"Huh? Me, a body cultivator?" Alex asked, stunned by what he had just heard.
"Yes, Your body is stronger than what it used to be. From what you said about your experience earlier, you must've gone through a tempering of sorts. That's how body cultivators are born. They temper their body through pain and hard work, and become stronger." Wen Cheng was still in shock as he explained.
"But, aren't body cultivators supposed to be very rare. I remember master saying something about there rarely being a body cultivator in the Crimson empire and that I don't have to worry about them much." Alex repeated what he had remembered from Ma Rong.
"Ma Rong explained to you about them, did she? Well, she is not wrong. It is extremely rare for there to be a Body cultivator in the Crimson Empire, but it's not rare. There have been a few times that body cultivators arrived in the Crimson empire, but they don't stay as one for long since there aren't many things they can use to temper themselves with."
Alex got curious about something, "Master, when you say Body cultivators temper themselves, is it different from the normal tempering realms of Qi cultivation?"
"Of course there is a difference. The tempering for both is meant for completely different results. A normal cultivator's tempering is meant to temper their body with internal Qi so that it is less resistant to the Qi during cultivation and they can succeed in future cultivation."
"However, a Body cultivator's tempering means he is destroying and fixing his body a lot of times so that he can make his body stronger."
"Normal cultivators temper to improve cultivation, while body cultivators temper to make their bodies much tougher. You… are now one of them." Wen Cheng finally let go of his shock.
"That is not a bad thing, right?" Alex asked as he hoped for a positive answer.
"No, but since you won't really have that many ways to improve your body, you will stagnate later on and it will be quite useless in the long run," Wen Cheng just finished saying this when he thought of something and added, "Although, since your body tempering came from your cat, … maybe you can do it indefinitely." Wen Cheng started getting lost in his own thought.
"Master?" Alex called to bring him out of his stance. "What are you thinking about?"
"Hmm… I… want you to do it again." Wen Cheng's reply came out of nowhere.
"Do it again? But, it hurts so much, master." Alex's eyes turned wide as fear crept upon them.
"Yeah, that's what body tempering is. You have to get hurt to become stronger, and you have to do that without going overboard and injuring yourself badly." Wen Cheng explained as such.
Alex took a deep breath. "Alright, Pearl come out." Light shined from his left arms as Pearl came out of it and stood in front of him, licking his front paw.
"Meow," it spoke as he looked towards him. "Master, make sure you stop him from cultivating if it gets really bad, okay?"
Alex then tried really hard to find the next set of words to speak, "Pearl, Cultivate once more."
"Meow"
Pearl closed his eyes and started to meditate again. Slowly, a light started coming off of him. It started with white light, then yellow, and finally, it moved to golden light.
Alex fully prepared for the pain to hit him, but even then he wasn't ready at all. "AHHHH," his scream was as loud as ever as he found it hard to focus on anything other than the pain.
The scream also shocked Wen Cheng. He wasn't expecting such a horrific scream from his own student. He immediately wanted to stop the cat from cultivating any more but decided to wait.
He used his spiritual sense to look all over Alex's body. He was terrified to see what he was going through. Hearing the explanation of what had happened last time did not do the actual thing any sort of justice.
"Should I stop it?" he started deliberating. He wanted to stop Alex from feeling more pain, but then, he saw something. Throughout Alex's body, tiny black spots were oozing out of his skin.
"No Way!! Mortal cleansing? Without any external assistance?" Wen Cheng was shocked at what he was seeing. "How is body tempering helping him in Mortal cleansing, when it should only be for normal cultivation?"
Wen Cheng felt like he was seeing a miracle. He no longer gave any thought to stopping the cat and watched as Alex's body kept on pushing out the tiny black bits.
Alex's screams, however, were ever so violent. Wen Cheng has to ignore all noises for a while. Only after a few hours did his scream started dying down.
Finally, Wen Cheng saw that the black bits were no longer oozing out of Alex and decided to stop the cat. "Meow" the cat woke up from its cultivation with a single command from Wen Cheng. He then turned to look at Alex.
He slowly walked up to Alex's completely black and filthy body to give him a nudge. But as soon as he got close to him and realized what he really smelled like, he ran back.
Wen Cheng looked at Alex who was on the floor, completely unmoving, and said," He's gone unconscious from all the pain."
He felt bad for letting his disciple go through this, but he also felt happy that his disciple had done through this. Mortal cleaning was one of the best things a cultivator could hope to experience, and his disciple had just done it.
"He is really going to go very far in his journey as a cultivator," Wen Cheng started to feel proud. After a few minutes, he told Pearl to go back into Alex, to which the cat complied.
"Yeah, you need a bath," Wen Cheng thought as he used his Qi to carry Alex and bring him inside his building to cleanse his body of the filth from Mortal cleansing.