Jiang Ding sat cross-legged, drenched in sweat and pale-faced.
First Branch of the Lunar Lung Scripture (100%) Tenth Branch of the Lunar Lung Scripture (100%) ...
Looking inward, he saw that the ten primary branches of the Lunar Lung Scripture had already been tempered to completion, clear and luminous as pale-white inner qi flowed through them.
"Ten meridians in two days, with the Essence-Replenishing Qi-Boosting Pills supplied without interruption," Jiang Ding calculated to himself. "That counts as fast. If I were cultivating the top-tier techniques used by martial artists like Gong Caiyu, with their thousand meridians, I could reach full inner qi in two months at most and begin preparing to break through to the Innate realm."
"Ha, even super geniuses are nothing more than this."
He let his imagination run wild.
That was only natural.
The pills, the Ginseng Flower Qi-Regulating Pills, were utterly ordinary, rated by the education system as "low-cost and barely usable." Yet if placed in the martial world of the Yue Kingdom, they would be heavenly pills that even the royal family would struggle to obtain.
Old Ginseng and the others had them; they had all kinds of medicinal herbs over a century old. But they could not enjoy pills of this grade.
The services Immortal Sect Citizens could obtain by casually sending a delivery contained immense labor value. Calling it turning stone into gold would not be an exaggeration.
The gap in cultivation techniques and teaching resources was even greater.
"What a pity. The Young Eagle Takes Flight Sword Art has one hundred and eight thousand meridians!" After indulging in fantasy for only a moment, Jiang Ding's heart sank.
"Tempering and nurturing five a day means twenty-one thousand six hundred days!"
"Fifty-nine years!"
After roughly calculating the result, Jiang Ding was shaken to the core and could no longer remain calm.
"I'm not slow."
"The Young Eagle Takes Flight Sword Art at the minor mastery level, Hundred Essences Transform Qi Pills refined from ninety-year-old ginseng—these are advantages ordinary students do not have. Taken together, even factoring in aptitude, my cultivation speed should be at least twice that of an ordinary student!"
"Hiss..."
No wonder Li Junhao had so easily given up on cultivation. His grades in cultural subjects were so good that he had long known these things. No wonder Jiang Chaoyang had schemed and struggled for most of his life, only to reach major mastery in Young Eagle Inner Qi.
"To turn from mortal to immortal, one must be a genius."
Jiang Ding regained his calm and thought swiftly.
"I can't belittle myself. Once the tempering and nurturing of my meridians reach the stages of the Minor Celestial Circuit, Lesser Celestial Circuit, and Greater Celestial Circuit—when the twelve regular meridians and eight extraordinary meridians form a complete circulating whole—the progress of refining essence into qi will accelerate by leaps and bounds."
"It isn't that difficult. It's not enough to call it despair."
After closing his eyes and regulating his breathing for a moment, Jiang Ding stood up and walked to the equipment rack.
At some point, a translucent camouflage uniform and a firearm over two meters long had appeared there. The Array Spirit had placed explanatory labels beside them.
Recon Scout-1 Camouflage, superior-grade special artifact. Woven with an inscribed first-rank breath-concealing array. Must be used together with the Minor Breath-Concealing Technique. Upon reaching minor mastery, it could block the divine-sense scans of Qi Refinement ninth-layer cultivators, as well as scans from the first-rank vehicle-mounted radar equipped on tanks.
If a Qi Refinement cultivator had cultivated a divine-sense scanning technique of the same rank, it could block divine-sense reconnaissance secret arts one rank lower.
For martial artists below the Innate realm, it dropped another rank.
In other words, if he used it now, the Recon Scout camouflage paired with the major mastery Minor Breath-Concealing Technique could only block divine-sense secret-art scans from classmates at the proficient level.
Jiang Ding knew a little about this as well.
Immortal Sect Qi Refinement cultivators had always been uninterested in spells like Fireball Technique and Ice Arrow Technique, whose range was only several dozen meters. But one spell was mandatory.
Electromagnetic Induction Wave Technique.
The core of the Immortal Sect cultivators' combat system: it created electromagnetic waves of specific frequencies through magic for reconnaissance and scanning, starting at a range of one thousand meters—far beyond the hundred-meter limit of a Qi Refinement cultivator's divine sense.
When paired with Immortal Sect Spirit-Particle Radar, this technique's search range and precision would increase dramatically.
When facing Immortal Sect Qi Refinement cultivators, cultivators of the same rank from beyond the realm often could not even see their enemies before being drowned beneath artillery fire and bullets arriving from nowhere.
Jiang Ding briefly flipped through the Minor Breath-Concealing Technique provided by the Array Spirit. He found it obscure and difficult to understand, its difficulty matching its effects, not the slightest bit inferior to the Electromagnetic Induction Wave Technique.
He looked at the next piece of equipment.
Type 03 Anti-Materiel Sniper Rifle, superior-grade special artifact. Caliber: 12.7x108 millimeters. Length: 2,124 millimeters. Weight: 89 kilograms. The barrel was inscribed with a first-rank breath-concealing invisibility array and a first-rank spell-rending array. A hit could break through the defensive artifacts of a Qi Refinement ninth-layer cultivator and consume some of a Foundation Establishment cultivator's mana (5%--10%).
Note: An Innate martial artist had to supply inner force for three minutes to fire one shot. An inner qi realm martial artist had to supply inner qi for over ten minutes to fire one shot, or would be unable to fire it.
Two superior-grade special artifacts!
Jiang Ding held his breath.
Unlike the heavy machine guns and other mass-producible half-artifacts he had practiced with before, artifacts required the consumption of various spirit-mineral alloys to produce. Moreover, only Qi Refinement cultivators could use industrial machinery to manufacture them.
Every artifact cost more than a hundred times as much as ordinary weapons, and they were military supplies. Anyone who had not served in the military could not purchase them.
These two artifacts alone made a reconnaissance infantryman worth who knew how many times more than an ordinary infantryman.
Yet even so, not one of the dozen or so inner qi realm students in the grade had chosen the reconnaissance infantry direction. There had to be some obstacle that could not be overcome.
The third and fourth periods were Chinese exams.
In the back row, Jiang Ding gripped his pen and pondered bitterly. Only after a long time did he write down an answer with some trepidation, completely unlike his high spirits in Ideological and Moral Education class.
Chinese mainly tested cultivation-technique principles, talismans, and the use of spirit script, which could better express cultivation information.
Even so, compared to before, he had improved greatly during this period after gaining the Rusty Sword Tip's boost to his comprehension and having inner qi as a concrete reference.
Ring, ring!
"Time is up. Candidates, please hand in your papers."
Two hours passed in a flash. Jiang Ding barely finished the spirit-script composition, glanced at the two major questions that were still blank, and sighed as he let the teacher take away his test paper.
"Ah, I messed this one up..."
Following the crowd out of the classroom, Jiang Ding glanced at Li Junhao beside him, whose face was full of bitterness.
"Heh."
Half an hour for eating, half an hour for sleep.
Jiang Ding opened his eyes, sat on the edge of the bed, and closed his eyes to regulate his breathing.
His next cultivation goal was to achieve a "minor circuit." Therefore, what he needed to cultivate next were the ten principal meridians within the second of the three hand yin meridians, the Hand Jueyin Pericardium Scripture.
Once each of the twelve regular meridians had ten primary meridians opened, nurtured, and connected according to the array diagram provided by the Young Eagle Takes Flight Sword Art, they would stabilize into a circulating whole.
Only then could his inner qi meridians be considered initially stable, and his cultivation speed would rise sharply.
Inner force emerged from the Lunar Lung Scripture and poured into the starting node of the neighboring Hand Jueyin Pericardium Scripture, spreading toward its ten primary meridians.
A faint stabbing pain came with the sensation. Jiang Ding let only a little inner force enter before withdrawing it.
After more than ten minutes, Jiang Ding once again controlled his inner force and sent it into the meridians he had previously nurtured, repairing and advancing, expanding them step by step without ever stopping.
The afternoon exam was mathematics.
Tomorrow would be the science and humanities comprehensive exams, followed by the cold-weapon and firearms assessments, and finally practical combat.
The methods of practical combat assessment varied. Some were one-on-one duels, conducted under a teacher's supervision while students wore full equipment and used reduced powder charges.
Others took the form of squads, generally requiring them to complete a certain objective, such as infiltration or assassination.
The last was the campaign format, usually involving students from multiple classes and grades working together to form a regiment and besiege a Foundation Establishment cultivator employing tactics from beyond the realm.
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