Chapter 158: Unintentional Success

"Nonsense. If you don't know how to craft talismans, how could you become my destined guardian beast?" Feng Ke'er snorted. Among all my skills, crafting talismans is what I do best!

The fox in question shamefully shut his mouth: Oh, Lord Pangu, my master is an all-rounder!

Thus, the ten talismans from the newcomer's gift package were also collected by his master.

The only thing left was a water-attribute fifth-tier spirit beast skin. A fifth-tier spirit beast skin is very practical: it can be used to make fire-repelling talisman treasures, or it can be used to make a fire-resistant leather armor. It was just that this piece of skin was neither too big nor too small; if used for a talisman treasure, it would be making a sledgehammer to crack a nut; if used for a leather armor, the material would be insufficient.

How should it be disposed of?

Feng Ke'er thought of modern pet clothes and couldn't help laughing out loud—fine, let's just make a vest.

"What is it?" Hearing this laughter, the pet felt an inexplicable chill down his spine.

His master held back her smile and replied in a muffled voice, "It's nothing. I was just thinking that this spirit beast skin will make a great armor for you."

"Thank you, Master." Hu Li was overjoyed.

Just like that, everything in the newcomer's gift package was put to use.

Looking at the empty rosewood box, Hu Li felt a stir in his heart and suddenly asked, "Master, why do you think the Alliance gives out newcomer gift packages?"

Feng Ke'er was fiddling with the spirit beast skin, and at these words, her movements paused. "Are you saying they have ulterior motives?"

Hu Li nodded. "On the path of cultivation, specialization is key. Therefore, among cultivators, martial cultivators, physical cultivators, and spell cultivators are in the majority. Entering the Dao through alchemy, talismans, or artifact forging is the hardest. Hence, few alchemists, artifact refiners, and talisman masters ever achieve greatness. Moreover, due to my Dao heart—since I entered the Dao through commerce—whenever I arrive at a new place, I can't help but pay attention to the local market conditions. Similarly, for alchemists, artifact refiners, and talisman masters, when they see good materials, how could they possibly restrain themselves?"

"So, you think the Alliance is trying to probe something through the gift package?" Feng Ke'er inwardly cried out, "Oh no." Damn it, in her momentary eagerness, she had already refined the ten portions of medicinal herbs into elixirs, and she had used up both pieces of refined iron.

A tight sensation gripped her heart, and she immediately injected her divine sense into the spirit beast skin.

"Good thing there are no marks inside," she wiped away a cold sweat. Goodness gracious, that was terrifying!

Hu Li didn't make a sound. This was the Spirit Realm; leaving marks and such was far too beneath consideration.

For the next few days, he did not go out, concentrating wholly on practicing the Breeze Technique near the immortal cave. To this end, Feng Ke'er specially crafted an invisibility talisman for him.

The talisman paper distributed by the Spirit Realm was extraordinary, far more powerful than the ones he crafted himself. By a stroke of pure luck, she triggered a burst of high-grade performance for the first time in her life, successfully drawing a fourth-tier talisman treasure.

With this fourth-tier talisman treasure on his person, no one whose cultivation level did not exceed the True Immortal realm would be able to detect him.

In the lower realm, talisman treasures had always been rare, let alone a fourth-tier one. However, when Hu Li received this talisman treasure, only a flash of amazement crossed the depths of his eyes—he had already fully experienced his master's versatility and had long since grown accustomed to it.

However, clever as this fellow was, his motor coordination was atrocious. After three solid days of practice, whenever he used the Breeze Technique, he remained top-heavy and stumbled about like a drunkard.

Feng Ke'er's temperament was hardly suited for being a master. Seeing this, after offering guidance a few times, she could no longer hold back her scolding: "You're so stupid," "Do you know how pigs die?", "Hey, hey, hey, you're crossing your legs and arms on the same side" ...

Two days later, the fox's handsome face was covered in bumps and bruises, truly resembling a pig's head.

By this time, she had completely given up. Simply turning a blind eye to the outside world, she held her breath and concentrated on crafting the leather vest inside her spatial ball.

Similarly, Hu Li was filled with frustration—he refused to believe he couldn't master the Breeze Technique!

Anyway, with the invisibility talisman treasure on him, ordinary people in the Spirit Realm couldn't see him at all. So, he practiced through the night as well, not resting until his spiritual power was completely exhausted. Even when resting, he would simultaneously recover his spiritual energy and practice the first layer of the Clearing Heart Mantra.

Such day-and-night practice was no different from going into secluded cultivation.

Heaven never lets down a hardworking and diligent good child. Twenty days later, Hu Li finally mastered the Breeze Technique—or so he thought—and specially performed a demonstration for Feng Ke'er.

Unbeknownst to him, he had already been ascending for a month, and it was time to renew his rent. Employing the Breeze Technique, he headed to the Foreign Affairs Courtyard to make the payment.

Hu Li flicked his sleeves, placed both hands behind his back, moved with ethereal grace, traveled with the wind, and soared ten feet in the blink of an eye.

"Master, the speed of the Breeze Technique is nearly double that of a cloud boat!" Seeing that Feng Ke'er remained silent, Hu Li extended his arms like a butterfly swimmer, suddenly accelerated, and darted back and forth among the auspicious clouds like a barracuda.

Sitting cross-legged inside the spatial ball, Feng Ke'er was utterly shocked—Goodness gracious, is this the Breeze Technique? Did my eyes deceive me, or did my eyes deceive me?!

Her Breeze Technique was never this showy and flashy!

The Breeze Technique has three major characteristics: first, low spiritual power consumption; second, ethereal posture; and third, high speed.

The latter was by far the most important.

And Hu Li? Right now, his narcissistic posturing was identical to a flashy, impractical butterfly.

Seeing a perfectly good Breeze Technique used in this manner, she pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed longly, "Fox, can you run a little slower?" He was wasting her top-grade cultivation technique.

Heaven can bear witness that she was definitely a qualified master of excellent character and had truly not held anything back. In the world of cultivation, emphasis is placed on substance rather than appearance. In other words, apart from the lowest-tier introductory techniques, the more profound a cultivation technique, the fewer fixed moves it has; all that remains are fixed chants for regulating breath and circulating energy. As for posture, moves, and the like, they depend entirely on individual comprehension. Therefore, the same move taught by the same master, when passed down to ten disciples, will inevitably manifest in ten different sword forms.

To put it bluntly, it was the naked truth of "The master leads you through the door, but cultivation depends on the individual."

Take Feng Ke'er's practice of the Breeze Technique as an example. Her Breeze Technique was based on the posture of the Swift Movement Technique, which in turn was based on the footwork of "dragonflies skimming the water." The common characteristic of the latter two postures was concise movement without cumbersome, extraneous motions. Such a posture had one greatest advantage: without those complicated, pretty little movements, the speed was maximized.

Feng Ke'er's Breeze Technique inherited this fine tradition. Therefore, her Breeze Technique posture was neat, fluid, and extremely fast.

Looking back at Hu Li's Breeze Technique, it possessed an excess of elegance and untethered grace, but the movements were overly complicated while lacking physical force. The price paid was a drastic reduction in speed!

Upon hearing Feng Ke'er's venomous critique, Hu Li's posture wavered, and he nearly lost his breath, tumbling headfirst out of midair—his Breeze Technique was currently limited to looking the part and was far from reaching the pure, masterful realm of effortless control.

"Careful!" Startled, Feng Ke'er hurriedly helped him stabilize his sea of consciousness. You idiot, are you trying to suffer a deviation in your vital energy on purpose?!

"Master, did I comprehend it wrongly?" Stabilizing his posture, he inwardly cried out that it was bad. The most terrifying thing in cultivation is setting off in the wrong direction from the very beginning and misunderstanding the path.

Drawing upon her own experience in practicing the Breeze Technique, Feng Ke'er imparted all her insights without reservation.

Hu Li was not stupid. Upon hearing her explanation, everything instantly became clear in his mind. Having grasped his master's temperament, he refrained from uttering redundant expressions of gratitude, hurried as quickly as possible to the Foreign Affairs Courtyard to renew his rent, returned, and once again launched into intensive, secluded-style practice.

Another full month passed. He employed the Breeze Technique and went once more to the Foreign Affairs Courtyard to pay his rent.

Before he could even ask, Feng Ke'er proactively offered her critique: "Not bad. The posture has greatly improved, and the speed has also picked up. Later on, as your cultivation advances, your divine sense and spiritual power will further increase, and your speed will naturally rise significantly." The implication was that his speed had currently hit a bottleneck constrained by his cultivation level.

Rubbing his chin, Hu Li chuckled softly, "I can feel the barrier of the first layer of the seventh tier loosening somewhat." His master truly treated him with boundless generosity. The Breeze Technique was a top-tier flight spell, and the first formula of Qigong was an elite cultivation method. For two months, he had practiced the Breeze Technique day and night while practicing the first Qigong formula merely to recover spiritual energy faster, never expecting that planting flowers unintentionally would create a shade. This unintentional move had greatly accelerated his cultivation progress.

"Really? Congratulations, congratulations." Feng Ke'er had no habit of peeping. She only left a sliver of divine sense in his sea of consciousness because she was currently an unregistered person and could only communicate with him through that thread of sense; it was absolutely not for peeping, surveillance, or the like.

Hu Li smiled without answering. The higher one's realm in cultivation, the harder it becomes. With his current cultivation, taking anywhere from a few decades to a century to go from a loosening barrier to ultimate successful advancement was completely normal.

Scratching her head, Feng Ke'er said, "Perhaps supplementing with elixirs could lend you a hand." After browsing the markets of the Southern Spirit Continent, she realized that such a wide variety of miraculous elixirs existed in this world, possessing bizarre and all-encompassing effects.

A stir arose in Hu Li's heart, and he asked curiously, "Master, what elixirs do you take?"

"Me?" Feng Ke'er shook her head and answered truthfully, "I don't eat those." Fearing he would misunderstand, she carefully explained, "What I mean is, every medicine is three parts poison, and elixirs are no exception. Regarding your advancement, you must still solidly practice the first Qigong formula, while preparing appropriate elixirs merely as a backup for emergencies." Back then, when she advanced ten tiers consecutively, had she not prepared a massive quantity of medicinal pills, she probably would have perished long ago.

"Every medicine is three parts poison?" This was the first time Hu Li had ever heard that miraculous elixirs also had a negative side. In the cultivation world, popping pills was the prevailing trend; as long as conditions permitted and they could afford the upkeep, who didn't wish they could eat elixirs like meals? Well, fine, Inedia Pills were a type of elixir, so they actually did eat elixirs like meals.

"Indeed. However, the body possesses its own detoxification function. As long as they aren't taken in massive quantities, that tiny bit of elixir poison is harmless." In modern times, Feng Ke'er held this view simply because of common hearsay. But after transmigrating to the cultivation world and becoming an alchemist herself, she gained a profound realization: where there are medicinal pills, there is elixir poison. It's just that higher-quality elixirs contain less poison. However, "less" does not mean "none." Take the first-grade Inedia Pills she refined; they belonged to the top tier of their class, yet they still contained trace amounts of elixir poison. Taking only two to three pills a year would cause no side effects whatsoever.

Well, once the fox advanced, his divine sense would increase fivefold. By then, he should be able to start practicing the second Qigong formula, which was the second layer of the Clearing Heart Mantra. She silently made her plans. With the second layer of the Clearing Heart Mantra, the fox would be able to achieve true inedia just like her.

Hearing this, Hu Li dismissed "that tiny bit of elixir poison" from his mind. After paying his rent, he went straight to the market. Firstly, he only had a little over five thousand spirit stones left and could no longer live off past savings; secondly, he wanted to hunt down some "appropriate" elixir recipes and medicinal materials.

(End of chapter)