The process of opening a dantian wasn't like how they described it in xianxia novels. It wasn't as though you were trying to light a fire in your body or break through numerous clogged portions of the body, trying to free up a section of your existence that had not been used. There were no impurities to clean out, because the dantian was always in use.
The process of opening the middle dantian was more akin to building an underused muscle. First, you had to locate it, which required multiple attempts at moving your body part in action until you finally located it. The degree one could do that, and how quickly an individual picked up that particular muscle was dependent upon a few factors, from talent and body awareness to how much time said individual contemplated and reviewed their body.
Once you had found the dantian, you had to work it to grow the dantian. The core was like any muscle, and while the lower core or dantian was the largest by virtue of its location and years of practice and use, it was possible to increase the size of other storage areas through focused effort.
The working of these dantian were a matter of flooding said location with energy, then squeezing it out, expanding the dantian slowly. The more energy one forcibly stored within, the better. Of course, you could damage yourself doing these exercises, and the process of forcing energy through specific meridians into dantian was tightly controlled, or should be. Thus the existence of cultivation methods.
However, the Tower had given them extremely robust bodies with the assumption that mistakes were going to be made. Or so Arthur figured, because one of the simplest ways to create a new cultivation method was a process of elimination. Of trying and testing till it stopped working, or worked better than ever.
The dantian-breaking pill simplified the process. It did it in three parts. Firstly, it contained energy that radiated and moved towards the three dantian in Arthur's body. He no longer needed to strain to locate them; he could tell where they were by the increasing amount of heat within those spots. A simple but effective method of locating the centers in his body.
The second way it aided him was that, in the movement of energy to each of those locations, he also noticed where and how the energy flowed through his various meridians to reach the location. It happened a little too fast in the beginning for him to do anything beyond vaguely note which portions were warmer, but it was there. He could, if he paid attention, locate the meridians as energy coursed through them.
Not that he had a lot of time. Because his upper and middle dantian were getting really, really warm. That was the part that was considered painful. He could sense the growing pain, and instinctively, Arthur squeezed down on those sections. Most of his attention was on the middle dantian, the place he intended to test his theory, and squeezing on this dantian relieved the pain immediately.
It was like getting hold of a three-part bladder that was slowly filling up with water. By squeezing down on the bags, you shifted and made the water within flow around, relieving the pressure. To keep the pain regulated, he just needed to squeeze on both his lower dantian and middle one at the same time, regularly. Doing so relieved the pain, allowing the pill energy to collect at more reasonable locations.
That was where the third benefit of the pill came into play. It was how the energy slowly dissipated, as it accelerated the healing process of the body, specifically the meridians and the core. After all, to “break” a dantian open, he needed to make it large enough, make himself conscious enough of its location, that the dantian could then be used for other things. Which meant a process of slowly enlarging the core over months and years had to be done quickly.
So. Let it fill, keep an eye on where the energy flowed when it entered and left each section. When it grew too painful, when his body felt too stretched, he would squeeze and force the energy out, like a sponge being wrung. Then wait, as the exhausted muscles soaked in healing energy from the pill, grew larger and stronger, before he proceeded to repeat the entire process over again.
Instinctively, Arthur knew that the longer he could hold out on squeezing the energy, the better off he would be. Since the pill itself had a specific duration, he needed to make best use of the pill before it faded away, at which point he would be back to doing this the old way. Though he would be better off now, because he at least knew which cultivation streams to bring to the middle dantian, if he paid attention.
Even so, it was not easy.
Like slowly filling hot pockets in his body, coals glowing. He felt like he had a pair of balloons within him that were blowing up with warm air; and if he didn't squeeze some of the air out now, they'd pop. Luckily, squeezing into the surrounding tissues and meridians didn't seem to appreciably increase the tension around a non-squeezed dantian. Arthur knew it had something to do with energy density, the difference between second and third and future transformations, where the energy held within a body was just not as compact as they could be.
Not that he was paying attention to that right now, not with the pain filling him. Just that it did mean he wasn't going to pop the upper dantian by squeezing the middle one. Luckily, freeing up space in other two dantian pulled energy into them, relieving the pressure of his upper dantian at the same time.
Again, Arthur recalled reading about a cultivation method that made use of this phenomenon, that made full use of all three dantian, because it was so effective at pulling energy through the body. Supposedly, the cultivation method was a three-star one. It was even purchasable on the open market outside, but the price and need to have three dantian open meant there were almost no adherents. At least not at the Beginner level.
Arthur was no stranger to pain, no stranger to the constant ache of the body that pushing oneself to the limit entailed. He'd spent more than one day standing in a supermarket store freezer, utilising it as a poor man's ice bath for a little extra help moving goods back and forth later on. He understood pain.
And even with all that experience, all that knowledge, all the mental and emotional callouses he'd grown, he was not sure he would voluntarily take another dantian-opening pill.
Squeeze. Relax. Breathe, wait with patience. Grit your teeth as the pain grew, as the body struggled to heal itself. Some people thought healing was painless, but they'd never had nerves reawaken as the body patched itself together.
Hold. Hold. Hoooold.
Squeeze.
Do it all over again.
And again.
By the time Arthur had sense to pick himself off the ground, wiping away the sweat and the spit that had dribbled down his mouth, the day was well underway. Seated not far from him, cultivating with a watchful eye out, was Uswah.
"Report?" Arthur croaked, then gratefully accepted the bottle of water to clear his dry throat.
"Rick, Casey, and Mel are hunting. The others are inside, cultivating. We're ready to go, and I'll signal the others once you're good." She looked up, eyeing the sun that was headed directly overhead. "Best get moving, no?"
"Yeah, we got a long way to go to the clan building." He gestured outwards. "Get them to come in. I got to get one thing sorted, then we're good to go."
"Boleh,” she affirmed.
Slipping in, Arthur glanced at the notification he finally let bloom, grinning a little.
Now, he just had to figure out how to make use of it.