Sensing Martial Aunt Yang’s gaze, Gu Ningyun stepped forward and set out six stone balls.
Then, circulating her spirit energy, three palm-sized weapons—a cleaver, a trident, and a wind sword—appeared simultaneously in her palm.
She adjusted her aim and flipped her palm toward the stone balls. The three weapons flew out at once, each piercing through one of the balls.
Immediately after, she used her divine sense to control the three weapons. Using the tip of the cleaver, one prong of the trident, and the tip of the wind sword, she began to carve the remaining three stone balls.
As the final stroke fell, Gu Ningyun recalled the weapons into her palm.
The three stone balls had been transformed into three lifelike little fish.
Seeing this, a flicker of surprise flashed in Martial Aunt Yang’s eyes.
“Excellent.
Using divine sense to control weapons for carving requires very high divine sense strength.
You were able to control three weapons simultaneously and carve with them even after they had already pierced through stone balls.
This shows that your spirit energy condensation is exceptionally stable and your divine sense control is outstanding.
Wind spirit energy is renowned for its speed. Large weapons are cumbersome, and with your current divine sense cultivation, it would be difficult to bring out their true strength.
You had the foresight to condense your weapons into a palm-sized form to leverage the speed advantage of wind spirit energy, manipulating the three weapons with fluid precision. Well done.
Ningyun, in terms of weapon condensation, you have also exceeded the goal.”
After checking their training results, Martial Aunt Yang took out three talismans and handed them to Gu Ningyun and the other two who had passed.
“These are mysterious-rank low-grade water shield talismans. They can block a single strike from someone at the early Foundation Establishment stage. Take them as a reward for reaching the goal and have some fun with them.”
Then she turned to Jiang Yao and Mu Chenze. “You two will come here every evening at the start of the Wu hour for extra training until you reach the standard.”
...
Before the body refining class ended that afternoon, Gu Ningyun and the others received news that their training difficulty was being increased as well.
Martial Uncle Lu watched the five little sprouts who had just finished climbing from the bottom of the cliff to the peak ten times in a row, a look of satisfaction in his eyes.
“With your current cultivation, your speed has reached a point where simple climbing is no longer very meaningful.
Starting tomorrow, I will set up a gravity array on the cliff. The gravity of the array will increase steadily each day.
With the help of gravity, you will be able to train your strength faster and enhance your physical constitution.”
Gu Ningyun stretched her aching arms. Hearing Martial Uncle Lu mention a gravity array, she immediately thought of the pressure she had encountered on the Stairway to Immortality during the entrance exam.
Back then, she had been a mere mortal. At most, she had drunk some spirit spring water to slightly improve her physical fitness.
Yet, under the pressure of the gradually increasing gravity, she had managed to endure a weight she had never imagined possible and reached the top of the Path to Immortality.
Climbing the cliff under such gravity would indeed maximize one's potential and break through limits, provided one had enough perseverance.
At this thought, a surge of anticipation rose in her heart.
She found climbing the cliff quite easy now; it was only the continuous round trips for the entire class that left her limbs weak from exhaustion.
The addition of a gravity array was exactly what she needed to break through her current bottleneck.
During this time, she had been spearing fish for the fat duck every night until midnight. Besides developing a technique that never missed, she had also practiced her control over spirit energy and divine sense to the absolute limit of her current ability.
After the fat duck left, she used the latter half of the night to refine the Lung Meridian of Hand-Taiyin.
Since her cultivation technique was always running on its own, performing the Minor Orbit cycle, the Ren and Du Meridians were constantly being refined slowly even when she wasn't actively cultivating.
Consequently, it wasn't until last night that she finally refined the Lung Meridian of Hand-Taiyin to the same level as the Ren and Du Meridians.
The spirit energy and star power in her Dantian had filled more than half of the space, but they were still relatively loose and could be compressed further.
Before the fat duck left yesterday, it told her it had matters to attend to outside the sect and wouldn't have time to play with her for a while.
Gu Ningyun decided that for the coming period, she would refine the Lung Meridian of Hand-Taiyin during the first half of the night and focus on her cultivation during the second half. She aimed to compress her spirit energy and star power to the limit and break through to Qi Refining level two before the second stage of training began.
As for the Almanac of Heavenly Wonders, through her relentless memorization every morning and noon, she had already committed half of the Spirit Herb Chapter to memory. She believed that in another month, she would have the entire chapter memorized.
...
It was nearly the start of the Si hour.
Without waiting for the wind chimes to ring, Gu Ningyun put away the Almanac of Heavenly Wonders, left the Cloud Residence, and headed toward the small square of Ruiyu Pavilion.
She wondered what they would be learning for these final ten days.
“From this lesson onward, we will train the spirituality of your spirit energy.”
This time, Martial Aunt Yang had not prepared any props. Instead, she condensed an owl in her palm.
The owl was composed entirely of water spirit energy, yet it sat on Martial Aunt Yang’s forearm like a real bird, tilting its head to look at them.
From Gu Ningyun’s perspective, she could see the owl’s eyeballs moving. She even felt she could read an expression of curiosity on the owl’s face.
How could it be this magical?!!
“Spirit energy is inherently an inanimate substance. When we speak of training its spirituality, we are not creating something from nothing or granting life to spirit energy creations.
Rather, it is borrowing the characteristics of living creatures to imbue the spirit energy with a certain level of spirituality.
In previous lessons, you have already learned to condense weapons and manipulate them for attacks.
But weapons are, after all, inanimate objects. No matter how you use them, there will always be limitations.
Condensing inanimate objects and condensing living creatures are two completely different concepts.”
Martial Aunt Yang scratched the owl’s chin. “Training spirituality does not directly increase your attack power. On the surface, it might even seem useless—a pure waste of time.
In fact, that is not the case.
Unlike the previous lessons, the true essence of spirituality training is to let you sense life.
It is a form of communicating with heaven and earth—or rather, it is a form of cultivation related to the level of life.”
Martial Aunt Yang moved her arm, and the owl flapped its wings, circling once above their heads.
Finally, it landed on Wen Xuan’s shoulder, snatched away the ribbon tying her hair, and flew back to Martial Aunt Yang’s arm, looking at them with an innocent expression.
“Hey! My hair ribbon!” Wen Xuan cried out, trying to save her disheveled hair while staring at the feigning-innocent owl in disbelief. “You... you...”
Finally, she looked at Martial Aunt Yang. “Martial Aunt Yang, does this owl really not have its own consciousness?” It couldn't be that Martial Aunt Yang had personally controlled the owl to steal her ribbon, right?
Gu Ningyun was also curious as she watched this scene.
Martial Aunt Yang covered her mouth and coughed lightly before returning the ribbon to Wen Xuan. “Of course not.
The reference subject for this owl... was a bit mischievous.
When I condensed this water spirit energy owl, I replicated both its appearance and its habits.
Therefore, while I am controlling the owl, it acts according to instinct based on the habits I imbued during the replication.
I merely allowed it to follow its nature just now.”
Gu Ningyun guessed that these 'habits' were likely the 'spirituality' Martial Aunt Yang had mentioned earlier.
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