In truth, with the merit points and battle achievements Yu Fei had accumulated, he could have easily reached the Gang Qi Realm if he had chosen to focus solely on advancing his realm with ordinary Cultivation Techniques.
However, in the path of martial arts, gaining greater power than one's peers within the same realm required a greater investment of resources. And the further one progressed, the lower the return on that investment became.
For example, 10 points of resources might raise one's combat power to 10, but even a continuous investment of 100 points might not be enough to raise it to 20.
The relationship between resource consumption and the increase in strength was not linear; it was also constrained by the Martial Artist's own capacity to withstand it.
