Cultivation arts

After leaving the council hall, Xiao Yu flew on his artifact straight to the Scripture Pavilion on Morning Glow Peak.

Standing before the light barrier, Xiao Yu activated a Sound Transmission Talisman and waited quietly.

Before long, the light barrier rippled, and a black-robed disciple carrying a great sword on his back stepped out.

"Greetings, senior brother!" Xiao Yu cupped his fists in salute first.

"No need to stand on ceremony, junior brother. I haven't seen you before. May I ask your name?" the disciple asked, returning the salute.

"I'm Xiao Yu. I reached Foundation Establishment only recently, so I came here today to see whether there are any suitable cultivation arts."

"So you're Junior Brother Xiao. My name is Zhang Qian. Please follow me!"

Zhang Qian understood. After disciples of the sect reached Foundation Establishment, those without influential backing or a Core Formation cultivator as their master would generally come to the Scripture Pavilion at the first opportunity to choose a cultivation art. The man before him was one of them.

Xiao Yu followed him into the hall and, through the teleportation array, once again arrived before the five-story pavilion inside the mountain.

Pushing the door open, Xiao Yu saw the gray-haired old man he had met three years earlier. This time, however, a slight sweep of his spiritual sense revealed that the old man had a late Foundation Establishment cultivation base.

The old man was still slumped over the desk, snoring away. He's always asleep. How did he ever cultivate to such a level? Xiao Yu muttered inwardly.

He stepped forward and tapped the desk. "Senior brother, senior brother, wake up!"

"Eh? Who's that? Disturbing my sleep!" The old man raised his head, wiped the corner of his mouth, and spoke indistinctly.

"Greetings, senior brother! I'd like to have a look on the third floor. Please allow me through," Xiao Yu said gently.

"Oh! It's you, lad. Tsk, tsk, I haven't seen you in a few years, and you've already reached Foundation Establishment. Not bad. You have a bright future!" The old man finally recognized Xiao Yu and spoke with some surprise.

"In that case, take this token. It will let you pass through the restrictions and reach the third floor. Foundation Establishment disciples can consult the texts for free, but copying jade slips and the like still costs a fee." As he spoke, he handed Xiao Yu a square jade token.

"Thank you, senior brother!" Xiao Yu took the token, then turned and headed upstairs.

A white restrictive light barrier blocked the stairway from the second floor to the third. Xiao Yu gently waved the jade token toward it, and the barrier parted to either side.

Xiao Yu climbed the stairs, and the light barrier behind him closed automatically.

Upon reaching the third floor, he looked up and found that its layout was much like the second floor's. Several rows of shelves held all manner of books, beast hides, jade slips, and other items, though there were considerably more of them than on the second floor.

These shelves were also divided into categories such as pills, artifacts, spells, and cultivation arts, making everything look neatly organized.

Xiao Yu went straight to the shelves marked for cultivation arts, picked up the items displayed there, and examined them carefully.

Broadly speaking, the cultivation arts practiced by cultivators in the world of A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality could be divided into three categories according to their power and effects.

The first category offered astonishing gains in magical power and was relatively easy to practice, with fewer chances of encountering bottlenecks.

But every gain came with a loss, and the advantages of these arts were also their fatal flaws. They generally lacked powerful means of self-defense, and their divine abilities were pitifully weak.

Essentially, any cultivator who chose such an art was destined to spend the rest of his cultivation career among the weakest of his peers.

Yet many people chose these arts for those very advantages, hoping to pursue higher realms and dreaming of attaining immortality. After all, they offered cultivators the easiest path toward the Core Formation Stage.

The second category was precisely the opposite of the first. Practicing these arts generally resulted in a slightly slower increase in magical power than normal.

However, the divine abilities and means of defeating enemies that came with them were often extraordinarily powerful. They allowed practitioners to fight like fish in water and defeat higher-stage cultivators even while their own magical power remained at a lower level.

Thus, most cultivators who knew they had no hope of reaching Core Formation in this lifetime would choose arts of this kind. The third category consisted of top-tier cultivation arts. They combined nearly all the strengths of the first two categories, offering both astonishing increases in magical power and tremendous might.

Yet practicing them required not only exceptional aptitude or a special constitution, but also the fulfillment of numerous restrictive conditions. Cultivating them was fraught with difficulties and danger; a single careless mistake could lead to cultivation deviation or plunge the practitioner into a plight beyond all hope of recovery.

Unless a cultivator's aptitude far surpassed that of others, practicing them was scarcely different from suicide.

Xiao Yu had come specifically for the second category. With the Purple Gourd in his possession, he was not worried about the drawback of slow cultivation, so power became his foremost consideration.

Working his way along the shelves, examining each book and item in turn, Xiao Yu found many cultivation arts, some of which genuinely tempted him. One, called the Phantom Body Art, allowed its practitioner to manifest a certain number of illusory bodies. These bodies possessed exactly the same aura as the original and were imbued with a portion of his magical power, allowing them to wield a certain fraction of his strength.

Another, called the Origin Return Art, allowed its practitioner to continually compress the magical power within his body, eventually granting him twice as much magical power as others at the same stage. Greater reserves meant being able to fight longer, and it also meant that the same techniques would be more powerful in his hands than in someone else's. This art greatly tempted Xiao Yu as well.

Whenever Xiao Yu found something that caught his eye, he kept it in hand, intending to compare them all before deciding which to make his primary cultivation art.

Near the end of the shelves, Xiao Yu discovered an art he had never expected to find-the Azure Essence Sword Art. He was deeply surprised that this art could appear in the Giant Sword Sect's Scripture Pavilion.

He immediately sent his spiritual sense into the jade slip and carefully examined the sword art.

After a long while, Xiao Yu lowered the jade slip and exhaled softly. It turned out to be only an incomplete copy, allowing cultivation no further than late Foundation Establishment. It did not even contain the methods for Core Formation.

However, Xiao Yu thought of someone: Yan Kuan, the Martial Fool, a Qi Refining Stage disciple of his sect. Xiao Yu had seen him half a year earlier, and the sword art he used to control his flying sword had been quite extraordinary. Presumably, he had already obtained the Silver Page recording the Azure Essence Sword Art by then!

As Han the Old Devil's primary cultivation art in the human world in the original novel, the Azure Essence Sword Art naturally had a remarkable history.

This sword art had been created ten thousand years earlier by a cultivator named Qing Yuanzi. It later became the supreme art of a sect called the Profound Sword Sect, a cultivation art that led all the way to the Deity Transformation Stage.

Many years earlier, the seven sects currently established in the Yue Kingdom had joined forces to destroy that sect. At the time, cultivators from Yellow Maple Valley had seized the first half of this sword art from the Profound Sword Sect's leader. It allowed cultivation all the way to late Core Formation.

From the looks of it, the art recorded in his sect's jade slip had most likely been copied from Yellow Maple Valley's version. However, Yellow Maple Valley had held something back, giving the Giant Sword Sect only the Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment portions.

In fact, the truth was much as Xiao Yu had guessed. When sects joined forces to destroy another sect or formed a group to explore hidden places, everyone was usually allowed to make a copy of any cultivation arts, secret techniques, and the like they obtained. It was just that Yellow Maple Valley had cheated the Giant Sword Sect back then, leaving it with an even more simplified version.