Heavenly Dipper Gold-Tempering Art, Changes in Dou Qi

This forced Zhou Changqing to sink into thought once more.

"Why won't it work?"

"It clearly worked when I tempered weapons this way, but when I tried it on my body, there was no reaction at all."

"Could it be because of Heavenly Thunder?"

"That must be it."

"When refining weapons, even without Heavenly Thunder, both types of my Dou Qi are outsiders to the weapon itself, so changes naturally occur."

"But for me, Dou Qi is energy I've refined and branded with my own mark. It's a part of me, a part of my body, so without an external stimulus, there's no way any reaction can occur."

"When the arcs of Heavenly Thunder invaded my body earlier, they served as outsiders. After combining with my Lightning Attribute Dou Qi, they became something different, something capable of stimulating my Metal Attribute Dou Qi."

"The principle is the same in both cases. Both require an external stimulus."

At that moment, realization dawned on Zhou Changqing. He had deduced why his two types of Dou Qi could not temper his body on their own.

And that was indeed the case.

If one's own Dou Qi could temper the body, what would body-tempering arts be for?

Although the flesh gradually grew stronger under the nourishment of Dou Qi during cultivation, that strengthening had its limits.

It was a gradual process, advancing alongside one's cultivation.

There was no way it could produce such dramatic improvements as refining those lightning arcs had earlier!

If simply circulating Dou Qi could temper the body, then every cultivator on the Dou Qi Continent could become a musclebound monster.

Having figured this out, Zhou Changqing felt a little forlorn. After all, he had lost a shortcut to rapidly improving both his Dou Qi cultivation and his physical strength.

To achieve that kind of improvement again, he would have to actively court death by drawing Heavenly Thunder down onto himself during a thunderstorm.

In that case, never mind whether he would improve—he would definitely die!

Besides, Zhou Changqing had become somewhat afraid of being struck by lightning and did not dare attempt anything like that.

Still, it had to be said that when people sought shortcuts, their ingenuity soared, and their minds worked at peak speed.

Only a moment later, Zhou Changqing's eyes lit up. Drawing on what had happened when the lightning arcs entered his body, he thought of a method that might work.

However, that method would require further experimentation, so he set it aside for now.

He got up and put all his clothes back on.

Zhou Changqing lit a fire inside the cave, then took out some dry provisions and placed them beside it to warm up.

While he waited, Zhou Changqing began studying his new cultivation art.

This new art had come into being through an extraordinary coincidence. Without today's ordeal, Zhou Changqing probably could never have cobbled it together.

Even if his cultivation rose in the future and he truly created an art of his own, it would be different from this one.

After all, he had created this new art merely by merging the Dormant Thunder Method and Steel-Condensing Force, drawing on a few Yellow Tier arts for additional experience.

Its foundations were indeed considerably shallower than those of the continent's high-tier arts.

If he had to assign it a grade, this new art would be Profound Tier Low Grade at most. It could go no higher.

Still, Zhou Changqing was satisfied.

After all, cultivators born with dual attributes were exceedingly rare on the Dou Qi Continent.

Dual-attribute cultivation arts were rarer still.

Although Alchemists seemed fairly numerous on the continent, they were pitifully few when measured against the total population.

Even then, an Alchemist's fire and wood attributes could not count as true dual attributes.

That was because an Alchemist's fire and wood attributes were unequal: one strong and one weak, one primary and one secondary. They were not balanced at all.

Thus, the vast majority of Alchemists primarily cultivated fire-attribute arts. Almost none primarily cultivated wood-attribute arts or even practiced them alongside their main art.

With only that tiny trace of the wood attribute in their souls, there was no point in making it their main focus. Cultivation would be painfully slow, and even practicing it on the side would waste time.

Those whose dual attributes were truly balanced were rarer even than Alchemists.

The Wind-Thunder Pavilion might have seemed to cultivate dual-attribute arts in the original story, but that was because its founding pavilion master had possessed both wind and lightning attributes.

In the present-day Wind-Thunder Pavilion, most disciples and higher-ranking members possessed only one attribute, cultivating either Wind Attribute or lightning-attribute arts.

Within the Wind-Thunder Pavilion, the only person explicitly known to possess both wind and lightning attributes was Feng Qing'er of the Heavenly Demon Phoenix clan.

Thus, finding a cultivation art for Dual Gold-and-Lightning Attributes was extremely difficult.

The fact that he had asked Ya Fei to help collect such arts over half a year ago, yet had failed to find even a Yellow Tier Low Grade metal-lightning art by the time he left, made that clear.

In truth, dual-attribute arts generally did not exist at the Yellow Tier. Even the lowest were Profound Tier Middle Grade, and that was merely the bottom limit.

That was because the creator of a dual-attribute art would, at the very least, have to possess dual attributes themselves. Others might be able to create one, but such cases were virtually nonexistent.

A dual-attribute cultivator who reached the point of creating cultivation arts would inevitably be powerful—at the very least, an expert who held sway over a region.

Moreover, dual-attribute arts were more complex than single-attribute ones, so their starting point could not be low.

For Zhou Changqing to create a Profound Tier Low Grade art for Dual Gold-and-Lightning Attributes by accident while still at the Dou Shi realm could fairly be called a fortuitous encounter.

Even if a large portion of its circulation routes had been borrowed from other arts, it was still an exceptional achievement.

"Since this is an art I created, it naturally needs a new name."

"You were born from Heavenly Thunder, and you also let me discover a path to treating my body as a weapon, catalyzing Metal Attribute Dou Qi to temper myself and strengthen my physique."

"Then why not call you the Heavenly Dipper Gold-Tempering Art?"

Having come up with a reasonably fitting name for his new art, Zhou Changqing felt rather pleased with himself.

Before long, however, Zhou Changqing pulled himself out of that self-satisfaction.

He had refined many lightning arcs earlier, which might have made his Lightning Attribute Dou Qi stronger than his Metal Attribute Dou Qi, upsetting the balance of his Dou Qi Vortex.

His next task was to deal with this and restore balance between the two types of Dou Qi.

Yet when he looked inward at the Dou Qi Vortex in his dantian again, he was astonished to discover that there seemed to be no need.

Earlier, he had only given the Dou Qi Vortex a cursory glance before being stunned by its increased size. After that, he had thrown himself into researching body-tempering methods and had paid it no further attention.

Now that he looked again, he saw something different.

The Dou Qi Vortex in his dantian, revolving like a sea of stars, showed not the slightest sign of imbalance.

In fact, the two types of Dou Qi were more closely connected than before, intermingling like yin and yang in a taiji symbol, each containing the other.

"Was I worrying over nothing? That's impossible. Even if those lightning arcs were refined, they were still lightning. Surely the cultivation art couldn't have refined them into Metal Attribute Dou Qi?"

This left Zhou Changqing deeply puzzled.

To find the source of the mystery, he sank his awareness inward and sent his soul perception pouring out in full force, enveloping the entire Dou Qi Vortex. He examined it carefully, leaving no part unchecked.

"Wait... why has my lightning attribute changed?"

As Zhou Changqing probed, his mind jolted. He discovered what was different about his Lightning Attribute Dou Qi.

This change had not originated in the vortex within his sea of Qi, but in the depths of his soul!

As everyone knew, the attributes of people on the Dou Qi Continent were determined by their souls, so the fundamental source of their attributes also lay within the soul.

Zhou Changqing had sensed the essence of the lightning attribute deep within his soul before.

Now, however, some subtle changes had occurred in the fundamental source of his lightning attribute.

These changes were not obvious, but they gave the Lightning Attribute Dou Qi within his gold-and-silver sea-of-Qi vortex a mysterious quality unlike anything it had possessed before.

If he had to describe that quality, only one phrase came to Zhou Changqing's mind.

Mystery upon mystery, boundless creation!

(End of chapter)