The system spat out a pile of garbled words. For a moment, it did not know what to say, and hid away again. It dearly wanted to know what other tricks Li Tianwei could come up with.
"It had to be like this. With my special spirit root, I was definitely different from other Heavenly Spirit Roots."
"It was like when I studied. I remembered something after reading it once; I saw the answer to a math problem at a glance. The process was not important at all."
"I couldn't be judged like an ordinary person, nor could I be judged like an ordinary cultivator. That was what made me special."
Li Tianwei felt as though he had achieved enlightenment.
He immediately began flipping through the Heavenly Origin Dao Foundation Method in his hands.
Clearly, the cultivation methods for Drawing Qi into the Body within it were useless now.
"Who told me to be special?"
Li Tianwei was just short of tossing his hair and saying it narcissistically.
"Since I'm special, I need special treatment."
Li Tianwei stared at the Qi-gathering method in his hands and fell into deep thought.
He closed his eyes and continued to sense it. Unfortunately, no matter how Li Tianwei studied or tried to understand it—
the spiritual qi between heaven and earth seemed to look down on him. It refused to approach or enter his body. Even when he desperately guided it, it seemed disgusted.
"No, I don't understand it at all. Wasn't I a genius?"
"It definitely wasn't my problem. The problem was with this method and this world."
At the foot of Tianmen Peak, Bai Muxu gazed toward the summit, his eyes filled with anticipation.
"It took me an hour to complete Drawing Qi into the Body and step into the Qi Refining Realm. Li Tianwei climbed to the top of the Heart-Questioning Stairway; his aptitude, temperament, and comprehension were all a notch above mine. He would surely be faster."
Yet as time ticked by, second by second—
half an hour soon passed. There was still no movement from Tianmen Peak's summit. One could even say there was not the slightest fluctuation in spiritual qi. It did not look like someone was cultivating at all.
"That shouldn't be possible! With the aptitude of a Heavenly Spirit Root, even if the qi had not entered the body, cultivating qi should at least cause fluctuations in spiritual qi."
"Why was it so quiet?"
Bai Muxu was also confused and conflicted now. He itched to rush up to the summit and take a look.
But before his foot could take a single step, he forcibly stopped himself.
"A master leads one to the door; cultivation depends on the individual."
"Foundation Establishment in a Hundred Days is the foundation, as well as an understanding of controlling spiritual qi. I have already taught him Drawing Qi into the Body, and I have given him resources."
"This is the simplest part. If he cannot even accomplish this, what use would there be in my going?"
After stopping, Bai Muxu suppressed the doubts in his heart.
Bai Muxu was anxious below, but Li Tianwei atop the peak was even more anxious.
He was desperately flipping through the Heavenly Origin Dao Foundation Method in his hands. It recorded more than a dozen methods for Drawing Qi into the Body, various tricks for cultivating qi, and methods for later Foundation Establishment.
Bai Muxu had already explained all of these to him, and Li Tianwei had naturally understood them.
But that was all theory. Now that he was putting it into practice within his body, it was completely different from the theoretical answer he had arrived at. He could not even draw qi.
As for whether the problem lay with himself, Li Tianwei naturally refused to accept that.
After all, he possessed a Heavenly Spirit Root. The only possibility was that this method did not suit him.
So Li Tianwei planned to rely on his own ability to completely alter this Qi-gathering method and create one suited to himself.
Then Li Tianwei looked at the Heavenly Origin Dao Foundation Method in his hands and decided to research a method suitable for himself.
As for knowledge, while this world did not have much knowledge of cultivation, he still had the knowledge from his former world.
"Spiritual qi? What if I compared it to atoms in the air?"
"Besides, they didn't answer my call. Had my spirit root become too special?"
Li Tianwei muttered inwardly as he began sorting through the Qi-gathering methods in the Heavenly Origin Dao Foundation Method.
Li Tianwei combined the knowledge from his former world with the Qi-gathering methods in the Heavenly Origin Dao Foundation Method.
"Could human consciousness be some kind of magnetic field—a biological magnetic field? In my old world, there were no beings who could sense the spiritual qi of heaven and earth."
"It should be a difference in the human body. After all, these were two different worlds. And the uniqueness of spirit roots?"
"I didn't necessarily have to attract spiritual qi. I could make spiritual qi attract and repel one another..."
"Perhaps my spirit root couldn't attract spiritual qi, but once it entered my body, things would be different."
"According to the Heavenly Origin Dao Foundation Method, the spiritual qi of heaven and earth—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—used this as their foundation. Positive and negative gave birth to one another..."
As Li Tianwei muttered, his consciousness stretched out without end.
At this moment, the sole advantage of Li Tianwei's Pseudo-Spirit Root revealed itself.
The reason it was called a Pseudo-Spirit Root was that it was far too mixed. It possessed all kinds of attributes, which repelled and attracted one another, allowing it to sense spiritual qi of every attribute.
But because those attributes were too mixed, it had a little of everything, yet lacked attraction toward anything.
Most importantly, because a Pseudo-Spirit Root possessed too many attributes, advancing required cultivating every attribute together and reaching the same critical point before a breakthrough was possible. Yet because there were too many attributes, it had no attraction toward the spiritual qi of any individual attribute, making it difficult to absorb the spiritual qi of heaven and earth.
For a Pseudo-Spirit Root to cultivate and ascend, it was simply impossible.
This was not a novel, where they would claim that a Pseudo-Spirit Root would cultivate faster than single spirit roots or Heavenly Spirit Roots in the later stages.
Reality was that because a Pseudo-Spirit Root had mixed attributes, with mutual generation and restraint leaving every spirit root especially unbalanced, the later one progressed, the more balance was needed. To grow them all together required ever more resources, and even after investing them, those resources would be consumed or transformed through mutual generation and restraint.
Water might be strengthened by fire, but it might also be weakened by wood.
As for other single spirit roots and dual spirit roots, though they had fewer attributes, they could focus on one path. Some spirit roots even possessed different grades, granting them the utmost attraction toward particular attributes.
The only advantage a Pseudo-Spirit Root had over other spirit roots was that it could sense more types of spiritual qi.
And now, it was precisely this advantage that brought Li Tianwei a different feeling.
Although the spiritual qi between heaven and earth was difficult for Li Tianwei to receive or attract because of his Pseudo-Spirit Root—
he could clearly sense its existence.
Since it existed, there had to be an answer. If he could touch it, that meant spiritual qi was also a kind of substance.
So in Li Tianwei's understanding, he did not necessarily need to attract it. He could set it in motion.
With Li Tianwei's extraordinary train of thought, he planned to make these different types of spiritual qi collide and stir one another.
Drawing Qi, as the name implied, meant drawing spiritual qi into motion. As for whether it entered his body or not, that was no longer up to it.
Thus, under Li Tianwei's manipulation, the various types of spiritual qi between heaven and earth instantly collided under his control. Those minute collisions burst apart among the different attributes.
Atoms gathered and scattered, rippling outward without end. A strange chain reaction erupted within the spiritual qi.
Most importantly, to ensure sufficient guidance, Li Tianwei treated this spiritual qi as atoms.
And in his former world, the era when atoms were used most powerfully was—
"Nuclear fission..."
That was right. Based on nuclear energy, fission formulas, everything he understood, and the Heavenly Origin Dao Foundation Method, Li Tianwei fused them together.
He would use the method of fission to draw qi, blasting this disobedient spiritual qi into his body.