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, making him an outstanding figure among Mid-Grade Qi Refining cultivators.

With his peak Mid Qi Refining Stage cultivation, looking across Wanfang Lake, even the highest-level cultivators at the Low-Grade Qi Refining stage were no more than his equals.

Logically, Ning Yongrui should have been able to crush them with ease, like a broken bamboo.

However, when facing Mo Wenjian, whose cultivation was similar, his Mid-Grade Qi Refining was of higher quality than Low-Grade Qi Refining, and his five inches of Three-Nine Snow Cold Qi possessed absolute attribute suppression over Mo Wenjian's two inches of Green Lake Jade Water Qi.

Under these circumstances, Ning Yongrui could only gain the upper hand, fighting with ease but never managing to achieve a swift, decisive victory.

The problem, as always, lay in the application and power of his techniques.

He held the sharpest pig-slaughtering knife in his hand, yet he seemed unsure of how to precisely and efficiently strike the pig.

It wasn't until the Yun Family collected all the technique inheritances from the various families around Wanfang Lake, and Yun Long studied them meticulously, that he suddenly understood.

His invincibility by the lakeside back then wasn't solely due to his seven inches of High-Grade Qi Refining, which far surpassed his peers.

The Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield he cultivated were far more profound and powerful than the ordinary techniques of Wanfang Lake.

Otherwise, even with his seven inches of Qi Refining, he would likely have ended up like Ning Yongrui.

Possessing strength far exceeding his opponents, but lacking sufficiently refined "knife techniques," he couldn't translate that strength into an overwhelming advantage.

The jade slips containing the techniques collected from the Wanfang Lake families lay quietly on the table before Yun Long.

He ran his fingertips over the jade slips, sinking his spiritual sense into them, studying them carefully.

These days, he had immersed almost all his attention in these myriad techniques.

Only now, with a complete understanding of these diverse inheritances, did Yun Long truly and clearly perceive the caliber of the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield he practiced.

In the past, he had vaguely felt that these two techniques were extraordinary, far beyond the ordinary, but he had never had such a direct and profound comparison.

The subtlety and power of a technique were inseparable from three fundamental prerequisites.

The first was the quality of the Qi Refining.

The higher the quality of the Qi Refining, the more robust the foundation of the technique, and naturally, its power would increase. This was an undeniable truth in the cultivation world.

The second was the compatibility between the Qi Refining and the technique itself.

The higher the compatibility, the more adept the cultivator would be at wielding the technique, fully displaying its characteristics and avoiding the predicament of sluggish True Qi circulation, which greatly diminished its power.

These two points were obvious to any cultivator who had crossed the threshold of cultivation and needed no further explanation.

However, what truly shook Yun Long was the third, and most crucial, factor—the quantity of Qi Refining that constituted the technique.

This quantity was not about how much Qi Refining was arbitrarily mobilized during casting, but a more fundamental, more core constituent unit, the cornerstone that determined the technique's power.

The techniques mastered by these cultivation families in Wanfang Lake were mostly crude and rudimentary, their inheritances incomplete.

Often, only three to five strands of Qi Refining were needed to barely outline the form of a technique and drive its operation.

The quality of Qi Refining was determined the moment a cultivator successfully guided Qi into their body and entered the Qi Refining stage, and it was difficult to change unless one encountered a heaven-defying opportunity.

Therefore, the upper limit of the power of these techniques, composed of a small amount of Qi Refining, was almost irrevocably fixed from the beginning, making breakthroughs difficult.

To maximize the power of a technique within its established framework, cultivators had explored various methods.

The dull-witted would choose the simplest and most brutal approach—forcefully infusing more Qi Refining when casting, disregarding the technique's structure.

This approach was not entirely ineffective, but the results were minimal, often yielding half the effort for twice the result, and could even cause hidden injuries to the meridians.

Those with a bit more insight would focus their efforts on improving their casting speed.

By repeatedly casting the same technique in a short period, they would compensate for the lack of individual power through the accumulation of quantity, forming an offensive wave of techniques.

This method could indeed enhance the overall effect of the technique to a certain extent and was more oppressive when facing enemies.

However, whether it was brute-force Qi Refining stacking or clever casting superposition, in front of the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield that Yun Long practiced, they seemed so... childish and laughable.

Yun Long clearly remembered that when the Vajra Primordial Qi condensed within his body was still less than nine strands, although the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield could still be cast, their power stemmed more from the exceptionally pure quality of the Vajra Primordial Qi itself, which far surpassed that of Qi Refining of the same level, and the near-perfect compatibility between this top-tier Qi Refining technique and the two sets of spells.

Just like in the Jingyang Mountain Range, when he first entered the Qi Refining realm, he could easily defeat Elder Mu, whose cultivation was far superior to his, by simply using the Great Arhat Fist powered by a single strand of Vajra Primordial Qi.

At that time, the dominance of the Vajra Primordial Qi had already begun to show, displaying its unique edge.

It wasn't until Yun Long pushed his cultivation to the peak of the early Qi Refining stage and successfully condensed a full nine strands of Vajra Primordial Qi within his body that the truly astonishing power of the Great Arhat Fist and Golden Bell Shield, like a peerless beauty unveiling her veil, barely revealed a tip of the iceberg.

Nine strands of Qi Refining might have been an unattainable luxury for the ordinary techniques of Wanfang Lake, the limit that their structures could accommodate.

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

Yun Long had still not been able to fully comprehend the upper limit of the number of Qi Refining strands that constituted these two supreme techniques, as if it were a bottomless abyss.

He only knew that the more Vajra Primordial Qi he invested, the more the power of the technique would surge, as if it were endless, bringing new surprises with each increase.

Especially when the number of Qi Refining strands constituting the technique reached numbers like nine, twelve, or even sixteen, which seemed to contain some special pattern, the power amplification of the two techniques would exhibit an almost leap-like surge, bringing about a qualitative leap.

Yun Long had a vague premonition, a blurry touch of the profound principles of the Great Dao.

In addition to Qi Refining quality and compatibility, the cultivation world's classification of technique grades might also involve a standard based on the quantity of Qi Refining required to form the technique, which was the true measure of a technique's potential.

However, what this standard was, the current Yun Family was clearly not qualified to access it, as if separated by a thick fog.

This realization caused the slight sense of self-satisfaction that had just arisen in Yun Long's heart to quietly subside, transforming into a deeper desire for exploration and profound considerations for the future of his family.