the dantian and step into Spirit Gathering.

In the past, Mu Chen had skipped the Tendon Transformation and Bone Forging stage and jumped directly to Meridian Opening. This wasn't anything unusual, rather it was the norm. Completing these two stages just took way too much time. Moreover, they weren't crucial. One could skip them and move on to Meridian Opening.

Skipping these two stages was not without drawbacks though. During Fragmentation Boundary, the initial size of the dantian that could be constructed depended on the strength of the physical body. The stronger the physical body, the bigger the size of the dantian that it could support. The bigger the dantian, the larger the amount of spiritual qi it could store. Later, as one advanced to higher realms, the dantian would continue to expand proportionately. 

Thus, if you could form a bigger initial size dantian than others', you could continue to maintain your advantage. In fact, your advantage will become more and more evident.

Unfortunately, although it sounded good in theory, it simply wasn't practical. In the past, there were many ambitious people who wanted to build a supreme foundation and invested many years of their prime into completing these two stages. Most of them gave up rather quickly. Seeing their peers advancing into realms higher than themselves, they couldn't resist the temptation.

On the other hand, there were a few who were persistent and achieved success in the Tendon Transformation stage. However, their efforts bore unexpected results. By the time they completed the Tendon Transformation stage, they were already old.

Bone Forging was even more difficult. Who knew how much time it would take? If they didn't step into Spirit Gathering soon, they would die of old age. So left without any choice, they had to step into Spirit Gathering.

Unfortunately, their bad luck wasn't limited to this. To their horror, even after they stepped into Spirit Gathering and had their lifespan increased, they didn't regain their youth!

Cultivators will not grow past their prime. They will start aging only when they are in their final sixty-year cycle. But once you grow past your prime, even if you make a breakthrough you won't become younger. You would just stop aging further. This was something that was verified beyond doubt since then.

This was why, despite the allure of establishing a supreme foundation, no one bothered with Tendon Transformation and Bone Forging stages. Preserving your youth was more important for most people. No one wanted to be an old man for the rest of their life.

Mu Chen, of course, also didn't have any weird fetish to live his life as an old man, so he too had conveniently skipped them.

As such, the raw physical strength of someone who had just stepped into Spirit Gathering wasn't much different from an average mortal.

Even then, there was a vast gap between someone who was at Foundation Stage and Spirit Gathering. Because, once one stepped into Spirit Gathering, one could use divine sense making his reaction speed several times faster than those at Foundation Stage. One could also use magical techniques, flying swords, and other treasures.

Because of his damaged spirit root and dantian, Mu Chen could only rely on the strength of his physical body. So aside from practicing his sword techniques, he had been training his physical body like a madman and accidentally discovered something incredulous.

When Mu Chen had just started his physical training several months ago, a particularly intense training session had left him breathless. When he sat down to adjust his breath, he ended up using natal breathing technique out of habit and discovered his stamina was quickly replenished. This made him excited because he realized the reason he could recover his stamina so quickly was because of the spiritual qi being absorbed by his body. 

Since then, Mu Chen had relied on this trick, increasing the time and efficiency of his training. Later, he discovered the strength of his physical body had significantly increased. Although he was training his body, such a dramatic increase in his physical strength couldn't be justified by it. The only explanation was the spiritual qi was also tempering his muscles and tendons. The process of tempering muscles and tendons was much faster after a session of intense physical training. It was several times more efficient than just using natal breathing to temper and nourish the muscles and tendons. This gave him hope of completing the Tendon Transformation stage.

Completing these two stages before becoming a true cultivator, had already become something of a myth in cultivation. But now, since he could no longer cultivate, they had become Mu Chen's hope and goal.

If he could complete Tendon Transformation, his physical strength will receive a tremendous boost. As for Bone Transformation? It was meaningless to think that far.

"Do I have to resort to using that method?" Mu Chen sighed. There was no hope to complete the Tendon Transformation stage before the internal competition, at his current speed. Mu Chen felt he was only around halfway through the transformation, despite his several months of harsh training.

Since discovering his own method for tempering his muscles and tendons, Mu Chen had been trying to find more ways through which he could speed up the process. And he had found out a method which seemed feasible, but also risky, so he hadn't tried it yet.

After meditating for some more time, Mu Chen got up and walked out of his room.

"Looks like I need to make a trip into the city..." 

To try this new method he would need to first buy some materials. And he also needed to find a caretaker for their residence.

Although the Mu Family had its own storehouse where one could buy a variety of stuff, Mu Chen wasn't optimistic regarding it. First, it wasn't a guarantee he could get what he wanted. Most importantly, someone was already creating troubles for him. There was no doubt if he went to get anything there, he would instead face unnecessary harassment and delay. Since that person could direct the Big Housekeeper and even someone from Law Enforcement, manipulating the Storekeeper shouldn't be difficult for him.

Mu Chen didn't think the one who was causing him trouble was some Elder level figure. Even if the Elders were somewhat dissatisfied with him, they wouldn't be so bored as to play such tricks on him. Although slanders about him started spreading quite a while back, real trouble actually started just a few days ago.

Those Elders didn't take any action for the past several months. Why would they start acting against him now? For them, the best result was one of their younger generation knocking Mu Chen off his position during the tournament. If Mu Chen resigned his position, it would instead lead to conflict among the Elders regarding whose younger generation it will belong to.

Thus Mu Chen was pretty certain that the person who was creating trouble for him was someone from the younger generation, same as him. And that person likely had quite a bit of status being able to influence Elder level figures.

What confused Mu Chen the most was the motive behind that person's actions. Considering the level of influence he had observed, that person should be at least a True Line Member. Or some upstart from Main Family. If it was someone who was a True Line Member, why did he need to deal with a Core Member like him?

If it was some upstart from the Main Family, he should be after his status of Core Member. In that case, causing him trouble like this isn't useful at all. If Mu Chen resigned due to pressure, he would have to fight for the position against others from the Main Family. Instead, it was better to challenge Mu Chen during the tournament.

Was it a personal grievance? But Mu Chen was sure he had never offended anyone before he was crippled. In fact, his conduct had been upright. And he was engrossed in his cultivation most of the time.

Mu Chen shook his head and cleared his mind of such thoughts. He could continue to make conjectures but it won't help. He didn't have strength, nor did he have any influence in the clan. His status as a Core Member had become just a mere title, which he might lose in a few days. Although the Family still provided him with resources and a cultivation environment as per the stipulation, he no longer held the same value he once did.

Even if he identified the perpetrator, which Elder would help him prosecute? Even if he got evidence, it might not really help. Although Family laws and regulations existed to ensure fairness, there were several ways to circumvent them.

Instead of wasting time and energy trying to figure out the identity of his opponent, he should focus on his goals.

Mu Chen clenched his fists in determination.