Chapter 11: The Sword Refining Art
“The Sword Refining Art, compatibility 93%.”
Chu Huaixu was slightly surprised, not expecting it to be so high.
He looked through the remaining jade slips. Only this Sword Refining Art was above 90%. The highest of the rest was only 81%.
“I’ll choose this one.”
Opening the jade slip, Chu Huaixu saw the words in large characters: “Heaven and Earth as the furnace, the body as the sword, spiritual energy as the hammer, tempering the body and opening the meridians.”
He closed the jade slip and looked at Niu Yuanshan. “I’ll choose this one.”
Steward Niu nodded. There were simply too many cultivation techniques for the Meridian-Opening Stage. Although he was an outer sect steward, he couldn’t possibly know every single one.
After thinking for a moment, he took out two small booklets from his storage space and handed them to the two.
“These are cultivation insights for the Art of Icy Purity and the Sword Refining Art, respectively. They were written by predecessors. If you have any thoughts during your cultivation, feel free to write them in the booklets for future junior disciples to refer to.”
“Thank you, Steward.” They accepted the booklets.
After this, Niu Yuanshan had wanted to chat with Chu Huaixu alone but held back. He merely pointed eastward and said, “Your residences are over there, please find them yourselves.”
“Yes.”
After the two turned and left, Steward Niu did not go inside but watched them go. He stared at Chu Huaixu’s retreating back, his heart filled with emotion. His curiosity about this newcomer to the Organization was overwhelming, and even when he suppressed it, it would immediately resurface. Only after the two were far away did he return to his courtyard and enter his bedroom.
Niu Yuanshan sat cross-legged on his bed, his mind full of Chu Huaixu. He was simply too curious. You were supposed to be a handyman, so how did Li Chunsong take a liking to you?
“Find an opportunity to chat with him?” Steward Niu thought.
As the thought crossed his mind, he suddenly remembered when he was on the reception duty for newcomers near the dense forest. He had been wearing a golden mask and had reprimanded the silver-masked man. The silver-masked man had wanted to stay and observe this person with the fox-like face, but he had been severely berated.
Thinking of this, Niu Yuanshan raised his large hand and slapped himself hard.
“Slap—!”
“Article 3 of the Admonishments: Regarding fellow practitioners within the Organization, one must not have excessive curiosity!”
Chu Huaixu’s bamboo house and Han Shuangjiang’s bamboo house were adjacent, making them neighbors. Their residences were much smaller than Steward Niu’s.
They walked in silence all the way, without any conversation.
“Farewell.”
“Farewell.”
After bidding each other farewell, Chu Huaixu entered his bamboo house.
Every residence in the Daoist Sect had a dust-clearing magic array, so the interior was spotless even without cleaning. He took out bedding from his Storage Token and spread it on his bed. He tossed the jade slip and the booklet aside, not rushing to cultivate.
“I should add the [Random Attribute Point] first. That’s the correct order,” he thought.
Chu Huaixu opened his [Character Panel] and glanced at his attributes. The attributes that greeted his eyes were very simple.
“【Physique: 1】 (Can be upgraded, maximum 10).”
“【Spirit Gathering: 1】 (Can be upgraded, maximum 10).”
“【Comprehension: 1】 (Can be upgraded, maximum 10).”
“【Spiritual Embryo Attribute: 0】 (Can be upgraded, maximum 10).”
“【Experience Points: 200】.”
“【Character Level: Level 0】.”
“【Remaining Random Attribute Points: 1】.”
As long as he used this 1 point of random attribute, it would be randomly added to one of the attributes above. As the name suggested, Physique represented physical strength such as HP, defense, power, and speed. The higher the Physique value, the more these aspects would increase with each character level.
Spirit Gathering represented the spiritual power within the body. Without spiritual power, one could not cast spells, meaning use skills. The higher the Spirit Gathering value, the greater the increase in the body’s spiritual power for each character level. When out of mana, the recovery speed of mana would also be faster. At the same time, some ultimate skills have mana requirements; if the total spiritual power in the body is insufficient, they cannot even be cast once.
Comprehension was linked to Skills, which referred to the spells of cultivators. Taking Chu Huaixu’s level 49 main character from Spring-Autumn Mountain as an example, his main skill was the Evil-Quelling Art. This skill manifested as black flames blooming like lotuses, with stunning effects. However, it required Comprehension to be above 5 points to learn; this was an ironclad prerequisite.
Furthermore, in the Profound Yellow Realm, cultivators learned spells in four stages: Preliminary Mastery, Minor Accomplishment, Major Accomplishment, and Great Perfection. Players, on the other hand, relied on experience points to level up their skills, also divided into 4 levels. Simultaneously, the higher the Comprehension, the less experience points required to upgrade a skill each time.
The lower the Comprehension, the more experience points were consumed. For some skills of higher quality, if Comprehension was too low, they could not be upgraded further, even if you had experience points. Chu Huaixu’s Evil-Quelling Art had only been upgraded to level 3. To reach the maximum level, he needed to raise his Comprehension to 7 points.
Spiritual Embryo Attribute was somewhat similar to Comprehension, but it was linked to cultivation techniques. Cultivators in the Profound Yellow Realm absorbed spiritual energy from heaven and earth by circulating cultivation techniques.
Players were different; players infused experience points into their cultivation techniques. As long as they filled it up, they could level up. However, players could also go offline and cultivate while idling; once they sat cross-legged, the cultivation technique would begin to circulate. The higher the Spiritual Embryo Attribute, the more cultivation technique experience points gained from idle cultivation. Similar to Comprehension, some powerful cultivation techniques also had requirements for Spiritual Embryo Attribute.
The amount of experience points consumed when upgrading cultivation techniques was also linked to this attribute. If the Spiritual Embryo Attribute was insufficient, even the character level could not be increased! If your Spiritual Embryo Attribute was only 1, your level cap would be level 19. If your Spiritual Embryo Attribute was 2, it would be level 29.
In the words of the Profound Yellow Realm, this meant your talent was too poor, and you could only be stuck in the First Realm your entire life, with no hope of reaching the Second Realm. Simply put, it was just a digitalization of some of the cultivation systems in the Profound Yellow Realm.
“Han Shuangjiang’s Spiritual Embryo is likely level 9, or even the max level 10!”
“This means her leveling speed will be incredibly fast because the experience points consumed will be very low, and the cap is very high, so she won’t get stuck in a certain realm for life.”
“She has almost no bottlenecks!” Chu Huaixu was incredibly envious. Why were the Dao Ancestors of the Daoist Sect so strong, so strong that their opponents even wanted to send people to compromise her virtue?
How desperate would they have to be to resort to such measures? It was because she possessed the Pure Yang body! And a level 10 Spiritual Embryo!
“The long-legged beauty next door, whose talent rivals that of the Dao Ancestor, has probably already started cultivating, right?” Chu Huaixu guessed in his heart. He wasn’t in a hurry. He wanted to add that 1 point of Random Attribute and 1 point of Spiritual Embryo Attribute first.
“Let’s draw first!” Chu Huaixu rubbed his hands. “Add it for me!”
A large roulette wheel, visible only to him, appeared and began to spin. In the roulette wheel, the areas for other attributes were balanced, with only the Spiritual Embryo column being particularly small, with a probability of only 3%.
“Stop!” he thought.
“Ding—! Congratulations, you have obtained an attribute point—Physique!”
Chu Huaixu narrowed his eyes slightly and pondered for a moment, thinking, “Physique, huh? That’s fine too.” It didn’t matter what he added in the early stages; he was balanced poorly. “The random choice is fine too, after all, I didn’t get a [Free Attribute Point]; I can’t allocate it myself.”
On his level 49 character, he had invested the most in Spirit Gathering. Every time he took female players into dungeons, he relied on his thick mana pool and abundant spiritual energy to cast skills as if they were free, focusing on visually spectacular effects – looking cool was all that mattered. Besides Spirit Gathering, he invested more in Comprehension.
This was because professions like artifact refining, alchemy, and talismans were all linked to Comprehension. Refining artifacts could sell equipment, alchemy could sell pills, and talisman crafting could sell talismans, all of which were ways to earn money. Chu Huaixu’s approach was practical: either earn money from women or earn money from players to achieve class advancement. — He truly yearned for progress! Therefore, Physique was something he was relatively unfamiliar with.
“That 1 point of Spiritual Embryo Attribute cannot be added yet; I need to reach character level 1 first.” As mentioned before, with a Spiritual Embryo Attribute of 1, the character level cap was level 19. With a Spiritual Embryo Attribute of 0, the cap was level 9. Therefore, the priority now was to learn the cultivation technique for the Meridian-Opening Stage. Not to mention, he still had 200 experience points to use, which was enough to level up.
Chu Huaixu picked up the jade slip for the Sword Refining Art and the booklet. After thinking about it, he decided to flip through the booklet first. “The Sword Refining Art is like a book, and this booklet is notes left by predecessors, practically like the comment section for this book. Of course, I should check the comment section first! See how everyone has reviewed it.” Chu Huaixu felt this was the correct order.
He opened the first page of the booklet with anticipation. On the first page, there were only two large, flowing characters written somewhat carelessly.
— “Don’t practice it!”
