Cultivation

Tier 3 Experience Card: Li Fangbai (cultivation world), cultivation: mid Core Formation Stage, Daoist titles: Perfected Qiankun, Ancestor Fangbai.

Life: I was once a mere scholar of the mortal world. By chance, I obtained the legacy of a rogue cultivator and entered the cultivation world. I began Qi Refining at twenty-three, luckily reached Foundation Establishment at sixty-three, and at one hundred and twenty-one, obtained a supreme treasure—the Heaven and Earth Cauldron—with the aid of a dear friend who fought to the death.

Though I reached Core Formation through the supreme treasure, the Heaven and Earth Cauldron, I suffered the loss of my dear friend and lost my will to cultivate. I later established a cultivation clan, spending my days reading and nurturing my temperament, never putting a book down.

I studied the hundred arts of cultivation, dabbling in alchemy, artifact refining, talisman making, puppetry, immortal plants, beast taming, formations... and so on. Though I would not dare claim mastery of them all, I knew a little about each.

I lived to the age of six hundred and twelve.

When Chen Mo drew this Tier 3 Experience Card from a cultivation world, he was overjoyed.

He had finally drawn an Experience Card from a cultivation world, and one so well suited to him at that.

Chen Mo did not lack Tier 4 combat power. What he lacked were the cultivation world's techniques and various legacies.

As it happened, Li Fangbai had dabbled in all the hundred arts of cultivation.

Chen Mo did not need him to be a master or have superb skills. It was enough that he knew how.

To teach a kindergarten child, what need was there for someone with a master's or a doctorate? Any middle schooler would do.

Just as he was getting sleepy, someone had sent him a pillow. How thoughtful.

Daddy System, love you.

?(?v??)

Chen Mo wanted to use it that very day, but in the end, he held back.

He rested for three full days, bringing his body and mind into peak condition before using the Experience Card.

The moment he used the Experience Card, he picked up a pen.

Copy, copy, copy! Copy like my life depends on it-as much as I can!

After copying for more than ten minutes, Chen Mo finally realized something. Wait, that's not right! I'm a Core Formation cultivator now. I can inscribe the cultivation methods and legacies and everything onto jade slips!

Damn!!!

Chen Mo immediately swept the area with his spiritual sense and flew to the nearest jade shop. Without a word, he swept up every usable piece of jade, left enough money behind, and vanished.

That day, every jade shop in Haier City was cleaned out. The first few shops fared well enough: Chen Mo paid them. Later, he ran out of money, and there was nothing he could do about it. He would deal with it later.

Chen Mo had been in desperate need of jade at the time. Even if the Heavenly King himself had come, it would have been no use.

Afterward, the price of jade in Haier City soared, and prices in several nearby cities rose considerably as well.

Of course, with supply and demand down, prices had gone up. Chen Mo could understand that.

What Chen Mo could not understand, however, was how the stories about jade grew more and more fantastical.

For example, that jade held the secret to becoming a Titled Douluo.

That eating jade could make one live longer.

That jade could bring people good fortune.

That jade contained instructions from the gods.

Chen Mo could not help but remark that they were simply thinking too much-and that the jade merchants' marketing tricks for driving up its value were truly formidable.

It was like an old sow wearing a bra-one set after another.

After that day, though, quite a few unfamiliar faces appeared in Haier City, presumably to gather information.

A powerful figure suspected of being a Titled Douluo had suddenly appeared in Haier City and robbed twelve jade shops of all their jade, paying only three of them.

For ordinary people, it was merely something to talk about after dinner. But for the major factions, no intelligence they ought to gather could be overlooked. It might come in handy someday.

That day, Chen Mo made over a thousand jade slips. Even an ordinary person could receive the information within simply by placing one against their forehead.

Fortunately, using an Experience Card could deepen his memories of the person, so it did not matter even if the person's memories had grown blurry.

When he used an Experience Card, he clearly received the subject's memories from birth to death. Once the time was up, those memories would be erased.

It was precisely because of this ability that Chen Mo was able to record so many jade slips. He recorded nearly a hundred cultivation methods alone, followed by various secret arts, spells, the hundred arts of cultivation, various ores, spiritual herbs, and so on...

That day, Chen Mo could be said to have squeezed those twenty-four hours completely dry, without wasting a moment.

To help himself better grasp this knowledge, Chen Mo also gathered some materials and made a few samples himself, so that he could better imitate and create things in the future.

There was no helping it. The memories ultimately belonged to someone else, not to Chen Mo himself. While the Experience Card was still active, Chen Mo had easily understood what they meant.

But once the experience period ended, Chen Mo was dumbfounded on the spot.

Who am I?

Where am I?

What is this?

Brain: I'm lost. Why can't I understand any of this?

While there was still time on the Experience Card, Chen Mo also left behind a few strands of spiritual thought, but the system had not left him that loophole.

As soon as the time was up, the strands of spiritual thought he had left behind vanished.

Back then, to learn a cultivation method, Chen Mo had spent three full days before he could begin cultivating. There was no helping it: cultivation methods were too obscure and difficult to understand, even though he had already explained the key points that needed highlighting.

Yet he still frequently got stuck.

Fortunately, he had left behind enough knowledge at the time, and in the end, he overcame each difficulty in turn.

During the experience, Chen Mo had tested his spiritual roots: Water, Earth, and Metal Triple Spiritual Roots. His aptitude was barely passable. Li Fangbai had Wood and Metal Dual Spiritual Roots, considerably better than his.

Li Fangbai's main cultivation method was the wood-attribute Evergreen Technique. Unfortunately, Chen Mo had no wood spiritual root.

Although he had recorded nearly a hundred cultivation methods, only five included the parts for cultivating to the Soul Transformation Stage. The others contained only methods for cultivating to the Nascent Soul or Golden Core Stage.

Chen Mo had recorded all the Nascent Soul and Soul Transformation cultivation methods in Li Fangbai's memories. As for those that only contained methods for the Golden Core Stage, Chen Mo selected only some that were powerful, rare, or distinctive.

If he had really recorded every cultivation method Li Fangbai had ever seen, even a thousand jade slips would not have been enough. Li Fangbai's knowledge was simply too vast!

After all, the man had lived for over six hundred years. Copying all his memories in a single day was simply impossible.

The five Soul Transformation cultivation methods were the Evergreen Technique, the Thornwood Sacred Technique, the Metal Essence Sword Art, the Great Sun Blazing Yang Immortal Art, and the Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers Mental Cultivation Method.

The Evergreen Technique and the Thornwood Sacred Technique were wood-attribute cultivation methods, but Chen Mo had no wood-attribute spiritual root. Pass.

The Great Sun Blazing Yang Immortal Art was a fire-attribute cultivation method. Chen Mo likewise had no fire-attribute spiritual root and could not learn it either.

The only real choices Chen Mo had were the metal-attribute Metal Essence Sword Art and the water-attribute Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers Mental Cultivation Method.

Of course, if he really did not want to cultivate either of those two methods, Chen Mo still had quite a few Nascent Soul cultivation methods to choose from.

Metal Essence Sword Art: It came with numerous metal-attribute killing divine abilities, including the Metal Essence Sword Formation, Sharp Metal Qi, Metal Essence Single Sword, and Metal Qi Escape Technique. Its power was boundless, and even a minor accomplishment in its various divine abilities and spells could make one invincible among those of the same rank.

Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers Mental Cultivation Method: The sea embraced a hundred rivers; its capacity made it great. It came with water-attribute divine abilities such as One-Origin Heavy Water, Multiple-Origin Heavy Water, the Boundless Sea Sword Art, and the Metal Flow Escape Technique. Its transformations were endless, capable of a thousand changes and ten thousand variations, and it also had the effect of strengthening one's own primordial yang Qi.

A simple comparison of the two methods: the Metal Essence Sword Art emphasized killing and had greater combat power; the Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers Mental Cultivation Method emphasized versatility and was better rounded.

Cultivating the Metal Essence Sword Art would be cooler, and its combat power was greater too. Its drawback, however, was that it was rather one-sided. Though strong in battle, it lacked versatility and was not very well rounded.

As for the Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers Mental Cultivation Method, it was better rounded and could dabble in a little of everything-a true cure-all! It looked good and seemed capable of anything, but in fact, it was good at nothing.

Mastery of one art was better than familiarity with ten thousand; a bird in the hand was worth more than ten in the forest.

Thinking of it that way, Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers was pathetically weak. How could it compare to the coolness of the Metal Essence Sword Art?

Strength was temporary, but being cool lasted a lifetime.

After thinking it over and over, Chen Mo ultimately chose the Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers Mental Cultivation Method.

Metal Essence Sword Art: (☉?☉)?

Metal Essence Sword Art: Choose me and you'll be cooler and stronger! Why aren't you choosing me?

Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers Mental Cultivation Method: Excellent, excellent.

Metal Essence Sword Art: A sword immortal! Think about it-it's very cool, both cool and strong.

Sea Embracing a Hundred Rivers Mental Cultivation Method: Excellent, excellent.

(???)?

Metal Essence Sword Art: ...

In seven months, he had gone from a complete novice at cultivation to a minor cultivator at the fifth layer of Qi Refinement.

That speed could be considered extremely fast. However, considering the world level of the Douluo World, it was not surprising. The density of spiritual Qi in this world was much higher than in Li Fangbai's world.

On top of that, Li Fangbai, a Core Formation cultivator, had left a little magical power in Chen Mo's body, so advancing five layers in seven months was nothing remarkable.

As for the Soul Power system, he had long since reached level ten; Chen Mo simply had not attached a Soul Ring yet.

As for the blood refiner system, he had been nourishing his life in the Life Nourishing Realm for a year and a half, and his strength had already increased to three thousand jin. And Chen Mo was only seven years old!

A seven-year-old child could muster, at most, twenty or thirty jin of strength, yet Chen Mo had a hundred times as much. That was what made body-refining cultivation methods terrifying: as long as resources kept up, they could be called invincible.

Moreover, the greatest strength of the Life Nourishing Realm lay in tempering all the blood in the body and strengthening one's vitality and constitution. Strength and such were merely added benefits.

For the moment, compared with the Douluo Continent, Chen Mo could ignore most Soul Skills from Soul Rings under a thousand years old. They could not penetrate his defenses.

In the Immortal Cultivation System, he was at the fifth layer of Qi Refinement, the mid Qi Refinement Stage, and could just barely use magical artifacts.

Those magical artifacts had been personally refined by Chen Mo back when he used the Experience Card.

Unlike spiritual artifacts and magical treasures, magical artifacts could be refined using ordinary ores. Time had been short then, so Chen Mo had used whatever materials were available and refined only six magical artifacts for himself.

Two intermediate magical artifacts and four low-grade magical artifacts.

Offensive magical artifacts: two flying swords (one low-grade and one intermediate).

Defensive magical artifacts: one shield (low-grade) and one magical robe (intermediate).

Flying magical artifact: one small boat (low-grade).

Utility magical artifact: one alchemy furnace (low-grade).

However, with Chen Mo's current magical power, he could control two magical artifacts at once for only about two minutes at most. Controlling just one, he could last about five minutes.

The cultivation system's combat style was characterized by high mobility and high attack power.

That was why the Immortal Cultivation System was essentially invincible in the early stages.

In other cultivation systems, few could fly before Tier 3, whereas in the Immortal Cultivation System, one could control a magical artifact to fly at Tier 1.