Chapter 025

Chapter 25: Spirit Refining Art

On the snowy peak, a white silhouette blended into the drifts, and Pei Xuan opened his eyes to look.

Ye Wan Wan sat as still as stone. She was breathing, but very lightly. The energy around her body was slowly changing. Wind and snow settled on her shoulders, pressing down like slow-falling weight.

Pei Xuan flicked his hand. The wind and snow around her scattered. A small Barrier rose and blocked the storm. “Pretty diligent,” he murmured, and the wind carried his words away.

Deep in meditation, Ye Wan Wan knew nothing of the outside world. All of her focus sank into the new heart method.

At first glance, Pei Xuan’s method looked like breath-holding. But if you studied it, you saw that holding the breath was the result, not the process. The key was to turn inner breathing into outer breathing, to move breath from the organs to outside the body, and to merge with heaven, earth, and nature. That way, no matter the time, you were always cultivating. Whether standing, sitting, or sleeping, nothing was wasted.

It was the most suitable and also the fastest heart method for Multiple Spiritual Roots.

The hard part was how to change. How do you turn inner qi into outer qi? How do you let both flow and form a new circuit?

Ye Wan Wan focused on the qi moving in her dantian. She watched a wisp of spiritual energy enter from outside, travel along her meridians, finish a cycle, and fall back into her dantian. She also watched it slowly leave through her skin until only a hundredth remained. This cycle was the basic Qi Refining method for beginners.

What if she drew a second circuit outside her body and linked it with her meridians to make one whole loop?

Ye Wan Wan didn’t know if it would work, but she acted on the idea. With her mind, she drew spirit lines around herself. Spiritual energy condensed into Talisman Arts and formed a new path outside her body. Under her adjustments, it resonated with her meridians and became a new circuit.

These lines worked somewhat like a Spirit Gathering Array, but ordinary Spirit Gathering Arrays used an Array Stone as the core. This time, Ye Wan Wan used herself as the core.

As spiritual energy gathered from nature, poured into her meridians, and was pushed out again through Array Arts, Ye Wan Wan sensed she had completed a full cycle with the spirit lines. It was rough and exhausting. The incoming energy was too strong. It pulled at her meridians and crawled forward with great effort. Before, she could complete three major cycles with ease. Now, even one minor cycle was hard to finish.

The pain could not be put into words.

Gritting her teeth, Ye Wan Wan forced one small cycle to the end. When the energy settled back into her dantian, she realized much more of it remained in her body than before, more than ten times as much.

Naturally, the pain was also more than ten times.

But the effect was excellent.

She let out a long breath and came back to herself: “[Looks like I shouldn’t use this shortcut too often.]”

This method worked, but it still borrowed outside help. She needed to understand how to draw spiritual energy straight from the world. Only then could she do twice the work with half the effort.

She clenched her fist. Seeing that Pei Xuan hadn’t stirred, she went on. In her next deep focus, Pei Xuan opened his eyes and fell into thought. [How long did it take me the first time I used the Spirit Refining Art to temper my Body Refining quality? About a month.] This girl didn’t even need a single day.

With the help of the spirit lines, Ye Wan Wan quickly absorbed Earth Spirit energy. Day by day, she reduced the lines’ influence and, with her Primordial Spirit, felt the changes of nature. Little by little, she replaced the lines’ role, finished a true inner and outer circuit, and smoothly upgraded her Qi Refining method into the Spirit Refining Art.

Pei Xuan told her the name a month later.

“Pretty grand name,” she said.

By then, Ye Wan Wan had also broken Pei Xuan’s time record, finishing within one and a half shichen. Neither of them cared much about it anymore.

To focus fully on cultivation, she moved from Disciples’ Peak to the summit of Snow Mountain.

“Spiritual herbs can be grown on a plot I buy in the Spirit Market, and I can harvest them anytime,” she muttered, rubbing her chin. “But I can’t hide in the Spirit Market forever for a house.” She decided to build a home on the peak.

Before she finished buying materials, a lazy voice sounded: “Did it never occur to you that your master has a cave dwelling?”

She turned, surprised: “Master, I thought your cave was the rock under you.”

Pei Xuan was speechless.

He released his Self Sealing. Only then did Ye Wan Wan see it. When the illusion faded, a cold, blue cave residence stood not far away. Looking at the place, entirely blue through and through, she grinned: “As expected of Master’s cave. It doesn’t look much better than sleeping on the ground.”

It wasn’t an ice palace, yet it looked very close to one. It was wide and spacious, so big Ye Wan Wan could use a different room every hour.

“The rooms here are yours to use as you like,” Pei Xuan said evenly. Rarely leaving his stone dais, he actually stood and led her inside.

The door opened. Instead of a blast of cold, a soft warmth drifted out. The whole cave was blue with threads of white, and the overall look was like a certain kind of ore.

Ye Wan Wan’s heartbeat sped up: “Is this Azure Sea Soulstone?”

Pei Xuan glanced back: “You have a decent eye.”

“Is the whole cave made of it?” Her voice trembled a little. “This is a very rare deep-sea ore. I’ve heard artifact refiners pay a fortune even for a tiny piece.”

“More or less. Where it wasn’t enough, I patched with some Blue Crystal,” Pei Xuan said lightly.

“…”

[A small piece of Blue Crystal is worth more than a larger piece of Azure Sea Soulstone, and he used it as a patch?]

“Master, you must be rich.”

“Fair enough.”

“Then… lend me a hundred thousand?”

Pei Xuan looked back at the little disciple. Her sheepish smile held a hint of teasing, while his cold eyes seemed to mock the petty world. He acted like he didn’t care about anyone, yet her outstretched hand asking for money did seem a little… amusing.

He waved his hand.

A small chest of brocade boxes fell into Ye Wan Wan’s hands. She blinked.

“For you,” Pei Xuan said, turning to walk inside. “Tell me if it’s not enough.”

Ye Wan Wan opened a box and her pupils shrank. Inside lay a full layer of Spirit Crystals. There were twelve.

One Spirit Crystal could be traded for one million Low Grade Spirit Stones.

“Master, you really are rich…”

“There are many empty rooms here,” Pei Xuan said. “I rarely use them. Take whichever you want.”

Ye Wan Wan looked around and, grinning, offered a suggestion: “Then may I open my own cave next door?”

Pei Xuan looked at her.

In the moment when Ye Wan Wan had almost no hope, he said: “You may.”

Ye Wan Wan’s palm tightened.

He… actually agreed.