Chapter 18

Chapter 18: The Breeze That Answers the Girl

Rong Shu gathered a small pinch of withered roots and dead leaves, recalling the processing tricks she had secretly learned from the hunchbacked Uncle, then set to work refining these offcut-like medicinal scraps.

After finishing the preparation, she considered the nature of each herb, choosing either to grind it into powder or to add water and knead it into medicinal paste.

In the end, she produced a small packet of powder and four pellets of paste.

She sat cross-legged on the meditation mat, swallowed the powder and then the pastes in succession, and immediately entered cultivation.

The powder and pastes took effect, and she found that her progress toward a “breakthrough” in wind-attribute cultivation to the seventh layer of Qi Refining was a little faster than usual, although she soon slipped back down to the fourth layer of Qi Refining.

…

Since she had decided to “shear the wool” from the spirit herbs, she made a special trip to the hunchbacked Uncle and, for the remaining half month, increased her daily assignment time in the Hundred Herb Garden from two hour to four hour; the number of medicine plots in her care rose by two as well.

The hunchbacked Uncle looked at her with disapproval and asked: “Are you sure?”

[Is this little girl getting things backward? When you first enter a sect, shouldn’t cultivation come first?]

Rong Shu had her own ideas and nodded firmly as she answered: “Mm-hmm, I’m sure.”

Seeing this, the hunchbacked Uncle said no more.

An ordinary Outer Sect disciple likely could not increase task hours on a whim; people are not fools, and while the pay for working in the Hundred Herb Garden is modest, the “potential” benefits are quite tempting to Outer Sect disciples. But Rong Shu’s status as a personal disciple gave her leeway, and because her first half-month of tending spirit herbs had gone well, the hunchbacked Uncle simply turned a blind eye and granted the increase.

Knowing this full well, Rong Shu smiled squint-eyed as she thanked the hunchbacked Uncle, while silently thanking Senior Sister Yu in her heart.

[Out of the vast sea of people, thank you, kind Senior Sister Yu, for choosing me. Senior Sister Yu is truly a wonderful person.]

…

After finishing her daily work at the Hundred Herb Garden, Rong Shu clocked in as usual at the Spirit Beast Garden.

Inside the Spirit Beast Garden, while trimming the excess feathers from the Red-crowned Cinnabar Crane, she mulled over matters of cultivation: “I remember there’s a technique in the Library Pavilion, Wind Armament, a profound-grade art that can manifest formless wind as tangible weapons.”

If she could learn Wind Armament, she would gain another means of staying alive.

But the sect only grants disciples free access to yellow-grade arts, and Wind Armament is a profound-grade technique that costs two thousand contribution points to redeem.

“Two thousand… hiss.”

She winced. She did not even have a fraction of that, so redeeming it was out of the question.

“Turn wind into weapons… wait…”

A spark flashed in her mind.

Right. Wind blades.

Wind blades are the budget version of Wind Armament, likewise shaping wind spiritual qi into the form of weapons for combat.

After she filled a basket with the crane’s trimmed feathers, there was nothing else to do, so she squatted casually on the ground, chin propped in both hands, and kept pondering the problem of “weaponized wind.”

But after thinking for quite a while, she still could not find a good method.

“Wouldn’t it be better to just practice than to overthink it?”

The moment that thought popped up, she stood, stretched her numb legs, and then her gaze slid to the pile of Red-crowned Cinnabar Crane feathers beside her. She let out a mischievous “heh-heh-heh.”

She grabbed a handful of feathers and tossed them into the air.

Almost at the same time, she condensed two wind blades that sliced in and out of the swirling feathers with a swift swish-swish-swish.

Clusters of feathers were cut into scraps and drifted to the ground.

Ignoring the mess, she took another handful from the basket and repeated the toss.

This time, she held her breath for several seconds, trying to reshape the wind blades into another kind of weapon to achieve a manifested form.

“Sword? Saber? Throwing dart?” As several familiar weapon shapes flashed through her mind, the wind blades slowly began to change bit by bit.

… In the end, they became tiny mini blades only as long as a finger.

They were impossible to grip and wield, usable only as a shapeshifted version of wind blades.

Moreover…

She glanced at the fallen feathers.

From condensing wind blades to deliberately altering their shape demanded extra time and effort.

Bound by her current cultivation, she could not shorten the manifestation time, nor could she enlarge the tiny blades to normal size.

What she needed was greater strength, not new burdens in a real fight.

“Forget it. If I can’t use Wind Armament, then I can’t.” After much thought, she let the idea go.

Even so, she was a little dejected.

Feeling glum, she fished out another handful of feathers, tossed them up, then condensed wind blades again and sliced through the drifting fluff with more swish-swish-swish.

Watching the feathers float and eddy in midair, a glimmer lit her eyes.

Wait… there is wind.

Wind is everywhere.

Wind slips through every gap.

And she needed to master the wind and make that elusive air into her eyes, her other pair of hands, her second body.

She murmured to herself: “Right. I don’t necessarily have to attack the target head-on.”

All she needed was to predict the target’s path ahead of time, set wind blades in the place where it would soon appear, and then sit back and wait for it to rush into the trap.

“Wind blades can be made smaller, easier to control.”

“Then I use the omnipresent wind to carry those blades and drive them to strike.”

After several trials with the remaining feathers, she compared the feeling to when she first tried directly steering wind blades.

The latter, simply controlling the wind, was indeed easier than controlling the blades themselves and saved much more spiritual power.

“Ohoho~” She planted her fists on her hips, struck a needlessly grand, chuunibyou-serious pose, and lowered her voice on purpose as she declared: “I hereby name it: Wind Blade, Version 2.0!”

“Gu-gu-gu…”

“…”

Only the calls of the surrounding Red-crowned Cinnabar Cranes and the soundless breeze brushing the girl’s cheek answered her.

…

Half a month later, behind the mountain in the Spirit Beast Garden, she whooped: “Woohoo! Fifth layer of Qi Refining!”

Her delighted cry startled the Red-crowned Cinnabar Crane that had just walked up beside her and sent it flapping away.

After savoring the feeling of the fifth layer of Qi Refining, Rong Shu converted the wind spiritual qi in her dantian into metal qi.

Her fire-attribute cultivation had become impossible to suppress. Seven days ago, she had been forced to break through to the second layer of Qi Refining. So she switched to metal, which was only at the first layer of Qi Refining, to serve as her little disguise.

After staying her two hour in the Spirit Beast Garden, she smoothly wrapped up a full month of daily tasks at the Hundred Herb Garden and the Spirit Beast Garden.