Lin Xuan

"Sigh!"

A disappointed sigh echoed. A youth with an ordinary appearance and a blank expression had failed once again. This was his forty-ninth failed attempt to break through in the last three months. Even with Lin Xuan's resilient mind, he was currently surrounded by frustration and despair.

A bitter smile touched the corner of the youth's mouth. He shook his head and looked at his own hands. Was his aptitude truly that poor?

Lin Xuan clenched his fists tightly, his nails digging deep into his flesh, yet he seemed not to feel any pain at all.

Lin Xuan was seventeen years old and had been a disciple of Floating Cloud Valley for three years.

Floating Cloud Valley was a small sect in the Cultivation World with nearly a thousand disciples, and Lin Xuan was one of those low-level disciples.

In three years, the fellow disciples who had entered the sect at the same time as him had long since stepped into the middle stage of the Spirit Movement Stage, and a few with outstanding aptitude had even entered the late stage of the fifth level, yet he was still lingering at the first level.

His progress was so slow not because Lin Xuan lacked effort; on the contrary, his diligence was second to none among the low-level disciples. When others practiced a technique once, he practiced it three times; when others meditated for an hour, he meditated for three. Yet, despite such painstaking efforts, the harvest was pitifully small, leaving him far behind the others. Lin Xuan's heart was filled with a sense of frustration.

Cultivation was divided into eight stages: Spirit Movement, Foundation Establishment, Core Condensation, Nascent Soul, Lihe, Dongxuan, Spirit Division, and Tribulation Transcendence. Each stage was further divided into seven levels: the first and second levels were the early stage, the third and fourth were the middle stage, the fifth and sixth were the late stage, and the seventh level was known as the Great Perfection. Once the bottleneck was broken, one could enter the next stage.

Although the path to immortality was difficult, it progressed from the shallow to the deep. For example, the techniques for the first two levels of the Spirit Movement Stage were merely introductory. Those with good aptitude could master the first level in two months, while those with poorer aptitude could manage in three to five months. Unfortunately, this only applied to those who possessed a Spirit Root.

A Spirit Root was a term used in the Cultivation World. There had been no precise description of what it actually was for tens of thousands of years; it was only known that those who possessed a Spirit Root were far faster in their cultivation speed than ordinary people without one. In other words, theoretically speaking, it was not impossible for a mortal with ordinary aptitude to cultivate, but it was a case of half the result for twice the effort... no, it should be that even with ten times the effort, one could not achieve even half the harvest of others.

Simply put, it was thankless work.

And unfortunately, Lin Xuan was just an ordinary person without a Spirit Root.

Normally, for an ordinary person without a Spirit Root like him, even if he wanted to step onto the path of immortality, no sect would be willing to accept him. However, Lin Xuan's situation was special. Three years ago, by a stroke of luck, he had saved a severely injured elder of Floating Cloud Valley. The elder was grateful and recommended him for entry, making him a member of this small cultivation sect.

Through three years of winter and summer, Lin Xuan had never been lax in his cultivation. He trained in the bitter cold of winter and the sweltering heat of summer, putting in far more sweat than others. Yet even so, he was still left far behind by his peers.

In the pursuit of the immortal path, aptitude was more important; relying solely on effort was hard to compensate!

Just like his recent attempt to break through, Lin Xuan felt that his cultivation had reached the peak of the first level, just a hair's breadth away from the second level of the Spirit Movement Stage. Yet this tiny gap felt like a massive chasm that, no matter how hard Lin Xuan tried, he could not cross.

After a long while, Lin Xuan loosened his clenched fists and let out a breath, as if to drive the gloom from his heart. He sat cross-legged once more and performed the Internal Vision Technique.

The Internal Vision Technique was a minor spell in the Cultivation World that allowed one to check the flow of spiritual power within their own dantian and meridians. It was an auxiliary spell used only during cultivation.

He saw that his dantian was a void, and the only things present were wisps of pale cyan gas. This was the legendary spiritual power.

But there was not much gas, and it was extremely thin, a result of Lin Xuan's low cultivation level.

So-called cultivation was essentially going against the heavens, and to go against the heavens, one needed immense supernatural power. This required enduring all kinds of arduous tempering to eventually control the Five Elements, absorb the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, refine it, and finally make it his own.

These wisps of spiritual power were what Lin Xuan had gained from three years of cultivation. Naturally, compared to his peers, it was far less, because without a Spirit Root, his path of cultivation was far more arduous than theirs.

Under the influence of his divine sense, those wisps of spiritual power began to gather and intertwine. Originally, each wisp was only as thick as a strand of hair, but as time passed, they converged into a stream of spiritual power about as thick as a little finger.

A faint white mist rose from Lin Xuan's head, and his body was soaked in sweat. Merely the process of gathering the spiritual power had exhausted all his strength. For an ordinary person to cultivate, it was truly a path filled with thorns at every step.

His breathing became heavier, but Lin Xuan's expression did not change in the slightest. Over the past three years, he had long since grown accustomed to it.

Once the spiritual power was gathered, Lin Xuan's expression did not relax at all. He carefully released his divine sense and, following the mental cultivation method taught by the sect, controlled the spiritual power to flow out of his dantian and into his meridians.

For a cultivator, the dantian was the foundation for storing spiritual power, and the eight extraordinary meridians were also very important locations. When spiritual power circulated through the eight extraordinary meridians from head to toe once, it was called one cycle.

With every such cycle, the spiritual power would strengthen a little. Although it was negligible, many drops made an ocean; by performing such cycles several times a day, the spiritual power would gradually grow.

Of course, there were thousands of cultivation techniques in the Cultivation World, and the paths for the great cycle varied for every sect, with significant differences in effectiveness.

The great cycle, while a mandatory course for every cultivator, was not as easy as outsiders imagined; in fact, it could be said to be very difficult.

One did not need to worry about the route the spiritual power flowed, as the sect's mental cultivation method explained it clearly, and one only needed to follow it. However, the speed of the flow had to be explored by oneself. The reason was simple: the condition of every person's meridians was different.

Some people had strong meridians with high tolerance, allowing them to not only hold more spiritual power but also handle faster flow without issue. Others had weaker meridians, and the situation was the exact opposite. Generally speaking, the better the Spirit Root, the stronger the meridians, and vice versa.

Lin Xuan was just an ordinary person, lacking even a Spirit Root, so he had to expend more energy and consume more time to perform the great cycle.

Every step had to be taken with extreme caution. If the speed were too fast, not only would he fail to complete the cycle smoothly, but he would also damage his meridians.