Chapter 30 – First success of training
Although Liu Ming was being glared at by the disciple as if he was a country bumpkin, he did not get angry. Instead, he went to his own field without any hesitation and picked the best Spirit rice stalks. Then he used his standard Practitioner Sword, which he brought with him anywhere he went, to collect it.
He then took out a yellow cloth from his arms, packed the Spirit rice stacks in carefully and strolled towards the forest.
After two hours, Liu Ming had returned the completed chore and gone back to his own dwelling.
Sitting down in front of his desk, he opened the cloth pack and spread out the Spirit rice stalks again to carefully observe them.
Every Spirit rice stalk was half a foot long, the grains on it were as big as soy beans. However, each rice stalk only seemed to have about seven to eight rice grains that had the shiny gold coverings as if they were made of gold.
After examining it for a while, Liu Ming raised his hand and plucked a grain from the rice stalk, putting it between his hands and rubbed it.
The covering broke and dropped off like paper mache, showing the greenish, translucent rice grain. Putting the single grain of rice under his nose, Liu Ming realized that it was giving off a faint fragrance.
There was a slight sense of happiness in Liu Ming’s heart; not hesitating anymore, he found a small ceramic can in another room, poured some water into it and then removed the coverings as he placed the Spirit rice grains from a couple of stalks into the can.
With one hand, Liu Ming lifted the crock can and made some one-handed finger gestures with the other while mumbling something.
With a ‘peng’ sound, red flames emerged from his palm, covering the ceramic can, burning ferociously.
This was the Flame Spell Liu Ming had just learned.
After some time, a special smell of rice came out from the ceramic can, stirring Liu Ming’s appetite.
Liu Ming make the flames smaller and, after waiting for a while, he felt that it was almost ready. Then with a ‘puchi’ sound, he cancelled the spell completely before quickly placing the hot can on the table. After that, he opened the can’s cover.
A layer of rice that was as white as snow appeared in front of his eyes together with a distinctive fragrance.
Liu Ming took out a wooden spoon that he had prepared a long time ago and impolitely took a spoonful of rice from the can. With just one spoon-full, half of the rice in the can disappeared into Liu Ming’s mouth.
He ate the spoonful of boiling rice and immediately, an indescribable feeling of smoothness filled the mouth.
The rice grains wiggled around as if living and entered into Liu Ming’s stomach one after another. The delicious taste this rice brought was a first for Liu Ming in his life.
Liu Ming failed to resist his temptations and ate all of the rice in the can quickly and cleanly.
The next moment, Liu Ming immediately felt a surge of hot breath rushing from his stomach and spreading out into his four limbs rapidly.
“Eh? This is……”
This hot breath was an extremely pure Worldly Qi!
Without thinking about it too much, Liu Ming sat down cross-legged and began practice his Dark Bone Method.
When Liu Ming opened his eyes again after two hours, his face had a pleasantly surprised expression on it.
The increase in his Fa Li during this training session, which lasted only for two hours, was far greater than the increase in Fa Li he would have received from training an entire day.
It was surprising how much Spirit rice could help in his training.
No wonder Li Zong said that the chore of farming might bring surprising benefits.
If Liu Ming could eat this Spirit Rice several times a day, his training speed would grow at an exponential pace.
However, after this thought circled several rounds around Liu Ming’s mind, he immediately shook his head and rejected it.
In addition to the probable rareness of the Spirit, rice which meant that normal disciples could not expect it from the Sect, the feeling of fullness from his stomach right now was a few times stronger than the Pills of Fastening. Even if there was enough Spirit rice supplying him, one person could only eat it once every six or seven days.
If that was so, the speed of one’s training could only be increased by twelve to fifteen percent.
Compared to the results when he used his innate talent of doing two things at once, this kind of increase was far from useful.
After having such thoughts, the excitement in Liu Ming’s heart had calmed without him noticing.
When Liu Ming finished packing the Spirit rice that was left, he went back to his room and sat down cross-legged.
In the month before, Liu Ming had used the Dark Bone Method to convert all the Yuan Li in his body into Fa Li and thus, his training was quite quick.
Now that the Yuan Li inside Liu Ming’s body had been completely converted; if Liu Ming wanted to continue to increasing his Fa Li, he could only depend on his own training.
Liu Ming knew from the two books of Cultivating Experiences that higher level Cultivation Methods would also have higher mental energy consumption rates which forced one to put aside a lot of time for mental energy recovery.
Of course, generally as one improves his or her strength, his or her mental strength would also slowly build up.
So when the new disciples and the Middle to Late Spirit Apostle disciples were both training on the same Cultivation Method or technique, the Middle to Late Spirit Apostle disciples had obvious higher training speeds than the new disciples.
As for the Cultivation Methods such as the Earth Spirit Method, normal new disciples would have no choice but to rest for ten to twelve hours after training for the same amount of time before being able to train again.
But when Liu Ming was using his multi-tasking talent to train on the Dark Bone Method, he did not need to care about this at all; a day’s sleep was what he needed to train with full energy for a continuous five to six days.
The amount of time Liu Ming spent training was almost twice as much as the other disciples training time.
Also, from the two books of Cultivation Experiences, Liu Ming learned that he could not compare to the Six or Nine Spiritual Pulse disciples in his training speed.
Spending two hours on his training, Liu Ming’s Three Spiritual Pulse would yield a result that was half of the result that a Six Spiritual Pulse disciple would achieve during two hour and only one-third of the result of a Nine Spiritual Pulse.
Because of this, even though the time Liu Ming spent on his training was far longer than the other disciples, the actual increase in his Fa Li and his training speed was equal to a Six Spiritual Pulse disciple.
It was no wonder that the Spirit Masters were only interested in the Six Spiritual Pulse disciples and did not even care about the Three Spiritual Pulse disciples.
If Liu Ming was the leader of one of the factions, he would also focus his resources on the Six Spiritual Pulse disciples since the difference between the training results of high pulsed disciples and low pulsed disciples was frightening.
From this, Liu Ming could only imagine how incredibly fast Gao Chong would be improving once he started to train with his Earth Spirit Pulse.
With twelve spiritual pulses in his body, Gao Chong’s training speed would be four times faster than the normal Three Spiritual Pulse disciples.
Even with Liu Ming’s talent of doing two things at once, his training speed was only about half of the of Gao Chong’s training speed.
As for some elemental spiritual pulses such as the Thunder Spiritual Pulse and Wind Spiritual Pulse, they would not have a great effect during training but when the owner casts techniques or spells that were of the same element as his or her Spiritual Pulse, the spells would have extremely increased power. Thus, they could also be noticed by the sect and given more resources than normal disciples.
Besides Spiritual Pulses, some cultivators had innate talents and abilities from their bloodline or some congenital occurrence…
Some of these talents and abilities could increase one’s training speed, some could allow the owner to train Secret Techniques and Cultivation Methods that normal people could not and some would even have strange effects.
These abilities and talents had not been clearly tallied by the training world and those with such abilities were said to have ‘Spirit Bodies’
Compared to the Nine Spiritual Pulse and Elemental Pulse, the appearance of a Spirit Body disciple was far more unusual.
However, not all the Spirit Bodies were useful to their owner. Rather, most of the known kinds of Spirit Bodies were all unimportant useless abilities.
Along these lines, Liu Ming’s talent of doing two things at once could also be classified as one of the Spirit Bodies.
However, his ability differed from the normal Spirit Bodies. Other Spirit Bodies were innate, Spirit Bodies that were with them since they were born, while on the other hand his multi-tasking talent was an acquired ability which appeared after an accident.
Whether these two were related or not, Liu Ming himself also could not tell.
As Liu Ming thought of these things in his room, he began to feel morose in his heart. However, he was also much more determined and had a lot more perseverance than other people. Very quickly he calmed the thoughts that were bothering him, and using the Dark Bone Method he began to train.
…..
Half a year passed by in a blink of an eye!
During this time, besides going out to do the Sect Chores and going to the Spirit Spell Pavilion to borrow some useful spells, Liu Ming had never went out of his dwelling one step.
He just used his whole heart to train on the Dark Bone Method, boosting his Fa Li with incredible speed.
Today when Liu Ming was training, his body suddenly shivered, the sound of metal hitting metal came from within his body. Then, he opened his mouth and released thick black gas. The thick black gas transformed into dark gusts of wind and trapping his body.
Inside the gusts of wind, there were several faint, black tentacles fluttering, but in a blink of an eye they completely disappeared.
A clear sound of incantation came from inside the winds, and after a low groan the gusts of wind stopped, showing Liu Ming’s standing shadow again.
“This first level of Dark Bone Method is finally completed. Heh heh, one year? For me, half a year is enough!” Said Liu Ming, a strand of laughter emerging on his face as he raised his arms and saw strands of dark gas winding between his fingers.
Suddenly when Liu Ming raised his hand, and the Tiger Bite Bracelet on his wrist glimmered before him, he pointed towards a wall that was not far away.
With a ‘pu’ sound, a black gust of wind shot out from the braclet, making a small hole in the wall.
Seeing this, Liu Ming’s heart jumped with joy.
This kind of strength could completely prove that he and the highest level of practitioners were at the same level. It looked like Liu Ming had really entered the Beginner stage of a Spiritual Apostle.
Because of this, Liu Ming could finally start training in the “Soul-shackling Chains” technique that he had.
At this time, there was bell’s sound of ‘dang dang’ coming from outside of his dwelling.
Liu Ming was shocked. He went out hastily and looked towards the mountain top.
The bell sounds came from the peak of the Nine Infant Mountain and each sound was louder than the previous one, until the bell had rung nine times.
“Nine-rings? Could it be that today is Nine Infant Mountain’s day of the Small Competition!” Liu Ming said with a surprised look on his face after listening to the bell sounds.
At this time, grey-colored clouds came from foot of the mountain and flew towards the mountain top.
Looking at the situation, Liu Ming hesitated for a while before making some hand signs and casting the Soaring Sky Technique to form a grey-colored cloud at his feet to help him ascended the mountain.
Soon after, seventy to eighty disciples gathered around the field on Nine Infant Mountain peak, and they were all looking at the three people at the center with serious expressions.