Spirit Root Theory

Spirit Root Theory

The Imperial Medical Academy had done extensive research into the corresponding relationship between spiritual roots and cultivation speed, ultimately compiling it into a medical classic titled Spirit Root Theory.

Research showed that Spirit Root Attribute Points were directly proportional to cultivation speed.

Every normally born cultivator, provided their Xiantian vital energy was sufficient, had 100 points of spiritual root attributes. Those were then distributed by fortune into the Five Elements Attribute, which was the "spiritual root" every cultivator possessed.

And the amount of attributes in the Five Elements Spiritual Root determined the efficiency of cultivating a technique.

For example, if there was a genius with astonishing fortune, and all 100 points were allocated to the Wood Element spiritual root, that would be the legendary perfect wood-type Heaven Spirit Root. When he cultivated Wood Attribute techniques, he would be twice as fast as an ordinary person.

What originally took 100 years to master would take him only 50.

Chen Mobai's current spiritual roots were: Metal 23, wood 27, water 30, fire 17, earth 10.

Taking his current highest Water Attribute spiritual root as an example, if he cultivated the Black Water Technique and plugged it into the formula from Spirit Root Theory, his efficiency in refining spiritual energy would only be 1.3 times that of an ordinary person.

Of course, the specific efficiency of cultivation also depended on the concentration of spiritual energy, the cultivator's state of mind, whether there were auxiliary spiritual items, and so on. It could not be lumped together in one breath.

Calculated under the most ideal conditions, with Chen Mobai's talent, if he wanted to break through to Qi Cultivation Level 6 with the Five Elements Technique, he would need at least half a year.

But the Water Mansion was a Second Grade middle-rank Spirit Land, and its spiritual energy concentration was five or six times that of a Grade 1 High Rank site. Cultivating here, compared to cultivating at school or at home, was simply like shooting upward on a rocket.

Even so, however, due to the limitation of his spiritual roots, according to Chen Mobai's previous calculations, he would still need a hundred days, not until just before the College Entrance Exam, before he could barely attempt to break through to Qi Cultivation Level 6.

That was before he watched the Video of Venerable Qingping's lecture.

A Nascent Soul Venerable was worthy of being a Nascent Soul Venerable. Even if he was only explaining the most basic Five Elements Technique, and even if he had rambled on and on about a huge pile of irrelevant things at the beginning, once he truly entered the practical content of explaining the cultivation method, Chen Mobai instantly felt a kind of enlightenment as if sweet dew had been poured over his head.

So when spiritual power circulated to this meridian, rotating it seven times to the left within the acupoint could easily charge through and open the passage.

When absorbing spiritual energy through the three apertures of the mouth and nose, it had to go repeatedly back and forth at the Twelve Layers of the Tower in the throat. This could use the twelve sections to intercept the impurities within the outside world's spiritual energy, preventing them from entering the body's meridians, until the cultivation session ended and that mouthful of waste air lodged in the throat was spat out.

Another example was when the spiritual energy had been refined and flowed into the Dantian Sea of Qi, it could enter thread by thread through rightward rotation.

Because rightward rotation was clockwise; following the current meant entering, and it could help condense spiritual power. In the future, Foundation Establishment meant turning spiritual power into liquid form, and taking this step in advance could increase the future success rate of Foundation Establishment by ten percent.

By the same logic, leftward rotation was countercurrent, meaning dispersion. When spiritual power circulated through some relatively blocked and narrow meridians, it could not forcefully ram through; it had to scatter and turn into thin, soft qi, slowly advancing.

After finishing his cultivation, Chen Mobai watched the earlier Videos on the first and second levels of qi cultivation in the Five Elements Technique again, only then realizing how crude his everyday understanding of this basic technique had been.

Seeing that it was almost morning, he reluctantly turned off his phone.

However, that night, while he had been cultivating, he had already used the offline download function to download all twenty-eight Videos of Venerable Qingping explaining the Five Elements Technique onto his phone.

This offline download function was also a privilege only users of Auxiliary Cultivation Third Grade and above had. Chen Mobai was now a Fifth Order user, so naturally it was no problem.

But just in case, when he went to class today, he turned off his phone's mobile network to avoid having the operator of Auxiliary Cultivation come knocking.

"Did you know? Yan Bingxuan dropped out."

In the morning, before the teacher had come in, his Deskmate Lu Hongsheng mysteriously leaned over to Chen Mobai, then still failed to keep it bottled up and directly blurted out the explosive news.

"Huh? Why? The College Entrance Exam is right around the corner. Is she dropping out because she lost to Song Zheng and couldn't take the blow?"

"Very possible. She's always been cold and aloof, and now that she lost this time, she couldn't save face, so she simply dropped out."

"That shouldn't be right. It's not like she's never lost before."

"Maybe dropping out is just an excuse, and she's secretly working hard at home."

The two beautiful Deskmates in front also leaned over, and those at the back desk refused to be lonely either. In an instant, with Chen Mobai and Lu Hongsheng as the center, an Eight Trigrams circle formed.

Chen Mobai could only roll his eyes. If it had been any ordinary day, he would have joined in too, but now it was senior year, precisely when they needed to go all out. He could not be bothered to waste time on gossip.

He wanted to astonish the world with a single cry, to soar into the sky in one flight...

Just then, Yan Bingxuan walked in, and the Eight Trigrams circle instantly fell silent.

Her cool, clear gaze looked over. Chen Mobai indicated that he was very innocent; he had not participated in the discussion at all. But the great beauty Yan merely looked at him coldly for two seconds, then returned to her own seat, silently packed up her things, shouldered her blue schoolbag, and left the classroom.

The classroom stayed quiet for roughly ten seconds. Then everyone's voices rose sharply as they began whispering to one another.

The classmates who had originally been half-convinced and half-doubtful about Lu Hongsheng's news could not help casting shocked gazes toward their side, making Chen Mobai's Deskmate lift his chest high, his face full of smugness.

With a click.

Chen Mobai stood up, dragging his chair across the floor and making a sound.

"Where are you going? Class is about to start."

Lu Hongsheng asked curiously.

"I forgot to bring my textbook. I'm going to the library to borrow one."

After Chen Mobai said this, he avoided the even more outrageous gossip conjectures that were about to begin. There was no helping it; the back desk had already imagined an entire saga of love, hate, passion, and vengeance between the two geniuses, Song Zheng and Yan Bingxuan, enough to film into a twenty-episode television drama.

He really could not listen anymore.

It just so happened that he had been planning to borrow the Five Elements Technique textbook from the library, so he simply slipped away.

Immortal Sect Fifth High School had a small library with a collection of roughly three thousand-plus books. It housed some commonly used biographies and histories, books about the local customs and practices of Vermilion Cloud City, as well as some Ancient Texts on minor spells that could be self-studied, cultivation manuals, medicinal pills, artifacts, formations, and so on.

Although the highest grade among them was only Grade 1 High Rank, the foundational content in every aspect was complete. If there were someone diligent and hardworking who read and comprehended all the books in this library, then testing for a Grade 1 professional certificate as a Formation Master, alchemist, or Treasure Appraiser would be no problem at all.

Unfortunately, basically no one came to this library.

What era was this? Who still read paper books?

Only those who forgot to bring their textbooks would come here and use their Student Card to borrow one for half a day, then return it after school.

If Chen Mobai had not been unwilling to spend 10 Points to download the electronic version of the Five Elements Technique from the Immortal Sect National Digital Library, he would not have come to this library to borrow it either.

Yesterday, he had benefited greatly from listening to Venerable Qingping's lecture, but when he reviewed the earlier content, he found that some of it was already a little blurry. He felt it was necessary to take the original Five Elements Technique textbook and make up the lesson again while comparing it to the Video content.

"One copy of the Five Elements Technique, borrowed on Student Card debit, free within one month."

The one managing the library was a teacher wearing round-framed glasses. She skillfully took Chen Mobai's Student Card and swiped it.

Just as Chen Mobai thanked her and left, someone suddenly walked in through the library entrance.