Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Rong Shu Feels Drained

After returning to the small courtyard and activating the formation, Rong Shu made another trip to the outer sect to collect two sets of outer-sect disciple robes, then headed back to the courtyard on Limitless Peak.

The formation in the courtyard was running normally. With her identity token on her person, Rong Shu could pass through the protective barrier with ease.

Without Rong Shu’s personal identity token, there was no way to enter the courtyard properly. Moreover, unless an outsider had cultivation at the Foundation Establishment Stage or above, they would see only an illusion with the naked eye; the real courtyard would remain hidden.

Even if Rong Shu blew up the entire courtyard, so long as she neither dispelled nor damaged the formation, nothing inside would be visible from the outside.

Of course, the formation was not without weaknesses. Anyone at Golden Core could easily tear it open, but doing so would immediately alarm the formation’s owner.

This was Limitless Peak, the area overseen by Immortal Venerable Ze Yu of Heaven’s Evolution Sect. Under normal circumstances, no one would dare run wild here, much less tear a peak-ward formation in broad daylight.

[Heaven’s Evolution Sect has plenty of cultivators at or above Foundation Establishment, but those who can freely come and go on Limitless Peak, aside from the Master at the Divine Transformation Stage, are limited to the Eldest Senior Brother, Feng Lin, whom I’ve never met.]

At that thought, Rong Shu allowed herself to relax a little.

[Master Jun Xiu Ran, honored as the number one powerhouse, would not lower himself to casually damage a formation or use his cultivation to pry into the courtyard.]

[As for Eldest Senior Brother Feng Lin, we have no quarrel. He surely wouldn’t stoop to the shameless act of disturbing a human cultivator’s practice, would he?]

Such behavior was a grave taboo in the cultivation world; once discovered, the offender would be reviled by cultivators.

Still, nothing was absolute, and Rong Shu kept her guard up.

[Golden Core cultivators of Heaven’s Evolution Sect each carve out an independent tract for a cave-dwelling; the shielding formations they use must be even higher-grade… but the leap from Qi Refining to Golden Core is rather steep.]

[Maybe I could learn to craft formations? Otherwise I’ll have to spend Spirit Stones to buy one.]

Whichever way she considered it, all three paths posed no small difficulty.

For the moment, though, she could set the matter aside. No one would bother to monitor a newly admitted disciple with mediocre talent.

Rong Shu entered the practice room, took a Fasting Pill, and sat down to cultivate.

Cultivation made time indistinct.

A full day and night passed in the blink of an eye.

It was not until the afternoon of the second day that Rong Shu withdrew from meditation.

Sensing the density of spiritual qi in her dantian, she frowned: [It’s still the same as last night. As soon as I broke through to the fifth layer of Qi Refining, the qi I drew in seemed to vanish into thin air. Where did it go?]

Rong Shu knew her situation differed from others.

Ordinarily, a multi-spirit-root cultivator, once they obtained a suitable technique, would choose to specialize in a single attribute. Specializing made that attribute advance faster, while the other roots advanced slowly; only when qi for all roots had accumulated to fullness would the cultivator rise to the next stage. This path had two drawbacks: first, advancement was slow; second, the specialized attribute became far more proficient while the others lagged and felt unfamiliar.

Even so, for ordinary multi-root cultivators, there were no cases of dropping a realm immediately after breaking through.

At present, Rong Shu’s wind attribute sat at the second layer of Qi Refining and her fire attribute at the first layer, neither showing any change.

She faintly felt, however, that her wood attribute was on the verge of breaking through to the first layer of Qi Refining.

As for her other attributes, they were the same as before.

Propping her chin with one hand, Rong Shu considered: [Although it slows my cultivation speed, it’s not that I can’t cultivate at all. I just need to spend more time.]

Lacking a suitable cultivation method for the next steps, she decided to set pure cultivation aside for now and switch to training spells instead.

Rong Shu started with the basic spell set.

The fundamentals were simple. After practicing a few times, she could use them reliably.

The main event would be Gale Step, the Fireball Technique, and Wind Blade.

Seated on the Meditation Mat, Rong Shu set three jade slips in front of her.

[Compared to Fireball and Wind Blade, Gale Step is more difficult, and my control over wind qi is better than the rest… so I’ll start with Wind Blade.]

There was no room to practice Wind Blade properly indoors.

Rong Shu rose and walked to the backyard.

The backyard faced a sheer cliff. Standing at the edge, she saw only a sea of clouds and several peaks spearing into the sky.

No people and quiet surroundings made it an ideal place to train.

And as before, the weeds in the courtyard would serve as practice targets.

A small cyclone formed in Rong Shu’s palm. She did not rush to fling it.

Instead, like a sculptor, she slowly shaped the little vortex into the profile of a blade.

The difference between Wind Blade and an ordinary vortex lay in focus: the former condensed wind qi into a single direction, like a tug-of-war where all the force pulled the same way, yielding twice the result for half the effort. The latter, by contrast, was like a swarm of headless flies trapped in a bottle: without a clear vector of force, the power scattered and the damage remained limited.

With the principles clear in her mind, Rong Shu spent the time it takes to drink a cup of tea and finally condensed a Wind Blade that was both successful and stable.

Her Wind Blade was about the length of a finger.

Its edge was razor-sharp. Rong Shu plucked a thin blade of grass by her foot and let it fall above the Wind Blade; the instant the grass touched the edge, it split cleanly in two.

[Hmm? The wind qi condensed in the blade seems to have diminished a little. Was it because I just cut the grass?]

Sensing the fluctuation, she sighted on a lush green clump of weeds three meters away and flicked the Wind Blade from her hand.

The blade sheared cleanly through the weed at the root, then continued forward for a stretch before dissipating in midair.

Watching this, Rong Shu made a quick summary: [When wind qi forms a Wind Blade, the blade persists so long as the internal qi does not disperse. Each time it acts, it consumes that wind qi.]

After that, Rong Shu condensed three more Wind Blades. She laid one flat on the ground without using it.

The other two she flung simultaneously from left and right hands toward the open space ahead.

Because they struck no obstacles, these two flew much farther than the first. The first had reached only six or seven meters; this time they went about thirty meters, already beyond the backyard.

After condensing four Wind Blades in total, Rong Shu felt as if her body had been hollowed out by half; [no, more accurately, half the spiritual qi in my body has been emptied].

Looking down at her hands, she fell into thought: [The spell text only mentions condensing the Wind Blade in one’s hand… what if it isn’t in the hand? Would that work?]

She tried to condense a Wind Blade one meter away from her hand. This time she felt strain set in, and gradually her strength failed.

In the end, she failed.

Rong Shu mentally reviewed the contents of Wind Blade again and pinpointed the problem.

[Right! I’m only at the Qi Refining Stage. I can mobilize only the qi inside my body. I can’t, like a Foundation Establishment cultivator, command the ambient “wild” qi between heaven and earth.]

[To condense a Wind Blade off the hand, I’d have to “send out” my internal, owned qi. But because of the distance, the moment I release it, it’s gone.]

However, if she first formed the blade in her hand and then threw it, the distance traveled would already give an opponent time to react.

[If I could suddenly generate a Wind Blade around the opponent to catch them off guard…]

[Such a sneaky tactic would be hard for most people to defend against.]