"What is this?" Mo Caihuan discovered golden patterns inside the magnified cells. She had never noticed them before, but now they had appeared.
But what were they? She did not know, so she recalled the various cultivation books she had asked Daoist Wealth to purchase.
Although she did not cultivate, it was still necessary to understand it. Better to be prepared than caught off guard.
Cultivation was extremely complex. Even setting aside side pursuits such as pill refining, artifact refining, talismans, and formations, cultivation methods and spells alone came in a bewildering variety.
Spells involved circulating magical power along fixed routes to produce a phenomenon that affected the surrounding environment, such as creating a fireball or a ball of water...
Mo Caihuan had a copy of Hundred Qi Refining Spells, which recorded a hundred spells that Qi Refining Stage cultivators could use. They came in all shapes and forms, but every one required precise control of magical power, or it would fail.
The routes along which magical power circulates look something like these patterns, Mo Caihuan thought.
She also thought of the various cultivation scripts in the original novel. Writing was not merely a medium for conveying information; it was something that possessed power.
Immortals used special scripts, such as Silver Tadpole Script and Golden Seal Script. Every character contained mysterious power. Immortals also saw all sorts of Dao Patterns when they cultivated.
"Immortal writing might be ideographic, recorded according to Dao Patterns. It's just that Dao Patterns are too complex for written characters to reproduce completely. As they were passed down, the characters became simpler and simpler, and the power they contained grew weaker and weaker." She pondered, Could these golden patterns be Dao Patterns?
"Even if they are Dao Patterns, what do they mean? Just seeing them doesn't mean I understand them." She did not know what the Dao Patterns meant, only that they were a manifestation of the Great Dao within a mortal body.
The Great Dao was everywhere, so it was perfectly normal for it to exist within the human body. For example, seventy percent of the human body was liquid, and water was also part of the Great Dao.
The human body could be called an organic combination of the three thousand Great Daos.
The golden patterns she observed were extremely complex. Mo Caihuan tried to record them. If they really were Dao Patterns, the written characters she recorded ought to possess miraculous power.
She picked up a newly made pencil and copied them, tracing the gourd to draw its likeness. She was only halfway through when the white paper and pencil caught fire.
Rather than being frightened, she was thrilled. This proved that her conjecture was correct.
"This is like talismans. You need special brushes, ink, and paper to record them. Ordinary paper can't withstand the power of the Great Dao." Having said that, she immediately began pondering again. "The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao. I can see Dao Patterns, but I can't transmit them through paper. A Dao that can be transmitted through paper isn't the true Dao, the complete Dao. It's an incomplete Dao, a tiny part of the Dao."
"The Dao Patterns I see are only an insignificant fraction of the Dao, but even something so tiny can't be borne by ordinary materials. Ah, mortals really are too weak."
She could only find a way to buy a batch of talisman-making materials. However, when cultivators drew talismans, they also needed spiritual energy, channeling it into the brush and then through the ink into the paper.
Cultivation differed from science. Science emphasized quantification, turning various properties into data for precise control. Cultivation, however, relied on experience that could not be articulated, something that could only be understood intuitively, not conveyed in words.
Even when practicing the same cultivation method, a thousand people would achieve a thousand different results.
Brushes, ink, and paper were neither rare nor expensive, because independent cultivators simply did not practice talisman-making. The initial investment was too great.
The reason Han Li possessed so many divine abilities was that he had a cheat and could afford the initial investment. Ordinary Rogue Cultivators simply lacked those financial resources.
Only major sects had the funds to foster such side pursuits.
With his cheat, Han Li had an inexhaustible supply of high-grade medicinal herbs. He exchanged those herbs for large quantities of Spirit Stones, allowing him to keep learning through trial and error and build up experience.
If an ordinary Rogue Cultivator did the same, they would certainly go bankrupt.
Mo Caihuan purchased talisman-making tools through Daoist Wealth. Holding a Spirit Stone in her left hand to draw on its spiritual energy, she drew a talisman with a brush in her right.
Body temperers could not generate magical power, but they could manipulate the spiritual energy around them. Bringing brush, ink, and paper into harmony, however, was a hundred times harder for them than for cultivators.
Boom! The talisman paper turned into a small orange fireball, signaling failure.
"The bad news is that I failed. The good news is that I finished drawing the pattern." She took a deep breath and continued drawing. If she could master talisman-making, she could sell them even if she could not use them herself.
If she could print them, it would be like switching on a money-printing machine.
Every failure meant burning through Spirit Stones.
Gritting her teeth, she made over a hundred attempts before one finally did not catch fire.
"Did it work?" Her eyes widened as she leaned over to examine the talisman paper, her long eyelashes almost brushing the pattern.
It did not burn, become soaked, or emit lightning... Her earlier failures had taken all sorts of forms. All she could say was that the Heavenly Dao was subtle: miss by a hair, and the result would be a thousand miles off.
"It worked, but what does this talisman do? I don't recognize it." She had not drawn this talisman based on any of those circulating on the market.
The market offered sword talismans, lightning talismans, earth spike talismans, swamp talismans... Each could release a corresponding spell.
Mo Caihuan, however, had simply copied the Dao Patterns, tracing the gourd to draw its likeness. She had no idea what it did.
"Hehe, I'll find someone to try it, and then I'll know." Since she did not know, using it once would give her the answer.
Activating a talisman required an infusion of magical power. Mo Caihuan had none, but she could find someone else. There were cultivators in Jia Yuan City who, lacking Foundation Establishment Pills, had chosen wealth and luxury and accepted employment with the Whale-Jiao Society.
Just as she was about to pick up the talisman, she discovered that it was stuck fast to the square table, not budging an inch.
"Hm?" Mo Caihuan pulled harder, but it still did not move.
"You've got to be kidding. I can lift three hundred jin without breaking a sweat now." After tempering her body, she had become sturdier and stronger, yet a lightweight sheet of talisman paper refused to move.
She pulled harder, and both the paper and the table rose into the air. She hastily held them steady to keep everything on the table from falling off. The brush on it was specially made from spirit beast hair, the ink from spirit beast blood, and the paper from special materials. They were all expensive, and she could not bear to let them fall to the floor.
"What the hell? How did it get stuck?" Helpless, Mo Caihuan carefully lowered the table to the floor and frowned in thought.
Recalling the books she had read, she could not help speculating, "Could Dao Patterns be a kind of restriction within the human body?"
"According to the Cultivation General Outline, cultivation means defying heaven. But what exactly are you defying? The restrictions heaven and earth planted within your body. Limits on lifespan, eyesight, hearing, speed, strength... In short, heaven and earth left many limits within the human body, and cultivation is about breaking through them. Of course, cultivators also turn these limits to their advantage, setting up restrictions for use in battle."
She looked at the talisman paper stuck to the table and wondered whether this might be a restriction. She immediately took out a book called Formations and Restrictions and leafed through it.
"Sure enough, this is it." In the book's "Types of Restraints" section, she found a similar pattern. Its effect was to solidify spiritual energy.
"Tsk, tsk. Looks like I've reached a certain level in my cultivation and hit a bottleneck." Mo Caihuan realized that Dao Patterns had appeared in her body because her cultivation had reached the restrictions imposed by heaven and earth.
Unless she broke through them, her cultivation could not advance.
"This talisman is pretty good. I can use it as an adhesive." Since it was a solidifying talisman, she might as well use it as glue.
Industry had plenty of uses for glue. With such an effective talisman, she could put it straight to use.
She even had an idea already, though she would need to test it.
Next, she tried making several more talismans. She failed many times, with a success rate of one in five.
With talismans in hand, she began tinkering with a Spirit Stone printing press, where the glue talismans would come in handy.
She bought two more brushes and chopped up their bristles. Using the chopped bristles, she arranged a talisman pattern on a glue talisman. She then had a hired Qi Refining Stage cultivator infuse it with magical power, fixing the pattern of chopped bristles in place.
Then she stuck the talisman onto a roller and coated it with ink made from spirit beast blood. Now it could print.
As for harmonizing the spiritual energy of all three components, for now Mo Caihuan had to act as an intermediary, drawing it from Spirit Stones.
The first-generation roller printing press, powered by a steam engine, went into operation!