Over the next twelve days Shen slowly advanced her cultivation back to where it was before. As the full purity chi inside her was painful to use, the previously damaged walls being limited in what they could handle, she had visited the Formation field the first night. It cost one stone per hour to use the field, but she paid for ten hours in advance and immediately started meditating. By sunrise she was using the formation at its maximum purity, so she stood and asked about the time. As she had been there for eleven and a half hours, she gave them an extra two stones and left without getting her change. She was running low on funds, but thankfully it didn’t cost anything to meet your basic needs in the sect.
She had spent the next day hauling carts while still at the Cleansing stage, as which stage she was in didn’t matter when using the Restrict ring, and by midnight she had maximized the size of her dantian’s Cleansing level. With the lowest level of her dantian now fully expanded she was able to advance to Gathering once again and have a 20% larger pool of chi to use to condition her dantian. By working at it until she had depleted her chi every night before sleeping she was able to quickly return to a perfectly conditioned dantian while only having been slightly weaker than normal for one full work period at the shop.
One thing that helped her return so quickly was the purity of her chi. Apparently, while most people would use neutral chi to condition the dantian, if one used elemental chi above five percent purity it worked just as well. And because her chi was over four times as pure as that, she got over sixteen times the effect, cutting a job that would take most people most of a year if not the whole year down to an eleven day task.
She had purchased the book that Sister Wuxan recommended and read through it. Apparently, all living beings had something called ‘genes’. As could be seen by the immortals who had complete control of their bodies even below the cellular level, there were 13 sets of them in humans, though the number varied in other lifeforms. When two people of the same race had a child, each would give one half of each set to their child. The genes of humans and spirit beasts didn’t mix, though. While a person that was half spirit beast, including dragons, was conceived, they would have the complete genes of the spirit beast parent but only half those of the human parent. The human genes wouldn’t be able to make a functional body, though, so the spirit beast genes would have to reveal themselves to make up for this. If they didn’t, the person would die before birth, which resulted in a lower birth rate but everyone being born having spirit beast traits. Every time such a hybrid had a child, they would pass on the full spirit beast gene set to their children, plus half the human genes they had.
If the other person had a spirit beast gene set as well, that would also be passed to the child, and both sets would partially express themselves to fill in the gaps in the hybrid’s genes. In Shen’s case, seven of her eight great grandparents were fully human, and one was half dragon, so she had 12 complete sets of human genes and an extra one which had to make up its missing pieces with a few dragon genes. If she were to have a child with a full human, there is a 50% chance that the child would have the dragon genes, but they would never express themselves, and a 50% chance that they would be like her, with only a small amount of dragon genes being expressed.
One interesting thing about this was the idea that one could cultivate a bloodline similar to how one could cultivate the body or chi, and make the bloodline express certain traits, overriding the normal human traits, like giving herself scales. This could be used to unlock all of the bloodline abilities or, at the extreme end, become a dragon. Shen knew that she would want to do this eventually, but for now she would remain human.
The morning after she finished conditioning her dantian she was considering advancing to Foundation as well. She had learned the healing techniques Mae had wanted her to learn, or at least the ones that seemed like they would be useful as a relic, and created blue rings for all of her friends with the best one she could use, a more advanced Wood technique which she also fed with Water chi. She had even made body cultivation rings for the boys and a Restrict ring for Ponma, as he needed to expand his reserves and Danka already got one from being a city guard.
She was sitting at the table with the others, trying to think of anything she might have missed before advancing when Ponma spoke up. “Hey, did you guys hear about the White Ice Spirit sect? Apparently, they were conquered by the demons and many of them fled to the north.”
“I’ve never heard of them.” said Shen. “How did you find this out?”
“Some of them showed up last night as refugees. Though I found out about them due to them being the largest customer for the Water Blossoms, as they study both Ice and Water chi techniques.”
“Aren’t they Spirit summoners?” asked Mae. “Surely they could fight off the demons using superior numbers.”
“They also have a Spirit Realm.” said Danka. “Even if they couldn’t beat them, they should have been able to hide in there.” If Shen remembered correctly, Spirit Realms were created by people that were at least in the Nascent Soul realm by gathering souls and fragments of souls and having them circle a region they wanted to protect. They could then set conditions of who they wanted to let enter it, and the area would be protected from the outside by the spirits, as those below Nascent Soul rarely had ways to fight spirits and those at or above that level could usually be overwhelmed with numbers.
“Apparently it only allowed those in the Gathering Realm and below to enter it. That means that only their outer disciples could hide, and those numbers were limited by the fact that the inside is constantly frozen, with only three hot springs available to keep people warm.” Ponma said, then took another sip of water. “That means that they are trapped inside while freezing, and it’s only a matter of time before the demons manage to break in. They would be dead already if the demons had any soldiers lower than Foundation, but for now its a good thing that they don’t.”
Ponma went on to explain that the White Ice Spirit Sect was only around 500 li south of here and the demons had apparently brought over ten thousand troops to conquer them. It was only a matter of time before they advanced this far north and attacked the Jade Dragon Sect.
That solidified Shen’s resolve. She had to advance as quickly as possible, and help the other Sect members do so as well. For that reason she quickly made four more rings when she got to the shop. The first cycled the chi through your body until all of the toxins were removed. The second searched for minor meridian branch points, using the Gathering phase method for greater effect, and grew a minor meridian if it found a branch point. The third cycled chi through your meridians, including the minor ones. The fourth conditioned the dantian by cycling chi through it as well. Now, along with the bracelet, which would keep your chi purity at the maximum level, one could use a ring to rapidly advance to the peak of Gathering. She considered making one for each level of shell that needed to be constructed, but as those were things that only needed to be done once, they would be better done as a talisman.
She talked to Master Chen about the new rings, but was harshly scolded by him for the first time since she began working here. The sect had been afraid of people being reliant on relics, which is what had gotten most of them banned in the first place. And now she wanted to make rings that would let them cultivate while learning nothing of their new abilities? That would only create worthless cultivators with no skill in chi manipulation or any other area, cultivators which would lead to the downfall of the sect.
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After an hour of scolding he took the rings from her and destroyed them, then sent her back to her bench to work on new relics. As they were out of armor, she returned to making bracelets. The new design functioned much like the Formation Fields. It gathered Neutral chi and purified a bit of it into whatever element one needed before feeding it to the wearer. One could even, with a bit of effort, change the purity of the chi it was feeding you so that you could adapt to more pure chi. When she had suggested the new design Master Chen had feared that it would stop people from learning how to purify the chi on their own. Shen, however, had written a pamphlet on how to learn as much as possible from a high-purity chi source, and they had them printed so that one could be given to the customer with the purchase of each bracelet, thus making the bracelet a piece of training equipment and therefore appeasing the Elder that reviewed it. With the latest set of rings, however, she couldn’t hide behind a technicality any more, and if they were released to the public they could have gotten the shop sanctioned by the sect, something that they couldn’t afford and which would hinder the development of the sect as a whole.
After making several green bracelets, which maxed out at 10.5% purity, the same as the Formation Fields, she started making blue ones which maxed out at 16% purity. She had created the prototype of that design as a way to pay back Mae, but had shown the new design to Master Chen, which had convinced him to allow her to make them. Some of the preliminary work, like the Neutral gathering formation and the purity adjustment slider, were done by Larl and Don, but Shen had to make the purification formations, as she was the only one here that understood chi at such a high purity.
There was also a white jade version available, but Shen had an additional step with those, as she couldn’t directly imbue 23% purity onto the chi. Instead, she had to build a formation which could take it directly from the 21% she could make to the higher purity, lowering the working speed of the bracelet, though it was still slightly faster than the one she wore. All three bracelets made the shop large amounts of money, which were being used to bring in more materials and to save up to expand and hire more employees, though none had applied yet. At this rate, Master Chen might have to travel to another city to find recruits, though the refugees might have some skill.
Timp and Lin were working on rings when they weren’t busy making enough flying swords to keep up with the demand. Even with the rate of people advancing to Inner Sect tripling since she created the formation fields, and therefore earning a storage ring and flying sword, they hadn’t needed to make that many to keep up with demand. After all, the free sword was medium grade with a Foundation realm effect, and therefore Master Chen was the only one that could make it. Once Shen advanced, however, she could learn that formation as well as the one for storage rings and start producing them for the sect.
Still, there was enough demand for the Restrict, Body Cultivation, and Recovery rings in both Cleansing and Gathering realm for them to stay busy. Shen ended up making blue Gathering realm versions of all of the rings, but only the Recovery ones had any real demand, as the green Body Cultivation ones could get you to the level of the guards, which people saw as good enough, and the blue Restrict rings were only needed by those above Foundation, which few people were.
Shen ended up making herself a blue bracelet that included Tendons, Bones, Skin, Brains, Nerves, and Gathering Recovery effects, leaving out the Muscles one because she was already more toned than looked good on a woman her age and she didn’t want to overdo it. The rest of the changes, though, would still help her, so she continued to wear the bracelet for the next twenty days until it no longer had any effect, at which point she let Mae borrow it.
Before handing the bracelet over, though, she spent one of her nights after working at Fisher advancing to Foundation Realm. This time she also had to construct a shell, but because she was aware of many more ways in which her cultivation could be effected, she had to shield against those with this shell as well. With all of the times she had lowered her cultivation and reconstructed the first shell, however, she was able to make one that was high quality using only 70% of the chi inside her dantian. One couldn’t wear a chi recovery bracelet while advancing because it could only fill the outermost level of the dantian, and would therefore constantly try to poke holes in the shell to fill the depleted level which was neither full nor completely sealed off. Once she was done, however, she was able to put the bracelet back on and guide the chi into the second layer so that it would also be full.
Three hours later it had been refilled and she could start working on the Foundation layer. She put on her Restrict ring and got up just before the sun rise to take a bath. She was starting to feel things outside her normal senses, or was able to use this new sense to extend the range of her senses, she wasn’t sure which. This was what was called ‘divine sense’ and, when fully developed, could allow you to see the ants in the soil from several li away. What she had now, however, would take a bit of getting used to. By the time she left her room the ability only allowed her feel Mae from a few heights away. She would need to develop this new sense the best she could if she wanted to make the most of her Foundation Realm, as it was the key to being able to sense inside herself with high precision, as well as being able to affect the world around her, and was what most Foundation level techniques relied on for targeting.
Ten minutes later she sat in the bath, slowly spreading her divine sense to the area around her. She was only able to extend it an arm’s length away at the moment, but this allowed her to feel everything within that distance of her. She felt something vaguely rod-shaped behind her and opened her eyes and turned around to see that a woman had just walked behind her. Apparently, what she sensed was a leg. She sat there for another hour before getting out of the water. She had extended her range to two arm lengths with the accuracy to detect objects about the width of her finger, but she knew that her progress would slow as she developed it. She was also getting a headache from how mentally taxing using the ability was, so she relaxed and stopped consciously controlling it.
She got dressed and went to the cafeteria to eat. Danka was the first person to notice her new level, as he was trained to stay alert to his surroundings, and soon all of her friends were congratulating her. She didn’t see it as that important, though. At the moment, she was no stronger than she was at peak Gathering other than her larger pool of chi, and was unable to properly use her divine sense. She would be sure to remedy that as quickly as possible.
After eating she went by the library, but because it was in the outer city it didn’t have any technique books beyond Gathering. After all, any sect member that could use techniques above that level would be able to go to the inner city library. She made a note to visit the library after work and left for the shop. Once there she told Master Chen what had happened and, after everyone congratulated her, he gave her a book with the basic Foundation formations she would need to learn.
The first one she learned was a defensive ability. While the actual technique would be listed on the next page, because the formations mimicked techniques she could learn the basics of a technique from the formations. This one took the woven chi fabric technique of the Gathering phase Barrier and put several of them together, weaving them together between layers so that it couldn’t be penetrated and so that the minor flaws didn’t leave gaps. While she wasn’t sure of the specifics, it could also block divine sense, thus allowing it to prevent most Foundation abilities from penetrating it. On the next page, however, she found the technique and, after a few minutes of practice, was able to fully understand how the effect worked.
Next was the improved flying sword. This one used the divine sense to control the sword anywhere within range, so one could easily control it from far away. It also improved the efficiency and performance of the sword, so that one could use less chi to travel at the same speed as a Gathering quality sword or could travel faster. Shen would have to practice more with her divine sense to make this one work properly, but just the technique was able to teach her more about the divine sense. It also required a greater understanding of the various types of kinesis it order to move the sword, but Shen had practiced those enough that it wouldn’t be a problem.
The third was an ability called ‘aura’ which let one wrap an element around the blade so that it did additional damage to enemies that it hit. The associated technique was dangerous to practice with some elements, but it coated the body of the user with a specific type of elemental chi, adding elemental damage to unarmed strikes and amplifying elemental powers of the same element while weakening powers of the canceled element. So, if she used this with Water chi, she would barely be able to use fire attacks and if she used the technique with Fire chi, assuming she had tempered her skin enough that it didn’t burn her, she would have a hard time using metal attacks.
While the last one seemed interesting, she knew the first two abilities would be the most common. After finishing the book she got one of the sets of backup armor Master Chen had purchased and, after verifying that she was allowed to use it, started adding the Foundation realm defenses to it. While she didn’t make any mistakes in her engravings, it took her three attempts to properly imbue the effect onto the armor, and even then it would protect less than her Gathering armor unless one was facing a Foundation realm attack.
She practiced the new Barrier technique, keeping it up during lunch to get used to the technique and, when she got back to the shop, even though she was tired, she cleared the imbued effect and added it again. This time the armor was a proper set of Early Foundation armor, though she could tell that, with these materials, it would be difficult to get the performance up to Middle Foundation levels.
