Chapter 299 – Life 76, Age 17, Martial Disciple Peak

Over the past year and a half, while I had been researching and developing my new cultivation technique, Mei had been living a quiet life in my storage space.

During the day, she spent most of her time in the fields, doing mundane farming work. At night, she retreated to her room and studied books on soul cultivation. While it wasn’t possible for her to actively cultivate her soul within my inner world, she had dedicated herself to learning all of the theories and philosophies involved in it.

Every so often, I would check in on her to see if she needed anything, but she seemed content. According to Mei, within my inner world, her blessing was entirely inactive, so she could relax and relearn who she was without its influence.

Was this true? Was her blessing truly inactive, or was it making her lie? Every instinct I had told me Mei was telling the truth, but I still had to pull out a truth stone to check. Even then, even after the truth stone confirmed her words, it was hard for me to shake my lingering doubts.

Still, I didn't want to define a person only in terms of their blessing. That was what the Su Clan had done, and it hadn’t led them anywhere good. I needed to be better than that.

---------------------------------------------------

With Mei being a year older than me, by the time I ended my research into cultivation techniques, she was already nearly 19. So, if she wanted to learn cultivation, she would only have another two years to advance to Martial Master before stagnation set in.

Even though I was a bit wary, I wasn’t willing to cripple the girl out of fear of what she might become. So, after sitting down in a stark white room that had been cleared of all furniture and distractions, I sent her a letter.

Mei,

I need to talk to you about cultivation and your choices for the future. I am going to pull you out, back to the real world. Are you ready?

After seeing this, she took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes.”

In an instant, she disappeared from the rice field she had been standing in and appeared in the white room with me.

Seeing her normally for the first time in over a year, I studied her carefully. She was wearing dirty, undyed, roughspun clothing, and her long, black hair was tied up in a loose bun. Her skin had become darkly tanned from long days outside, and her hands and arm muscles showed that she wasn’t a stranger to hard work. While she smiled at me pleasantly, I sensed that her smile was hiding a deeper sadness.

I gestured to the chair across from me. “Please, sit. If you can, try to focus only on me. That will keep your blessing from activating.”

Mei dipped her head and did as I requested. “Of course, Ancestor Su.”

There was a hint of playfulness to her tone, and unlike most people in my clan nowadays, she didn’t feel the need to avert her eyes.

“Mei, I need to know if you want to learn to cultivate. If so, I will help you.”

“That…” She paused and closed her eyes. “Yes, I would.”

“Alright. What element would you like to cultivate? Any of them will work, but if you want to cultivate inside the world orb, it has to be earth.”

Her reply was instantaneous. “Wind.”

My breath caught in my throat, and I saw the corner of her lip curl up in amusement.

I looked down and began tapping on my armrest.

Wind. Would… Would that be okay? Of all the people…

My fear wasn’t the element itself. It was the related profession—Gu Keeping.

The only things I truly needed to fear were things that could damage my soul, and soul gu had always worried me. However, I had more than enough protections in place by this point, from my soul cultivation technique to talismans to formation-enhanced refined items, that I was confident I could handle anyone below a Gu Sovereign. Even if I were infected, unless it were a Rank 7 gu or higher, I could deal with it.

Instead, I was more worried about my clan. If someone began infecting them without my knowledge, it could be extremely troublesome. While I hadn’t studied gu in-depth, I had studied them enough to know that there were gu that could turn people into puppets and gu that could kill a person if they didn’t follow the keeper’s commands. Since these only affected the body, I hadn’t worried too much about them, but they could devastate my clan.

However, even putting aside the fact that cultivating wind qi wasn’t the same as learning gu keeping, would Mei be willing to use such creatures against me?

If she did, that would be the end of her. I would never bring her into the loop again, and if what she did was evil enough, I might even end up killing her at the start of a loop and moving my reset point forward to make it permanent. Her blessing should never allow that to happen.

Of course, even with the rationalization, there was no way I was willing to immediately send her off to learn gu keeping. Learning to cultivate wind, however…

I nodded. “Alright. Wind.”

Mei smiled, seemingly knowing that she had just won some kind of victory.

I blew out a breath and tried to refocus. “Mei, I’m… working on a new path for learning cultivation, and if you are willing, I would like you to experiment with it.”

“Of course, Ancestor Su.”

I wanted to shake my head, but I remained stoic. “All I need to know is, which aspects of ‘wind’ are you interested in? What… features of wind do you wish to embody?”

Again, her response was instantaneous. “Freedom.”

I nodded slowly. “Anything else? Two more would be best.”

This time, she gave her answer a bit of thought.

“Speed and…” Mei paused. I sensed a mix of emotions from her, from worry to anger, but her next word was light and cheerful. “Vengeance.”

“All… right. Give me some time, and I’ll see what I can come up with.”

She smiled and bowed her head. “Of course, Ancestor Su.”

---------------------------------------------------

Over the next few months, I focused on researching wind techniques.

With only a cursory examination, I found that wind Laws could be divided into two seemingly separate groups. Some of the techniques centered around freedom, speed, and happiness while others centered around vengeance, anger, and pestilence. I had Yellow-, Profound-, and Earth-Rank techniques that contained aspects of each of these two groups, but none of the techniques had aspects of both.

This made me curious, but before delving into the topic too deeply, I created a set of three basic techniques:

Mantra of the Swift Winds, Peak-Yellow Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Wind Qi, Effects: Makes one rasher.

Mantra of the Free Winds, Peak-Yellow Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Wind Qi, Effects: Makes one more rebellious.

Mantra of the Vengeful Winds, Peak-Yellow Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Wind Qi, Effects: Makes one seek revenge for any slights.

Because of my budding worry that cultivating a Low-Yellow technique might create lingering issues, I skipped them and only made techniques with Peak-quality filters. Then, I sent them to Mei so that she could begin her studies.

At this point, I had a problem, though. Mei didn’t have any affinities, I didn’t have a formation that could raise her wind affinity, and any purchases I made from the System to raise it would only be temporary.

Still, she was helping me research Law-based cultivation, and I had the credits to spare.

“System, raise Mei’s wind affinity to peak six-star.”

Purchase confirmed. Cost 16,177,600 credits. 899,577,048,524 credits remaining.

However, I chose not to raise any of her comprehensions since, in the past, she had been able to rise to Peak Lord without such boosts. I also chose not to copy these techniques into jade slips. Learning them in such a way would only hurt Mei in the long run since the memories from slips wouldn’t stick with her through resets.

With this settled, GuiAi’s team took care of arranging a teacher and quarters within Dragon Gate City for her, treating Mei the same as any other member of the clan.

Then, I turned my attention to researching more complex wind techniques.

---------------------------------------------------

Creating Profound-Rank techniques was far more complicated than creating Yellow-Rank techniques had been.

When I had been studying metal qi techniques, identifying the different Laws involved in a technique had been challenging, but it all made sense to me. In a way, I could feel which parts of a technique were connected to which Laws.

With these wind qi techniques, nothing evoked a similar feeling. I had to do everything through pure logical analysis.

Why? This might have been because I was more familiar with metal techniques, but I didn’t like that answer. I wasn’t familiar with the specific techniques I had been looking at, so why would a general familiarity with metal techniques matter? Instead, I began to suspect it was, again, related to Laws.

Whether it was because I had already cultivated metal techniques in this life, or whether it was for some other reason, I had a connection to metal Laws that I didn’t have to wind Laws. This made understanding metal techniques easier.

Still, even without this connection, Rank 1 techniques were simple enough, and my comprehension of cultivation techniques was high enough, that creating a handful of techniques wasn’t a problem.

In the end, I made three techniques for each level, Low-, Mid-, High-, and Peak-Profound. Twelve techniques in total.

After that, I made a single technique for each level of the Earth-Rank with each technique combining all three of the Laws that Mei requested. This was even more challenging since vengeance didn’t mesh well with the other two, but I found a way to make it work.

Writ of the Defiant Winds, Peak-Earth Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Wind Qi, Effects: Makes one less willing to follow orders. Makes one desire vengeance on anyone who imprisons them.

What my analysis ability didn’t say was that this technique should also make one’s qi ‘faster’ and that it should be far more difficult for someone to usurp control of it, even with a much higher affinity.

Once this was done, I handed everything off to Mei and allowed her to decide how she wanted to proceed. The clan could provide her with any teachers or resources that she might desire, but they wouldn’t come free. She would have to work and earn them like anyone else.

Then, I returned my attention to my own progress.

All of my work and study on wind techniques had given me valuable insights into how cultivation techniques worked and functioned. I wanted to use these insights to create 8 more sets of techniques, one for each element, that YuLong could use to train recruits through a Law-based methodology. However, that would have to wait. First, I needed to create Rank 2 techniques for both myself and Mei.

With everything I had learned, creating a new Rank 2 metal technique was no problem at all. It was done in less than a month.

Writ of Quicksilver, Peak-Earth Rank 2 Cultivation Technique, Metal Qi, Effects: Increases one’s integrity. Makes one more likely to react without thinking.

Creating a few Peak-Yellow wind techniques for Mei also wasn’t much of a problem. As soon as they were done, I handed them off to her so that she wouldn’t need to worry about not having them.

Creating Profound- and Earth-Rank techniques, though, was far more difficult.

Initially, I wanted to do the same as I had with Rank 1, create 12 different Profound techniques and 4 different Earth techniques. However, eventually, I decided to save time and only made 4 Profound techniques, a Low-Earth technique, and a Peak-Earth technique. I could come back and do the rest later.

Finally, after all these techniques were complete, I sat down in my cultivation chamber and focused on advancing.