Spells

Yun Long's thoughts drifted to Ning Yongrui of the Ning Family.

Ning Yongrui had cultivated five inches of Three-Nine Snow Cold Qi. Among those at Mid-Grade Qi Refining, he was unquestionably one of the best.

With his cultivation at the peak of the Mid Qi Refining Stage, across all of Wanfang Lake, among cultivators who possessed only low-grade Qi Refining, even the strongest were merely his equal.

By all rights, when Ning Yongrui faced them, he should have crushed dry weeds and rotten wood, advancing with irresistible force.

Yet when he had faced Mo Wenjian, whose cultivation was comparable to his own, his mid-grade Qi Refining was of superior quality, and his five inches of Three-Nine Snow Cold Qi held absolute elemental suppression over two inches of Green Lake Jade Water Qi.

Even under such circumstances, Ning Yongrui had only been able to gain the upper hand. He fought with ease, yet had never managed to secure victory in a single strike or swiftly crush his opponent.

The problem still lay in the application and power of spells.

He clearly held the sharpest butcher's knife in his hand, yet he did not seem to fully understand how to bring it down upon a pig with precision and efficiency.

It was only after the Yun Clan gathered all the spell inheritances of Wanfang Lake's various households that Yun Long, upon studying them carefully, suddenly saw the light.

The reason he had been able to sweep all before him, invincible and unmatched, by the shores of Wanfang Lake had not merely been his seven inches of superior-grade Qi Refining, far beyond those of the same realm.

The Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield he cultivated were wondrous and mighty in ways utterly beyond the ordinary spells of Wanfang Lake.

Had that not been the case, even with seven inches of Qi Refining, he would likely have been no different from Ning Yongrui.

He would have possessed strength far exceeding his opponents', yet lacked a sufficiently exquisite "art of wielding the knife" to turn that strength into an overwhelming victory.

The spell jade slips collected by Wanfang Lake's various households lay quietly upon the table before Yun Long.

His fingertips brushed over one jade slip after another as his Spiritual Sense sank into them, studying them closely.

These past days, he had immersed nearly all his mind and spirit in these diverse, bewildering spells.

Only now, after comprehending all these mixed and varied spell inheritances, did Yun Long truly and clearly sense what manner of existence the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield he cultivated were.

In the past, he had only vaguely felt that these two spells were extraordinary, far surpassing the ordinary. Never had he possessed such direct and profound comparison.

The intricacy and power of a spell could not be separated from three fundamental prerequisites.

The first was the quality of one's Qi Refining.

The higher the quality of one's Qi Refining, the more magnificent the foundation of a spell, and its power naturally rose with the tide. This was an unshakable truth in the cultivation world.

The second was the compatibility between one's Qi Refining and the spell itself.

The higher the compatibility, the more a cultivator could wield the spell as easily as an arm or finger, displaying its traits to the fullest and avoiding the predicament of sluggish true qi circulation and greatly diminished power.

To any cultivator who had stepped across the threshold of cultivation, these two points were obvious truths that needed no further explanation.

Yet what truly shook Yun Long's heart was the third, and most critical, factor—the quantity of Qi Refining that formed a spell.

This quantity did not refer to however much Qi Refining one casually mobilized while casting a spell. Rather, it was a more fundamental, more central unit of composition that determined the cornerstone of a spell's power.

Most of the spells held by Wanfang Lake's Cultivation Families were crude and rudimentary, their inheritances incomplete.

Often, merely three to five strands of Qi Refining were enough to barely sketch out the rudiments of a spell and set it into motion.

The quality of one's Qi Refining was settled in dust the moment a cultivator successfully drew qi into the body and stepped into the Qi Refining Stage. It was difficult to change thereafter, unless one encountered a heaven-defying opportunity.

Therefore, the upper limit of spells formed from such small amounts of Qi Refining had almost been nailed firmly in place from the very beginning, difficult to break through.

In order to increase the power of their spells as much as possible within that fixed framework, cultivators had each explored certain methods.

The dull-witted chose the simplest and most brutal method—when casting a spell, they disregarded its structure and forcibly poured in more Qi Refining in one great rush.

This was not wholly ineffective, but the gains were slight. More often than not, it was twice the effort for half the result, the loss outweighed the gain, and it could even inflict hidden injuries upon the meridians.

Cultivators with a little more insight, meanwhile, focused their efforts on increasing their casting speed.

By repeatedly casting the same spell without pause in a short span of time, they used accumulated quantity to compensate for the deficiency in a single casting's power, forming an assault like a tide of spells.

This method could indeed enhance a spell's overall effect to a certain degree and exert greater pressure upon enemies.

Yet whether it was brutal piling on of Qi Refining or ingenious layering of spells, before the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield Yun Long cultivated, both appeared so... immature and laughable.

Yun Long clearly remembered that when the amount of Vajra Primordial Qi condensed within his body was still below nine strands, the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield could be used, but their power came more from the exceptionally pure quality of Vajra Primordial Qi itself, which far surpassed Qi Refining of the same realm, as well as the nearly perfect compatibility between that supreme Qi Refining method and the two spells.

Just as in the Jingyang Mountain Range, when he had first entered the realm of Qi Refining, he had relied solely on a Great Arhat Fist driven by a single strand of Vajra Primordial Qi to easily defeat Elder Mu, whose cultivation far exceeded his own.

At that time, the tyranny of Vajra Primordial Qi had already revealed its first edge, displaying its distinctive splendor.

Only after Yun Long had pushed his cultivation to the peak of early Qi Refining and successfully condensed exactly nine strands of Vajra Primordial Qi within his body did the truly world-shocking power of the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield finally reveal the tip of the iceberg, like a peerless beauty lifting her veil.

For Wanfang Lake's ordinary spells, nine strands of Qi Refining might already have been an unattainable luxury, the limit their structures could contain.

But for the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield, nine strands of Qi Refining as a foundation were merely a beginning—a threshold that could only be called "entry-level."

Even now, Yun Long had not completely discerned where the upper limit lay for the quantity of Qi Refining composing these two supreme spells. It was like a deep pool whose bottom could not be seen.

He only knew that the more Vajra Primordial Qi he invested, the more the spells' power surged, as though there were no end to it. Each increase brought fresh surprise.

Especially when the amount of Qi Refining composing a spell reached numbers that seemed to contain some special pattern—nine strands, twelve strands, even sixteen strands—the increase in power of the two spells would erupt in an almost leap-like surge, bringing a qualitative transformation.

Yun Long vaguely sensed a premonition, born from a hazy touch upon the ultimate principles of the Great Dao.

Beyond the quality of Qi Refining and compatibility, the Cultivation World's classification of spell grades very likely also possessed a standard based on the quantity of Qi Refining needed to form a spell. That was the true measuring rod for a spell's potential.

Yet as for what that standard truly was, the current Yun Clan was clearly still far too unqualified to come into contact with it, as though separated by a thick veil of fog.

This realization caused the faint self-satisfaction that had just risen in Yun Long's heart to quietly settle once more, transforming into a deeper desire to seek knowledge and far-reaching considerations for his Lineage's future.