Chapter 298 – Life 76, Age 16, Martial Disciple 5

Cultivation. For multiple centuries, I had been trying to learn to cultivate further and better, but what was cultivation?

In the most basic sense, cultivation was pulling in energy from the environment to strengthen one’s body. Typically, this was pulling in qi to strengthen one’s energy body, but various members of my clan had been experimenting with pulling in wu to strengthen their physical bodies. In either case, energy was used to strengthen a facet of one’s body.

This strengthening wasn’t free, though. When a person cultivates their body, their mind would also be affected. I had personally experienced these mental effects more times than I wished to remember. While I still didn’t know the root cause of these effects, I did know a few factors that would impact how strong they would be.

First was the purity of a person’s qi. The less pure, the stronger these mental effects would be. Second was the placement of a person’s meridians. If a person’s meridians weren’t placed correctly, the mental effects of their cultivation technique would be more severe. Third was the Rank 3 cultivation technique that a person used. A technique that strengthened one’s qi would make the mental effects stronger as well.

However, even if a person cultivated perfectly, their mind would still be affected. The only way I had learned to completely cut off these mental effects was by blocking my acupoints, essentially cutting my energy body off from my mind and soul. While not entirely ideal, this allowed me to function normally without needing to worry about the mental effects of cultivation during my daily life.

The why behind these mental effects still eluded me, though. Why did pulling in energy affect one’s mind? My supposition was that it was related to the flow of energy through one’s body, but this only told me the ‘how,’ not the ‘why.’

For Yellow-Rank techniques, this was all that mattered. The only differences between one technique and the next were their elements, the purity of the qi they produced, and the mental effects one would be subjected to.

For Profound-Rank and above, however, one also needed to take into account a variety of tertiary effects. Some techniques were said to make qi ‘sharper,’ and some were said to make qi ‘hotter.’ Some made qi ‘smoother,’ and some made qi ‘heavier.’

But, what did it even mean for qi to be ‘sharper?’ Through my experiments with metal qi attack techniques, I found that with ‘sharper’ qi, my strikes would be able to cut through targets more easily. These attacks weren’t any more powerful than attacks with ‘normal’ qi, but ‘sharpening’ my qi was akin to sharpening a blade. For whatever reason, ‘sharper’ qi was met with less resistance during a cut. If I tried to use this qi with bashing or piercing attacks, though, it was no different from normal qi.

Again… why?

I had known for a long time that different fire qi cultivation techniques produced different ‘flavors’ of fire qi, but I did not know how or why. If I wanted to improve on existing techniques, if I wanted my techniques to reach into the legendary Heaven-Rank, I needed to figure this out.

Luckily, recent events had pointed a big arrow at an important aspect of cultivation that I had unknowingly been neglecting: Laws.

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From my most recent conversation with the incarnation of the Earthly Dao, I knew that by using a fire seed to pump my inner world full of earth qi, I had been imbuing it with earth Laws. This, in turn, allowed people to begin using earth qi cultivation techniques.

According to the most recent reports that I had received, while anyone who cultivated earth qi was able to draw in energy to replenish their reserves, only Martial Disciples were capable of advancing.

This told me that Laws were somehow connected to cultivation. Before anyone would be able to advance beyond Martial Disciple, the world would need to be imbued with more advanced Laws. This made sense, but I doubted things were this simple. There was something I was missing.

So, in my inner world, I constructed a new Technique Hall filled with scrolls for every Rank 1, 2, and 3 earth qi cultivation technique that I had in my mental library. Then, I talked to ShouLi, and she created a new mission for the members of my clan: cultivate everything.

Was it true that only Martial Disciples could advance, or was something else at play?

It didn’t take long for me to get my answer.

Only about 60% of the Rank 1 techniques were usable. The other 40% couldn’t be cultivated at all. Also, while it was true that none of the Rank 3 techniques worked, a handful of the Rank 2 techniques did, at least somewhat. A few techniques had allowed people to break through to Martial Master, but no one had been able to ascend past Martial Master 4.

Importantly, no one had been able to cultivate any Earth-Rank techniques. The best Rank 1 techniques that had been cultivated were Mid-Profound, and all the Rank 2 techniques that had worked were only Low-Yellow.

So, what did all of this tell me? Cultivation somehow imbued a person’s qi with Laws.

How did a person’s qi become ‘sharper?’ It was imbued with Laws of sharpness.

Why did a person who cultivated the Earth Heart Mantra believe that they could defeat anyone and everyone? Their qi was imbued with Laws of indomitability.

Why did cultivating impure qi cause people to become crazy? Their qi was imbued with a hodgepodge of messy and contradictory Laws. While the most dominant Law would still be expressed most strongly, this mixture of Laws would cause a person to lose control.

Why did cultivation work at all? Cultivation Laws or energy Laws.

Could everything about cultivation be defined in terms of the Laws at play? Maybe not, but doing so gave me a new way in which I could understand cultivation techniques.

What was the difference between a Profound-Rank technique and an Earth-Rank technique? The Profound-Rank technique needed Profound-Rank Laws, and the Earth-Rank technique needed Earth-Rank Laws.

If my guess was correct, then if I wanted people to be able to cultivate Earth-Rank techniques, I would need to imbue the space with qi from an Earth-Rank fire seed so that they would have access to Earth-Rank Laws.

What did all of this mean for me, personally? No matter how much I modified or improved an Earth-Rank technique, I would never be able to improve it to Heaven-Rank. Instead, I would need to start with a technique that was capable of tapping into Heaven-Rank Laws.

Also, even if I could find such a technique, even if I purchased it from the System, I couldn’t be certain that it would be usable. Was the Nine Rivers Continent imbued with Heaven-Rank Laws? Maybe, but the fact that I had never even heard of such a technique seemed to indicate otherwise. That being the case, I put away thoughts of acquiring such a technique any time soon.

All of these conjectures left me with one lingering worry: how did this new information affect my clan? I not only started them off with awful Low-Yellow techniques, but I also encouraged them to cultivate a random assortment of techniques that likely relied on a variety of mutually contradictory Laws.

I had believed that this was fine since they were using Energy Expulsion Pills to purge themselves of any lingering impurities. But if cultivating really did imbue a person’s qi with Laws, would such a pill be enough? When a person cultivated, was it only their qi that was imbued with Laws, or was their body imbued with them as well? If so, would these Laws linger even after their cultivation base was reset?

I needed to find out. I needed to know if there was a better way to train my people.

If we wanted to develop a new, optimal training regimen, there were a lot of questions that would need to be answered, but I already had enough work to keep me busy for a few lifetimes. So, I handed this project off to YuLong. I had bought him a boost to his training comprehension, and I couldn’t help but believe that it would come in handy.

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With this Law-based framework in mind, I set about creating a new set of Warrior Tier cultivation techniques.

I had already cultivated metal qi in this life, so since I didn’t want to have to worry about absorbing contradictory Laws, I chose to stick with that element.

What metal Laws would my ideal cultivation technique possess? What options did I even have?

I spent a good deal of time trying to purchase something from the System that could help me answer these questions, but I didn’t meet with any success. Simply put, information on Laws was not something that could be purchased with credits.

So, instead, I organized the techniques I had based on my guesses about which Laws they were connected to. Then, I tried to tease out which features of each technique were connected to which specific Laws.

My goal was to center my technique around Laws relating to sharpness, quickness, and integrity. These were core aspects of several metal techniques, so my assumption was that they were core Laws for metal.

After carefully constructing a new technique that I thought would work, I wrote it down in a book and used my technique appraisal ability to evaluate it.

Unnamed, Peak-Earth Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Metal Qi, Effects: Increases one’s integrity. Makes one more likely to react without thinking.

I wasn’t exactly enamored with that second effect, but I could see its usefulness. During a fight, the ability to react quickly was important. If it were something that I was subject to at all times, it would be a huge problem, but as long as I kept my acupoint blocked, it shouldn’t be an issue.

In any case, I could try it for a while and see if it worked. If not, I could just start over.

Picking my brush back up, I scribbled a name on the book’s cover: The Writ of Quicksilver.

Then, I took an Energy Expulsion Pill to abolish my existing cultivation base and started fresh using my new technique.

All told, including the time I spent researching, it took me a year and a half to reach Peak Disciple. Part of me wanted to continue pushing through Martial Master, but there was no reason to rush, and I had other tasks I needed to take care of first.