Gravis had been punching boulders for over a day by now. It was exhausting, and Gravis had wanted to take a break multiple times already but always forced himself to do one more. At some point, punching "just one more time" had become ingrained in him. He just continued to punch without stopping.
This whole experience was something that he had never gone through. He never had to train since everything always came naturally. His physical strength increased with pills. His Realm increased by simply pushing lightning into his mind. His battle-strength increased by fighting. His Will-Aura also increased by fighting. Nothing had ever needed him to physically train like this before.
The only time when something similar happened was when he was training Martial Arts with William, but that had been different. He only had to learn the movements then. It hadn't involved pushing his body to his limit.
The punching of boulders increased his control over his power substantially and also somewhat increased his physical power. However, the increase in physical power achieved by training was different than when taking pills. Of course, taking body tempering pills increased his power many times faster than this repetitive punching, but the training still achieved something else.
'The physical power of my whole body is not increasing very fast. On top of that, not all my muscles are becoming stronger. The biggest increase in power appears in my upper arms, back, and chest. My lower arms and legs don't get a significant increase. I know that in a proper punch, my legs and hip need to work with me, but I can't use my full power here since that would just destroy the boulders.'
Gravis thought about many eventualities regarding this training. 'Even though those muscles are becoming more powerful, as soon as I take more body tempering pills, everything else will easily catch up. Then, all the increase in muscles that I have achieved right now will disappear.'
Yet, Gravis continued punching with fervor because he realized something else. 'Yes, my progress will disappear, but that's only relatively speaking. If I take some body tempering pills, my other muscles will catch up, but what about my currently trained ones? There is only a finite amount of medicinal power inside a pill, so if it doesn't need to strengthen my currently trained muscles, there is more left for the other ones.'
'All in all, increasing the power of those muscles saves me some pills in the future.' Gravis then laughed bitterly. 'Of course, I still need to train the other ones if I want to reach the next level of my body without pills. If I were to do that, I would need to train everything for probably three years.'
'But if my goal is only to cut the pill consumption down by 50%, I would probably only need to punch for like a year or so. Of course, I won't do that since I have better things to do. Right now, only my control is important,' Gravis finished his thoughts.
By now, he was pretty good at controlling his physical power. Fitting bricks appeared more and more frequently. There was still some chance involved, but the frequency of the bricks appearing increased. That meant that his control had increased.
A normal human wouldn't be able to gain such fine control over their power this quickly, but Gravis was a cultivator. He knew his body incredibly well, and his Spirit allowed him to keep track of everything. With the Spirit always giving perfect feedback every time Gravis punched, his control was bound to improve rapidly.
His Spirit always kept watching over his body and the boulders. He saw how the power coursed through the boulder and how much power he used. After a while of watching, Gravis was entranced by the slow image of the boulders breaking and by the pattern that his power created while punching them.
The boulders always broke differently, and Gravis saw the pattern of the breaks. He saw how his power hit only one spot yet shot throughout the boulder in the shape of many rough lines. Not every line managed to break the boulder, but that didn't mean that the power didn't affect them.
After some more hours, Gravis had lost all feeling in his body. It felt like he was an outsider looking on, and it felt like his body was punching without him. Of course, that was only an illusion. When someone worked steadily, their brain and Spirit would disconnect after some time as everything became automatic. Of course, this could only happen if someone was very familiar with what they were doing.
As Gravis' Spirit disconnected from his body, he started getting entranced by the shapes that his power created when punching boulders. By now, he was fully concentrating on these shapes and even tried to manipulate them.
BANG!
A weirdly shaped boulder appeared this time, which surprised Gravis. This was the shape that he had wanted to achieve. He had only played around with this thought, but the shape actually became real. Like an onlooker, Gravis looked at his body, which dully continued to punch. 'I think I know what just happened,' he thought.
'Until now, I was only punching with my body. I was only trying to gain control over my physical strength, yet why is that necessary? Why should I ignore my other tools?' he thought.
Gravis realized that he hadn't used his Spirit until now, except for watching. He had only focused on his physical control and had tried to ignore everything else. Yet, wasn't the Spirit and the mind the controller of the body? After all, his body was only a tool that followed the orders of his Spirit. How was the body supposed to know what to do if the Spirit and mind didn't give an order?
With this newfound way to control his body, Gravis started experimenting. He willed the lines in the boulders to move into different pictures and patterns. Not everything followed these patterns, though. As soon as the lines started growing into complex shapes, his body wouldn't be able to correctly release the appropriate amount of force.
'I only need to practice and further refine my control!' Gravis shouted in his mind.
Sweat was flowing down his body like a waterfall, and his muscles were aching due to the constant abuse. This had happened multiple times by now. Normal cultivators needed to regenerate their bodies when that happened, which would take multiple hours, at least. Lucky for Gravis…
BZZZ!
And his body was fully healed again. Such, in comparison, minor damage to the body didn't need much Life Lightning to heal. The passive regeneration of the inherent Energy in his body was way faster than the exhaustion of his physical power. He could continue like this for years without a pause.
Food? That had stopped being relevant at the second half of Energy Gathering. The Energy in the air could be absorbed, which was more than enough to keep his body in top form. The body converted the Energy into many things that it needed and also expelled waste with it. Due to this, there was nothing that Gravis had to do. He could fully concentrate on punching without any distractions.
Gravis completely lost himself in manipulating the force lines going through the boulders and started creating more and more complex objects with only a single punch.
