"Sword Tempering Art', compatibility 93%."
Chu Huaixu was slightly surprised; he hadn't expected it to be so high.
He looked through the remaining few jade slips. Only the 'Sword Tempering Art' was above 90%. The highest among the rest was only 81%.
"This is the one."
Opening the jade slip, Chu Huaixu saw a few large characters.
"Heaven and Earth as the furnace, the body as the sword, tempered by spiritual energy, to forge the body and open the apertures."
He closed the jade slip and looked at Niu Yuanshan. "I'll choose this one."
Deacon Niu nodded. There were simply too many aperture-opening stage techniques. Even though he was an Outer Sect Deacon, it was impossible for him to know every single one.
After thinking for a moment, he took out two small booklets from his storage space and handed them to the pair.
"These are the cultivation insights for the 'Ice-Pure Art' and the 'Sword Tempering Art', respectively, all written by our predecessors. If you have any thoughts during your own cultivation, you can also write them in the booklets for the reference of future junior brothers and sisters who join the sect."
"Thank you, Deacon." They took the booklets.
After doing all this, Niu Yuanshan wanted to speak with Chu Huaixu alone, but ultimately restrained himself. He just pointed towards the east and said, "Your residences are over there. You can find them on your own."
"Yes."
After the two turned and left, Deacon Niu did not go inside but watched them go. He stared at Chu Huaixu's back, his heart filled with a thousand emotions. His curiosity about this newcomer from [The Organization] was overwhelming; even when he forcefully suppressed it, it would immediately rise again.
Only after the two had walked far away did he return to his own courtyard and enter his bedroom.
Niu Yuanshan sat cross-legged on his bed, his mind full of Chu Huaixu. He was just too curious. 'You were supposed to come here as a handyman, so how did you catch Li Chunsong's eye?'
"Should I find a chance to talk to him?" the deacon wondered.
At this thought, he suddenly remembered how he had chided the Silver-Masked Man when they were on the reception mission near the forest. Back then, the Silver-Masked Man had wanted to stay and observe the foxy-faced man a little longer, only to be harshly reprimanded by him.
Thinking of this, Niu Yuanshan raised a large hand and gave himself a fierce slap.
Slap—!
Article Three of The Admonitions: Do not harbor excessive curiosity towards our comrades within the Organization!
...
...
Chu Huaixu's bamboo hut was adjacent to Han Shuangjiang's; they were neighbors. Their residences were much smaller than Deacon Niu's.
Along the way, the two exchanged no words, just walking in silence.
"Farewell."
"Farewell."
After bidding each other farewell, Chu Huaixu walked into his bamboo hut.
Every residence in the Dao Gate had a dust-removing formation, so even if no one cleaned it, the inside was spotless. He took out the bedding from his storage token and laid it on his bed. The jade slip and the booklet were tossed to the side; he was in no hurry to cultivate.
"First, add the [Random Attribute Point]. That's the correct order," he thought.
Chu Huaixu opened his [Character Panel] and took a look at his various character attributes.
At this moment, the attributes that met his eyes were very simple.
"[Physique: 1] (Upgradeable, max 10)." "[Spirit Gathering: 1] (Upgradeable, max 10)." "[Comprehension: 1] (Upgradeable, max 10)." "[Spirit Embryo Attribute: 0] (Upgradeable, max 10)." "[Experience Points: 200]." "[Character Level: 0]." "[Remaining Random Attribute Points: 1]."
As soon as he used this 1 random attribute point, it would be randomly added to one of the attributes above.
As the names suggested, Physique represented physical strength like health, defense, power, and speed. The higher the Physique value, the greater the increase in these aspects with each character level gained.
Spirit Gathering represented the spiritual energy within the body. You needed spiritual energy to cast spells, i.e., use skills. The higher the Spirit Gathering value, the greater the increase in spiritual energy with each level up. When you were out of mana, your mana regeneration would also be faster. At the same time, some ultimate moves had mana requirements; if your total spiritual energy was insufficient, you couldn't even cast them once.
[Comprehension] was linked to [Skills], which were the techniques of cultivators. Take Chu Huaixu's old level 49 Spring and Autumn Mountain account for example; his main skill was called 'Extinguishing Evil'. This skill was a blooming lotus of black flame with explosive special effects. However, you needed a Comprehension higher than 5 to learn it; that was a hard requirement.
Furthermore, when cultivators in the Xuanhuang Realm learned techniques, they progressed through four levels: Initial Grasp, Minor Accomplishment, Major Accomplishment, and Great Perfection. Players, on the other hand, had to use experience points to level up their skills, also divided into levels 1-4. At the same time, the higher the [Comprehension], the less experience it cost to level up a skill. The lower the [Comprehension], the more experience it cost. For some high-grade skills, you couldn't even continue to level them up if your [Comprehension] was too low, even if you had the experience points. Chu Huaixu's 'Extinguishing Evil' had only been leveled up to 3. To max it out, he needed to raise his [Comprehension] to 7.
The [Spirit Embryo Attribute] was somewhat similar to [Comprehension], except it was linked to cultivation techniques. Cultivators in the Xuanhuang Realm absorbed the spiritual energy of heaven and earth by circulating their cultivation techniques. Players were different; players poured experience points into their techniques. As long as it was filled, they could level up. However, players could also cultivate while offline. They just had to sit cross-legged, and the technique would start circulating. The higher the [Spirit Embryo Attribute], the more technique experience points were gained from offline cultivation. Similar to [Comprehension], some powerful techniques also had [Spirit Embryo Attribute] requirements. The amount of experience points spent when leveling up the technique was also linked to this attribute.
If the [Spirit Embryo Attribute] was not up to standard, you couldn't even level up your character! If your Spirit Embryo Attribute was only 1, then your level cap was 19. If it was only 2, then it was 29. In the words of the Xuanhuang Realm, your innate talent was too poor, and you would be stuck in the first realm for your entire life, with no hope of reaching the second.
Simply put, it was just the quantification of some of the Xuanhuang Realm's cultivation systems.
"A Spirit Embryo like Han Shuangjiang's is likely level 9, or even a maxed-out level 10!"
"In other words, her leveling speed will be ridiculously fast because the experience cost will be ridiculously low, and her upper limit is very high. She won't get stuck at a certain realm for the rest of her life."
"She has almost no bottlenecks!" Chu Huaixu was green with envy.
Why was the Dao Ancestor of the Dao Gate so strong, so strong that his opponents were desperate enough to send people to make him lose his virginity? How desperate must one be to come up with such a "master plan"? It was all because he possessed the Pure Yang Physique! Also a level 10 Spirit Embryo!
"That long-legged beauty next door with talent comparable to the Dao Ancestor should have already started cultivating, right?" Chu Huaixu guessed.
He wasn't in a hurry. He wanted to add his 1 [Random Attribute Point] and 1 [Spirit Embryo Attribute] point first.
"Time for the lottery draw!" Chu Huaixu rubbed his hands together. "Give it to me!"
A large roulette wheel, visible only to him, appeared and began to spin. On the wheel, the sections for the other attributes were all equal in size, but the section for Spirit Embryo was particularly small, with only a 3% chance.
"Stop!" he willed it.
"[Ding—! Congratulations, you have received an attribute point in—Physique!]"
Chu Huaixu's eyes narrowed slightly. After a moment of contemplation, he thought, "Physique? That's fine."
At the beginning, it didn't matter what he got; he was equally weak across the board.
"Random is fine. It's not like I got a [Free Attribute Point] that I could allocate myself."
His level 49 account had the highest points in [Spirit Gathering]. Every time he took a girl through a dungeon, relying on his thick mana bar and abundant spiritual energy, he would spam skills as if they cost no mana, focusing on explosive special effects. Looking cool was all that mattered.
Besides [Spirit Gathering], he had also added more points to [Comprehension]. This was because professional skills like Item Refining, Pill Refining, and Talisman Refining were also linked to Comprehension. Item Refining could sell equipment, Pill Refining could sell pills, and Talisman Refining could sell talismans. These were all ways to make money.
Chu Huaixu was all about pragmatism: either make money from women or make money from players to achieve a class leap.
—He was just that desperate to improve!
Therefore, [Physique] was actually the attribute he was relatively unfamiliar with.
"I can't add the 1 [Spirit Embryo Attribute] point yet. I need to get my character to level 1 first."
As mentioned before, if the Spirit Embryo Attribute was 1, the character level cap was 19. If the Spirit Embryo Attribute was 0, the cap was 9. So, the most urgent task was to learn the aperture-opening stage technique first. Don't forget, he still had 200 experience points to use, which was more than enough to level up.
Chu Huaixu picked up the jade slip for the 'Sword Tempering Art' and the small booklet. After thinking for a moment, he decided to flip through the booklet first.
"The 'Sword Tempering Art' is like a book. This booklet contains the notes left by predecessors, so it's basically the book's comment section."
"Of course I have to read the comment section first! To see what everyone thought of it." Chu Huaixu felt this was the correct order.
He opened the first page of the booklet with anticipation.
On the first page, there were only two large, wildly dancing characters, written in a rather sloppy hand.
—"Don't practice!"