Spell

Li Shiming sat in the pavilion. The Autumn Examination had ended several days ago, but he had not paid any attention to the results.

He did not cultivate the Five Elements Qi Absorption Art today, not because he was lazy, but because the four glowing stones on the Spirit Gathering Disk had lost their light.

The Spirit Gathering Disk no longer attracted spiritual qi, so cultivating the Five Elements Qi Absorption Art was as good as useless.

He did not waste time on cultivation that was nearly ineffective. Instead, he began studying spells.

The contents of the three spells—the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art, the Geng Metal Art, and the Earth Spirit Art—flowed through his mind. He had simulated the process of casting them countless times in his heart.

Li Shiming had long since dismissed the servants in the garden. He wanted peace and quiet. Unless it was his father, Li Wenyuan, no one else dared disobey his order.

At this hour, Li Wenyuan was working, so he was the only person in the garden.

"Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art!" he murmured to himself, his fingers tracing through the air.

As his fingers moved, spiritual power flowed with a faint glow. With the help of the IBMz15 Mainframe, the most difficult part of the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art—the complex runes—was drawn perfectly by him.

During this process, he needed to make many minute adjustments to the output of spiritual power. Even the slightest mistake would make the spell impossible to complete.

The profound Spiritual Power Rune hovered before him as he waited for his first spell to appear.

Unfortunately, after several seconds, all he saw was the Spiritual Power Rune before him dissipating. It did not trigger the phenomenon described in the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art manual, where a small patch of clouds and rain would appear.

"Where exactly did the problem occur?" He recalled the contents of the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art manual in his mind again. He trusted his own understanding; there had been no mistakes at all in the process of casting the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art.

This failed attempt reduced the spiritual power inside the Spiritual Qi Vortex in his body by one-third.

He did not know how long it would take to restore the spiritual power in the Spiritual Qi Vortex. He had to find the reason for the failure before testing again; otherwise, his little bit of spiritual power was simply not enough to squander.

"Intent Manifests the Art!" Li Shiming thought of a sentence he had not paid attention to before.

He had thought this sentence meant that as long as he intended to cast a spell, the spell could be released. But it was precisely this understanding that had caused him to fail.

He considered himself quite experienced in using consciousness. Every operation inside the Server Room Space was carried out through consciousness.

If this intent referred to consciousness, then in theory, the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art should have been successfully cast.

He flipped through the cultivation notes Shi Ximing had left behind again. There were not many descriptions of the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art in them, nor did they mention what "intent" was.

At this moment, Li Shiming understood the importance of having a teacher. The Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art manual seemed to have recorded things in great detail, but for someone with no foundation, any bit of common knowledge could become an obstacle in cultivating spells.

He reorganized the spellcasting process in his mind. Casting a spell had extremely stringent conditions, but with the comparison provided by the IBMz15 Mainframe, he could be one hundred percent certain that he had followed the description in the manual.

Before his spiritual power had met the spellcasting requirements, he had already rehearsed the spellcasting process of the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art many times without using spiritual power.

"Could this 'intent' mean having the artistic conception of spring breeze transforming into rain in one's heart?" A flash of Spiritual Light suddenly came to him, and he thought of a possibility.

But then came another problem: how was he supposed to make the artistic conception of spring breeze transforming into rain appear in his heart?

He thought of a method. From the IBMz15 Mainframe's database, he found a video of spring rain and output the video to his eyes.

He felt as though he were standing amid misty rain. Nourished by the rain and mist, seeds broke through the soil and sprouted, and trees put forth tender shoots.

Because the IBMz15 Mainframe used his eyes as displays for the video output, when he watched this video, he had the feeling of watching a 3D movie in his Previous Life—no, it even surpassed that kind of immersive sensation.

"Still not enough!" Li Shiming felt as if he was faintly about to Come into Contact With the truth, but he was still just a hair's breadth away.

That hair's breadth only required him to spend more time comprehending it. Perhaps one day, perhaps even longer, would allow him to perceive the artistic conception of spring breeze transforming into rain.

But he had a better idea. His consciousness entered the IBMz15 Mainframe's Linux system. Previously, he had loaded his vision as the IBMz15 Mainframe's display and scanning equipment.

What he needed to do now was load all five senses as the IBMz15 Mainframe's input and output equipment. He could input the sensations of the five senses into the system, and he could also transform the server's specific virtual data into sensations for the five senses.

For this, he even wrote a program to serve this function.

In his Previous Life, completing such a program would have required at least many days of effort.

But when his consciousness wanted to write this program, large sections of code generated along with his thoughts.

It had to be known that when Li Shiming wrote code, he could borrow all 190 CPUs inside the IBMz15 Mainframe to perform computation and analysis together. When he connected his consciousness to the IBMz15 Mainframe, his computational and analytical abilities became bound to the mainframe itself.

And because his consciousness could control any component of the IBMz15 Mainframe, the code he wrote was closer to low-level programming like assembly.

Such programs were more efficient and more direct, and could make greater use of server resources.

The entire five-sense connection and conversion program took only five minutes to complete.

He loaded the feeling of spring wind blowing, rain falling on his body, and the fragrance of soil onto his body's five senses through the program, then replayed the spring rain video.

He stood on damp soil, softness coming from beneath his feet. A gentle breeze blew across his face, and his nose could smell the scent of spring mud. Threads of rain scattered onto his body, bringing with them the vitality of spring.

"This is spring breeze transforming into rain!" Li Shiming murmured.

His hand could not help mobilizing spiritual power, drawing the complex runes of the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art in the void.

The complex Spiritual Power Rune hovered in the air. Then the Spiritual Power Rune exploded, Transformed Into a small mass of Dark Clouds.

The Dark Clouds churned, and within them, tiny flashes of lightning seemed to appear and vanish.

Raindrops fell from the Dark Clouds, and as they did, the color of the Dark Clouds slowly faded. The entire rainfall lasted for the time it took to drink a cup of tea.

Li Shiming stared blankly at the scene before him. If there had been outsiders in the garden, this sight would have been enough to shock the world.

To be honest, the range of the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art was not large—roughly twenty square meters.

Such an area was far from the legendary immortals' ability to summon clouds and spread rain, but considering that he was only at Qi Refining Second Level, and that the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art was merely the lowest-level Spirit Planter spell, this effect already left him extremely satisfied.

The Dark Clouds formed by the Spring Breeze Transforming Rain Art were not very high. In addition, the garden had been laid out as a landscaped garden, emphasizing a different view with every step, so people outside the garden could not see the Dark Clouds at all.