Chapter 6: Five Elements Skill

Chen Mobai checked the time. There was still over an hour until the first group of students finished their cultivation session, so he wasn't in a hurry to leave. Instead, he took the opportunity to ask more questions about purifying and enhancing spirit roots.

“Yan Bingxuan’s family must have an expert who knew her spirit root could be transformed into an ice spirit root through the Frost Condensation Method. That’s why she started cultivating with this goal in mind from the beginning.”

“The method for purifying and enhancing spirit roots requires less time and fewer resources the lower one’s cultivation realm.”

“She’s already in the late stage of Qi Refinement at a young age. Conservatively, she could attempt Foundation Establishment three times. That’s why she wants to transform her spirit root into an ice spirit root before reaching the perfected Qi Refinement realm.”

“Once successful, she could gain direct admission to the Academy of Nature, one of the ten great academies. If she advances further, she might even pass the assessment for the Four Great Daoist Academies, essentially skyrocketing to success.”

The Four Great Daoist Academies were established by the five Deified Ancestors who founded the Immortal Sect.

Every graduating cultivator becomes a future high-ranking member of the Immortal Sect.

For thousands of years, the Foundation Establishment success rate for students of the Four Great Daoist Academies has exceeded eighty percent.

For Danxia City, a blessed land on the outskirts of the Immortal Sect, the last person to be admitted to the Four Great Daoist Academies was Real Person Yu Tianguang, the Red-Robed Cultivator, over a hundred years ago. He has now successfully formed his Gold Core.

After leaving Old Man Ding’s office, Chen Mobai waited for more than ten minutes and became part of the second group to enter the cultivation chambers.

After setting up his phone and activating the assisted cultivation recording mode, he entered a meditative state. He began circulating his Qi Nurturing Art again, refining the spiritual energy he had gained from consuming pills, making it his own.

Time slowly passed, and the Soul Calming Incantation woke Chen Mobai as usual.

He walked out of the cultivation chamber, where only a dozen or so “unlucky” students from the third group remained.

He looked around and spotted Lu Hongsheng, his deskmate, and a few other classmates he usually got along with. After exchanging greetings, they all headed home.

Normally, these close friends would stay after school to drink spirit tea and play small games to practice their spell usage.

However, since entering their senior year (Grade 12), all such recreational activities had been canceled.

The intense pressure of college admissions even motivated Lu Hongsheng, his deskmate, who was usually lazy due to his inferior spirit root, to start working hard.

Before going home, Chen Mobai bought a box of glass beads for practicing spiritual energy circulation at a roadside convenience store.

After arriving home, while dinner was cooking, he cut some small talisman papers and logged onto the online trading platform, where he found only one cultivator from the same city had placed a bid.

18 Merit Points.

It was a bit low, but usually Chen Mobai would have agreed to the transaction. After all, his were small-workshop products and naturally cheaper than those from official stores.

However, since he planned to explore the underwater mansion (transmitted by the tortoise shell) again today, he wasn't in a hurry to make the sale.

After eating and cleaning up, Chen Mobai returned to his room.

He took the tortoise shell in his hand and examined it carefully. But just like last night, it appeared to be an ordinary old tortoise shell, covered in smoke and burn marks, without a hint of spiritual energy.

If it weren't for yesterday's miraculous journey, Chen Mobai would never have believed that this object was actually a spatial artifact.

He placed the tortoise shell in the bedside table’s drawer, then took out his phone and tapped on the app named “Tortoise Treasure.”

After exploring it all last night, he now had some understanding of “Tortoise Treasure.”

It had three functions. “Return to City” meant returning to his current location.

As for whether “City” referred to his room or the place where the tortoise shell was, that remained to be verified.

The other function, “Teleport,” which was closely related to “Return to City,” was, in Chen Mobai’s understanding, the culprit that sent him to that mysterious underwater mansion yesterday.

Only the last function, “Agent,” still made no sense to him.

Evidently, these three functions couldn’t be used indefinitely. Only when the virtual interactive buttons for these functions within the app protruded would tapping them elicit a response. Currently, only “Teleport” was lit up.

Last night, Chen Mobai waited until 3 AM, discovered this, and used the “Teleport” function again to go to the underwater mansion.

However, he still found nothing. But after cultivating for a night in a Rank-2 spiritual energy location, five or six tenths of the after-effects from consuming the pills had been dissipated.

Chen Mobai estimated that if he cultivated in seclusion in the underwater mansion for another two or three days, he could mostly eliminate the hidden dangers of breaking through with pills and resume cultivating the Five Elements Art to further improve his Qi Refinement realm.

It was precisely for this reason that Chen Mobai gathered his courage, wanting to return to the underwater mansion and even attempt to decipher the restrictions in the back hall.

This was a Rank-2 Mid-Grade spiritual land. In the Immortal Sect, renting geopathic spiritual energy of this grade would cost 160 Merit Points per month.

Calculated, cultivating in the underwater mansion for one day was equivalent to getting 5.33 Merit Points for free. Pitifully, his hard work cutting talisman papers only earned him twenty or thirty Merit Points a month.

Thinking this way, it was no wonder Chen Mobai didn't think much of his small online workshop business.

“Based on the time of my two round trips yesterday, the cooldown for ‘Teleport’ should be 6 hours, while ‘Return to City’ is longer, requiring 10 hours. The cooldown starts from the last use…”

Chen Mobai mentally calculated the timestamps of his two experiences from last night and arrived at a preliminary conclusion.

Half an hour later, exactly 10 hours had passed since his morning teleportation back, and the “Return to City” button protruded and lit up in his vision.

This way, if he went and found the situation unfavorable, he could immediately return.

Chen Mobai immediately hung a “Seclusion: Do Not Disturb” sign on his door, then locked it from the inside. Taking a deep breath, he tapped the protruding “Teleport” button on the “Tortoise Treasure” app on his phone.

“Do you wish to select Teleport Location 1 (Unnamed)?”

Chen Mobai tapped “Yes.”

Then, a silver light flashed, and he seemed to transform into light, disappearing from the room after about five or six seconds.

He looked up.

Chen Mobai faced the familiar underwater environment, suppressing the joy rising from deep within him.

Although he didn’t know where exactly he was, at least he now had a secret Rank-2 Mid-Grade base.

He took out the box of glass beads he had prepared earlier and infused them with spiritual energy. The formerly transparent beads began to glow with various colors. This was because Chen Mobai cultivated the Five Elements Art, which blended spiritual energy of all five attributes.

The Five Elements Art was a foundational method created by a Deified Ancestor of the Immortal Sect after a thousand years of contemplation. Any cultivator practicing it would automatically transform their spiritual energy into the attributes most suited to them, essentially customizing a Qi Refinement cultivation technique for each cultivator, perfectly matching their physique and spirit roots.

For example, Chen Mobai’s spirit root attributes were: Metal 23%, Wood 27%, Water 23%, Fire 17%, Earth 10%.

Therefore, the spiritual energy he generated while cultivating the Five Elements Art would be 23% Metal, 27% Wood, and so on, perfectly aligning with his spirit root attributes.

Furthermore, these Five-Element spiritual energies cycled and mutually generated, also promoting realm advancement during cultivation. This was the Immortal Sect’s greatest reliance for enabling widespread cultivation on the resource-scarce planet Diyuan.