This Finger Technique, It's Truly Difficult

Returning from Monk Tianming, Li Su felt a bit dazed.

From the Arhat Fist to the Arhat Gong, and now to the Formless Calamity Finger, he suddenly wondered if the Northern Dark Divine Skill was truly the only top-tier technique in the world of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.

Regarding this, Li Su could only express doubt—profound doubt.

To say nothing else, this Formless Calamity Finger alone unleashed five layers of force with a single point.

Although the Six Meridians Sword Qi was powerful, Li Su did not feel the Formless Calamity Finger was any inferior.

It could only be said that the baseline was too high; at the time of the main story, no one in the Shaolin Temple had cultivated this finger technique to the level of Mahayana.

Setting other things aside, take the Six Meridians Sword Qi.

During the era of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, it only sounded prestigious; if not for Duan Yu, what difference would this martial art actually have from the Formless Calamity Finger?

One person learned one finger, turning sword techniques into a sword formation.

In the end, Jumozhi caused such a ruckus that they had no choice but to burn the manual.

Thinking about it this way, wasn't it much the same as the Formless Calamity Finger?

At this thought, Li Su could not help but feel a bit excited.

If this Formless Calamity Finger was truly as the old monk claimed, he wouldn't need to go through the trouble of running to Dali to find some Six Meridians Sword Qi. Wasn't the Formless Calamity Finger just as good? And most importantly, not only was this thing free, but he also had the rights to use it directly.

Whether in reality or here.

However, thoughts aside, Li Su's expression turned somewhat troubled.

A profound martial art like the Formless Calamity Finger could naturally not be learned simply through oral instruction and demonstration.

He had taught them everything hand-in-hand.

It was precisely because of this that Li Su felt the difficulty.

Just the challenge of nurturing five distinct types of true qi on his five fingers was already explosive enough; having to fuse them and eventually condense five fingers into one—the difficulty of that was beyond imagination.

Li Su took a deep breath and decided to start trying.

This set of techniques was bound to be difficult.

But as for the five layers of qi force, Monk Tianming had let them experience each one through his own true qi, which was quite troublesome.

Even if it were just one type, it wouldn't be impossible to master; spending some time should suffice.

But this involved five types of qi force, and even after cultivating them, they had to be integrated into a single stream, forming something like a burning fire.

In other words, the Formless Calamity Finger did not require one to have Yang-attribute internal energy; rather, the finger technique itself generated Yang-attribute finger force, clearly produced through the five layers of force.

True qi itself was formless and quality-less, existing between gas and something else; generating that kind of heat was no easy feat.

Thus, Li Su took a breath and intended to start with the simplest.

Of the five layers of qi force, the simplest was the Forward Spiral qi.

By the way, let it be noted here that the spiral qi of the Formless Calamity Finger and the spiral true qi of Kou Zhong and Xu Ziling were two different concepts.

The former was merely true qi gathered at the fingertip, spiraling under one's own control, while the latter was passive—the true qi itself existed in that state and ran directly through the meridians. The difference between the two was immense; the former was spiral qi, while the latter belonged to heterodox true qi.

With a shift of his thoughts, tiny specks of true qi began to rotate on his little finger, with little movement.

Li Su paused, looking at the true qi spiraling on his finger, and could not help but recall the words Master Tianming had spoken just moments ago while teaching them the five types of qi force.

"Of the five layers of qi force, the Forward Spiral is the simplest. Those who learn quickly can master it in three to five months; those who are slow, in a year."

Three to five months? A year???

A question mark appeared over Li Su's head. Did this count as success?

Hmm, the movement wasn't enough.

To say nothing else, when Master Tianming rotated his, it was much faster than his.

He reckoned that simple spiraling was easy; the difficult part lay in the rapid spiraling.

Li Su thought about it and really didn't believe that, as someone who had practiced the Formless Calamity Finger for decades before entering the door, his own talent could be so good that he could master one layer of force in an instant.

Therefore, he began to increase the speed.

Hmm, it was getting a bit difficult.

Increasing the speed not only required more focus and consumed more true qi, but it also didn't yield much improvement.

By comparison, his fingertip true qi rotated at about one and a half turns per second, while the Master's was close to three turns per second.

And that was when he had specifically slowed down the speed so they could observe it with the naked eye.

In other words, to meet the standard for Forward Spiral qi, it needed at least five turns, or even ten.

Li Su didn't think too much and began to work hard to increase the rotation speed. By the time it grew dark, the rotation speed was barely the same as what the Master had demonstrated to them.

Exhaling, Li Su decided to head back and rest.

On the first day, after finishing his chores and tasks, he began to attempt the second layer of force: the Reverse Spiral.

Hmm, it was a little bit harder than the Forward Spiral, mainly because his mind easily wandered, and one careless moment would cause it to revert to the forward direction.

After about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, he succeeded.

Li Su paused, his eyelids twitching uncontrollably. At this moment, he confirmed a fact.

His talent was likely very high.

Not 75%, but 175%. Otherwise, there was no way to explain his speed of cultivation.

What to do?

Watching the tangled expressions on the faces of Xuannan and the others as they struggled to get started, Li Su wore a similarly conflicted look. His scalp tingled at his own progress; it wasn't that he was being pretentious, but he truly did not want to draw too much attention to himself.

This Formless Calamity Finger had to be difficult, because it was, in reality, truly difficult.

Of course, difficult as it was, that didn't mean Li Su would stop practicing it.

Practice he would, but this time, Li Su intended to consolidate his foundation a bit more—at the very least, he needed to drag out the time. He would leave the spotlight to Xuancheng, and once Xuancheng suffered a qi deviation, he would let Xuanci take over.

Soon, Li Su began to practice.

He kept the commotion to a minimum, beginning his cultivation with extreme caution.

Even though he had mastered the Reverse Spiral in just a cup of tea's time, just like the Forward Spiral yesterday, Li Su still spent an entire day consolidating it.

While some might scoff, asking if a single day was really enough to warrant the word "consolidate," Li Su could only express that there was no help for it. By the end of the day, the Reverse Spiral had reached a staggering five rotations per second, and consequently, the Forward Spiral had also broken through yesterday's three rotations per second to reach five. Furthermore, the reason the forward rotation had reached such a high speed was entirely because the reverse rotation could not go any higher; it wasn't that he couldn't do it, but his fingers couldn't take the strain.

Exhaling, Li Su felt quite helpless—there was no way around it once he hit the limit, right?

Then came the third day, the fourth day, the fifth day.

He had mastered all five layers of force of the Formless Calamity Finger.

And the performance he displayed individually was significantly more impressive than what the monk Tianming had shown.

Next, it meant that as long as he could fuse these five layers of force into one, he would be considered to have entered the threshold of the Formless Calamity Finger.

Li Su did not do this.

Because he decided to further consolidate his foundation, he channeled his internal energy solely into his index finger and began to switch between the five layers of force continuously.

Undoubtedly, this was difficult.

Even for Li Su, it took a full day to barely manage a switch every three seconds.

Three seconds was not much.

But it was as if Li Su had discovered a new continent, and he began to experiment incessantly. This was because it required an extremely high level of control over his true qi; if he could reach one second, or even push it down to one switch per second, it would mean his true qi could change according to his will.

Li Su had not forgotten what the monk Tianming had said: one must cultivate the technique, but one must also cultivate the martial arts.

And so, Li Su began to challenge himself.

A day, half a month.

Although the goal was not high—going from three seconds to under one second—in actual practice, it was incredibly difficult.

Especially when the switching time reached one second; as he continued to practice, Li Su discovered a barrier. For twenty full days, the speed of the transition did not improve at all. As he practiced, he realized that further improvement was not a matter of accumulating time, but that the true qi itself could not undergo such intense changes.

Of course, there were gains.

Li Su discovered that although he could not directly accelerate the speed of change, if he started with two types of force, the switching was very fast. For example, the forward and reverse spirals, or the vibration and contraction; they were essentially the same type of change, only the direction and the form were slightly different.

This piqued Li Su's immense interest, and he began to experiment constantly.

It was not until a full month and a half later that he emerged from his obsession. He took a breath, a look of extreme helplessness appearing on his face.

Looking at the monk Xuanbei not far away, who wore a smile on his face, Li Su felt a pang of heartache.

The monk Xuanbei had entered the threshold.

He had successfully mastered the first layer of force of the Formless Calamity Finger, the Forward Spiral.

Remarkable. It fully demonstrated the difficulty and height of the Formless Calamity Finger. A month and a half! Hadn't it only taken him half a month to enter the threshold of the Dragon Subduing Elephant Taming Art?

But when it came to Li Su, the Formless Calamity Finger was basically at its end.

Not the threshold, not minor success.

Looking at the invisible qi force forming on the tips of his index and middle fingers, Li Su sighed deeply.

Two-Finger Realm!

The five layers of qi force had already been compressed onto two fingers.

Although this was not the highest realm of the Formless Calamity Finger, for Li Su, it was basically the end of the road. To enter that One-Finger Realm required many things, such as years of cultivation and thousands of refinements of proficiency.

This was not a guess, but a feeling. His intuition told Li Su that the final layer of the Formless Calamity Finger required a proficiency that came naturally, triggering a qualitative change through quantitative accumulation.

Sighing deeply, Li Su felt incredibly happy, yet at the same time, felt somewhat powerless.

"Master, this finger technique is truly too difficult to practice. It's gotten to the point where I don't know what to do next."

The only one who had practiced it, Xuanbei, had actually spent a month and a half to master just one layer of force. If he had to wait for him to enter the threshold, how long would that take?

It was agonizing.