Chapter 20: Formation Mastery
Chapter 20: Formation Mastery
Mo Hua returned and practiced drawing the array patterns as Yan Jiaoxiu had instructed. Just as he said, Mo Hua felt a sudden enlightenment.
That night, as he slept and practiced on the stele, his comprehension improved significantly.
For the parts he didn't understand, he drew them a few more times and gradually grasped the intricacies.
As long as he had a solid grasp of the basic array patterns, learning the variant patterns wasn't overly difficult. The challenging part was not having guidance, which prevented Mo Hua from thinking in the right direction, leaving him clueless.
Mo Hua spent another day familiarizing himself with the patterns. On the evening of the third day, after class, he began to attempt to draw the Solid Earth Array formally.
His first attempts were bumpy, but after some stumbling, he finally managed to draw it, albeit with a longer-than-expected time.
It took Mo Hua an hour and a half to draw the Solid Earth Array with its four array patterns. After completing it, he needed to rest for an hour due to excessive spiritual consciousness consumption.
By the time Mo Hua finished drawing the Solid Earth Array, it was midnight.
He checked it over and, as expected, found mistakes in his work.
Mo Hua sighed.
He had only drawn one array in the entire evening, and it was incorrect.
With only five days left to complete ten arrays, time was tight.
"What should I do now?" Mo Hua thought, ultimately deciding to skip some of his cultivation classes.
Of course, he couldn't skip the classes on cultivation history and common sense, as they broadened his horizons and provided valuable cultivation experience.
He selectively skipped some lessons on pill refining and talisman making, as they required spending spirit stones on medicinal ingredients, talisman papers, and jade stones, as well as renting the sect's pill furnaces, which made the costs of learning these skills prohibitive.
Anyway, in these areas of cultivation that required huge amounts of spirit stones, he knew he wouldn't have much of a future.
After that, he could skip all the body tempering classes.
Cultivators refined their spiritual energy through cultivation techniques and manipulated it for attacks using Taoist methods.
Taoist methods were divided into two categories: spells and martial arts.
Spells manipulated spiritual energy through spiritual consciousness, condensing it into spells for attacks, while martial arts harnessed spiritual energy to unlock the body's potential, enhancing physical combat abilities.
Those who cultivated spells were called Spirit Cultivators, and those who cultivated martial arts were called Body Cultivators.
There were fewer Spirit Cultivators and more Body Cultivators in the Qi Refining stage, especially in Tongxian City, where most cultivators made a living by hunting demons. Spirit Cultivators tended to be physically weak and unsuited for demon hunting, so most freelance cultivators chose the path of body cultivation.
For this reason, the Tongxian Sect specifically offered a body tempering course to allow their disciples to strengthen their physical bodies in advance.
However, Mo Hua was destined to be unable to temper his body.
He hadn't inherited his father, Mo Shan's, natural talent for body tempering. Instead, he took after his mother, Liu Ruhua, who was frail since childhood and even more so than her.
According to Master Feng, the pill concoctor of Xinglintang, cultivators were born with a balance between their spiritual consciousness and physical bodies, following the laws of heaven.
Mo Hua, with the memories of two lifetimes, had an inherently strong spiritual consciousness, which disrupted this balance, causing his spiritual consciousness to overpower his physical body. As a result, he was born frail and susceptible to illnesses.
While his peers could easily lift a hundred-kilogram stone cauldron, Mo Hua couldn't budge it even with all his might. Most cultivators his age were also taller than him by a head and more robust in build.
Although Mo Hua was slender and weak, he had a delicate appearance, a gentle temperament, red lips, and white teeth, resembling a porcelain doll when he was ten years old.
This appearance wasn't bad, but Mo Hua still felt that a man should be more robust and majestic.
For example, his father, who was tall and handsome, exuded a formidable aura.
Mo Hua's dream of himself was to wear a white robe, cultivate an unparalleled cultivation technique, wield a spear with dragon-like prowess, stand alone against thousands, and be undefeatable.
Mo Hua remembered that after falling asleep, his spiritual consciousness would automatically enter his sea of consciousness, and he wouldn't be able to dream...
The instructor who taught his brother disciples how to refine their bodies originally wanted to be strict with Mo Hua as well. However, after Mo Hua pushed the stone cauldron a few times without budging it and ended up twisting his arm, the instructor became much more lenient with him.
Such was the way of cultivation; sometimes, no amount of effort could solve a problem.
The instructor was very understanding of Mo Hua's situation.
When heaven closes a door, it may be guiding you to another path, rather than wanting you to stubbornly force your way through.
So, Mo Hua selectively skipped those classes, using the extra time to lock himself in his room and focus on drawing the Solid Earth Array.
On the bi-monthly break five days later, Mo Hua finally used up all ten sets of materials, successfully completing six arrays.
Not only did he not lose money, but he also made a profit of four spirit stones, which Mo Hua was quite satisfied with.
Taking advantage of the one-day break, Mo Hua went to Youyuan Hall on Beidajie Street and handed the completed Solid Earth Arrays to the plump manager.
The manager took a look and said to Mo Hua, "Your brother's foundation in array techniques is really quite lacking, but he learns fast. With each of these arrays, you can visibly see the improvement from the last. It's just that..."
The manager then picked up the first array and began to criticize, "This array looks like it was drawn by a beginner, and some of the basic array patterns are messy and uneven..."
Mo Hua had gotten used to the manager's complaints, letting them go in one ear and out the other.
Moreover, the manager was talking about his brother, which had nothing to do with him. He didn't even have a brother.
Mo Hua cut straight to the point, "Can I exchange them for spirit stones?"
The manager glared at Mo Hua but still counted out four spirit stones for him, "Tell your brother to do better next time."
"Mmhmm," Mo Hua nodded repeatedly as he took the spirit stones.
He spent these four spirit stones on pastries, eating two himself and leaving two for later, while the rest were shared with Dahuhu and the others.
The three of them were deeply touched by the abundance of pastries, and they asked Mo Hua if he wanted to eat meat again. They had noticed that the elders were also raising a colorful duck that looked very fat.
Mo Hua had a slight headache and told them not to steal anymore, or else the sect would notify their parents, and they would surely be beaten by their fathers and mothers when they returned home.
Only then did the three of them reluctantly give up their thoughts of stealing.
After that, Mo Hua continued to draw the Solid Earth Array for another two months.
With practice, his understanding and mastery of the array deepened.
Previously, drawing a Solid Earth Array, including breaks to restore his spiritual consciousness, would take about three hours. Now, he only needed an hour and a half.
This was because he had become more skilled with practice, and the more profound his understanding and grasp of the array patterns became, the less time it took to draw them. Secondly, by constantly practicing the array day and night and continuously consuming, recovering, and utilizing his spiritual consciousness, he unknowingly trained his spiritual consciousness, making it much stronger than before.
The benefits of a strong spiritual consciousness for drawing arrays were very obvious.
The success rate of the Solid Earth Array had reached eight to nine out of ten, and occasionally, he could even successfully draw all ten. Each array could earn him two spirit stones, and in the past two months, after deducting the cost of his daily expenses, Mo Hua had earned a full one hundred spirit stones.
Mo Hua planned to save up for two hundred spirit stones and then go to the sect to choose a high-quality lower-level cultivation technique.
He would make the selection first and then tell his parents, otherwise, they would definitely say that they would provide the spirit stones, and Mo Hua could keep his for cultivation or for finding a Daoist partner and buying a cave residence in the future.
(End of Chapter)
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