"Even though they're just temporarily hitting roadblocks and will push through soon enough, it still shows how brutal that breakthrough really is. Now you get how freaking amazing you are!" Fang Yu's voice was dripping with envy.
They both had high-grade spiritual roots, so why was Li Hanfeng's cultivation so much higher than his own?
Hearing this, Li Hanfeng was at a loss for words.
Sure, he'd felt his cultivation speed was pretty solid, but he hadn't thought it was anything special.
Who would've guessed that even supreme-grade spiritual roots would slam into a wall at the third layer of Qi Refining?
When he practiced, he hadn't felt any so-called bottleneck whatsoever.
After the pills got processed, he'd naturally busted through to the fourth layer of Qi Refining.
'Could it be the Embryonic Breathing and Qi Absorption Method working its magic?'
The Embryonic Breathing and Qi Absorption Method could boost your breakthrough odds. He hadn't expected it to kick in this early in the Qi Refining realm.
Of course, it might also be because the Embryonic Breathing and Qi Absorption Method was a perfect match for him. When practicing this method, even without any hand-holding from teaching elders, he'd picked it up like it was nothing and practiced it without breaking a sweat.
Since Li Hanfeng stayed quiet, Fang Yu bounced back quickly: "Whatever, can't compete with you monsters. The Celestial Dipper Sect is already light-years ahead of the outside world. If I were still with my family or stuck in some podunk sect, even with high-grade spiritual roots, hitting the first layer of Qi Refining in a month would be pretty damn good."
"Hold up, what are the cultivation sects like out there in the real world?" Li Hanfeng didn't know squat about the cultivation world beyond the Celestial Dipper Sect and was dying to know more.
Hearing this, Fang Yu jumped right in: "Come to think of it, Li Hanfeng, you're from one of those mortal kingdoms near the Celestial Dipper Sect, right? Makes sense you wouldn't know. The cultivation sects out there..."
"Let me break it down for you—the courtyards where we probationary disciples crash already have spiritual energy environments two to three times richer than the most spiritual hotspot in my family's territory, and that's not even counting techniques, spells, and all that good stuff."
Fang Yu's family was a Foundation Building family, yet their spiritual energy setup couldn't hold a candle to what the Celestial Dipper Sect's newbies got.
"Also, those Qi Refining Pills we get might look like no big deal, but they're actually high-grade Qi Refining Pills. High-grade! My family? Forget getting one every ten days—scoring one every three months would be hitting the jackpot. Usually we'd make do with low-grade Qi Refining Pills for cultivation, and that's still living the high life. The broke folks can't afford pills at all."
Pill grades worked just like talent grades, except there was no "crappy" tier. From bottom to top, you had low-grade, mid-grade, and high-grade, then supreme-grade and heaven-grade.
Li Hanfeng had never bothered checking the grade of pills the Celestial Dipper Sect handed out. First, he had zero clue about it, and second, the Qi Refining Pills he scored from his system were even better quality.
He'd never imagined that pills he didn't think twice about were pure gold to the outside world.
At this point, Fang Yu kept rolling: "So I've always thought you guys living in the Celestial Dipper Sect's backyard are crazy lucky. Not like me—even though I'm from a cultivation family, I had to go through hell and back traveling to join the Celestial Dipper Sect. The Celestial Dipper Sect doesn't run recruitment like clockwork. Each opening is totally random in length, and they only take twelve-year-olds. If luck isn't on your side, you could wander around for one or two years and still get shut out."
"This time around, the Celestial Dipper Sect cracked open its doors for the first time in thirty years. I only managed to squeeze in because this recruitment lasted a whole year, and I still had to get lucky as hell. Truth is, way more people got left in the dust."
Twelve was when your spiritual roots locked in and you could start cultivating. Miss that window, and you basically had zero shot at joining the Celestial Dipper Sect.
Li Hanfeng didn't have a clue how to respond to all this.
The envy in Fang Yu's voice was the real deal.
He'd never realized his birthplace was such a game-changer!
Talk about being born with a golden ticket to the best school district!
But Fang Yu wasn't bitter about it—he was just genuinely reflecting. Maybe picking up on Li Hanfeng's vibe, he switched gears, and before long they'd made it to the Technique Pavilion.
The Technique Pavilion was nothing like the Mission Hall—it was a three-story beast, with each floor massive enough to house a small army.
Of course, there were some similarities. The Technique Pavilion also had a setup like the Mission Hall's front desk, staffed by official sect disciples. Got questions? Just ask away.
Rolling up to the Technique Pavilion entrance, the two followed the crowd ahead of them, whipping out their identity tokens and getting them scanned by some fancy gadget at the entrance before they could waltz into the Technique Pavilion.
Every time he saw contraptions like this, Li Hanfeng felt like he'd been transported back to his past life.
But everything around him screamed ancient China.
After stepping into the Technique Pavilion, Fang Yu shot Li Hanfeng an envious look: "We probationary disciples are stuck with the first floor only. With this many techniques, I don't even know where to start. At least you've got an elder backing you up. If I can't find something that clicks, I'll have to wait for the day after tomorrow's class to bug the teaching elder. For now I'm just gonna browse around. Let's divide and conquer!"
Li Hanfeng was totally cool with that and nodded.
After splitting up with Fang Yu, he headed straight to the front desk.
Like Fang Yu said, he had a teaching elder's stamp of approval and didn't need to play the guessing game.
But with thousands of techniques packed into the Technique Pavilion, trying to hunt down one specific technique would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Just asking was way smarter.
In no time, he got the exact coordinates for Spirit Severing Blade.
He'd already figured out that techniques were stored in books made from some special paper. You could read them but couldn't smuggle them out of the Technique Pavilion, and the cultivation methods in the books were incomplete anyway—swiping them would be pointless.
If you decided to commit to one, you'd trade your identity token for a jade slip. Pop that jade slip, and the technique's entire playbook would download straight into your brain. Pretty slick setup.
Right now, nobody was checking out "Spirit Severing Blade," so Li Hanfeng didn't waste any time grabbing the book and diving in.
[Spirit Severing Blade, low-grade technique. Called Spirit Severing, but it's really Spirit Slashing. Uses spiritual power to forge a blade for long-range enemy takedowns. The cleaner your spiritual energy, the more devastating the power and reach. If your spiritual energy is pure enough, this baby can pack the punch of high-grade techniques.]
The second Li Hanfeng read the Spirit Severing Blade breakdown, he got why the teaching elder had thrown this technique his way.
When it came to spiritual energy purity, with his Embryonic Breathing and Qi Absorption Method, probably nobody among all the probationary disciples could touch him—hell, maybe nobody period.
If he mastered Spirit Severing Blade, he could unleash some serious firepower.
Then he kept reading.
In Spirit Severing Blade, spiritual energy purity had its own ranking system. From top to bottom: innate, flawless, perfect, excellent, and rock bottom—ordinary.
If your spiritual energy quality hit flawless, Spirit Severing Blade could dish out high-grade technique damage. Reach perfect and you'd unleash mid-grade technique power, while the learning curve stayed low-grade easy.
Seeing this, Li Hanfeng's eyebrows shot up: "This technique sounds pretty badass. Why did the teaching elder just toss it out as a suggestion?"
Logic said this kind of technique should be getting hyped up everywhere.
But soon he found out why.
He discovered from a senior at the front desk that the books in the Technique Pavilion had a killer feature. Half the book was technique content, while the other half was reviews and tips left by past users. If you vibed with someone's experience, you could juice it with spiritual power to show love.
Popular techniques always had comment sections bursting at the seams with constant updates. Only the posts with serious approval counts could stick around, and they'd get bumped to the front of the book.
When he heard this, he was like, "Holy crap!"
Wasn't this basically a comment section with a thumbs-up system?
Turned out, for convenience's sake, nothing was too wild anymore.
Spirit Severing Blade wasn't exactly trending, but it still had a decent pile of comments.
The top comment was:
[Anonymous: Don't touch this with a ten-foot pole! This is a massive trap. Using ordinary-level spiritual energy with this method gives you the weakest sauce among low-grade techniques. Even with excellent-level spiritual energy, the power is just meh for low-grade techniques. But the learning curve for this method is absolutely brutal among low-grade techniques! Trust me, don't get suckered in!]