Just as Zhao Hao was about to continue his research, hunger gripped his stomach.
He took a porcelain bottle labeled "Inedia Pills" from the cloth bag and tipped out a pill the size of a soybean.
According to Lu Gui, one pill could stave off hunger and thirst for seven days.
He tossed it into his mouth without hesitation.
The pill broke apart. A faint medicinal fragrance and a trace of bitterness spread across his tongue, while warmth slid into his stomach and swept away every hint of hunger and thirst.
With his body's needs met, the urgency weighing on his mind took over.
Zhao Hao sat cross-legged and sank his consciousness into the pale golden screen once more.
He focused his thoughts on enhancing the art.
[Main Item: Mysterious Yin Qi Absorption Art (Beginner 0/100)] [Please select materials to consume...]
Two options lay quietly in the Material Slot.
One was [Spirit Stones].
The other made the corner of his eye twitch.
[Dual Cultivation Secret Art—10 TB of Study Materials on Drive E (Proficient 0/100)]
Well, damn. The "teachers" on my hard drive in my past life became a dual cultivation secret art in this world?
He steadied himself, took a Low-grade Spirit Stone from the cloth bag, held it in his hand, and selected it in the materials field.
[Enhancement success rate +1%]
Zhao Hao selected all nineteen Spirit Stones he had just received as well.
[Enhancement success rate: 20%]
"One Spirit Stone only adds one percent."
Zhao Hao muttered to himself.
He could not forget that glaring "80% success rate" when he had enhanced his Spiritual Root, or the cold "Enhancement failed" that had followed.
In this hellhole that devoured people down to the bone, any chance below one hundred percent amounted to a one-hundred-percent risk.
Especially this early on, he could not afford to lose a second time!
With a thought, he removed all twenty Spirit Stones from the Material Slot.
His gaze settled on the [Dual Cultivation Secret Art—10 TB of Study Materials on Drive E] at the Proficient level.
He selected it.
[Enhancement success rate: 100%]
That did it!
Zhao Hao did not hesitate for another moment.
"Confirm enhancement!"
[Ding! Enhancement successful! Mysterious Yin Qi Absorption Art proficiency increased to (Proficient 0/200)!]
An invisible torrent of information surged into his mind, like wisdom poured straight through the crown of his head.
Every character and every meridian diagram in the thread-bound booklet of the Mysterious Yin Qi Absorption Art came alive in his mind.
Sentences that had been obscure and impenetrable broke apart and reassembled on their own, becoming the plainest truths of cultivation.
Those intricate routes for circulating energy felt as though power had already raced through them inside him a thousand times. He understood every hurdle and every trick.
A moment ago, he had stumbled over even the words, guessing his way through them. Now the art answered him as readily as his own arm obeyed his fingers.
Zhao Hao suppressed his elation, sat cross-legged on the stone bed, and followed his newfound understanding to try drawing qi into his body.
Time passed.
After the time it took an incense stick to burn...
Just as Zhao Hao was growing impatient, he finally sensed the spiritual energy between heaven and earth.
It came in wisps and threads, shimmering with every color.
He began circulating the art to absorb the fiery red spiritual energy that corresponded to him.
At once, he circulated the art and drew the fiery red spiritual energy toward himself.
But his brow soon furrowed.
His absorption speed... was painfully slow!
According to the art, when someone with a Heavenly Spiritual Root cultivated for the first time, he should draw in spiritual energy like a great whale drinking the sea, with qi surging in like a tide.
Instead, Zhao Hao might as well have been clumsily trying to pick sparse red specks out of the air with a pair of chopsticks.
My foundation is still that of a Five-Element Spiritual Root after all...
A chill shot up Zhao Hao's spine.
His supposed Heavenly Spiritual Root was his only shield.
If anyone discovered he was a spearhead made of shiny pewter, with a cultivation speed inferior even to someone with a Three-Element or Four-Element Spiritual Root, what would Jia Ren—and the entire Extreme Yin Sect—do to him?
His fate would be a hundred times worse than that of the scrawny boy refined into a zombie!
He dared not let his attention wander again. He immersed himself in cultivation, frantically drawing in those faint wisps of spiritual energy and washing them through his meridians again and again.
Six hours passed in the blink of an eye.
When the sky turned the pale white of a fish's belly, Zhao Hao, who had kept his eyes closed all this time, suddenly shuddered.
He clearly "saw" the countless wisps he had absorbed finally refine and merge into a thread of cool, yin-cold spiritual power, which flowed along his meridians into his dantian.
[Name: Zhao Hao] [Realm: Qi Refining, First Layer (1/100)] [Art: Mysterious Yin Qi Absorption Art (Proficient 0/200)] [Spiritual Root: Fire (Low-grade)]
I did it!
He had officially crossed the threshold into cultivation!
The world changed in that instant.
His perception reached outward. The finest patterns in the cave's stone walls and the sound of wind far beyond it stood out in exquisite detail.
This was spiritual sense.
Yet the joy of his breakthrough lasted only an instant.
The next moment, a deeper sense of danger seized him.
He did not get up. He did not even open his eyes.
The first thing Zhao Hao did with his newfound spiritual sense was scour his own body, leaving no stone unturned.
From the tips of his hair to the soles of his feet, from skin to marrow.
He meant to find any hidden trick that old devil Jia Ren might have left behind!
After the time it took an incense stick to burn...
Zhao Hao opened his eyes, his expression graver than before.
He had found nothing.
His body was utterly clean. There was nothing inside it that did not belong to him.
That was the most frightening thing of all!
His mind raced. He immediately tried to place his "blood" into the system's enhancement field as the [Main Item].
He wanted to see whether enhancement could change the nature of his blood and render the drop of vital essence blood that had been taken from him useless.
The system did not respond.
There was no "blood" option in the [Main Item] slot at all.
Zhao Hao's heart sank.
Plots from novels he had read in his past life flashed through his mind. That old devil might be waiting for him to grow stronger before seizing this "Heavenly Spiritual Root" body—or refining him into some kind of powerful living corpse!
The suffocating dread nearly robbed him of breath.
A dead end lay before him.
If he cultivated too slowly, his false Heavenly Spiritual Root would be exposed, and he would die.
If he cultivated too quickly, he would be fattening Jia Ren's prey for him—and die even sooner.
He had to grow stronger faster than someone with a true Heavenly Spiritual Root. At the same time, he had to find a way to hide his cultivation!
First, he still needed to increase his cultivation speed.
He opened the system again and placed [Spiritual Root: Fire (Low-grade)] in the Main Item Slot.
The Material Slot no longer contained the metal, wood, water, and earth Spiritual Roots.
After some thought, he took a Low-grade Spirit Stone from the Storage Bag and placed it in the Material Slot.
[Enhancement success rate +0.1%]
Zero point one percent?
Did that mean raising his Spiritual Root from low-grade to mid-grade would take a thousand Low-grade Spirit Stones just to reach a one-hundred-percent success rate?
A thousand!
His entire fortune now amounted to just nineteen.
Zhao Hao forced himself to calm down and sent his spiritual sense into the gray Storage Bag.
Inside was a space ten feet on each side. A neatly folded black robe lay within.
He put the art, pills, Spirit Stones, and token into the Storage Bag, then changed into the inner disciple's robe.
After cultivating all night and rushing around beforehand, his body was sticky with grime.
"I need to get to the Lecture Hall soon and see if they have a spell like a cleansing spell."
He silently made his plans.
Daylight had fully arrived.
Having reached the first layer of Qi Refining, he felt not the slightest fatigue. Instead, he was brimming with energy.
He stood and pushed open the stone door.
The sunlight dazzled him.
"The Lecture Hall."
Zhao Hao looked toward the distant hall, then lowered his gaze to the Storage Bag.
He could not count on improving his Spiritual Root for now. It seemed he would have to start with his art's proficiency.
I hope I can get more "study materials."