Exploring His Ability

The Immortal Seedlings stared at the courtyards on the mountain, unsure how to choose for a moment.

Wang Xiaohu sidled up to Zhou Qing and asked, "Brother Zhou Qing, wherever you live, I'll live next door to you."

Before setting out, Carpenter Wang had instructed him to seek Zhou Qing's advice in all matters. Over this time, he had also witnessed Zhou Qing's capabilities, so his first thought was to live beside him.

He thought to himself, Brother Zhou Qing can't possibly choose the wrong place. If I live beside him, I'll naturally share a bit of his good fortune.

Wei Xu also came over shamelessly and said, "Count me in too. It'll be livelier if we all live together."

Inspired by the two of them, the other Immortal Seedlings also voiced their intentions, saying they wanted to live next to Zhou Qing.

Wei Kuang was somewhat surprised.

When he had left marks for the Immortal Seedlings earlier, he had glanced through everyone's records and knew that Zhou Qing possessed only a single spirit root, ranking dead last in talent among these Immortal Seedlings.

Yet now, he looked as though he were everyone's leader.

Wei Kuang could not help but wonder whether this Zhou Qing possessed some other unique strength.

Zhou Qing quieted the Immortal Seedlings and said, "These courtyards will be our homes for the next ten years. The most important thing is to choose a place that suits you. Only by cultivating in a place that suits you can your state of mind become its most comfortable and tranquil."

"You should all choose for yourselves."

The others found his words reasonable, so they stopped insisting. They bade Wei Kuang farewell one after another and went off to choose their own residences.

Zhou Qing did not rush to make his choice. Instead, he took a walk around both the mountain and its foothills.

He wanted to choose the most secluded, least frequented courtyard, so that he could conveniently test all kinds of ideas.

Ever since gaining the magnetic field three years ago, he had wanted to thoroughly explore its various applications, but unfortunately, he had never been given the chance.

The Zhou family had only that tiny courtyard. Even the slightest commotion would be noticed by Old Man Zhou.

As for going out into the wilderness to experiment, that was even less realistic. Not to mention that after his previous body had committed suicide, Old Man Zhou had kept a close eye on him. Whenever he occasionally needed to enter the city to consult scholars about the Cultivation World, Old Man Zhou would even send children from the village to accompany him.

Even if Old Man Zhou had not been watching him, he would not have dared to go alone to places rarely visited by people.

This was no peaceful world. Even though Cloud Prefecture City was relatively prosperous, news often spread of bandits running rampant in its outskirts.

Thus, his exploration of this ability had been delayed.

Now that he had arrived at the Azure Cloud Sect and learned that every Outer Disciple would receive an independent courtyard, Zhou Qing was overjoyed.

After making a round of the mountain, Zhou Qing finally chose a courtyard within a bamboo grove on the shaded side.

There was only this one courtyard in the entire bamboo forest. Even the nearest other courtyards were two or three hundred paces away. No matter what he tinkered with in his own courtyard, it would be difficult for the sound to reach anyone else's ears.

A row of pink walls enclosed the courtyard. A gate faced downhill, and there was a groove in the wall beside it.

Zhou Qing set his waist token into the groove, indicating that the courtyard now had an owner.

Cultivators feared being disturbed most of all. If someone was interrupted during secluded cultivation, their circulation of qi could easily go awry, causing them to suffer qi deviation.

Thus, every courtyard here had a restriction. Once Zhou Qing placed his waist token into the groove, only he himself and sect elders at Foundation Establishment or above could open the gate.

Zhou Qing pushed the gate open. Several elegant buildings stood in the courtyard, and the rooms contained every sort of daily necessity.

After wandering around the courtyard, Zhou Qing felt extremely satisfied.

This would be his home for the next ten years!

Thinking that he had already arrived in the legendary Cultivation World and was only one step away from cultivating immortality, Zhou Qing could not help but feel his heart itch with impatience.

But he knew that while this one step would be easy for the other Immortal Seedlings to take, for him, it might be a chasm beyond measure.

And tomorrow's lecture would reveal the truth of it all.

The sky was still bright. After choosing their courtyards, the other Immortal Seedlings eagerly wandered around Violet Cloud Mountain, admiring the scenery.

Zhou Qing, however, had no interest in sightseeing. He could hardly wait to explore his ability.

What concerned him most was how his ability could be used for self-defense and against enemies.

After all, he had now arrived in the perilous Cultivation World. Without sufficient means of protecting himself, who knew whether he might one day suddenly fall into someone else's trap?

In theory, as long as he did not leave the Azure Cloud Sect, his safety could be guaranteed.

But he was not accustomed to entrusting his safety entirely to others. Only with the "gun" in his own hand could he truly remain calm in the face of danger.

The most obvious application of a magnetic field was controlling metal.

Zhou Qing had already figured out that he could use his magnetic field to levitate roughly thirty catties of iron. After half an hour, his whole body would grow weak, and he would be unable to maintain the magnetic field.

Clearly, the energy he used to sustain the magnetic field came from his own bioenergy.

Using thirty catties of iron to slowly smash someone was truly of questionable power. Let alone Cultivators, even ordinary mortals could easily dodge it.

Zhou Qing would not use his ability in such a clumsy way.

If he was going to strike someone anyway, rather than slowly smashing them with thirty catties of iron, he might as well use the same magnetic field to accelerate a tiny pellet. As long as it moved fast enough, it could display astonishing power.

Zhou Qing took a smooth iron ball the size of his thumb from his robes.

He had asked a blacksmith in Cloud Prefecture City to make it. The iron ball weighed less than half a tael—converted into the units of his previous life, it was only around twenty grams.

He had always wanted to test how fast he could accelerate this iron ball, but he had never had the opportunity. Now, he could finally do so.

Zhou Qing placed the iron ball on his palm, then applied his magnetic field to it.

The iron ball slowly floated up from his palm, spinning rapidly two or three inches above it.

Zhou Qing focused his attention and applied a lateral magnetic field to the iron ball.

He wanted to see its power, so he pushed the magnetic field's strength to its maximum.

The iron ball flashed once and vanished from before his eyes. Immediately afterward, he heard a dull thud from the pink wall ahead.

Zhou Qing hurried to the wall and found that the iron ball had embedded itself about an inch into the brickwork.

Zhou Qing was instantly beside himself with joy.

This iron ball was already no weaker than an ordinary handgun. If he could take this ability back to Blue Star, this one trick alone would require at least an entire special police unit to capture him.

Even in the Cultivation World, according to what Zhou Qing had heard from Chen Qingxuan, cultivators at the third level of Qi Refinement could still be injured by ordinary mortals' arrows.

His iron ball was stronger than an arrow no matter what. In other words, relying solely on the iron ball, he could already injure cultivators at the third level of Qi Refinement if he caught them off guard. If he was lucky, he might even kill one outright.

Before he had even begun cultivating, he already possessed enough combat power to threaten cultivators at the third level of Qi Refinement.

Yet Zhou Qing was still not satisfied.

The third level of Qi Refinement was merely the very bottom rung of the Cultivation World. Being able to threaten someone at the third level meant little.

He needed a more powerful trump card.

Especially since Zhou Qing could sense that the power of his iron ball still had immense room for improvement.