Vuong family villa.
Inside the quiet training room, Vuong Minh sat cross-legged with his hands resting over his knees, fingers interlaced.
Nestled between them was a low-grade spirit stone emitting a faint, ethereal glow.
His expression was intensely focused and deeply absorbed, shutting out the rest of the world to pour his heart and soul into cultivation.
He was running the Spirit-Guiding Body-Refinement Technique, the introductory cultivation method on Blue Star.
Meticulously revised and perfected by generations of predecessors, it was a universal foundational technique practiced across the entire world.
Ever since he first came into contact with martial arts, Vuong Minh had practiced this very technique.
Ten years of unwavering consistency had brought it to the minor accomplishment stage, putting him ahead of the pack among his peers in Quang Binh City.
A minor-accomplishment Spirit-Guiding Body-Refinement Technique paired with a low-grade spirit stone was no joke.
The moment he began cultivating, Vuong Minh noticed a night-and-day difference.
Normally, he had to painstakingly regulate his breathing, extracting trace nutrients from the food in his stomach and absorbing scattered ambient spiritual energy from heaven and earth to refine into his own spiritual power.
A full night of this would yield at most a few strands of energy.
But now?
In less than half an hour, he had successfully condensed an entire strand.
The speed was so astonishing it left one breathless.
In the path of immortality: wealth, techniques, land, and companions.
Placing “wealth” first was truly no exaggeration.
With endless piles of spirit stones, even a pig could cultivate right into the Meridian Opening Realm for you to see.
Young Master Vuong wasn’t a pig, but as it happened, he did possess the superpower of being rich.
However many spirit stones he wanted, he could conjure them up in an instant.
And this was just a low-grade spirit stone.
What if it were a mid-grade, or even a top-grade one?
At that mere thought, Vuong Minh felt his blood surge with excitement, his heart rate rocketing past 200 beats per minute.
If Amy were around, she’d definitely be triggering safety alarms right now.
Regrettably, high-grade spirit stones were hard to come by.
Given his family’s current capabilities, getting their hands on them was impossible.
Moreover, higher-grade spirit stones contained vastly more powerful and tyrannical energy; with Vuong Minh’s mid-stage Spirit Channeling cultivation, he probably couldn’t control them yet, so he couldn’t afford to rush things.
Pulling his thoughts back, Vuong Minh refocused his mind and plunged back into cultivation.
While instinctively drawing in spiritual energy and refining his spiritual power on one hand, he thoughtfully observed the Violet Star on the other.
Thanks to Bao Han’s help since morning, the amount of faith and malice energy had grown significantly, stirring an itch of curiosity within him.
Acting on his thoughts had always been Chairman Vuong’s style.
Yesterday he had tested using faith energy to nourish his divine soul; today, he wanted to try out another one of its functions.
As for his target, he didn’t even need to think—there weren’t many options to begin with.
Vuong Minh quickly locked onto the Spirit-Guiding Body-Refinement Technique and initiated a simulation.
Instantly, hundreds of flashes of insight sparked in his mind.
Countless epiphanies, solutions to lingering bottlenecks, and clever nuances regarding the Spirit-Guiding Body-Refinement Technique imprinted themselves directly into his brain out of thin air, suddenly making everything crystal clear to him.
“So that’s how it is!”
“It was actually meant to be handled like this!”
Muffled murmurs escaped his lips in the quiet room, sounding almost like someone possessed or crazed.
Before long, Vuong Minh snapped his eyes wide open, his gaze burning with excitement, greed, and a hint of regret.
He had fully figured out how the Violet Star operated.
The Violet Star functioned much like a super-server, linking him directly to the individuals who had generated those feelings of faith.
He could borrow and review their fragments of comprehension, absorbing them to supplement his own.
And naturally, for him to borrow, the provider had to possess those insights in the first place—meaning the source of the faith energy also had to understand and possess comprehension regarding whatever technique he was practicing, which in this case was the Spirit-Guiding Body-Refinement Technique.
Otherwise, the efficiency would be minuscule, and the energy cost would multiply infinitely.
Vuong Minh was thrilled because, as it turned out, all those fangirls and everyone else across Blue Star practiced the exact same Spirit-Guiding Body-Refinement Technique as part of their mandatory education.
He felt greedy because he wanted more, vastly more faith energy.
And the regret?
That was simply because the process had ended too quickly, leaving him no time to gain even more.
Vuong Minh broke into a confident, brilliant smile.
Casually pointing a finger to summon a tiny dab of karmic fire to temper his physique, sending a pleasant, numbing warmth coursing through his entire body, Vuong Minh wasted no time diving right back into the dry, repetitive routine of cultivation.
Who knew how much time had passed?
Knock, knock, knock!
Steward Binh’s gentle rap on the door interrupted his meditative state:
“Young Master, it’s time for dinner.
Your parents are waiting for you downstairs.”
Vuong Minh slowly opened his eyes as a sharp gleam cut across his pupils before vanishing.
He looked down at the spirit stone in his hands; its luster had dimmed noticeably.
Bolstered by the help of hundreds of girls, although his Spirit-Guiding Body-Refinement Technique hadn’t broken through, it had solidified far beyond its previous limits, significantly accelerating his absorption rate of the spirit stone.
In just a single afternoon, he had consumed nearly a quarter of the spiritual energy stored within it—the equivalent of three to five days of normal breathing and meditating.
The speed was terrifyingly fast.
“Hoo…”
Vuong Minh exhaled a mouthful of turbid air, beaming with delight as he muttered to himself:
“At this pace, I’ll be hitting the threshold of the Fifth Tier in no time.”
“Too bad my meridians are too weak to withstand drawing spiritual energy from stones every single day.
Otherwise, if I just went wild popping pills, I might actually step through the doors of the Academy as a peak Tier Five Spirit Channeling martial artist by the end of the school year!
Hehe…”
Yet even as he laughed joyously, his gaze suddenly faltered, turning glazed with sudden thought:
Wait, why do I have to go through the trouble of refining spirit stones?
A flash of inspiration struck his brain, bringing forth an eternal philosophical dilemma:
Why bother raising a cow when you just want a sausage?
And why not just grind it up and stuff it straight into your stomach instead of wasting time chewing and swallowing?
Once that thought surged, there was simply no turning back.
He called out loudly toward the door:
“Steward Binh, could you have someone bring my food up to my room?
I’ve run into an important bout of enlightenment and can’t come downstairs!”
Waiting for the butler’s footsteps to fade away, Vuong Minh immediately closed his eyes.
Using a strand of his primal spiritual energy bearing his soul imprint as a template, he commanded the Violet Star to execute a direct replication.
Whoosh!
Surging spiritual power materialized instantly inside his Dantian, filling it to the absolute brim within mere breaths, reaching the threshold of breaking through to the Fifth Tier.
However, Vuong Minh instantly spotted a fatal flaw: although the replicated spiritual power was abundant, it was disjointed and unrefined, making it highly impure.
When he attempted to circulate it through his meridians, it was constantly jagged and snagged.
Drawing upon the wisdom of two lifetimes, Vuong Minh quickly figured out the problem.
First, his meridians lacked sufficient tempering and weren’t tough enough; second, the spiritual energy currently inside his body was at the early-stage Tier Four, not peak Tier Four, meaning it couldn’t stably anchor his current realm.
Pondering for a moment, he made a realization and converted the vast majority of the spiritual energy back into Star Points, restoring his original state.
A broad grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, impossible to suppress.
After all, flaws couldn’t overshadow the immense benefits.
As long as he refrained from replicating too much in the future, dedicated all his time to condensing his spiritual energy, and then replicated just the right amount of that purest essence, that would be enough.
That way, wouldn’t he be able to rapidly boost his cultivation speed while simultaneously allowing his state of mind to keep up?
This…
was the truest way to unlock the Violet Star!
Time in cultivation always flies by quickly.
In the days that followed, aside from heading downstairs for meals and family reunions with his parents, Vuong Minh truly never stepped a foot outside.
He locked himself up in the training room body and soul to cultivate, completely ignoring even the New Year festivities.
At first, this left his parents a bit bewildered.
But later, seeing that their son wasn’t growing gaunt, that his blood-Qi was becoming increasingly condensed and vigorous, and that he wasn’t even burning through tissues at the usual rate anymore, his parents set their minds at ease.
They simply assumed the young master was feeling the pressure and trying to squeeze in extra cultivation to test into his dream academy.
Everyone simply went back to tending to their own busy schedules.
In a flash, it was already the third day of the Lunar New Year, leaving just a single week before the start of the new term.
On this day, right after finishing a meal with his parents and just as he was about to head back to his room to resume cultivating, Vuong Minh was called back by his mom: This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“Baby, come here for a second, Mom has something to ask you.”
Though puzzled, Vuong Minh still obediently walked over and took a seat beside her.
It was truly tough being parents.
Seeing their child indulge in entertainment, parents worried he’d turn bad; but conversely, seeing their child push himself through such grueling cultivation like Vuong Minh, they worried his mental state would suffer, fearing he might suddenly snap, whip out a blade, and castrate himself to practice some forbidden divine art, ruining the family’s inheritance.
That was why his dad had reminded his wife to have a heart-to-heart and guide the young master a bit, helping him understand the balance between hard work and relaxation.
“Baby, how come you haven’t gone anywhere to play this New Year?
Where is little Dung and the rest of your friends?
Nothing’s wrong, is there?”
“No, nothing’s wrong, Mom.
I just genuinely didn’t feel like going out.
I’m just trying to make the most of my free time to cultivate a bit more.”
Vuong Minh answered truthfully, not hiding anything as he unlocked his phone screen.
It was filled with various chat logs with his buddies, proving to his mom that he was completely normal—just grinding hard in his current phase.
Nguyen Ngoc Linh examined it earnestly, skimming through a few conversations before catching the main point:
“Baby, how come there isn’t a single girl texting you?
Don’t tell me you don’t have any female friends in your class?”
“Mom, right now I only want to cultivate.
I don’t want to be distracted by romance.”
“How can that be?!”
Although they knew it wasn’t true, while attending various social gatherings over the past few days, Nguyen Ngoc Linh and Vuong Thanh had still caught wind of malicious gossip whispering that their son was gay.
His parents offered some profound, earnest advice:
“Son, you only get one youth.
If you don’t experience a passionate, earth-shattering romance, what’s even the point of youth?
We aren’t old-fashioned people who forbid early dating; if you’ve got a crush on someone, just boldly go after them.
Whatever issues pop up, we’ll handle them.”
“That’s right, baby!
Besides, as the saying goes: in cultivation, wealth, techniques, land, and companions come hand in hand.
Choosing a good cultivation partner is a very important form of assistance; there’s no need to resist it so much.”
Not understanding what the fuss was about, Vuong Minh instantly gave them a deadpan stare, groaning in exasperation:
“Alright!
Mom, what exactly are you guys trying to say?”
Naturally, his parents couldn’t bring themselves to air out that delicate rumor directly, so after a moment of consideration, Nguyen Ngoc Linh finally opened her mouth:
“Baby, your uncle messaged the other day saying he wants to introduce you to the daughter of the Deputy Director of the Provincial Public Security Bureau.
Mom looked at her photo—she’s pretty, cute, and her aptitudes are top-tier.
If it works out, she’ll be a tremendous help to you in the future.”
Not this again!
With his heart set solely on cultivation, Vuong Minh naturally had zero interest and flatly shook his head:
“Mom, no need.
I don’t want to find a girlfriend right now.
Besides, university entrance exams are right around the corner; everyone’s going their separate ways after that anyway, so what’s the point of looking for one?”
“It doesn’t matter!
That girl’s aptitude is exceptional; she’s fully capable of testing into Victoria Academy.
You two looking out for each other there will be very convenient.”
“Mom…”
“Just go meet her once, it won’t hurt.
You can visit your uncle while you’re at it—killing two birds with one stone.”
Ultimately, arms couldn’t twist thighs.
Under his mother’s unyielding tyranny, Chairman Vuong had no choice but to obediently prepare to head out to the provincial capital the next morning for a blind date.
Naturally, he didn’t forget to casually draft a message whining about his helplessness to little Dung, giving several Quang Binh First High School group chats yet another field day filled with wailing ghosts and howling wolves.