Mo Hua went back and followed Instructor Yan's advice, trying to draw the array patterns several times. Sure enough, everything suddenly became clear.
That night, he practiced on the stone tablet in his sleep, and his comprehension became noticeably faster as well.
For things he did not understand, he only needed to draw them a few more times before he gradually grasped the key points.
As long as one had a firm grasp of the basic array patterns, learning some variations was not overly difficult. The hard part was having no one to guide him. Mo Hua simply would not think in that direction, and naturally, no matter how hard he racked his brains, he could find no way in.
Mo Hua spent another day familiarizing himself with them. By the evening of the third day, after class ended, he began formally drawing the Earth Solidification Formation.
His first strokes did not go smoothly either, but after stumbling and fumbling along, he finally managed to draw it. It just took rather a long time.
For the four-array-pattern Earth Solidification Formation, Mo Hua needed an hour and a half to finish drawing it. Afterward, because his divine sense had been depleted too greatly, he needed another hour to rest.
By the time Mo Hua finished the Earth Solidification Formation, it was already midnight.
Mo Hua checked it over once and found, as expected, that he had drawn it wrong.
Mo Hua sighed.
He had only drawn one in an entire night, and it was wrong besides.
Trying to finish ten within five days left him with very little time.
"What should I do?"
Mo Hua thought for a while. In the end, with no other choice, he could only find a way to skip some cultivation classes.
He naturally could not skip classes such as cultivation history and common knowledge. Those could broaden his horizons and improve his experience in cultivation.
As for Alchemy and Talisman Making, he had to spend Spirit Stones on medicinal herbs and talisman jade, and he also had to rent the sect's Alchemy Furnace. Learning them was not cheap, so Mo Hua selectively skipped some classes.
In any case, in these cultivation fields that devoured enormous amounts of Spirit Stones, he was unlikely to have much of a future in this lifetime.
After that, he could skip all of the Body Refining classes.
Cultivators cultivated Lingli through cultivation techniques, then used Dao Methods to wield that Lingli in attack.
Dao Methods were divided into two major categories: spell-type Dao Methods, and martial arts-type Dao Methods.
Spells used divine sense to control Lingli, condensing it into spells for attack. Martial arts, on the other hand, used Lingli to stimulate the body's potential and fight in close combat with the flesh.
Those who cultivated spells were called Spirit Cultivators, while those who cultivated martial arts were called Body Cultivators.
At the Qi Refining Stage, there were few Spirit Cultivators and many Body Cultivators. Especially among the cultivators of Immortal City, most made their living through Monster Hunting. Spirit Cultivators had frail bodies and were unsuited for Monster Hunting, so most Rogue Cultivators followed the path of Body Cultivators.
For this reason, Immortal Gate had specifically opened a Body Refining course, allowing its disciples to train their bodies in advance.
But Mo Hua was destined to be unable to cultivate his body.
He had not inherited his father Mo Shan's talent for Body Refining. Instead, like his mother Liu Ruhua, he had been somewhat weak since childhood—his constitution was even weaker than Liu Ruhua's.
According to Elder Feng, the Alchemist of Apricot Forest Hall, cultivators were born under the order of the Heavenly Dao, and divine sense and the body were relatively balanced.
When Mo Hua was born, he possessed memories of two lifetimes. His innate divine sense was excessively strong, throwing his divine sense and body out of balance. As one waxed, the other waned; from the moment he was born, Mo Hua had been weak and sickly.
A hundred-kilogram stone tripod that others could lift with ease would not budge even when Mo Hua strained with all his milk-drinking strength. Cultivators his age were generally a head taller than him and a whole circle broader.
Though Mo Hua was thin and frail, he was fortunate to have delicate features and a gentle temperament, with red lips and white teeth. At ten years old, he was like a porcelain doll.
It was not a bad appearance, but Mo Hua still felt that a true man should be imposing and mighty.
Like his father: tall and broad, with heroic features, looking majestic at a glance.
The Mo Hua of his dreams should wear white robes, cultivate peerless techniques, thrust out a spear like a dragon, hold a pass alone, and stand invincible against ten thousand men.
Unfortunately, he could only see such a scene in his dreams.
"Oh, right."
Mo Hua remembered that after he fell asleep, his divine sense automatically entered the Sea of Consciousness, so he could not even dream...
The Instructor who taught the disciples Body Refining had originally intended to be strict with Mo Hua. But after Mo Hua pushed the stone tripod several times without making it move an inch, while spraining his own arm instead, the Instructor became much more lenient with him.
Cultivation was like that. Sometimes, effort alone could not solve a problem.
The Instructor understood Mo Hua quite well too.
When the Heavenly Dao closed a window for you, perhaps it wanted you to take another door, not smash your head against the wall.
So Mo Hua selectively skipped those classes. With the time he squeezed out, he shut himself in his room and focused on drawing the Earth Solidification Formation.
On the rest day five days later, Mo Hua finally used up all ten sets of materials. Of the ten formations, six were successful.
Not only had he avoided a loss, he could even earn four Spirit Stones. Mo Hua was fairly satisfied.
Taking advantage of the one-day break, Mo Hua went to Fate Pavilion on North Street and handed the completed Earth Solidification Formations to Fat Manager.
Fat Manager looked them over and said to Mo Hua, "Your elder brother's foundation in array techniques is truly rather poor, but he learns quickly enough. These formations are visibly better one after another. It's just that..."
The manager picked up the first formation and criticized it again. "This formation looks like it was drawn by a beginner. Even some of the basic array patterns are drawn in such a stumbling, awkward way..."
Mo Hua had long grown used to the manager's grumbling. It went in one ear and out the other.
Besides, the manager was talking about his elder brother. What did that have to do with him?
He did not even have an elder brother.
Mo Hua went straight to the point. "Can I exchange them for Spirit Stones?"
Fat Manager rolled his eyes at Mo Hua, but still counted out four Spirit Stones for him. "Tell your elder brother to draw them better next time."
"Mm-hm, mm-hm." Having received the Spirit Stones, Mo Hua nodded repeatedly.
Mo Hua used all four Spirit Stones to buy pastries. He ate two himself, set aside two, and gave the rest to Da Hu and the others.
When the three of them saw so many pastries, they were deeply moved. They then asked Mo Hua whether he wanted meat, saying that they had seen an elder raising a plump duck covered in all sorts of colors.
Mo Hua's head began to ache. He told them not to steal anymore, or if the sect notified their parents, they would be beaten so badly at home that a layer of skin would be peeled off.
Only then did Da Hu and the other two reluctantly abandon the idea.
Afterward, Mo Hua continued drawing Earth Solidification Formations for more than two months.
The more he drew, the more thoroughly he mastered them.
Previously, drawing one Earth Solidification Formation, including the breaks he needed to rest and restore his divine sense, took nearly three hours. Now, it only took an hour and a half.
First, practice made perfect. The deeper his grasp and understanding of array patterns became, the less time he needed to draw them. Second, by practicing array techniques day and night, continuously depleting, restoring, and using his divine sense, he had unknowingly trained the strength of his divine sense. It had grown much more profound than before.
The benefits of a powerful divine sense when drawing array techniques were extremely obvious.
The Earth Solidification Formation's success rate had risen to eighty or ninety percent. Sometimes, all ten would succeed. He could earn two Spirit Stones from each formation, and over these two months, after deducting his ordinary expenses for food and clothing, Mo Hua had earned a full hundred Spirit Stones.
Mo Hua planned to save up two hundred Spirit Stones, then go to the sect and choose a middle-grade, lower-tier cultivation technique.
He would tell his parents after choosing it. Otherwise, they would certainly say that they would pay the Spirit Stones themselves, that Mo Hua should keep his own Spirit Stones for cultivation, or for marrying a Dao companion and buying a Cave Abode in the future.
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