Shadows and Reckless Cultivation

For the better part of the following week, Lu Li skipped classes as usual to research his skill combinations and shadow manipulation. He discovered that under direct sunlight, his shadow was completely immobile, providing at most a minor boost to his physical stats. Indoors, however, he could detach his shadow to a volume slightly smaller than his own body.

Nights were spent continuously exploring the shadow's utility. He practiced deforming it, familiarizing himself with the nuances of its control, and multitasking by moving his own body and the shadow simultaneously while studying the shadow's power and movement speed.

Lu Li found that the shadow's quality was tied to its volume. When its volume matched his own, its strength and speed were identical to his own unreleased state. In a lightless environment, if the entire shadow was detached, its volume and strength tripled. However, the shadow had a troublesome limitation: Lu Li could not control its deformation with fine precision. Despite constant practice, he could only refine a shadow tentacle down to the thickness of a finger; anything smaller was nearly impossible. Consequently, whenever he fully released his shadow, it remained a large, irregular, writhing mass.

"The friction is similar to my skin, meaning it can hold weapons, but it lacks the dexterity to simulate a standard hand shape. Holding a weapon requires a wrapping motion, which feels less efficient than just using a tentacle to bind it..." Lu Li studied the shadow's applications. "Although its hardness and toughness are higher than mine, it's not by much. It can withstand some ordinary blade strikes, and the parts that get cut or dispersed return to me, though they become unusable for a short time. It handles small firearms well enough; after all, the shadow has no weak points, and bullets only disperse a bit of it. As long as I don't encounter heavy-caliber suppression, firearms aren't much of a threat. What I fear is explosives. Once blasted apart, the shadow is unusable for at least an hour, and even the physical stat boost disappears temporarily..."

"When the shadow is exposed to light, a portion returns to me depending on the intensity. If the light is strong, the shadow dissipates entirely, though it can be redeployed immediately without recovery time. The shadow cannot be completely separated; any part without my will injected into it will dissipate. And since multitasking is already difficult for me, trying to split my focus three ways is impossible." Lu Li summarized the pros and cons of his shadow bit by bit. "The detachment range is short, only fourteen meters. While it can be increased by strengthening my soul, strengthening the soul is inherently difficult..."

"Maintaining the shadow in a fixed form isn't difficult, though. Perhaps I could do this..." Recalling the scene during his enhancement, Lu Li narrowed his eyes, an idea forming. He would need to look up more information on this, but it might allow for a significant boost to the shadow's melee capabilities.

"I should also put skill creation on the agenda! I wonder if anyone has traded for the Energy Module yet?" After some thought, Lu Li grabbed his bag and headed to school; after all, he was still a student, and disappearing for too long wasn't ideal. He wiped the dust off his desk, took out a sheet of white paper, and began to write and draw. He first listed his existing modules—eight in total. He decided to keep the Rule Module for now and examined his Energy Module: Life. This module extracted life energy.

Normally, a human body contained only sporadic traces of life energy. Life energy was extracted from the flesh and was essentially no different from internal energy or battle qi, though it was purer and better suited for healing injuries. It was an auxiliary energy, highly effective for skills like healing spells.

This module was useless to Lu Li, so he had already posted a thread looking to sell it or trade it for a more suitable module. Lu Li checked his stats. After half a week of accumulation, his Shadow Magic was fully charged, meaning he now had slightly over one unit of Shadow Magic. Moreover, as long as his mental power kept up, he could store even more. Therefore, his ideal Energy Module would be magic-based, preferably specialized for Shadow Magic, which would allow for faster magic flow.

Next was the Control Module. Lu Li's current module was Spirit, which allowed him to control skills using mental power. This skill was quite convenient, but the downside was the additional consumption of mental energy. Lu Li's current mental power was 0.38, accumulated naturally. If not for his freakish level of control, he might never have even noticed something he hadn't been exposed to before.

The Special Module: Primary Intelligence was likely rare; discussions about special modules on the forum were pitifully scarce, and most people didn't even know they existed. They weren't sold in the shop either, so it was best to keep it.

It seemed his current bottleneck was mental power. He truly needed a skill to cultivate it. This reminded him of the mental power extraction skill template he had seen earlier consisting of three modules. Although the reviews were negative, Lu Li was quite interested in it. He hadn't cultivated it previously because the Tranquility Module was out of stock in the shop.

He took a rough look at the shop, and today, the Tranquility Module had finally refreshed. Lu Li purchased it immediately. Adding in the other two modules he had bought earlier, he was left with only 250 game points.

He then went to combine the three modules: Soul, Tranquility, and Extraction. Following the parameters from the post, Lu Li placed the modules into a skill slot one by one and configured them. He named the skill: Tranquility Meditation Method. He checked his post, saw no replies, closed it, and prepared to attempt his first mental power extraction.

Upon touching the skill slot, Lu Li sensed the object known as the soul. The skill activated instantly. With his freakish control, he instantly shielded himself from unnecessary emotions and distractions, focusing on counting silently from nine to one. The next moment, Lu Li entered a specific state. The sounds made by the surrounding students gradually faded away, and the world slowly fell into absolute silence. There was no more noise, no more worry. He wanted to remain in this quietude forever. Unknown white mist drifted silently, and Lu Li's soul began to drift into eternal sleep.

Suddenly, a suction force appeared, breaking the tranquility. Lu Li's soul slowly awakened. When the time was up, Lu Li regained consciousness, feeling as if he had just had a good night's sleep. He even stretched, then looked at his panel. The mental power section had changed:

[Soul Assessment: 2.88; Mental Energy Derivation: 0.42; Shadow Magic: 1.087]

Both his mental power and soul assessment values had increased. Seeing the positive results, Lu Li replied to the thread by Moon Shadow Yifeng: "The effect is good, thanks for the recommendation. Soul assessment increased by 0.02, and mental energy derivation increased by 0.04."

I forgot to mention earlier that mental derivation and mental energy are different concepts. The former is the upper limit, while the latter is the actual stored amount. The magic calculation formula is: Soul * Mental Derivation = Maximum Magic Capacity.