Chapter 11: 《Sword Refining Art》
"《Sword Refining Art》, compatibility 93%."
Chu Huaixu was slightly surprised—he hadn’t expected it to be this high.
He looked at the remaining jade slips as well, and only this 《Sword Refining Art》 was above 90%.
The highest among the rest was just 81%.
"This one, then."
Opening the jade slip, Chu Huaixu saw a few large characters.
"Heaven and earth as the furnace, the body as the sword, spiritual energy for tempering, forging the body to break through apertures."
He closed the jade slip and looked at Niu Yuanshan. "I’ll choose this one."
Steward Niu nodded. There were simply too many cultivation methods for the Qi-opening Stage; even though he was an Outer Sect Steward, it wasn’t possible for him to know all of them.
After thinking for a moment, he took out two small booklets from his storage space and handed them to the two.
"These are the cultivation insights for 《Ice Purity Art》 and 《Sword Refining Art》, both written by predecessors. If you have any thoughts during cultivation, you can write them in the booklets for reference by future junior brothers and sisters."
"Thank you, Steward." They accepted the booklets.
Having finished all this, Niu Yuanshan originally wanted to speak privately with Chu Huaixu, but in the end held back. He simply pointed toward the east and said, "Your residences are over there. Go find them yourselves."
"Understood."
After the two turned and left, Steward Niu didn’t return to the house, but watched them walk away.
He stared at Chu Huaixu’s back, filled with emotions. His curiosity toward this newcomer from the 【Organization】 was immense—no matter how much he suppressed it, it would rise up again.
Only when the two were far away did he return to his courtyard and enter his bedroom.
Niu Yuanshan sat cross-legged on his bed, his mind filled with thoughts of Chu Huaixu.
He was truly too curious. You were supposed to be here as a menial laborer—how did you end up being chosen by Li Chunsong?
"Should I find an opportunity to talk with him?" Steward Niu thought.
At that thought, he suddenly remembered when he was performing the newcomer reception task near the dense forest, wearing a golden mask, and reprimanding the silver-masked man.
Back then, the silver-masked man just wanted to stay and observe that fox-faced guy a bit longer, and Niu had harshly scolded him for it.
Thinking of this, Niu Yuanshan raised his large hand and gave himself a hard slap.
"Smack—!"
《Admonition》 Rule Three: Do not harbor excessive curiosity about fellow members within the Organization!
...
...
Chu Huaixu’s bamboo house was right next to Han Shuangjiang’s—they were neighbors.
Their residences were much smaller than Steward Niu’s.
All the way there, the two said nothing to each other, simply walking in silence.
"Farewell."
"Farewell."
After parting ways, Chu Huaixu entered his bamboo house.
Every residence within the 【Dao Gate】 had a dust-clearing formation, so even if no one cleaned it, it remained spotless.
He took bedding out of his storage token and laid it on his bed.
The jade slip and booklets were tossed aside; he wasn’t in a hurry to cultivate.
"Add the 【Random Attribute Points】 first—that’s the proper order," he thought.
Chu Huaixu opened his 【Character Panel】 for a glance to check his various attributes.
At this moment, the attributes before his eyes were very simple.
"【Physique: 1】 (Upgradeable, cap at 10)."
"【Spirit Gathering: 1】 (Upgradeable, cap at 10)."
"【Comprehension: 1】 (Upgradeable, cap at 10)."
"【Spirit Embryo Attribute: 0】 (Upgradeable, cap at 10)."
"【Experience Points: 200】."
"【Character Level: Level 0】."
"【Remaining Random Attribute Points: 1】."
As long as he used this 1 point of random attribute, it would be randomly added to one of the attributes listed above.
As the name implied, Physique represented HP, defense, strength, speed, and other aspects of physical toughness.
The higher the Physique value, the more these aspects would improve with each character level-up.
Spirit Gathering represented internal spiritual power. Only with spiritual power could one cast spells, which meant using skills.
The higher the Spirit Gathering, the greater the increase in spiritual power with each level-up. And when your mana ran out, the recovery speed would also be faster.
At the same time, some ultimate moves had specific mana requirements—if your total internal spiritual power wasn’t enough, you wouldn’t even be able to cast it once.
【Comprehension】 was tied to 【Skills】, namely the magical techniques used by cultivators.
Take Chu Huaixu’s level 49 main account from Spring and Autumn Mountain as an example—his main skill was called 《Evil Rest》.
This skill manifested as black flames blooming like a lotus, with explosive visual effects.
However, you needed more than 5 points in Comprehension to learn it. That was a hard threshold.
Besides that, cultivators in the Xuanhuang Realm learned techniques in four stages: Initial Insight, Minor Achievement, Major Achievement, and Great Perfection.
Players had to use experience points to level up skills, which were also divided into levels 1 through 4.
Moreover, the higher your 【Comprehension】, the fewer experience points were required to upgrade a skill. The lower your Comprehension, the more it cost.
Some high-grade skills couldn’t even be upgraded further if your Comprehension was too low—having experience points wouldn’t help.
Chu Huaixu’s 《Evil Rest》 only reached level 3. To fully upgrade it, he needed to raise his 【Comprehension】 to 7.
【Spirit Embryo Attribute】 was somewhat similar to Comprehension, except it was tied to cultivation methods.
Cultivators in the Xuanhuang Realm absorbed spiritual energy from heaven and earth by operating their cultivation methods.
Players, however, were different. They injected experience points into the cultivation methods.
Once fully filled, the method would level up.
But players could also log off and enter idle cultivation mode—just sit cross-legged and the method would begin running.
The higher the 【Spirit Embryo Attribute】, the more cultivation experience you’d gain during idle cultivation.
Similarly, some powerful cultivation methods also required a high 【Spirit Embryo Attribute】.
The amount of experience required to level up a method was also tied to this attribute.
If your Spirit Embryo Attribute didn’t meet the standard, your character level couldn’t even go up!
If your Spirit Embryo Attribute was only 1, then your level cap was 19. If it was 2, then 29.
In terms of the Xuanhuang Realm, that meant your talent was too poor—you’d be stuck at the First Realm your entire life, never touching the Second Realm.
To put it simply, it was just the datafication of the cultivation system from the Xuanhuang Realm.
"Han Shuangjiang’s Spirit Embryo might be level 9, maybe even the max level of 10!"
"That means her leveling speed would be ridiculously fast because her experience cost would be super low, and her upper limit would be high—she wouldn’t hit a bottleneck at any stage."
"She practically has no bottleneck at all!" Chu Huaixu was absolutely envious.
Why was the Dao Gate’s Ancestor so powerful—so powerful that even his enemies wanted to send someone to seduce him? Just how desperate did they have to be to resort to that?
It was because he had a Pure Yang Body! A level 10 Spirit Embryo!
"The long-legged girl next door, whose talent rivaled the Dao Ancestor’s, must’ve already started cultivating, right?" Chu Huaixu guessed in his mind.
He wasn’t in a hurry. First, he had to allocate the 1 point in 【Random Attribute Points】 and the 1 point in 【Spirit Embryo Attribute】.
"Let’s spin the wheel first!" Chu Huaixu rubbed his hands together. "Give it to me!"
A giant spinning wheel that only he could see appeared and started turning.
On the wheel, the zones for each attribute were balanced, except the Spirit Embryo one, which was particularly small—with only a 3% chance.
"Stop!" he willed in his mind.
"【Ding——! Congratulations, you have received an attribute point in—Physique!】"
Chu Huaixu narrowed his eyes slightly and, after a moment of pondering, thought, "Physique? That’s fine."
At early stages, it didn’t matter what he added—he was a balanced weakling anyway.
"Random is fine too. After all, what I received wasn’t a 【Free Attribute Point】 that I could assign myself."
His level 49 account had the most points added to 【Spirit Gathering】.
Every time he took a girl through a dungeon, he’d rely on his thick mana bar and abundant spiritual energy to spam skills like he didn’t need mana at all—just blasting out special effects like crazy. The goal was to look cool.
Aside from 【Spirit Gathering】, he also invested a lot into 【Comprehension】.
Because things like artifact refining, pill refining, talisman crafting... all those belonged to professional skills and were also tied to Comprehension.
Refining gear let him sell equipment. Refining pills let him sell medicines. Crafting talismans let him sell charms—these were all ways to make money.
Chu Huaixu’s core principle was practicality. Either make money off women or make money off players—achieve a leap in social class.
—He just wanted to progress too badly!
Therefore, 【Physique】 was actually the attribute he was least familiar with.
"That 1 point in 【Spirit Embryo Attribute】 can’t be added yet. I need to level up to 1 first."
As previously mentioned, if Spirit Embryo Attribute was 1, the level cap was 19.
If it was 0, the cap was only 9.
So the priority now was to learn a Qi-opening Stage cultivation method.
Don’t forget, he still had 200 experience points left—more than enough to level up.
Chu Huaixu picked up the 《Sword Refining Art》 jade slip and that booklet.
After some thought, he decided to flip through the booklet first.
"《Sword Refining Art》 is like a book, and this booklet is the notes left by seniors—pretty much like the comments section of the book."
"Of course I need to check the comments section first! See what everyone’s saying." Chu Huaixu felt this was the right order.
With great anticipation, he opened the first page of the booklet.
On the first page, there were only two large, flamboyant characters, written a bit sloppily.
—"Don’t Practice!"
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