Learning Materials from Another World, Those Who Know, Know

Study Materials from Another World—Those Who Know, Know. Just as Zhao Hao was preparing for the next step of his research, the hunger in his belly came through with particular clarity.

He took a porcelain bottle labeled "Fasting Pill" from the cloth bag and poured out a pill the size of a soybean.

According to Lu Gui, one pill could keep him free from hunger and thirst for seven days.

Without the slightest hesitation, he tossed the pill into his mouth.

The pill shattered, and a faint medicinal fragrance mixed with a slight bitterness dissolved across his tongue. A warm current slid into his stomach, instantly dispelling all hunger and thirst.

With his body's needs satisfied, the urgency in his mind immediately occupied every thought.

Zhao Hao sat cross-legged, and his mind sank once more into that pale-golden screen of light.

He focused his will on enhancing the cultivation art.

[Main Item: Mysterious Yin Qi Absorption Art (Beginner 0/100)]

[Please select materials to consume...]

In the materials column, two options lay there quietly.

One was [Spirit Stones].

The other made the corner of his eye twitch uncontrollably.

[Dual Cultivation Secret Art—E Drive 10T Study Materials (Proficient 0/100)].

Good grief. The "teachers" on his hard drive in his previous life had turned into dual cultivation secret arts after changing worlds?

He steadied himself. First, he fished a low-grade spirit stone out of the cloth bag, placed it in his hand, and selected it in the materials box.

[Enhancement success rate +1%]

Zhao Hao then selected all nineteen spirit stones he had just obtained.

[Enhancement success rate: 20%]

"One spirit stone only adds 1%."

Zhao Hao muttered to himself.

He could not forget the glaring "80% success rate" and the icy "Enhancement Failed" prompt when he had enhanced his spiritual root.

In this damned place that ate people without spitting out the bones, any probability below one hundred percent was equal to one hundred percent risk.

Especially in the early growth phase—he could not afford to lose a second time!

With a thought, he withdrew all twenty spirit stones from the materials column.

His gaze fell on that proficient-level [Dual Cultivation Secret Art—E Drive 10T Study Materials].

Select.

[Enhancement success rate: 100%]

It was done!

Zhao Hao no longer hesitated in the slightest.

"Confirm enhancement!"

[Ding! Enhancement successful! Mysterious Yin Qi Absorption Art proficiency raised to (Proficient 0/200)!]

An invisible flood of information surged into his mind like divine enlightenment poured over his head.

Every character and every meridian diagram in that thread-bound booklet of the Mysterious Yin Qi Absorption Art instantly came alive in his mind.

The sentences that had originally been obscure and difficult to understand broke themselves apart, reorganized, and transformed into the most straightforward cultivation essentials.

Those complex circulation routes seemed as if they had already run through his body hundreds and thousands of times; every barrier and key trick was understood in full.

One moment earlier, he had still been stumbling over the words, half guessing and half muddling through. Now, this cultivation art already moved like an arm directing its fingers.

Zhao Hao suppressed his wild joy and immediately sat cross-legged on the stone bed according to the newly added experience in his mind, attempting to draw qi into his body.

Time flowed by.

After the time it took an incense stick to burn.

Just as Zhao Hao was about to grow impatient, he finally sensed the spiritual qi between heaven and earth.

Thread after thread, strand after strand, in a riot of colors.

He began circulating the art to absorb the corresponding fiery-red spiritual qi among them.

He immediately circulated the art, drawing in the fiery-red spiritual qi that corresponded to himself.

But very soon, his brows furrowed.

This absorption speed... was outrageously slow!

According to the cultivation art's description, when a heavenly spiritual root cultivated for the first time, it should be like a great whale drinking water, with spiritual qi surging in like the tide.

But now, he was like someone holding a pair of chopsticks, clumsily trying to pick up the sparse red specks of light in the air.

"The foundation is still that of five spiritual roots after all..."

A chill shot up Zhao Hao's spine.

The identity of a "heavenly spiritual root" was his only protective talisman.

Once anyone discovered he was a silver-plated pewter spearhead, that his cultivation speed was not even as good as someone with three spiritual roots or four spiritual roots, how would Jia Ren—and even the entire Extreme Yin Sect—treat him?

His end would absolutely be a hundred times more miserable than that dark, skinny youth who had been refined into a zombie!

He did not dare let his mind wander again. He immersed all his focus in cultivation, madly drawing in those faint wisps of spiritual energy and scouring his meridians with them again and again.

Six hours passed in the blink of an eye.

When the horizon began to pale like the belly of a fish, Zhao Hao, whose eyes had been tightly shut all this time, suddenly trembled.

He clearly "saw" that the countless strands of spiritual energy he had absorbed were finally refined, merging into a thread of cool, dark, icy spiritual power that flowed along his meridians and into his dantian.

[Name: Zhao Hao]

[Realm: First Level of Qi Refining (1/100)]

[Cultivation Method: Mysterious Yin Qi Absorption Art (Proficient 0/200)]

[Spiritual Root: Fire (Low Grade)]

He had done it!

He had officially stepped over the threshold of a cultivator!

The world became different in that instant.

His perception stretched outward. The fine grain of the cave dwelling's stone walls, the sound of the wind far outside the cave—every hair and fiber stood revealed.

This was spiritual sense.

However, the joy of breaking through lasted only an instant.

In the next second, an even deeper sense of crisis seized him.

He did not get up. He did not even open his eyes.

The very first thing Zhao Hao did after obtaining spiritual sense was to use it on his own body, launching a meticulous search that dug three feet into the ground.

From the tips of his hair to the Yongquan acupoints in his soles, from his skin to his marrow.

He had to find any hidden measures that old ghost Jia Ren might have left behind!

After the time it took an incense stick to burn.

Zhao Hao opened his eyes, his gaze even graver than before.

He had found nothing.

His body was perfectly clean. There was nothing inside that did not belong to him.

And that was precisely the most terrifying part!

His thoughts raced, and he immediately tried placing his own "blood" into the system's enhancement slot as the [Main Item].

He wanted to test whether he could alter the essence of his blood through enhancement and render that drop of natal blood essence that had been taken away useless.

The system gave no response at all.

In the [Main Item] column, there was simply no option for "blood."

Zhao Hao's heart sank completely.

Plots from novels he had read in his previous life flashed through his mind. That old ghost—surely he was not planning to wait until Zhao Hao grew stronger, then directly seize this "heavenly spiritual root" body, or refine him into some kind of powerful living corpse!

The intense feeling of suffocation left him almost unable to breathe.

A dead end lay before him.

If he cultivated too slowly, his identity as a fake heavenly spiritual root would be exposed. Death.

If he cultivated too quickly, it would be no different from fattening the prey for Jia Ren himself. He would die even faster.

He had to become stronger at a speed even faster than a true heavenly spiritual root. At the same time, he also had to find a way to hide his cultivation!

First, he still had to raise his cultivation speed.

He opened the system again and placed [Spiritual Root: Fire (Low Grade)] into the main item slot.

In the material slot, the four spiritual roots of metal, wood, water, and earth were already gone.

After thinking for a moment, he took a low-grade spirit stone from his storage pouch and placed it into the material slot.

[Enhancement success rate +0.1%]

0.1%?

Did that not mean that to raise his spiritual root from low grade to middle grade, he would need one thousand low-grade spirit stones to pile the success rate up to 100%?

One thousand!

His entire fortune now only amounted to nineteen stones.

Zhao Hao forced himself to calm down and sent his spiritual sense into the gray storage pouch.

The inside of the pouch was ten feet square, and a neatly folded set of black Daoist robes lay quietly within.

He placed the cultivation method, pills, spirit stones, and token all into the storage pouch, then changed into the Daoist robes of an inner sect disciple.

After a night of cultivation, coupled with all the rushing about before, his body had long since become sticky and unbearable.

"I need to get to the Transmission Hall as soon as possible and see if there are any spells like 'Cleaning Art' or the like."

He calculated silently.

The sky was already bright.

Having stepped into the first level of Qi Refining, not only was he not the slightest bit weary, he was instead full of energy.

He rose to his feet and pushed open the stone door.

The sunlight was dazzling.

"The Transmission Hall."

Zhao Hao looked toward the great hall in the distance, his gaze falling on the storage pouch.

Improving his spiritual roots was out of reach for the moment. It seemed he would have to start with the proficiency of his cultivation method first.

Hopefully, he could get his hands on more "study materials."