Chapter 5: Ice and Fire
A few hours earlier.
"I don't understand this..."
Shu Fanrong panicked.
As she watched her master head inside the hut while yawning, Shu Fanrong hurriedly took another look at the notebook her master had given her.
The cover was crusty and wrinkled, as were the pages. However, the writing looked like they were written as recently as last night.
"Master must have stayed up all night writing this for me. I can't let him down."
Even though she said that, the moment she read the content again, she scratched her head.
"What do I do?"
She tried to follow the instructions once more.
"First, the correct stance should be sitting down while standing up. Clasping hands, while fingers point upwards."
Shu Fanrong stood straight before raising one of her legs and leaning it against her other knee. She also followed the other instruction by clasping with half of her fingers while the rest point upwards.
"Is this how to do it?"
Disregarding if she was wrong or not, Shu Fanrong continued to the next step.
"I should put an emphasis on breathing in, as well on breathing out..."
Shu Fanrong took in a big breath of air with her nose. To breathe out, she started talking using the chant that the manual provided.
"Conflicting paths are intertwined. Without one another, both would be lost."
She didn't quite understand what this chant meant. Nevertheless, she said it again and again repeatedly.
After running out of breath, she once again breathed in air before repeating the chant.
In her mind, Shu Fanrong was hesitant.
"The manual says that perseverance is key when it comes to this technique. Master said that some other fairies took months to sense their first wisp of spiritual energy. Does that mean I need to do this for months too?"
Shu Fanrong was just an innocent child. She didn't have any strong desires to become strong.
Even adults struggle to figure out what they really want, not to mention someone at such a young age. In the meantime, they take interest in various stuff, children most of all.
In short, becoming a fairy was something Shu Fanrong took a casual interest in.
As such, boredom already started to seep into her mind.
However, the image of her master's deep eye bags clearly showed that he worked hard to provide her with this manual.
She couldn't just ignore it and give up, especially since it had only been a few hours since she started.
"I've decided! I will persist for at least one month. If I don't get anything done, I will just give up..."
And so, she continued her cultivation, internal and external conflicts having been taken care of half-heartedly.
As the words of the chant flowed out of her mouth, she didn't notice an internal phenomenon happening.
A cold blue and a hot red circulated inside of her body, competing with each other.
These were Shu Fanrong's spiritual roots, Fire and Ice roots.
These roots were one of the most common pairs amongst mortals. It normally meant that as long as one lived with these roots, they would never be able to cultivate.
The two roots were at conflict with each other, and would never be in harmony. All conventional cultivation manuals were defeated by these two roots.
However, as Shu Fanrong repeatedly tempered the two using a cultivation manual full of conflicting methods, the two roots grew simultaneously, all the while maintaining each one's desire to devour the other.
And so, the two streaks of blue and red eventually combined into one, dual-colored ray of light.
Shu Fanrong felt that her body had undergone a massive change.
As she ran out of breath, she opened her eyes.
Her irises were of a blue and red color, respectively.
Balls of light both red and blue became visible in her surroundings. She had never seen such a beautiful sight before.
"Little fairy orbs?!"
She breathed in slowly. The balls of light became streaks as they hurriedly entered Shu Fanrong's body.
The sudden absorption startled Shu Fanrong. Soon enough, she couldn't take it anymore and stopped breathing.
Recalling the content of the manual, Shu Fanrong started circulating all of the energy she collected according to the instructions.
"Direct the energy both upwards and downwards... so it's like a wheel!"
She remembered the carriage her father always brought whenever they went out hunting. While the wheel turned, one side was headed up, while the other side headed down.
Shu Fanrong decided to use this as a basis and led the energy inside her.
The impurities that built up inside of her body caught onto the spiritual energy. As the clump of impurities built up, Shu Fanrong felt like gagging.
She halted her circulation first as she coughed out a black slimy substance onto her palm.
However, as the impurities left her, so did her energy.
Shu Fanrong felt her legs turn off completely.
"Little Rong!"
The last thing she saw was her master running towards her before her vision blacked out.
.....
Liu Feng looked at Shu Fanrong once more. She breathed slowly as she laid unconscious on the bed.
He then looked at her Attribute Panel.
"How in the hell... did she break through?"
———
Name: Shu Fanrong
Bone Age: 12
Level: 1
Realm: Spiritual Awareness Realm
Number of Spiritual Roots: 1
Spirit Root Attribute: Frostfire
Talent: 89
———
"Wait, 89?"
Liu Feng laughed wryly.
"I didn't know Talent could go higher than 10..."
He recalled his and Shu Fanrong's talent ratings earlier.
Both were in the single digits. In other words, master and disciple were extremely untalented!
However, Shu Fanrong had climbed herself out of that hole.
He also noticed that the number of her spiritual roots decreased from two to one.
In this world, the less spiritual roots one had, the more talented they were regarded as. The number of spiritual roots was inversely proportional to the speed of their cultivation and their strength. Of course, disregarding those who had none. This wasn't the only factor contributing to talent, but it was one of the major factors.
Among those with spiritual roots, the most common was having five. Only those that had one or two had the potential to become a cultivator. Three would already be pushing it. Everyone else was encouraged to give up as there was virtually no chance of them stepping into even just the first stage of cultivation.
In those spiritual roots, there was also a hierarchy. If two cultivators who had the same cultivation level were to fight, the one with the rarer variant would triumph.
In essence, those rarer variants were one in ten million. One would need to be blessed with luck just to see someone with a rare spiritual root with their own eyes, not to mention actually having the rare variant root.
Liu Feng didn't know much about the possible attributes of spiritual roots, but one thing was for sure, he had never heard of the Frostfire attribute before. Not a single time.
"Bah, who am I kidding. I'm ignorant about matters like these, of course I'd be uninformed about a single rare variant over what could be hundreds of variants."
In the end, what kept Liu Feng from putting the matter aside was her Cultivation Realm.
His disciple was in the same stage as him! After just one day of cultivation!
"System, let me look at my manual."
[Ding! One or more of host's Creations have been used. The system has graded them appropriately.]
———
Discordant Tempering Technique
Grade: Middle Unique Black
Characteristics: Suitable for those who have conflicting spiritual roots, or for strengthening inner demons.
———
"Unique grade?"
In this world, Liu Feng was well-aware of the levels and grades and whatnot. Even though he was a lowly librarian of the mortal library, he still knew because Jiang Hua had told him when he asked her about it.
"Firstly, there's the Mortal grade, a grade given to those manuals that really shouldn't exist after all."
"After that, there's the Yellow grade, which means that the manual is mediocre on all fronts. This is the most common grade given to manuals."
"Black grade is the next one, it means that the techniques in the manual have some type of substance, but it still falls a tad bit short."
"Earth grade comes after. This grade means that the manuals finally have a complete and substantial structure."
"Finally, there's Celestial grade, the highest grade anything can get. It means that it is one of the strongest manuals under the heavens!"
"There's also the Unique grade, which applies to specialized type manuals that can only be used by certain types of people."
Now that he had exposited information, Liu Feng calmed down.
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