"Scorching Purge!"
Ning formed a series of hand seals. Spiritual qi converged around his palm, and a thin wisp of flame sprang into existence before descending upon the stubborn weed in front of him.
The weed blackened almost instantly before crumbling into ash.
Ning stared at the empty patch of soil with considerably more satisfaction than the accomplishment probably deserved.
After months of pulling weeds by hand, watching one of the tenacious bastards simply get erased from existence was almost euphoric.
"This technique is quite useful," Ning murmured, examining the untouched soil around the ashes.
Unlike the usual
throw-a-fireball-and-blow-something-up
type of fire spell, Scorching Purge was surprisingly refined. Although it belonged to the fire attribute, raw destructive power wasn't its purpose. The technique emphasized control, concentrating its heat upon unwanted plants and other harmful organisms while minimizing damage to the surrounding soil and crops.
That precision was especially important because weeds in this world were no ordinary plants.
Some grew quickly enough to overrun a field of spiritual grain within days. Others spread deep root systems that greedily absorbed the spiritual qi and nutrients meant for cultivated crops. The more troublesome varieties could even release toxins or harmful qi when disturbed, making pulling them out by hand an unnecessarily unpleasant experience.
Ning crouched beside the small pile of ash, feeling the lingering warmth against his palm as the faint, acrid scent of burnt vegetation reached his nose.
He slowly raised his hand and stared at the fading flame dancing above his fingertips.
"Power of the sun in the palm of my hand..."
For a moment, Ning admired the power of his first genuinely offensive spell.
Then he extinguished the flame.
Alright, that was enough theatrics.
With Scorching Purge added to his repertoire, Ning had now learned three of the fundamental spiritual farming techniques. More importantly, he was getting closer to the one he was actually looking forward to.
The
Withering and Flourishing Technique
.
Much like the Small Cloud Rain Technique, it was considered one of the most valuable techniques available to spiritual farmers. It allowed the cultivator to extract wood qi from one plant and transfer it into another, sacrificing or weakening less valuable vegetation to accelerate the growth of more important crops.
For spiritual plants that normally required years to mature, the usefulness was obvious.
Unfortunately, the technique also consumed an enormous amount of spiritual energy. A cultivator needed to reach at least the middle stage of Qi Condensation before they could properly practice it.
Speaking of cultivation...
[Cultivation Method: Pure Qi Sutra (1st Floor: 96/100)]
Ning's attention settled on the number.
The
Pure Qi Sutra
was the Pure Qi Sect's foundational cultivation method, famous not because it was particularly powerful, but because it was stable, reliable, and almost universally compatible.
Its greatest advantage lay precisely in its name:
Pure Qi
.
Unlike cultivation methods tied to a particular element, the Pure Qi Sutra was attribute-less. Whether someone possessed fire, water, wood, metal, earth, or mixed spiritual attributes, they could cultivate it without conflict. It could also support a cultivator all the way to the late stage of Qi Condensation without requiring any special supplementary materials.
For new disciples without wealth, backing, or specialized inheritances, it was difficult to ask for anything better.
The technique itself was divided into three floors. Each successive floor refined the cultivator's spiritual qi to a greater degree while also increasing the efficiency at which they absorbed and circulated spiritual energy.
And Ning was finally approaching the second floor.
He sat down cross-legged and took out one of his remaining Star-Marked Red Bud Pills. Without hesitation, he swallowed it.
The pill dissolved rapidly, releasing a rich medicinal energy that spread through his abdomen before entering his meridians. Ning steadied his breathing and began circulating the Pure Qi Sutra, guiding the newly released energy through the familiar route.
At the same time, he recalled everything he had come to understand about the technique.
Purity was the core of the Pure Qi Sutra.
But what exactly did
purity
mean?
The sect's explanation focused on repeatedly circulating spiritual qi, separating the clear from the turbid and gradually refining away impurities until only pure spiritual energy remained.
Ning's own understanding had developed in a slightly different direction.
Compression.
If spiritual qi could be circulated, refined, and compressed into a denser state, then the same amount of space within his dantian could contain qi of considerably greater quality. The process itself would force out unstable and incompatible elements while leaving behind increasingly concentrated spiritual energy.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
At least, that was Ning's theory.
He certainly wasn't foolish enough to simply crush all the qi in his dantian together and hope for the best. The human body wasn't a pressure vessel, and meridians weren't steel pipes. Compressing spiritual energy without understanding how the resulting pressure interacted with his meridians sounded like an excellent way to become the cultivation world's first human pipe bomb.
So Ning had proceeded carefully.
Very carefully.
Over the past several months, he had experimented with increasingly small changes to the Pure Qi Sutra's circulation, observing how each adjustment affected his cultivation before refining the process further.
The panel had been invaluable for this.
Ning inhaled slowly.
Spiritual energy entered his meridians.
He circulated it once, twice, then again, allowing the Pure Qi Sutra to refine it before gradually increasing the pressure within his dantian.
In his mind, Ning pictured a sealed chamber filled with vapor. As the available space gradually contracted, the particles within were forced closer together. Pressure rose. Density increased. Eventually, vapor reached the conditions necessary to condense into liquid.
Spiritual qi obviously wasn't literal gas, but the visualization gave his mind a framework through which to understand the process.
Circulate.
Refine.
Compress.
Then circulate again.
With every cycle, traces of turbid qi were separated and expelled through his breathing while the remaining spiritual energy became increasingly dense.
Ning lost track of how long he remained there.
Eventually, something changed.
The compressed qi within his dantian reached a point where maintaining the previous circulation was no longer possible. Instead of resisting the pressure, Ning carefully guided it into the route he had spent months developing.
The accumulated spiritual energy surged into his meridians.
Ning's body trembled. For a moment, the pressure threatened to escape his control, but he immediately adjusted the circulation, guiding the overflowing energy back into the sutra's established pathways.
He repeated the cycle, compressing, circulating, and refining the qi each time. With every revolution, the turbulence lessened, and the spiritual energy grew steadily denser, until the process finally began to stabilize.
Within his dantian, the once-faint qi had taken on a noticeably denser, milky-white appearance.
Then the panel appeared.
[Pure Qi Sutra (1st Floor: 96/100) → 2nd Floor (1/400)]
Ning slowly opened his eyes.
"It's done."
A smile spread across his face.
The difference was immediately noticeable. His spiritual qi flowed more smoothly through his meridians and felt substantially denser than before. Even the rate at which he drew spiritual energy from his surroundings had increased by nearly half.
More importantly, his theory had worked.
"Fortunately, everything went according to plan."
Ning exhaled and allowed his circulation to settle.
Compression itself hadn't been some miraculous shortcut. If he'd simply forced his qi together without considering the limits of his meridians or the principles of the Pure Qi Sutra, he would probably have injured himself.
What allowed him to experiment so confidently was the panel.
Over the past several months, Ning had gradually come to understand what the panel actually was.
It wasn't some absurd game system that allowed him to ignore bottlenecks and endlessly increase his skills by grinding experience points. It didn't cultivate for him, grant instant comprehension, or magically turn an incorrect method into a correct one simply because he'd practiced it enough.
It merely reflected his progress.
But that was far more useful than it sounded.
If Ning altered a technique and his proficiency stopped increasing, he knew something was wrong. If an adjustment caused his progress to accelerate, he knew he was moving in the right direction. Through constant experimentation, observation, and correction, he could gradually separate useful ideas from useless ones without relying entirely on intuition.
The panel gave him something cultivators rarely possessed: clear and immediate feedback on whether what he was doing actually worked.
It couldn't show him the correct path, but it could tell him whether the path he had chosen was taking him forward.
And for someone like Ning, who enjoyed pulling techniques apart and experimenting with their principles, that was more than enough.
Over the following month, Ning settled into an almost monotonous routine. He tended his fields, practiced his spells, swallowed pills, cultivated, recovered, and then repeated the entire process with the dedication of a man possessed by the sacred desire to make his numbers go up.
Little by little, his cultivation climbed until, eventually, he reached the bottleneck separating the second and third stages of Qi Condensation.
One evening, Ning sat cross-legged inside his hut, his breathing slow and controlled as spiritual qi circulated steadily through his body.
The second floor of the Pure Qi Sutra had made his qi considerably purer and denser than before. Now, Ning gathered that refined spiritual energy within his dantian and began compressing it, carefully building pressure while keeping the circulation stable.
His meridians gradually tightened under the strain, but Ning remained calm. He had prepared for this.
Rather than recklessly releasing everything at once, he continued compressing the accumulated qi until it approached the highest pressure his current meridians could safely withstand. Only then did he guide the gathered force through the Pure Qi Sutra's circulation route and direct it toward the bottleneck.
The compressed qi struck.
Ning's entire body jolted, but the bottleneck held firm.
He gritted his teeth, steadied the turbulent spiritual energy, and gathered it once more. The second impact was even stronger, sending a faint cracking sensation through his body as the invisible barrier finally began to give way.
Ning immediately seized the opportunity.
He drove the remaining spiritual energy forward, and with one final surge, the bottleneck shattered.
Boom!
Spiritual qi rushed through his meridians like water released from a broken dam. The pathways that had constrained his cultivation seemed to open all at once, allowing the accumulated energy to circulate farther and more freely than before. Ning's body trembled beneath the sudden influx, every meridian swelling with a sense of fullness that bordered on painful.
Yet beneath that discomfort was an unmistakable feeling of strength.
The amount of spiritual energy within him hadn't literally doubled, but the difference in how much qi his body could contain, circulate, and unleash was enormous.
He had broken through.
Ning resisted the urge to celebrate immediately. A breakthrough wasn't finished simply because the bottleneck had fallen, so he remained seated and continued circulating the Pure Qi Sutra, patiently guiding the turbulent spiritual energy through his newly expanded meridians until the surging qi gradually settled.
Only then did he open his eyes.
A faint spiritual light flashed through them before slowly fading.
[Cultivation: 3rd Stage of Qi Condensation (Consolidating)]
Ning stared at the words for several seconds before finally allowing himself to relax.
For the past few months, he had focused almost entirely on cultivation, rarely leaving his fields except to purchase supplies or deal with necessary matters. The only major interruption had been the second harvest of his spiritual grain.
And honestly, Ning rather liked it that way.
He wasn't the protagonist. He didn't need to fight bandits, fall off cliffs, awaken an ancient bloodline, offend a young master, or stumble into some life-or-death encounter every time he wanted to advance a single stage.
He had pills, a cultivation technique, and enough resources to support his progress.
So he cultivated.
Apparently, sitting safely at home and practicing was a surprisingly effective way to improve one's cultivation; unfortunately, it was a mob-only skill.
"Seven months..."
Ning glanced toward the faint evening light streaming through the window.
It had already been seven months since he'd arrived in this world. Seven months of farming, cultivating, learning spells, earning spirit stones, spending those spirit stones almost immediately, and slowly building himself up from an ordinary peripheral disciple who had barely stepped onto the path of cultivation.
Now, the words floating before his eyes finally read:
[3rd Stage of Qi Condensation.]
A satisfied smile spread across Ning's face.
"Finally. I've reached my goal."
...
Thanks for reading~