For the next seven or eight days, Lin Donglai continued chopping trees in the Danmu Forest on Tengshe Peak, earning two or three spirit stones each day.
However, Lin Donglai's strength had grown considerably. If he kept chopping trees like this, the rebounding force of the danmu wood could hardly feed back into the Marrow Cleansing Stake Method anymore. Moreover, with such intensive training and insufficient essence to burn, he was afraid he would end up as a skin-and-bones skeleton, so Lin Donglai exercised some restraint.
He maintained a pace of refining one bone's marrow per day and condensing two or three drops of essence blood, and even so, he still had to gorge himself madly on the free, unlimited bi-genmi rice and other spirit foods at the canteen just to make up the deficit.
As for the spirit stones he earned, Lin Donglai could not bear to spend them on spirit meals. He fed one to the Dao seed each day and saved the rest.
The verdant vitality of the vegetation gathered from felling danmu trees was plentiful, and abundant in yang energy, while the earth qi of Tengshe Peak was extremely rich. What the spirit-root Dao seed craved most these days was, surprisingly, water.
Ordinary water seemed to have little effect on the Dao seed. Lin Donglai planned to wait until the fifteenth of the month, then make another trip to the small market at the foot of the mountain to see if he could buy some spirit spring water to try, and also look for things that could nourish qi and blood.
It might be hard to believe, but Lin Donglai was now anemic. After transforming his marrow bones, the blood produced by spirit marrow was all essence blood, growing drop by drop, while much of his old blood had been expelled from his body as waste. The remaining marrow bones were also slowly being transformed.
One day, after chopping the danmu branches, Lin Donglai carried them over to Old Man Ma. Old Man Ma weighed them in his hands and found they came to a full five hundred and forty-odd catties. Slightly surprised, he immediately gave Lin Donglai four spirit stones, then advised him, "Kid, you've made great progress these past days, chopping dozens more catties of danmu branches daily. Your strength must be over a thousand catties. It seems you have some talent for body cultivation. But practicing without nourishing like this—you've already run a serious deficit."
"Spirit stones earned at the cost of your life are useless—you'll be dead before you can spend them. If you don't nourish yourself soon, your five organs, deprived of qi and blood, will begin to fail, and then you'll surely drop dead!"
Over these days, Lin Donglai had come to know Old Man Ma somewhat: a forty-year veteran of the outer sect, at the sixth layer of Qi Refining and the sixth layer of Body Refining, now an outer sect steward of Tengshe Peak, specifically in charge of this danmu forest.
"With the hundred-day assessment approaching, I've inevitably grown a bit anxious practicing the Marrow Cleansing Stake Method. Might Steward Ma have any guidance to offer?"
"You've gone down the wrong path—you've been spending your essence to increase strength and toughen your body. That's the body cultivator's path."
"Then again, without strength, you couldn't chop the danmu trees either."
"What you need to do now is use spirit stones to buy a spirit chicken, stew it with peiyuan ginseng, eat it all in one go, and digest it slowly."
"You needn't use the Muscle-Tendon Changing and Marrow Cleansing Stake Method. That stake method is actually a body-refining technique that can temper the muscles and bones to ten thousand catties of strength. With ten thousand catties of strength, one reaches the first layer of Body Refining."
"Generally speaking, after refining two or three marrow bones, you should begin finding ways to nourish the spirit marrow, stimulate it to produce essence blood, then refine essence into qi and cultivate embryonic breathing. Embryonic breathing draws spiritual qi into the body, serving as the seed of Qi Refining."
"Not burrowing your head into stake practice endlessly, thinking the more spirit marrow the better, without understanding the principle of 'three parts training, seven parts nourishing.' Your strength may seem to grow greater and greater, but inwardly you grow weaker and weaker. Deprived of sustenance, the spirit marrow will seize essence from your organs, and the deficit will grow ever larger."
"Why do you think the Peiyuan Breathing Technique and the Muscle-Tendon Changing and Marrow Cleansing Stake Method are issued together? Don't you know that without resources, two hours of breathing exercises and one hour of stake practice per day is the limit? You need dietary supplementation, rest, and sleep!"
Lin Donglai thought to himself, "So that's it—I've just been training too diligently!"
"Many thanks for your guidance, Steward Ma!"
"I wouldn't call it guidance," said Old Man Ma. "The overgrown branches on the danmu trees have mostly been cleared by now. We won't need hands for the next two months, so take this time to go back and recuperate properly. The spirit stones you've earned these days are enough to buy a spirit chicken and some peiyuan ginseng."
Old Man Ma no longer needed help, and Grandma Qian's crimson persimmons had finished their flowering period, so she needed no one to catch bugs either.
Lin Donglai simply stopped looking for work. In the future, once he reached the first layer of Qi Refining and went to Lingxi Peak to study the hundred arts of cultivation, he would choose the path of spirit plant cultivation and could still come to Tengshe Peak every day.
For now, it would be better to follow Old Man Ma's advice: buy a spirit chicken and some peiyuan ginseng and stew them. With his current count of essence blood, he had in fact already gathered forty-nine drops, enough to consecrate the Dao seed. But Lin Donglai feared that losing too much essence blood at once would leave his body too depleted, so buying a chicken first to replenish himself before consecration would spare him serious harm.
Besides, only by consecrating the Dao seed would the matter truly be settled—only then would this fortuity be entirely under his own control.
Back at Xianmiao Peak, Lin Donglai went to the canteen and found Peng Yue, the spirit chef steward, hoping he could help prepare a peiyuan ginseng stewed chicken—after all, his own cooking skills would hardly manage it.
Perhaps because Lin Donglai had declined the matchmaking with his daughter, Peng Yue's attitude toward him this time was quite cold: "Besides the ingredients, there's my fee as a spirit chef for making the dish—two spirit stones. Peiyuan ginseng is two spirit stones per root, and two roots are needed. A spirit chicken is eight spirit stones apiece. Fourteen spirit stones in total."
"Spirit chickens are that expensive?" Eight spirit stones was a month's stipend for a third-layer Qi Refining cultivator.
"Spirit chickens are raised from youth on a carefully proportioned diet of spirit medicines. Medicinal properties accumulate in their bodies, their spiritual qi is gentle, and they are generally supplied only to inner sect disciples to assist their late-stage Qi Refining cultivation. Naturally, they cost more."
"Demon beast meat, on the other hand, isn't as expensive—but its effects are poor, and its qi is rather violent, suitable only for body cultivators."
Lin Donglai was a bit dumbfounded—he didn't have twelve spirit stones on him at all. After all, the Dao seed was a heavy consumer of spirit stones; he fed it one a day, and these past few days it had already absorbed seven or eight stones' worth of spiritual qi. He had only ten spirit stones left.
Left with no choice, Lin Donglai borrowed two spirit stones from Ding Zhen to make up the difference. Once the Dao seed was consecrated, he would take on tasks again and earn spirit stones to repay her.
Seeing that Lin Donglai really did produce the spirit stones to eat such a spirit meal, Peng Yue gave a nod: "My daughter raises spirit pigs on Zhenling Peak. I have connections—you won't be cheated. As for peiyuan ginseng, it's among the supplies for cultivating immortal seedlings."
"My thanks then, Steward Peng, for looking after me."
"No need to thank me," Peng Yue said. "If you have matters like this in the future, just come find me. The rule is two spirit stones per spirit meal. This chicken soup needs to be slow-simmered over a gentle flame for a full day and night—come find me at this time tomorrow."
Returning to his courtyard from the canteen, Lin Donglai mused to himself, "Spirit chefs really do rake in the spirit stones—two stones just to make one dish. He's taken over the Xianmiao Courtyard canteen; who knows how much he's skimming. When I go to Lingxi Peak to study in the future, perhaps I could learn the way of spirit cuisine as well."
Thanks to Old Man Ma's advice, Lin Donglai no longer practiced the stake method, only guarding the origin and embracing the one, cultivating the Peiyuan Breathing Technique together with the spirit-root Dao seed. With each breath, he drew the primal qi of the void to fill himself.
This primal qi not only nourished his flesh, but also refreshed his spirit, expelling the turbid and taking in the new, from the inside out.
For a time, he actually sank into a state of dark, unfathomable stillness, of sitting in oblivion, self forgotten.
For a moment, Lin Donglai seemed to gaze inward.
He saw his five organs glowing, his skeleton visible and distinct—part of it still white bone, part faintly tinged with the color of jade. Qi flowed through his meridians.
In three places, things were clearly different from the rest, shimmering with iridescent light.
One was three inches below the navel—the Guanyuan acupoint, belonging to the lower dantian. One was at the center of the sternum—the Danzhong acupoint, belonging to the middle dantian. And one was at the center between the eyes, one inch within the brow, in a nameless void where no solid substance existed—the Niwan Palace, belonging to the upper dantian.
And within the Niwan Palace, a single Dao seed could be seen. Surrounding the Dao seed was a faint layer of space, like a shape of an egg.