The power of a single Finger Flick Divine Art startled Chen Dengming.
He quickly approached to inspect it.
The rock face looked as though it had been struck by a high-powered bullet, pierced straight to a depth of roughly two inches. Given the hardness of this rock face, even a heavy crossbow would have struggled to shoot a bolt this deep.
Moreover, the puncture site displayed spiral grooves where the astral qi had drilled through, demonstrating that the force was condensed very densely, and the lethality was quite considerable.
If I cast the Finger Flick Divine Art with Xiantian True Qi, at best I could only punch a very shallow pit into this rock face; the power is worse by more than tenfold.
Chen Dengming was quite alarmed.
The power of spiritual energy truly surpassed Xiantian True Qi by a wide margin. The Finger Flick Divine Art was merely a technique focused primarily on acupoint-striking within the martial arts system he had learned, and it did not emphasize massive lethality.
Yet now, executed with spiritual energy, flicking someone on the forehead would probably cause their skull to shatter.
Was this the strength of a cultivator?
And he had only just broken through to the First Layer of Qi Refining.
Chen Dengming suddenly felt a rare surge of excitement, harboring hopeful anticipation for growing even stronger in the future.
Yet after sensing things carefully for a moment, he frowned slightly.
Casting the Finger Flick Divine Art just now had consumed roughly a tenth of the spiritual energy within his body.
This consumed amount was a bit large.
Or rather, the spiritual energy inside his body was still far too scant right now.
Flicking his fingers consumed a tenth of his spiritual energy; how was he supposed to draw his forty-meter broadsword?
If he were to cast the Finger Flick Divine Art using Xiantian True Qi, he could flick hundreds of times without even catching his breath—he could fluff cotton with it without any problem, because his qi recovery speed was extremely fast and his Xiantian True Qi was sufficiently robust.
Yet now, executing martial arts with spiritual energy not only consumed far more, but spiritual energy recovered so slowly that it practically did not recover at all.
Did I gather too much during the technique just now?
Or is the Three Yuan Spirit Gathering Technique too trashy, falling short of the martial arts techniques I learned when it comes to qi recovery speed?
Let's study it further!
Coming into contact with a new power, Chen Dengming was brimming with enthusiasm, taking out the first-tier Daoist magic from his pack that he had obtained at the Ascension Convention that day.
He intended to conduct a comprehensive study, ranging from martial arts to Daoist magic.
He would analyze the differences between the two, weed out the dross and select the essential, and integrate a brand-new "cultivator combat plan" suited to himself.
Just as Chen Dengming was studying the new combat system.
In the Luo Family, Lüo Bing's mood was terribly bad, to the extent that the attendants serving inside and outside her boudoir were all treading carefully and feeling quite apprehensive.
At that moment, her most favored personal maid, Xi'er, tiptoed into the room. Glancing at the slender silhouette on the red-wood lounge chair ahead, she said nervously, "Eldest Miss, this time... it failed again."
"Mm, I know."
Lüo Bing's clear, cold voice—sounding like ice gravel falling into a pitcher—reached her ears, seeming entirely indifferent, yet the vexation between her brows was glaringly obvious.
She leaned listlessly half-prone against the chair back, a pair of nimble, pitch-black eyes sweeping over Xi'er as she let out a cold snort.
"How many batches of materials have already been wasted?"
Xi'er stuck out her little red tongue, putting on a frightened expression as she said, "Over the past three months, we've gathered fifteen batches of materials. We've already wasted thirteen batches, and there are only two batches left."
Lüo Bing furrowed her delicate brows and gracefully stood up. The graceful curves of her figure were breathtaking, and she walked with leisurely lotus steps to the door. Glancing at the insects lying dead and rigid in the distance, she shook her head and said, "How are the results of the bounty?"
Xi'er wore an indignant expression. "We haven't found that mortal surnamed Chen yet, but recently some daring rogue cultivators actually had the audacity to claim they understood gu arts. Your maidservant thought they truly understood, but after they arrived, they only knew some bug-repelling arts. Your maidservant severely punished several of them, and now nobody dares to falsely impersonate anymore."
Lüo Bing said calmly, "I heard that mortal is being hunted by a rogue cultivator?"
Xi'er nodded. "Eldest Miss, do you think that mortal might already be dead? Either he died in the wilderness, or he was already secretly snuffed out by that rogue cultivator named Qian Yuan."
Lüo Bing shook her head. "It's possible he died in the wilderness, but if that rogue cultivator had killed the mortal, why would he keep it a secret instead of broadcasting it far and wide long ago?"
"Then—"
Xi'er looked tentatively at Lüo Bing with her large eyes while inwardly sighing.
She felt that her eldest Miss had become somewhat obsessed with gu arts, and perhaps her stubborn nature had flared up, refusing to stop until she refined the Golden Silkworm Gu.
Yet this gu was indeed extremely difficult to refine.
According to what Lüo Bing had said, perhaps the mortal who gifted the gu arts could help her with her gu refinement; therefore, after sending people out under the guise of selling materials yielded no results, she issued a bounty to the rogue cultivator gathering place.
However, hampered by her pride and status, Eldest Miss had not directly named and shamed a mortal, instead putting on an attitude of letting a willing fish take the bait.
As ill luck would have it, that mortal ran into trouble and fled the rogue cultivator gathering place, seemingly vanishing without a trace ever since, rendering the bounty akin to making eyes at a blind man.
"Specify the reward on the bounty: whoever can help me refine the Golden Silkworm Gu will be rewarded with a hundred low-grade spirit crystals and granted a hundred-day residency qualification in Lüo Family Mountain City."
Lüo Bing waved her hand, speaking with airy nonchalance.
The reason she was so fixated on the art of gu refinement was that she had already discovered the preciousness of this art.
The Dao of Gu was a heterodox minor path of immortal cultivation, but precisely because it was a minor path, gu arts were little known and extremely difficult to defend against during magical combat. She surmised that the reason the mortal was able to instantly slay a cultivator was also by relying on gu poison.
However, ordinary gu worms and gu poison were useless to her; only the Golden Silkworm Gu would be of some use to her.
And yet this Golden Silkworm Gu was exceptionally difficult to refine.
According to the messages she had received, none of those Daoist friends at the Ascension Convention back then had successfully refined the Golden Silkworm Gu yet; it seemed there were some tricks and secrets within it that they had yet to comprehend, or perhaps their study of gu refinement arts was simply not profound enough.
"Green Hill Mad Dragon—"
A fierce, surging wave of one-zhang blade qi swept forth abruptly.
A booming roar erupted in its wake, and a huge boulder on the opposite cliff was directly cleaved in two by the fierce and surging blade force, even carving a deep ravine into the ground as the fractured boulder collapsed to both sides.
"Hoo—hoo—"
Chen Dengming panted heavily, looking at the boulder that had been cleaved apart, its cut surfaces as smooth as a mirror, fully demonstrating the ferocity and sharpness of that strike just now.
In terms of lethality, this blade strike unleashed with spiritual energy was more than a dozen times stronger than when he used to execute it with Xiantian True Qi.
If it were blade qi struck out by Xiantian True Qi, it was long enough, but the blade qi could at best cleave a deep ravine into the boulder; cleaving a boulder a zhang tall straight through was impossible.
Now the blade qi was shorter, but it had also grown far too strong. If he encountered a cultivator driving a Golden Bell Qi Shield talisman for defense again, it might not fail to cleave through it.
Yet at the same time, the consumption of spiritual energy for this single strike was truly too massive.
With a single slash, merely a zhang-long blade qi consumed seven-tenths of the spiritual energy within Chen Dengming's body; at most, he could manage one slash.
If he extended the blade qi, he wouldn't even be able to squeeze out a single slash.
No wonder... after becoming cultivators, they only engage in magical combat, and almost nobody is seen driving martial arts with spiritual energy. The general environment leads to few people practicing martial arts, and a lack of exquisite martial arts is one aspect; on the other hand, the consumption is simply too massive.
Daoist magic and martial arts are completely two different combat routes.
Daoist magic uses the spiritual energy within one's own body as a medium to leverage the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, striking with tenfold lethality using a single fraction of effort. Hand seals are the password to leverage heaven and earth spiritual energy.
Martial arts purely tap into one's own strength, bursting forth with the power inside one's body to strike. Although there are techniques of using four ounces to move a thousand pounds, ultimately they aren't as direct as Daoist magic borrowing heaven and earth spiritual energy.
Chen Dengming fished out a book and flipped through it.
Four large characters were written on the cover.
It wasn't The Art of War, but The Great Fireball Technique.
This was the simplest first-tier, first-grade Daoist magic.
Yet its lethality could not be underestimated.
Using rather clumsy hand motions, Chen Dengming began to circulate his spiritual energy and form hand seals.
As his fingers formed the seals, the spiritual energy within his body seemed like a single thread entangling with the abundant spiritual energy outside his body.
As his hand gestures changed, the myriad strands of spiritual energy surrounding his body obeyed his control like threads, leveraged by the spiritual energy threads inside his body.
Gradually, a mass of spiritual energy comparable to the total spiritual energy within his body entangled together outside him.
Even the air seemed to grow restless and agitated.
An oppressive spiritual might condensed at high speed outside his body, accompanied by crimson spiritual energy.
"Drink!"
With a low shout from Chen Dengming, a massive fireball was born abruptly out of thin air.
As he pointed a finger, the fireball suddenly shot forward.
Like flying a kite, he could feel his spiritual energy acting like the kite string, guiding the flying fireball and barely managing to alter its flight trajectory somewhat.
Yet the further the fireball flew, the weaker this control became.
Within the span of half a breath, the fireball flew ten zhang, abruptly severing its connection with the spiritual energy inside his body before fiercely slamming into a large tree opposite.
With a thunderous explosion, the tree was blasted into splintered fragments by the fireball. Charred charcoal scattered alongside sparks, and the high temperature surged forward with a wave of heat that pulled backward at the hairs on his head.
Chen Dengming quickly dodged out of the way.
A moment later, he arrived near the charred large tree to inspect it.
He discovered that the spot struck by the fireball had its trunk completely charred; a touch of the hand caused it to easily crumble as it had already turned to carbon.
The explosive power generated also blew half of this two-person-hug tree to smithereens, and its lethality was not unimpressive.
If one ignored the high-temperature lethality, this power was still somewhat inferior to the blade qi he had just cleaved out.
Yet if the high-temperature lethality was factored in, the two were practically on par.
However... this first-tier, first-grade Great Fireball Technique only consumed a tenth of the spiritual energy in his body; the primary consumption was still the manipulated spiritual energy in the air.
Daoist magic was much like a specific scheme for arranging fire spiritual energy into a particular combination.
And the hand seal was the key to detonating that combination.
The spiritual energy in his body was the hand holding the key and turning it.
The only regret was that he could not achieve instantaneous casting for this first-tier, first-grade Daoist magic at present; even counting the hand seals and execution, it took about one and a half breaths of time.
If he were fighting himself, such a long time meant that while one self executed martial arts, the self executing Daoist magic would have already been cleaved to death, without even needing the Blood Centipede Gu to make a move.
Chen Dengming glanced at the newly emerged message within his panel.
Daoist magic: The Great Fireball Technique (Beginner 1/100)
The word "beginner" looked rather irritating.
Practice, continue practicing. Practice it a hundred times and it'll reach mastery. If I grind it ten thousand times, I refuse to believe I can't achieve instant casting!
There will be another update at 11:00 AM during the day!
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