Chương 50: Cards

Dear Jianyi, I am writing to congratulate you on your performance during the duel against Lu Shan. While I am sure that the loss hurts, you improved markedly compared to the first one. While I am still early in my own cultivation journey, I believe that constantly improving is all we can do while walking our path to ascension. But I am not writing to you only to share superficial philosophy; I wanted to share some observations on your movements and forms.

Maybe they can provide some inspiration for your further training. Should you continue to improve as you have so far, I am sure you will rise again from Amber to Lapis, if not Jade. Your sect sister Cai Fangyin Inner Disciple, Fivefold Spear Sect PS: Please don't take Ruolan's behavior to heart. She is not a bad person, but cannot abide by any form of disrespect, real or imagined. He smiled at the note. She was right, the loss stung, but he had made Lu Shan fight for it—that had to be enough for now.

Elder Zhang Zixia stood in front of the class, her unblemished face looking emotionless at the young disciples filling the room.

"Disappointing." The single word resonated in the room; many of the outer disciples embarrassed, all of them quiet.

"A simple test about a topic even children like you should be interested in, yet half of you were incapable of answering eighty percent of the questions correctly. You should be embarrassed. Three merit points for those with full marks. None for the rest." There had been a few tests so far, and results had been mixed, but no elder had delivered such forceful feedback.

Jianyi had been fortunate—if one considered nights spent learning based on notes shared with Shuhua, Miyao, and the cousins fortunate—to do well so far. His efforts had garnered him four merit points, with the three from Elder Zhang; he now stood at thirteen. He wasn't sure whether Elder Fang had forgotten to reduce his points as he moved him from Lapis to Amber, or whether that was maybe not possible once awarded.

"Three card types. Affinity. Qi. Technique. Within techniques, you have those taking a single breath to cast, swift ones that take effect right away, and channeled cards that take multiple breaths. How hard can it be to remember this?" Elder Zhang was still letting them feel her anger.

"Inhale, draw, in the Qi Gathering Realm, two cards, and activate swift cards. Exhale, activate a card. End of breath, discard your cards. If you cannot keep this in mind, you might be wrong here." Her words were made worse by her impassive face.

"You!" she pointed at Jianyi, and he had to fight the instinct to duck.

"Deck weights in the Qi Gathering Realm." Relief flooded him; that was easy.

"Ten techniques, two qi cards, and three affinity cards."

"Correct. Too easy. In step one of the realm, how much qi, expressed in affinities, can one typically hold?"

"Five," Jianyi knew that one as well. Without a cultivation technique, he was probably still at one or less.

"Simple. How long until a cultivator of that realm can use an affinity card again?"

"Three breaths."

"Straightforward. Why does a card not state its impact?"

"Because the effect is determined by the cultivator's qi density, typically defined by their realm." The elder scrounged her nose.

"And?" Jianyi thought feverishly—until the answer that should be most obvious to him appeared.

"Dual affinity cultivation affects the effect as well."

"All of this is easy! One point—even though it is barely worth it." As they exited the lecture hall an hour later, even those disciples who had answered the test correctly felt beaten like a dog. Liu Jun was undaunted, though.

"Your fight yesterday was something. I thought Lu Shan would explode. His plan to humiliate you failed. How did you improve so much since the last time?" he asked eagerly, his cousin looking on. Jianyi bowed his head slightly in thanks.

"I recovered physically and trained quite hard. In combination, it managed to close the gap—at least somewhat."

"More than somewhat. You had him on the ropes there." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Jianyi smiled. He was grateful for the praise, but he knew that it hadn't been that close.

"Will you join the group training, then?" Liu Hong asked, slightly more sedate than his cousin. He nodded.

"I will." He was grateful to the group that had helped him with their notes and support. It would be unseemly not to repay them in kind if it was within his means. And it surprisingly didn't feel like a waste of time when doing it, either.

It had been a few days since the duel with Lu Shan, and things had quieted down a bit. After the near disaster of being hunted by demons, the intense period of building his soul defense and finally unlocking his dantians, followed by the duel, it had felt good to be back in a semblance of a rhythm. With some trepidation, he had quit his job in the kitchen but had resumed his activities with the tailors. Beyond a lot of time learning and training, he had spent every free minute in the library.

After all, a cultivator without a cultivation technique was like a merchant without wares, useless. However, his experience with the Martial Meridian Art had taught him that it was worth investigating his options, instead of going with the easy choice. He was sure that the Imperial Cycling Art was a good technique—how could it be different if tens of thousands of cultivators across the Empire used it—but he thought that it would be foolish not to spend a few days researching what his options were.

He could have taken a shortcut by going directly to the elder who did assessments for disciples, or even to Elder Sun, but that felt like laziness, and he wanted to truly understand before making a decision that would likely impact the next few years, if not more, of his cultivation journey. After having worked his way through several tomes, he had come to the conclusion that things were not quite as complex as they had felt in Elder Zhang's lecture, but there were still quite a few options to choose from.

The right cultivation technique was determined by three factors. The body and spirit composition: here it was important to note that he had twelve meridians opened and that his pathways, after the healing pill he had taken, were in excellent condition. That opened the most powerful tier of techniques to him. The second aspect was will strength. Nothing to be measured directly, but he thought that his recent experience with the Spiritual Sea Forging technique had shown that he was willing and able to endure pain.

That should therefore pose no limiting factor. Lastly, his cultivation was at the very beginning, and there were no limitations. After much deliberation, he had put together a list of four techniques that could work, which put him in a position to get advice from a specialist.

Elder Mo Xiang resided on the central peak. She was small but radiated energy and drive. He had gotten an appointment with her with the help of the administrative hall and, upon arrival, a servant had led him to her study right away. One wall of the study was full of plants, orchids, ferns, and other decorative greenery that gave the whole room the feel of a natural grove. The feeling was supported by the earthen tones of the rest of the interior and even the dark green robes that the elder wore.

After he introduced himself, the elder looked at him bright-eyed.

"Out of curiosity, and I ask this of every disciple that appears before me, why not go with the Imperial Cycling Art? After all, this session alone is going to cost you contribution points, not even taking into account the technique itself." Jianyi nodded.

"Honored elder, I feel this is a small investment given the importance of the decision that goes with it, and I have had a positive experience with choosing a method different from the Imperial Gate Opening Technique."

"Ah, interesting. Which technique did you use?" the elder asked with curiosity.

"The Martial Meridian Art."

"Oh, how ambitious! I like it. So this could be good tidings for our exploration. To confirm, this will cost five hundred contribution points. If you agree, place your medallion on this plate," she shoved a small jade plate over to him. The formalities behind them, the elder dove into the details right away. She handed him multiple artifacts that he needed to channel qi into to measure his meridians and pathways.

She made him follow a specific breathing pattern while having another artifact strapped over his mouth and nose, and then assessed his yin-yang body balance with another implement.

"Very good. As you probably expected, this all looks very good. Your body is in balance, which is to be expected from a young, healthy cultivator. Just keep in mind that if in the—hopefully distant future—the effectiveness of your cultivation technique drops, it could be that your yin and yang are out of balance." Jianyi nodded and filed that away as something to study eventually.

"We can test your will today, but if you give me permission to access the results from the test on intake day, we could save some time." Jianyi nodded. The will challenge had been one of the better experiences during that stressful day. The elder had him put his medallion back on the plate, and she seemed to read something in it with the help of another jade.

"Ah, impressive. Very good," she grinned at him with the enthusiasm of someone a fraction of her age.

"That opens up a lot of possibilities. Very interesting." The last part of the assessment went by quickly, as it was just a couple of questions that he could easily answer.

"The good news is that there is essentially no technique that is out of reach for you. The bad news is that choosing becomes very difficult. Before I make my recommendation, please describe how you see your path as a cultivator." Jianyi thought about it for more than a moment. Then he spent even more time thinking about whether he should say what he thought or find a more moderate way of framing it. He decided against it. If he wanted the best recommendation, he needed to be honest, no matter how it sounded.

He looked at her open, inquisitive eyes.

"I will endure any hardship, overcome any obstacle, suffer without end, rise to whatever height needed, to kill every demon on this plane and win the Celestial Confrontation, singlehandedly if I must." He had never said this before. Never formulated the thought this explicitly. But it felt right. It felt like the best summary of his path at this point. Warmth suffused his body. In contrast to what he had expected, the elder did not laugh in his face. The resolution on her face mirrored what he felt.

She nodded at him.

"Thank you for sharing this with me. Given the turmoil in qi that I feel around us, I think you might have made some progress towards the second step of Qi Gathering already." Jianyi looked at her, mouth open.

"How does that work?" She smiled.

"Well, the basis of cultivation is using qi to strengthen your spirit and body. The most common way to have qi enter your spirit is with the help of cultivation techniques. However, the more you advance, the more important it becomes that you shape that qi in accordance with your path, your Dao. If you make breakthroughs in your understanding of your Dao, the Heavens might reward you by providing you with additional qi.

If you had a technique, it would be recommended that you now use it to integrate that qi, but given how early you are in your journey, there is no harm in just letting it rest for now.

"Congratulations, though, this is something that most take many years to experience."