Chương 23: My Talent Is Truly Hopeless

I find Ling'er exactly where I left her, at the small desk in the room, surrounded by paper covered in careful characters. Dozens of sheets, each one filled with practice strokes, characters repeated until perfect, small notes in the margins. She's been practicing writing for hours, and her progress is astonishing. What would take normal students weeks, she's accomplished in a single day.

"Master!" She jumps up when I enter, her face lighting up. Then she catches herself, remembering her training, and bows formally.

"I mean—welcome back." I smile despite myself. The formality is endearing coming from someone who was eating out of a communal kitchen bowl two weeks ago.

"Look what I found." I place the cracked jade on the desk. It looks ordinary in the dim light—old, damaged, unremarkable. But I can still feel a faint warmth from it, a pulse of something ancient. She looks at it, then at me.

"A manual?"

"The most important manual you'll ever read." I pull up a chair and sit across from her.

"But it's sealed. It needs blood recognition to unlock; a drop of the reader's blood, so it can adapt to their specific constitution."

"My blood?"

"If you're willing. It might hurt, just a pinch. And then the manual will show you what it wants you to see. Every reader sees something different, tailored to them." She holds out her hand without a moment's pause. I take my spare knife and prick her finger. A single drop of blood wells up, red with the faintest golden shimmer. She lets it fall onto the jade and t he room changes. Light floods from the jade: not bright, but deep, like staring into a universe compressed into a stone.

Colors beyond naming swirl within it. Ling'er's eyes go wide, then gold, then something beyond gold. The light wraps around her, flows into her, and for a moment I see— Everything. Fire and water and earth and metal and wood, all spinning together, all one. A dragon made of stars, its scales infinite, its breath creation itself. A bone made of cosmic threads, connecting all things, weaving reality. And at the center, a girl made of impossible potential, smiling like she's coming home. Then it fades.

The jade sits on the desk, ordinary again. Ling'er blinks, her eyes slowly returning to brown.

"Master..." Her voice is distant, awed.

"I saw things. So many things. Cultivation paths I didn't know existed. Ways to combine elements I never imagined. Ways to use my bloodline and my bone together, not separately." She pauses, touching her chest.

"And it showed me… me. What I could become, if I follow the path. What I look like from the inside—all the pieces fitting together."

"Can you remember it?" She touches her temple.

"It's all here. Like the manual wrote itself into my mind. I couldn't forget it if I tried. Every word, every diagram, every note. It's part of me now." The Gaze flickers: Five Phases Transcendence - Ling'er's Copy Status: Fully integrated into her consciousness Content: Complete cultivation path, Qi Condensation to Soul Transformation Adaptations: Manual has automatically adjusted for True Dragon Bloodline and Sacred Cosmic Bone Estimated Cultivation Speed Increase: +300% Elemental Compatibility: Perfect.

She can now cultivate all elements simultaneously, using her bone to harmonize them and her bloodline to empower them. I sit down heavily. A three hundred percent increase to her already impossible speed. She was going to reach Foundation Establishment in months anyway. Now?

"How long to Foundation Establishment now?" I ask. She closes her eyes, calculating—drawing on the knowledge now embedded in her mind.

"The manual says... with my resources and training... three months. Maybe less. It depends on how quickly my body adapts." Three months. From mortal to Foundation Establishment in three months. Normal cultivators take decades. Geniuses take years. Ling'er will do it in seasons. I'm grinning. I can't help it. This is it: the key, the path, the future. She has everything she needs now.

"Master." Ling'er's voice pulls me from my thoughts.

"You should do it too." I blink.

"What?"

"The manual. It adapts to the reader. You have a mixed-element root—five elements, even if they're weak. It should work for you." She gestures at the jade.

"Please. Try." I've been so focused on empowering her that empowering myself seemed like a lost cause. I hadn't even considered using it for myself. I'm mediocre. I'm Foundation Establishment with no hope of advancement. But she's right. The manual adapts. It found a way for her impossible constitution; surely it can find a way for my pathetic one.

"Alright." I pick up the knife.

"Let's see what this old manual does with a washed-up sect leader." I prick my finger. A drop of blood falls onto the jade. The jade glows. Barely. A faint, apologetic shimmer, like a candle flickering in a windstorm. It lasts perhaps two seconds, then fades to nothing. I feel... something. Knowledge flowing into my mind, foreign yet familiar—similar to how I inherited this body's memories, but different. Cleaner. More intentional. The manual is writing itself into my consciousness, just like it did for Ling'er.

But where her integration took minutes and filled her with light, mine takes seconds and leaves me blinking in the dim room. Five Phases Transcendence - Lu Chen's Copy Status: Integrated Content: Complete cultivation path, Qi Condensation to Core Formation Note: The manual attempted to provide a path to Nascent Soul but could not find a viable route through your current foundation. Core Formation is the theoretical maximum.

Adaptations: Adjusted for mixed five-element root and below-average talent Estimated Cultivation Speed Increase: +15% Elemental Compatibility: Moderate. You can now cultivate all five elements with slightly improved efficiency. Special Note: The manual tried its best. Really. It's just... you're a tough case. I stare at the assessment. Core Formation maximum. Fifteen percent speed increase.

"Tough case." Ling'er looks at me with hopeful eyes.

"Master? How was it?" I open my mouth to answer. Nothing comes out. I droop slightly. The excitement drains away, replaced by resigned acceptance. Even a 3, 000-year-old Heaven-defying manual can't fix mediocre. Ling'er tilts her head, reading my expression.

"It didn't work well?"

"It worked." I manage a smile.

"Just... differently than for you. I'll reach Core Formation eventually, maybe. That's more than I had before." She looks at me with those too-sharp eyes, and I know she sees more than I'm saying. But she's kind enough not to push.

"I'm fine." I wipe my eyes, still chuckling.

"I'm better than fine. I just bought you a technique that would make every major sect in the Lower Realm declare war to possess it, and I got it for five middle-grade stones from a woman who thought it was broken." She giggles. It's such a normal sound from such an abnormal child—light and young and unguarded. For a moment, she's just a twelve-year-old who heard something funny. The moment passes, but the warmth lingers.

"Uh… Master?" Something in her voice makes me look up. She's staring at the jade slip on the desk between us. I follow her gaze. The jade is crumbling. A slow, quiet dissolution. The edges go first, flaking away in tiny fragments that catch the candlelight and vanish before they reach the floor. The ancient characters on the surface fade one by one, as if the words were only ever borrowed and now they're being returned. We watch in silence. By the time I think to activate the Gaze, half the slip is already gone.

Five Phases Transcendence - Grade: Garbage A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Previously contained complete cultivation method from Qi Condensation to Soul Transformation. Currently empty. Status: Exhausted. Remaining content: None. Verdict: The manual's stored qi was sufficient for perhaps a dozen cultivators. Your disciple consumed it in its entirety in a single use. You received the remainder.

Did you think a 3, 000-year-old artifact containing a Soul Transformation path would survive indefinite use? What exactly were you expecting? I stare at the readout. The last fragment of the jade slip dissolves. There's nothing on the desk but a faint smudge of pale dust and the ghost of warmth. I sit very still. In my mind, with the crystalline clarity that only comes in moments of profound loss, I think about Mei Lin. Her water affinity. Her steady, patient cultivation.

The years she's spent grinding through techniques that were already outdated when this sect was founded. I think about how the Five Phases Transcendence was adaptable not just for impossible dragon-blooded prodigies, but for anyone. It would have found something in her. Something specific, something suited to what she already had, something that would have compounded over years and decades into a foundation she couldn't build any other way. Then I think about Wei Chen. Then Jun. Then Lian.

Then the other eight disciples sitting on the mountain right now with mediocre techniques and genuine effort, working twice as hard for half the results because no one ever gave them tools worth using. Then I think about the five middle-grade stones I paid for this. Five. Middle-grade. Stones. Something behind my left eye begins to throb.

"Master?" Ling'er is watching me with the careful expression of someone observing a pot that may or may not be about to boil over. I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again. What comes out is not words. It is a sound. A very quiet, very controlled sound, the kind that a man makes when he is forty-eight years old and has spent a lifetime practicing equanimity and is currently watching equanimity pack its bags and walk out the door. The Gaze flickers, apparently sensing blood in the water.

The Gaze Current Observation: Your left eye is twitching. Verdict: This is what we in the assessment business call 'a learning experience.' I am going to develop a heart demon. Right here. Right now. In a rented room above a noodle stall in Greenstone City, and it is going to take the specific shape of a sardonic floating text box that dispenses fortune and mockery in equal measure and sees nothing wrong with this. Fifteen percent. Fifteen.

I used a Soul Transformation technique on myself and received fifteen percent. Ling'er used the same technique and received three hundred percent plus a complete rewrite of her cultivation path plus instinctive mastery of elemental combinations that senior cultivators spend lifetimes chasing. And now it's dust. I become aware that my hand has moved to my head. I am, I realize distantly, gripping my own hair.

"Master." Ling'er's voice is very gentle.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know it would—""It's not your fault." The words come out remarkably steady, all things considered.

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"I know, but—""Ling'er." I release my hair. Smooth my robes. Breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way forty years of meditation practice taught me to do when the universe is being particularly funny.

"I'm not angry at you. I'm not angry at the manual." A pause.

"I… am simply experiencing a brief period of grief." She nods solemnly, in the way of someone who does not believe this for a single second but is too kind to say so. I look at the smudge of dust on the desk. The most valuable thing I've ever owned. Lasted less than an hour. Right. I can't bring it back. That's simply the truth of it, stated plainly, and no amount of teeth-gnashing will change it. The manual is gone. The opportunity is gone.

What remains is the fifteen percent improvement integrated into my consciousness, the knowledge Ling'er carries in her mind, and the Azure Frost Breathing Method sitting in my storage ring.

'Focus on what you have.' What I have is this: the Five Phases Transcendence, whatever sliver of it survived the encounter with Ling'er's constitutions, is now part of how I think about cultivation. And one thing I remember clearly from those few seconds of integration, one thing the manual showed me before it ran dry, is that it was designed to be modular. Not a replacement for other techniques, but a framework that sits underneath them. A lens, the way I thought of it later.

It improves what's already there rather than demanding you start over. Which means the fifteen percent isn't applied to the mediocre cultivation path I've been stumbling down for twenty years. It's applied to whatever I choose next. I reach into my storage ring and take out the Azure Frost Breathing Method. The jade slip is cool in my palm, faintly luminous, carrying the particular quality that distinguished Elder Frostheart's legacy from everything else in that tomb. Foundation to Nascent Soul. Water and ice.

A single element, concentrated, refined over centuries into something that doesn't need to be everything because it's committed to being one thing perfectly. If the Five Phases Transcendence gives me fifteen percent and my current path gives me nothing, then the question isn't how to mourn what I lost. It's complete from Foundation to Nascent Soul. Even if I never reach Nascent Soul, having a clear path to Core Formation is valuable. Second, it's specialized. Water-ice is a single element, not five.

My mixed root is weak because it's diffuse, spread across all elements. Focusing on one element might let me concentrate what little talent I have. Third, the tomb's treasures include ice-aspected resources. Frost crystals. Century ice essence. Materials that could aid my cultivation if I commit to this path. Fourth, and this is the part that comes from a lifetime of reading xianxia BS, specialized techniques often have hidden depths that general techniques lack.

The Azure Frost Sect was extinct, but they were powerful once. Their core method must have value. Fifth, Ling'er can help me with it. Her Sacred Cosmic Bone sees everything. If I'm learning a single element, she can guide me more effectively than if I'm flailing with all five. It's not glamorous. It's not Heaven-defying. But it's practical. And practicality has kept me alive in two lives now.

"Now." I pull out the Azure Frost Breathing Method from the tomb, its jade slip cool in my hand.

"While you were reading, I was shopping. I also need to train. And since you're now the most knowledgeable person in this room about cultivation..." She perks up immediately, her eyes brightening.

"You want me to help?"

"I want you to watch me practice the Frost Manual and tell me everything I'm doing wrong." I set the manual on the floor between us.

"Every mistake. Every inefficiency. Every moment I'm being an idiot. Can you do that?" Her grin is answer enough. I sit cross-legged on the floor of the small room, the Frost Manual open before me. Ling'er perches on the edge of the bed, watching with those too-deep eyes that miss nothing.

"Azure Frost Breathing Method," I begin, reading from the introduction.

"Water-ice affinity. Requires understanding of flow before freeze, water before ice. I have water in my mixed elements, but poorly—it's diluted by earth and fire and metal and wood. The manual says it's adaptable, but—""You're forcing it." I blink.

"I haven't started yet."

"Your qi is already trying to shape itself into the technique." She tilts her head, seeing something I can't.

"But it's fighting you. You're thinking too much about the ice part and not enough about the water part. Ice is just frozen water. If you can't flow, you can't freeze." I stare at her.

"What?" She shrugs.

"The threads show me. Your qi is all tight and rigid, like it's bracing for something. It needs to loosen first. Be water before you try to be ice." I close my eyes and try again. Breathe in. Gather water qi from my mixed pool. Let it flow through my meridians. Don't think about ice. Don't think about freezing. Just think about water—fluid, adapting, finding its own path.

"Better." Her voice is soft, guiding.

"Now cool it. Just a little. Like asking water to slow down." I cool it. The qi responds, gradually, naturally. The flow slows. The edges thicken.

"More. Let it happen naturally, don't push." It does happen naturally. For the first time since I started cultivating in this body, a technique feels right. The water qi in my meridians, always sluggish and uncooperative, begins to flow with purpose. Cold spreads through my limbs, but it's not painful. It's refreshing. Clarifying. Like the first breath of winter air. I open my eyes.

"That was..."

"You were doing it wrong before." Ling'er's voice is matter-of-fact, no judgment, just observation.

"The manual's not wrong, but it assumes you already understand water. You don't. You've been forcing your mixed elements to behave like pure elements your whole life, and they hate it. They've been fighting you because you've been fighting them." She leans forward, earnest.

"You need to work with what you have, not against it. Your water is weak because you've never let it just be water. You've always been trying to make it into something else—fire, earth, whatever the technique demanded. No wonder it's uncooperative."

"How do you know all this?" She touches her chest, where the Sacred Cosmic Bone resides.

"It shows me. When I watch you, I can see your threads, your qi, your mistakes. The places where you're fighting yourself. It's like reading, but with cultivation instead of words." I shake my head slowly.

"You're going to surpass me so fast it'll make my head spin."

"Then I'll protect you." She says it simply, without drama, without hesitation.

"You protected me first. You saw me when no one else did. You gave me food and training and a name written on paper. When I'm strong, I'll protect you forever." For a moment, I can't speak. The words hang in the air between us, simple and true. A twelve-year-old girl, promising to protect a forty-year-old sect leader. And I believe her. Completely. Then I reach out and ruffle her hair. She ducks, laughing, and swats at my hand.

"Master! You're messing it up!"

"It's already messy. Sit still." She giggles, dodging, and for a moment we're just two people enjoying each other's company. Then I return to my meditation posture.

"Watch closely. Tell me every mistake." She settles back on the bed, all business.

"You're already making another one. Your left shoulder is tense. Relax it." I do.

"Better. Now breathe slower. The technique wants longer breaths." I adjust.

"Good. Now the water's flowing better, but you're still thinking about ice. Stop thinking. Just let the water be cold." I let the water be cold. We continue like that for hours. She watches. I practice. She corrects. I adjust. By midnight, I've made more progress on the Frost Manual than in two weeks of solitary practice. By dawn, I've internalized the first three levels. It's not much. I'm still Foundation Establishment, still mediocre by any real standard.

But for the first time in decades, I feel like I'm actually improving. And in the corner, curled on the bed with a candle flickering beside her, a twelve-year-old girl reads children's stories. Her lips move silently as she sounds out words. Her finger traces the illustrations. She smiles at the pictures; brave children, magical animals, happy endings. I watch her for a long moment, then return to my meditation.

End of Day 2 - Assessment Ling'er's Progress: Cultivation: Qi Condensation 1st Stage → 1st Stage (90% to 2nd) Five Phases Transcendence: Fully integrated, already optimizing her circulation Reading/Writing: Now literate at basic level, can read simple manuals independently New Acquisitions: Five Phases Transcendence (Soul Transformation technique, priceless) Various manuals for sect disciples Herb seeds, formation flags, recipe, children's books Total spent: 15 middle-grade, 40 low-grade Remaining Wealth: Low-grade: 2, 148 Middle-grade: 417 High-grade: 17 I blow out the candle as dawn light filters through the window.

Ling'er is asleep, the storybook open on her chest, her face peaceful. Tomorrow, the tournament begins.