Chapter 6: Five Elements Skill

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

"Yan Bingxuan's family must have an expert who knows that her spirit root can be transformed into an ice spirit root through the Condensing Frost method. That's why she started cultivating in this direction from the beginning."

"The lower one's cultivation realm, the less time and resources are required for spirit root purification and enhancement."

"Despite her young age, she is already in the late Qi Condensation stage. Conservatively, she could attempt Foundation Establishment three times. That's why she started trying to transform her spirit root into an ice spirit root before reaching the peak of Qi Condensation."

"Once successful, she could gain admission to the Academy of Nature, one of the ten great academies, without an examination. If she progresses further, it's not impossible for her to pass the assessments of the Four Great Daoist Academies and achieve immediate success."

The Four Great Daoist Academies were founded by the five Deified Ancestors who established the Immortal Sect. Every graduating cultivator is destined to become a high-ranking member of the Immortal Sect in the future. For thousands of years, over 80% of students from the Four Great Daoist Academies have successfully achieved Foundation Establishment. For Danxia City, a blessed land on the periphery of the Immortal Sect, the last person to pass the Four Great Daoist Academies' examination was True Person Yu Tianguang, the Red-Robed Cultivator, a hundred years ago. He has now successfully formed his Gold Core.

After leaving Old Man Ding's office, Chen Mobai waited for over ten minutes, becoming part of the second group to enter the cultivation rooms. He set up his phone and activated the assisted cultivation recording mode. Then, he entered a meditative state, once again circulating the Qi Nourishing Art to refine the spiritual power gained from consuming pills, making it his own.

Time flowed slowly, and the Soul Soothing Incantation, as always, woke Chen Mobai. He walked out of the cultivation room door. Outside, only a dozen or so "unlucky ones" from the third group remained. He looked around and spotted his deskmate, Lu Hongsheng, and a few classmates he usually got along with. After exchanging greetings, they each headed home.

Normally, these good friends would drink spirit tea together and play small games to practice spellcasting after school. However, after entering their third year of high school, all these recreational activities had been canceled. The intense pressure of college entrance exams had even spurred his usually lazy deskmate, Lu Hongsheng—who had inferior spirit roots—to start working hard.

Before heading home, Chen Mobai bought a box of glass beads for practicing spiritual energy circulation from a convenience store by the roadside. After arriving home, while waiting for his meal to cook, he cut some small talismans. He then logged onto an online trading platform and found only one cultivator from the same city had placed a bid.

18 Merit Points.

It was a bit low, but normally Chen Mobai would have agreed to the trade. After all, his products were from a small personal workshop and naturally cheaper than those from regular stores. However, since he planned to explore the water mansion teleported by the turtle 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 picked up the turtle shell and examined it carefully. But just like last night, it was merely an ordinary old turtle shell, covered in smoke and burn marks, without the slightest hint of spiritual energy. Had it not been for yesterday's miraculous journey, Chen Mobai would never have believed that this object was actually a spatial artifact.

He placed the turtle shell in the nightstand drawer, then took out his phone and tapped on the app named "Guibao." After a night of exploration, he had gained some understanding of this Guibao app.

It had three functions. "Return to City" meant returning to his current location. As for whether "City" referred to his room or the location of the turtle shell itself, that remained to be verified. The "Teleport" function, closely related to "Return to City," was, in Chen Mobai's understanding, the culprit that had sent him to that mysterious water mansion yesterday. Only the last function, "Proxy," was still a mystery.

Clearly, the three functions couldn't be used without limit. His finger would only register a tap when the virtual interactive buttons for these functions popped up within the app. Currently, only "Teleport" was lit up. Last night, Chen Mobai waited until 3 AM, discovered this, and used the "Teleport" function once more to go to the water mansion. Although he still found nothing, cultivating in a Grade Two spiritual energy location for a night had worn away 50-60% of the side effects from consuming the pills.

Chen Mobai estimated that if he cultivated in seclusion in the water mansion for another two or three days, he could almost eliminate the hidden dangers of his pill-assisted breakthrough and resume cultivating the Five Elements Art to further enhance his Qi Condensation realm. It was precisely for this reason that Chen Mobai gathered his courage, wanting to go to the water mansion again and even attempting to decipher the restrictions in the back hall.

This was a Grade Two mid-grade spiritual land. In the Immortal Sect, renting spiritual energy of this caliber from an earth vein would cost 160 Merit Points per month. To put it into perspective, every day Chen Mobai cultivated in the water mansion was equivalent to getting 5.33 Merit Points for free. It was pitiful considering he painstakingly cut talismans for a month just to earn twenty or thirty Merit Points. Thinking this way, it was no wonder Chen Mobai didn't think much of his small online workshop business.

"Based on the travel times for my two round trips yesterday, the 'Teleport' cooldown should be 6 hours, while 'Return to City' is longer, requiring 10 hours. The cooldown period starts from the last use..." Chen Mobai silently calculated the timestamps of his two experiences from last night and reached a preliminary conclusion.

Half an hour later, exactly 10 hours had passed since he teleported back that morning, and the "Return to City" button popped up and lit up in his view. This way, if he went and found the situation unfavorable, he could return immediately.

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 Guibao app on his phone.

"Do you wish to select Teleport Location 1 (unnamed)?"

Chen Mobai tapped "Yes."

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

He looked up. Faced with the familiar underwater environment, Chen Mobai suppressed the joy welling up from within. Although he didn't know where exactly he was, at least he now had a secret base with Grade Two mid-grade spiritual energy.

He took out the box of glass beads he had prepared earlier and poured spiritual energy into them. The originally transparent beads began to glow with vibrant, multi-colored light. 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 painstaking deliberation. Any cultivator who practiced it would automatically transform their spiritual energy into the attributes most suited to them, essentially providing a tailor-made Qi Condensation cultivation method that perfectly matched 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 generated when he cultivated the Five Elements Art would be 23% Metal, 27% Wood, and so on—perfectly aligned with his spirit root attributes.

Furthermore, these Five Elements spiritual energies circulated and mutually generated each other, which also promoted realm advancement during cultivation. This was the Immortal Sect's greatest reliance for enabling widespread cultivation on Diyuan Star, a land otherwise poor in resources.