Chapter 10: The Missing Neighbor, Flaming Palm Breakthrough!
Chapter 10: Chapter 10: The Missing Neighbor, Flaming Palm Breakthrough!
With Wang Lixia as an escort, the entire trip to the marketplace had been incredibly smooth.
Even when they encountered danger, it was easily resolved by her reckless, life-risking tactics.
The two returned to Wang Lixia’s Spirit Field. After thanking her and saying his goodbyes, Chen Mo headed back to his own plot of land. However, before he could even warm his seat, his neighbor from the south immediately came knocking.
Yin Zheng had practically been guarding the edge of the fields waiting for them.
His purpose for coming was crystal clear: to ask if they had run into any highwaymen or danger on their way to the marketplace.
Chen Mo’s reply was equally straightforward. Uttering a simple "No," he immediately turned around and went back inside his house.
Having received a satisfactory answer, Yin Zheng instantly breathed a sigh of relief, a joyful smile blooming on his face. He was so excited that he didn’t even say "thank you" before leaving.
He wondered, "He asked if there was any danger on the way there, and there really wasn’t. He didn’t ask about the way back..."
Chen Mo muttered in his heart. He didn’t have a single ounce of goodwill toward a guy who gossiped behind people’s backs.
Seeing the other party gone, Chen Mo didn’t sit idle.
He walked straight to his cultivation spot in the center of the Spirit Field. In the freshly harvested field, a few scattered rice stalks still stood, rustling as a gust of wind blew past.
Sitting cross-legged, Chen Mo carefully took out a tael of Spiritual Sand from his robes.
This kind of crushed debris, which couldn’t even be considered Spirit Stones, only amounted to a handful for a single tael. But even so, the Spiritual Qi it contained was hundreds of times richer than the Spiritual Qi dissipating in the world!
In the Cultivation Immortal Realm, what one cultivated was resources.
No matter how low your Talent was, as long as you possessed endless resources, reaching Core Formation was entirely possible!
Holding the Spiritual Sand, it shimmered with a crystalline luster under the sunlight.
Chen Mo clenched his right hand into a fist and began to circulate the Qi Cultivation Technique within his body. Gradually, the Spiritual Qi within the Spiritual Sand began to flow into him.
After about three or four hours, the sky gradually darkened.
Chen Mo’s Qi Cultivation Technique had run through several Grand Circulations.
He opened his hand; the Spiritual Sand barely looked diminished and was just as dazzlingly bright.
As for how much experience he had accumulated in a single day, it was still unknown.
Over the next few days, Chen Mo concentrated entirely on cultivating the Qi Cultivation Technique. Although this Cultivation Technique was a dime a dozen, simplified from other techniques, and practiced by almost every Spirit Plant Cultivator, it was said there was still a chance to cultivate it up to Foundation Establishment.
Before acquiring any other Cultivation Technique, it was all he could cultivate.
The days of meditating and cultivating flew by. One day, Yin Zheng from the south finally mustered his courage and set off for the marketplace, pushing his cart carrying less than a hundred catties of grain.
And once he left, Chen Mo never saw him return...
On the fifth day, the system panel, which had been as still as an ancient well, finally flickered.
[Qi Cultivation Technique +1]
At the same time, the Spiritual Sand clenched in Chen Mo’s palm was nearly reduced by half.
Another five days passed, and when the first tael of Spiritual Sand was completely depleted, the Qi Cultivation Technique finally gained another point!
He wondered, "Can one tael of Spiritual Sand provide 2 experience points?"
The reason he had done nothing but focus on cultivating the Qi Cultivation Technique for these ten days was to gauge his cultivation progress.
If this was the case, twenty taels of Spiritual Sand would provide 40 experience points for the Qi Cultivation Technique.
If all went well, he could break through to the Qi Refining Second Layer in just a year!
Chen Mo knew that although this cultivation speed was quite slow, it was incredibly stable. As long as he had Spiritual Sand and Spirit Stones, he could continuously gain experience and break through, without worrying about bottlenecks or similar issues.
Since he had already tested the amount of experience the Spiritual Sand could provide, Chen Mo no longer focused solely on this one technique.
Moving forward, he meditated and cultivated during the day, and practiced the Flaming Palm inside his house at night.
However, every time he practiced the Flaming Palm, Chen Mo didn’t dare to cultivate until his Spiritual Qi was completely drained. Instead, he only performed it twice a day, ensuring his experience increased without severely delaying his cultivation the following day.
With the addition of his Flaming Palm practice, his already slow progress decelerated even further.
He still consumed one tael of Spiritual Sand every ten days, but it wasn’t until the twelfth day that his Qi Cultivation Technique experience increased by 2 points.
Still, Chen Mo knew it was all worth it!
Time flew by.
The climate at the foot of Purple Cloud Peak shifted from biting, bone-chilling winds to the brisk chill of early spring.
Yin Zheng, the Spirit Plant Cultivator from the neighboring field, still hadn’t returned.
Fortunately, there were no Spirit Rice Seedlings in the field, so it wasn’t a major issue that no one was tending to it. However, in a month at most, seeds would need to be sown. Otherwise, once the planting season was missed, the plot of land would be left barren.
One day, Chen Mo took a long stroll around his neighbor’s Spirit Field.
After observing and comparing it repeatedly, a thought surfaced in his mind.
He wondered, "Should I take over these two acres of Spirit Fields as well?"
However, if he did that, once the seeds were sown, managing ten acres of Spirit Fields with his natural recovery speed of ninety percent of his Spiritual Qi every three days would mean he had to rely on Spiritual Sand to recover!
And before the Spiritual Sand was depleted, he had to achieve his second breakthrough in the Rainfall Technique!
After performing some simple mental calculations, Chen Mo reached a conclusion: he could make this work!
For a Cultivator, enduring loneliness was a mandatory lesson.
Wang Lixia would occasionally step out of her wooden cabin and gaze into the distance.
As she watched Chen Mo meditating and cultivating in the field day after day, a ripple formed in her heart.
Once upon a time, she had been just like him.
She had been devoted to cultivation, hoping that one day her accumulated efforts would yield great results, allowing her to successfully reach Foundation Establishment in her lifetime and walk the path of a true Cultivator.
But a plague of insects had completely shattered her dreams.
Starting from that year, she had run herself ragged, spending the Spirit Rice harvests of many subsequent years just paying off the debt from that single disaster!
From then on, lacking resources, her Realm remained stagnant.
Eventually, as she grew older day by day, she lost all hope of ever breaking through to the Qi Refining Fourth Layer...
"It’s so good to be young," Wang Lixia murmured. A mournful look appeared on her aged face as she turned and walked back to her room.
Finishing a strike of the Flaming Palm, Chen Mo wrapped up his practice.
Along with the prompt [Flaming Palm +1] that suddenly popped up before his eyes, he immediately stopped.
He opened the system panel. The Flaming Palm, which previously only had 20 experience points, had successfully broken through from the entry-level and entered the Proficient Realm!
He was overjoyed. Although this panel couldn’t automatically allocate points, every step of his cultivation gave him positive feedback, ensuring that as long as he put in the effort, there would inevitably be a reward.
This was more than enough!
WHOOSH!
In the next second, raging flames ignited on Chen Mo’s hands.
The intensity of the fire was more than ten times stronger than when it was at the entry-level!
Although he couldn’t project this palm strike outward like Wang Lixia, if it hit someone at the Qi Refining First Layer like himself, they would probably lose half their life, if not die outright.
"Ceaseless daily practice, bitter cultivation all day long! This is the reward!"
Chen Mo was incredibly happy. With the increase in his strength, his ability to protect himself had grown substantially.
On this day, there were still twenty-two days left until the agreed date to buy seeds from Mr. Wei, and twenty-five to thirty days until the spring plowing and sowing.
However, Chen Mo didn’t wait any longer. Instead, he arrived at Wang Lixia’s door once again.
He wanted her to accompany him on another trip to the Ancient Dust Marketplace!