As time slowly passed, Ling Tian gradually grew familiar with the movement technique. He could manage as many variations as possible, and in every movement, he could hold half back after releasing half. The little grove was filled with his ghostly figures. For a time, phantom after phantom overlapped, making it impossible to tell which one was the real Ling Tian. Seeing that Ling Tian was no longer paying them any attention, the Swift Shadow Rabbits gathered nearby, squeaking noisily and looking terribly anxious.
"Gugu!" Without Ling Tian noticing, noon arrived as he practiced. His little belly made the best "alarm clock" for him. He looked around and saw that the Swift Shadow Rabbits had disappeared at some point, so he could only go pick some fruit to eat first.
"This movement can be done this way, too. It's faster, with more variations." Ling Tian muttered to himself as he ate, and when inspiration struck, he even took a few steps to try it out.
The more he thought about it, the more Ling Tian felt that the Illusory God Phantom Shadow Movement Technique was vast and profound. He now realized that he had only just begun to learn it. He really wanted to see what its ultimate limits were, and wondered how far his mother, Humei Niang, had mastered it.
"Heh heh, little rabbits, let's see if you still dare act so smug this time." After demonstrating another set of movements, Ling Tian finished his fruit. Now he was looking forward to the Swift Shadow Rabbits showing up again.
Ling Tian didn't have to wait long. A few minutes after he finished eating, the first rabbit's shadow appeared, followed by more and more Swift Shadow Rabbits. When they saw Ling Tian waiting for them, they immediately squeaked nonstop, looking exceptionally excited.
"Here I come!" Seeing that most of the rabbits had arrived, Ling Tian shouted and pounced.
The Swift Shadow Rabbit saw Ling Tian swoop down like a goshawk. It kicked off with its hind legs and shot away, leaving a long afterimage in its wake that slowly faded a moment later.
"Trying to run? Watch how I catch you." As if he already knew what the rabbit would do next, Ling Tian's hands turned into a mass of afterimages, cutting off its escape route ahead of time.
"Squeak!" The Swift Shadow Rabbit cried out in alarm, suddenly speeding up and twisting around. It barely managed to escape.
"Still not quite there, but I've made a lot of progress." Ling Tian looked at the handful of rabbit fur in his hand and murmured to himself.
"Squeak!" Seeing the fur flutter down from Ling Tian's hand, the Swift Shadow Rabbit squeaked in pain, its expression full of anger and alarm.
"Heh heh, you brought this on yourself for laughing at me." Ling Tian didn't care in the slightest. He even made faces at the rabbits.
"There still aren't enough variations, and my movements are a little stiff. Otherwise, I'd have caught that rabbit already." Ling Tian summed up what he had learned from the failure, then headed toward the rabbit again.
Seeing Ling Tian come after it again, the rabbit had no choice but to stay on high alert. In an instant, rabbit shadows and human shadows overlapped, bringing the whole grove to life.
And so, Ling Tian slowly improved through failure.
The sun sank and the moon rose, and the dark curtain of night began to blanket all of Qingyou Peak.
Aside from the first time, when he'd caught a handful of fur because the rabbit had let its guard down, Ling Tian had never managed to gain the slightest advantage over the Swift Shadow Rabbits again. But he wasn't too worried. He felt himself improving with every passing moment. The feeling of growing stronger little by little was deeply fulfilling, and it made him very happy.
After yet another failed attempt to catch a rabbit, Ling Tian looked up at the sky. It was already dotted with stars, so he had no choice but to call it a day. He said goodbye to the rabbits and headed back.
About a month passed like this. Every morning, Ling Tian went alone to catch Swift Shadow Rabbits, and at night, he practiced the movement technique. He never got discouraged by failure. Gradually, the rabbits began to feel they couldn't take much more. They still hadn't been caught, but quite a lot of fur had been pulled out—and that really hurt. They were thoroughly annoyed. Being gradually outpaced by a "little fellow" they had looked down on was enough to make their blood boil.
That day, Ling Tian was once again struggling against the Swift Shadow Rabbits. After a year, his movements had become even more phantomlike and uncanny. Every gesture left a trail of overlapping afterimages, making him seem utterly unreal. He pounced at a bald rabbit. In an instant, phantom after phantom surrounded it. The rabbit spun around sharply, but Ling Tian was even faster. Before there was the slightest opening, he had caught the bald rabbit he had been tormenting for so long.
"Squeak!" The rabbit was furious and startled. Over the past month, it had lost more and more of its fur, and it was always at risk of being caught, but it still refused to give up easily.
"Hee hee, you kept running, you stinky rabbit. Let's see if you dare laugh at me now." Ling Tian was beaming. This was the first time he had caught a Swift Shadow Rabbit, so of course he was overjoyed.
"Squeak!" The rabbit shrieked and struggled with all its might.
"You still won't admit defeat? Heh heh, be careful, or I'll eat you. Braised rabbit tastes pretty good." Ling Tian put on a fierce expression to scare the Swift Shadow Rabbit. He had played with these rabbits for so long and they had helped him practice his movement technique, so he couldn't bear to actually hurt them.
"Squeak!" The Swift Shadow Rabbit's eyes were full of terror. It seemed to understand Ling Tian's words, and it stopped struggling, gazing at him pleadingly.
"Little fellow, you give up now? Ha ha. Relax, relax. I won't hurt you." Seeing the Swift Shadow Rabbit's pleading look, Ling Tian's expression shifted. Mother said all things had a spirit, and we must never kill indiscriminately. It turned out she was right.
Thinking this, Ling Tian released the Swift Shadow Rabbit. The instant his grip loosened, the rabbit bolted away.
"Heh heh, let's keep going." Ling Tian chuckled. The rabbit that had just escaped ran even faster, and Ling Tian certainly had the potential to be as devious as Lingyun.
With that, he started catching rabbits again. As he became more and more skilled, his success rate rose until eventually none of them could escape his grasp. Still, he never hurt them, and as he grew more practiced, he stopped pulling out their fur, too. The rabbits were happy to play with him. Qingyou Peak was so remote that it was rare for anyone to play with them.
"Tian'er, I hear you can catch Swift Shadow Rabbits quite easily now?" Lingyun suddenly asked that night over dinner. Though he phrased it as a question, he sounded certain.
"Yes, Father," Ling Tian answered honestly.
"The Swift Shadow Rabbits are no longer suitable for your training. Go catch Lightning Ferrets instead," Lingyun said with a faint smile, looking calm and composed.
"All right, Father," Ling Tian replied after thinking for a moment.
The Lightning Ferret was described in Yao Beast Miscellaneous Talk as follows: "Fast as the wind, swift as lightning, and exceptionally agile—far swifter than the Swift Shadow Rabbit." Having read the book from cover to cover, Ling Tian naturally knew the Lightning Ferret's characteristics.
"From now on, find suitable targets for yourself. You have to learn to train on your own. After all, you're the one who understands your own situation best," Lingyun added.
"Yes, I understand, Father," Ling Tian replied respectfully. He knew his father was doing this for his own good, and he understood the care and concern behind it.
The next day, Ling Tian eagerly went off to catch Lightning Ferrets. The Swift Shadow Rabbits no longer posed much of a challenge, and he had already begun to lose interest in them.
From then on, Ling Tian began training on his own. By day, he went into the mountains and forests to catch all kinds of wild beasts for fun. At night, he returned to read the books Lingyun had given him. The books Lingyun gave him covered every subject under the sun, and he read them eagerly. He didn't find them boring; on the contrary, their contents often drew him in. But he longed even more to cultivate spiritual energy and the Dao, and he grew even more eager for and curious about the world outside that his father had described.
During this time, he tried to cultivate many times, but each time the energy particles entered his body, they were inexplicably swallowed up by his insides and slipped beyond his control. Every attempt left Ling Tian mentally drained and utterly exhausted. After several attempts, though he made no progress in cultivation, his Mental Cultivation advanced by leaps and bounds. He had already reached the peak of Qi Condensation and could break through to the Qi Solidification Stage at any moment.
Once he reached the Qi Solidification Stage, his mind would be able to produce spiritual sense. Then he could read the contents of jade slips directly instead of having to look at books, and reading with spiritual sense was naturally incomparable to reading with his eyes. What's more, a single jade slip contained an immense amount of information. All the books Lingyun had given him probably wouldn't even fill the most ordinary jade slip.
Most importantly, once he developed spiritual sense, he would be able to look inward and extend his spiritual sense slightly beyond his body. Then he could choose an object, communicate with it, and practice Object Flight. Of course, he would need sufficient spiritual energy to support it.
It could be said that the Qi Solidification Stage was an important turning point on the path of cultivation. Someone at the Qi Solidification Stage who could fly on an object wouldn't fear even a crowd of cultivators at the late Qi Condensation stage. Even if he couldn't win, he could simply fly away. Those who couldn't fly would have no way to hit him, giving him an innate advantage—he would be invincible from the start.
"Alas, what good is strong Mental Cultivation? I can't cultivate spiritual energy, so even if I communicate with an object, I still can't fly on it." Ling Tian sighed deeply, his face full of disappointment.
Flying had always been his dream. Though he hadn't brought it up in all these years, that was only because he was afraid his father and mother would be saddened by having a "good-for-nothing" son. But a dream remained a dream. It wouldn't fade with the passage of time; it would only grow more intense.
"I wonder when the person Father mentioned will arrive with the cultivation method. I wonder whether it'll suit a 'good-for-nothing' like me." Ling Tian smiled at himself, but a trace of worry and unease lingered in his heart. He still remembered the mysterious smile his father had worn several years ago when he said someone would come to bring him a cultivation method.
"Alas, there's no point thinking about things I can't change right now. I'd better focus on training my body. Father said there's a major misconception in the Cultivation World right now: people focus only on cultivating the Primordial Spirit and spiritual energy, and forget to train the physical body. I wonder how these two kinds of cultivation differ." Ling Tian was an open-minded person, and he naturally wouldn't waste too much mental energy on something he couldn't change for the moment. Soon, his thoughts turned to other things.
Before you continue