The Sword Refining Art

"'Sword Refining Art,' Match rate: 93%."

Chu Huai Xu was slightly surprised. He hadn't expected it to be so high.

He looked through the remaining jade slips as well. Only the Sword Refining Art had a match rate above 90%.

The highest match rate among the rest was only 81%.

"I'll take this one."

When he opened the jade slip, Chu Huai Xu saw several large characters.

"Heaven and earth as the furnace, the body as the sword. Spiritual energy tempers the body and breaks through the apertures."

He closed the jade slip and looked at Niu Yuanshan. "I'll choose this one."

Steward Niu nodded. There were simply too many cultivation methods for the Aperture Opening Stage. Even as an Outer Sect Deacon, he couldn't possibly know every single one.

After thinking for a moment, he took two more booklets from his storage space and handed one to each of them.

"These contain cultivation insights on the Ice Purity Art and the Sword Refining Art, respectively, written by those who came before. As you cultivate, you can write down your own thoughts in them as well, for the junior brothers and sisters who join the sect in the future."

"Thank you, Deacon." They accepted the booklets.

After taking care of that, Niu Yuanshan had wanted to speak with Chu Huai Xu alone, but in the end he held back. He merely pointed east and said, "Your residences are over there. Go find them yourselves."

"Yes."

After the two of them turned to leave, Steward Niu didn't go inside. He watched them depart.

He gazed at Chu Huai Xu's retreating figure, his heart full of emotion. His curiosity about this new member of the organization was boundless. Even when he forcibly suppressed it, it immediately rose again.

Only after the two had gone far away did he return to his courtyard and enter his bedroom.

Niu Yuanshan sat cross-legged on his bed, his mind full of Chu Huai Xu.

He was just too curious. Chu Huai Xu should have come to work as a servant. How had Li Chunsong taken a liking to him?

"Should I find a chance to talk to him?" Steward Niu thought.

At that thought, he suddenly remembered the time he'd been carrying out the newcomer reception duty beside the Dense Forest. Wearing a Golden Mask, he had scolded the Silver Mask Man.

Back then, the Silver Mask Man had wanted to stay and observe Fox Face a little longer, and Niu Yuanshan had given him a harsh reprimand.

Thinking of this, Niu Yuanshan raised a large hand and slapped himself hard across the face.

"Smack!"

Admonition Three: Do not pry excessively into the affairs of your fellow members in the organization!

Chu Huai Xu's Bamboo House stood next to Han Shuangjiang's. They were neighbors.

Their residences were much smaller than Steward Niu's.

The two of them walked in silence the entire way, without exchanging a word.

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

After bidding each other farewell, Chu Huai Xu entered his Bamboo House.

Every residence in the Dao Sect had a Dust Removal Array, so even if nobody cleaned the place, not a speck of dust would gather inside.

He took his bedding out of his Storage Token and spread it on his bed.

He tossed the jade slip and booklet to one side, in no hurry to start cultivating.

"First, I'll use the Random Attribute Point. That's the right order," he thought.

Chu Huai Xu opened his Character Panel and checked his various attributes.

The attributes that appeared before his eyes were very simple.

"Physique: 1 (upgradeable, maximum: 10)."

"Spirit Gathering: 1 (upgradeable, maximum: 10)."

"Comprehension: 1 (upgradeable, maximum: 10)."

"Spiritual Embryo Attribute: 0 (upgradeable, maximum: 10)."

"Experience Points: 200."

"Character Level: Level 0."

"Remaining Random Attribute Points: 1."

Once he used this 1 Random Attribute Point, it would be randomly added to one of the attributes above.

As the name suggested, Physique represented health, defense, strength, speed, and other measures of bodily toughness.

The higher the Physique value, the more those attributes increased each time the character gained a level.

Spirit Gathering represented the Spiritual Power inside the body. You needed Spiritual Power to cast spells—in other words, to use skills.

The higher the Spirit Gathering value, the more Spiritual Power you gained each time you leveled up. When you ran out of mana, it also meant your mana recovered faster.

At the same time, some ultimate moves required a certain amount of mana. If you didn't have enough Spiritual Power in total, you couldn't cast them even once.

Comprehension was linked to skills—in other words, the spells used by cultivators.

Take Chu Huai Xu's level 49 character on Spring Autumn Mountain, for example. His main skill was called Evil Repelling.

The skill manifested as black flames blooming like a lotus, with spectacular visual effects.

But you needed more than 5 Comprehension to learn it. That requirement was set in stone.

In addition, cultivators in the Xuanhuang Realm ranked their spells through four stages: Initial Insight, Minor Accomplishment, Major Accomplishment, and Great Perfection.

Players, on the other hand, used Experience Points to level up their skills, which also had four levels.

The higher your Comprehension, the fewer Experience Points it took each time you upgraded a skill. The lower your Comprehension, the more Experience Points you had to spend.

Some skills of especially high grade couldn't be upgraded any further if your Comprehension was too low. It didn't matter how many Experience Points you had.

Chu Huai Xu's Evil Repelling had only reached Level 3. To max it out, he needed to raise his Comprehension to 7.

Spiritual Embryo Attribute was somewhat similar to Comprehension, except that it was linked to cultivation methods.

Cultivators in the Xuanhuang Realm absorbed the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Energy by circulating their cultivation methods.

Players were different. They poured Experience Points into their cultivation methods.

Once the required amount was filled, the method could be upgraded.

Players could also log off and cultivate while they were away. They only had to sit cross-legged, and their cultivation method would start circulating.

The higher their Spiritual Embryo Attribute, the more Cultivation Technique Experience Points they gained from cultivating while logged off.

Just like with Comprehension, some powerful cultivation methods also had Spiritual Embryo Attribute requirements.

The Experience Points needed to upgrade a cultivation method were linked to this attribute as well.

If your Spiritual Embryo Attribute didn't meet the requirements, you might not even be able to raise your character level!

If your Spiritual Embryo Attribute was only 1, your level cap was 19. If it was only 2, your cap was 29.

To put it in the terms of the Xuanhuang Realm, your aptitude was so poor that you'd be stuck in the First Realm for your entire life, with no chance of reaching the Second Realm.

Simply put, it was just a way of turning some of the Xuanhuang Realm's cultivation system into data.

"Han Shuangjiang's Spiritual Embryo is probably Level 9, maybe even the max, Level 10!"

"That means she'll level up insanely fast, since she'll spend way fewer Experience Points. And her level cap is really high, so she won't get stuck at a certain cultivation stage for the rest of her life."

"She practically has no Bottleneck Period!" Chu Huai Xu was intensely envious.

Why was the Dao Ancestor of the Dao Sect so powerful that his enemies had even wanted to send someone to take his virginity? They must have been desperate to resort to such a plan.

It was because he had a Pure Yang Physique! He also had a Level 10 Spiritual Embryo!

"That long-legged beauty next door, whose talent rivals the Dao Ancestor's, has probably already started cultivating, right?" Chu Huai Xu guessed.

He wasn't in a hurry. First, he needed to use his 1 Random Attribute Point and add 1 point to his Spiritual Embryo Attribute.

"Let's spin first!" Chu Huai Xu rubbed his hands together. "Give me the points!"

A Big Wheel that only he could see appeared and began to spin.

The sections for the various attributes on the Big Wheel were all evenly sized. Only the Spiritual Embryo section was especially small, with a probability of just 3%.

"Stop!" He willed it to stop.

"Ding! Congratulations, you've obtained an Attribute Point—Physique!"

Chu Huai Xu narrowed his eyes slightly. After a moment's thought, he decided, "Physique? That'll do."

At the early stage, it didn't matter what he added points to. He was equally terrible at everything.

"It doesn't matter that it's random. After all, what I got wasn't a free Attribute Point, so I can't assign it myself."

On his Level 49 character, Spirit Gathering was his highest attribute.

Whenever he took women through dungeons, he relied on his huge mana pool and abundant Spiritual Power to unleash skills as if they cost no mana at all. He focused on making the special effects spectacular. Looking cool was all that mattered.

Besides Spirit Gathering, the attribute he'd put the most points into was Comprehension.

That was because skills for professions such as weapon crafting, alchemy, and Talisman Crafting were all linked to Comprehension.

You could sell equipment made through weapon crafting, pills made through alchemy, and talismans made through Talisman Crafting. All of them could make money.

Chu Huai Xu was all about practicality: either make money from women or make money from players, and use it to climb the social ladder.

—He wanted to get ahead more than anything!

As a result, Physique was the attribute he was relatively unfamiliar with.

"I can't add that 1 point to my Spiritual Embryo Attribute yet. I need to raise my Character Level to 1 first."

As mentioned earlier, if your Spiritual Embryo Attribute was 1, your character's level cap was 19.

If your Spiritual Embryo Attribute was 0, your cap was 9.

So, his top priority was to learn a cultivation method for the Aperture Opening Stage.

He still had 200 Experience Points to spend, after all. That was more than enough to level up.

Chu Huai Xu picked up the jade slip containing the Sword Refining Art, along with the booklet.

After some thought, he decided to leaf through the booklet first.

"The Sword Refining Art is basically a book, while this booklet is the notes left behind by those who came before. It's more or less the comment section for the book."

"Of course I should check the comments first! See what everyone thinks." Chu Huai Xu felt this was the right order.

He opened the first page of the booklet, full of anticipation.

There were only two large, flamboyant characters on the first page, written somewhat hastily.

—"Don't Cultivate!"