After telling Ding Zhen, amid her envious gaze and sincere congratulations, Lin Donglai headed toward Lingxi Peak.
Lingxi Peak was where newly admitted outer disciples went to learn; as for collecting an outer disciple's stipend, one had to go to Gongde Peak.
The moment he ascended Lingxi Peak, he found the place bustling with activity. There were all kinds of buildings: the Lecture Hall, the Scripture Pavilion, cultivation rooms, the Pill Hall, the Spirit Flora Hall, the Talisman Hall, the Formation Hall, the Artifact Hall, and even a Miscellaneous Arts Hall.
Lin Donglai first went to the Scripture Pavilion. At the first layer of Qi Refining, one could receive an early Qi Refining cultivation method.
At the second layer of Qi Refining, one could receive a free spell.
The Scripture Pavilion was a branch of the inner sect's Scripture Repository, but it only held early Qi Refining cultivation methods and some basic spells, along with cultivation notes, pill recipes, artifact recipes, and other elementary recipes of the hundred arts of cultivation for apprentices to borrow.
Following Elder Qin's guidance, Lin Donglai planned to cultivate the Five Elements Qi-Gathering Art—after all, he himself needed the essence of the Five Elements to reclaim his inner-landscape blessed field.
The essence of the Five Elements could be extracted from Five Elements spiritual qi. Once extracted, the Five Elements spiritual qi turned into attribute-less spiritual qi, which could then be condensed through special methods into attribute-less spiritual liquid.
Still, Lin Donglai wanted to first ask whether the sect's most fundamental cultivation methods—those that could be cultivated further along the path—had any Qi Refining level versions that suited him better. Otherwise, if he reached Foundation Establishment in the future with no method to cultivate, that would be trouble.
Although the Earth Immortal inheritance was powerful, that inheritance mainly concerned nurturing blessed lands and cave heavens and incubating the Dao seed—the further along, the more powerful it became. For now, he still had to rely on the Green Wood Sect's cultivation methods.
The one guarding the Scripture Pavilion was an aged outer deacon who looked to be around forty, with only white hair at his temples. He was engrossed in a book titled *The Demonic Enchantress Fell in Love with Me*, occasionally letting out a lewd, snickering laugh—completely at odds with his attire and bearing.
When he finished snickering, he rolled over on his recliner and kept reading.
"Senior!" Lin Donglai respectfully presented his outer disciple token. "I've come to receive a cultivation method."
The deacon immediately pulled in his smile, glanced at the token, and said, "Go find it yourself on the second floor of the pavilion. Once you find it, copy it out yourself."
Lin Donglai didn't go in directly. Instead, he said earnestly, "May I trouble you, senior brother, to explain things a bit."
"There's nothing to explain," the deacon said, shaking his head. "There's a stone stele on the first floor. Just look at the stele—it's the catalog of cultivation methods."
Hearing this, Lin Donglai entered the pavilion without hesitation.
The deacon muttered after him, "Not even a single spirit stone as a tip, and he still wants me to explain things to him."
Upon entering, Lin Donglai indeed saw a tall stone stele, beneath which a dragon-turtle was carved.
The inscriptions on the stele, large and small, were all names of cultivation methods, each annotated with its characteristics.
*The Eternal Longevity Evergreen Art*—a Purple Mansion true art of water, wood, and earth attributes, excels at extending lifespan.
*The Streamside Gathering of Lost Waters Art*—a water-attribute Purple Mansion true art, excels at divination; requires mastery of fate-lore and astonishing comprehension.
*The Purple Dawn Greeting-the-True Life-Nurturing Art*—an attribute-less Purple Mansion true art; requires gathering the purple qi of morning dawn while facing the sun daily; the purple qi can assist in breaking through bottlenecks.
Below the three Purple Mansion methods were Foundation Establishment methods.
*The Golden Palaces of Sunlight Frontier-Suppression Art*—a metal, earth, and fire three-attribute method, excels at suppression.
*The Jade Tree of the Jasper Grove Art*—a water, wood, and earth three-attribute method, excels at countering spells.
Below the Foundation Establishment methods were the Qi Refining methods.
The Five Elements Qi-Gathering Method was actually ranked first!
*The Five Elements Qi-Gathering Method*—a Five Elements method, can be split or combined, excels at wondrous arts.
There was no need to look at the rest; none of them were really suitable.
Now Lin Donglai had a clear picture, so he went up to the second floor of the Scripture Pavilion.
An old man was dozing at the top of the stairs. Lin Donglai passed by him and walked inside.
Quite a few disciples in the pavilion were copying cultivation methods and spells.
After asking around briefly, Lin Donglai arrived at the bookshelf corresponding to the Five Elements Qi-Gathering Method.
Two entire rows of shelves, all filled with works on the Five Elements Qi-Gathering Art.
Lin Donglai had no choice but to pick up a book titled *The General Outline of the Five Elements* and open it.
The Five Elements Qi-Gathering Method, though merely a Qi Refining realm method, had an extraordinary origin—it was left behind by the ancient Primordial Five Elements Sect.
Strictly speaking, this Five Elements Qi-Gathering Method was the Qi Refining portion of the Golden Core method *The Primordial Unity Pill Scripture*.
It was ten Qi-Gathering Methods combined into one, divided into the Yang Five Elements and the Yin Five Elements.
Men entered through cultivating the Yang Five Elements; once the Yang Five Elements cycle was achieved, their foundation after Foundation Establishment would be a Yin Five Elements foundation.
Women entered through the Yin Five Elements, then completed the Yang Five Elements after Foundation Establishment.
Alternatively, one could take a Dao companion and cultivate jointly.
In the end, when Yin and Yang and the Five Elements fully merged, their mutual generation would yield the Purple Mansion.
Once the Five Elements were perfected and progress was no longer possible, one would circulate the method through the mutual conquest of the Five Elements, returning them to their innate state to form a Primordial Unity Golden Core.
However, the methods for Foundation Establishment via the Five Elements, Yin-Yang dual cultivation, and the generation-conquest transformation into Primordial Unity had all been lost.
Only the Five Elements Qi-Gathering Method remained, widely circulated.
Among its contents, the Yang Five Elements could be split into the Jiayin Life-Gathering Method, the Gengshen Metal-Gathering Method, the Bingwu Yang-Gathering Method, the Wuchen Earth-Gathering Method, and the Renzi Water-Gathering Method.
For instance, Lin Donglai had a lower-grade five spiritual roots with flourishing wood, plus an inferior Jiawood body, so he could primarily cultivate the Jiayin Qi-Gathering Method—facing east at the hour of Yin each day, gathering the living qi of Jiawood, and cultivating Jiayin true qi.
This true qi possessed the characteristics of Jiawood: it favored yang, favored earth, favored water, and disliked metal. After reaching the middle stage of Qi Refining, he could secondarily cultivate fire, earth, and water methods. Once the Jiawood grew sturdy—that is, after the late stage of Qi Refining—it would no longer dislike metal but instead favor metal's firmness, at which point he could add a metal-element method. In this way, the Five Elements would gradually balance and generate one another, ultimately converging back into flourishing wood.
For subsequent Foundation Establishment, he could switch to the Foundation Establishment portion of *The Eternal Longevity Evergreen Art* or *The Jade Tree of the Jasper Grove Art*—both extremely compatible.
If Lin Donglai wanted to copy a method for cultivation, for early Qi Refining he really only needed to copy the Jiayin Qi-Gathering Method portion.
On this second floor of the Lingxi Peak Scripture Pavilion, only the first three levels of methods were available, and supervision was not particularly strict. If one had a remarkable memory, one could force oneself to memorize a method, or, with spirit stones, simply buy a copy someone else had made.
Still, Lin Donglai went and looked at the Qi Refining portions of other methods—such as the Qi Refining portions of the several Purple Mansion methods.
The Qi Refining portion of *The Eternal Longevity Evergreen Art* was extremely strict: it required water, wood, and earth spiritual roots to cultivate, and ordinary people were prone to qi deviation, requiring a master's guidance.
After qi deviation, some would turn into the appearance of a child, some into the appearance of an old man; some men became women, some women became men—a serious problem.
*The Streamside Gathering of Lost Waters Art* required learning a great deal of fate-lore, feng shui knowledge, treasure appraisal, and understanding of current affairs and the state of the world—it was a straight-up deterrent for an ordinary outer disciple like Lin Donglai.
Only *The Purple Dawn Greeting-the-True Life-Nurturing Art* was extremely simple during Qi Refining: one merely needed to face the sun at sunrise each day and gather a wisp of purple qi, accumulating little by little.
Further on, it was even noted that the Hall of Merit perennially purchased morning-dawn purple qi.
This was a purely auxiliary method. The purple qi could help oneself break through bottlenecks, and naturally could also help others break through bottlenecks—and accumulated bit by bit, who could say one of the sect's Purple Mansion Supreme Elders wasn't waiting for purple qi to break through to the Golden Core?