After coming out of the Spirit Plant Hall, Lin Donglai went down the mountain to look for the valleys around Immortal Sprout Peak, and sure enough, this year's immortal sprout disciples were already farming inside.
This spirit land was exactly lower-grade of the first order; the basic practice was to plant for one or two years, then leave it fallow for three or four years to let the land recover.
It was mainly meant for the immortal sprouts who had chosen the path of spirit plants to work with, so they could get a better start in the way of spirit cultivation.
Lin Donglai entered the valley, and relying on how strongly his spirit root dao seed yearned for the earth qi, he picked a wasteland plot overgrown with weeds but with fairly rich earth qi. He planted a sign to mark it as occupied, then headed back up to Immortal Sprout Peak.
For one thing, he needed to cultivate his technique as soon as possible; for another, he had to lend the two spirit stones he had just obtained to Ding Zhen.
After handing the two spirit stones to Ding Zhen, Ding Zhen looked deeply grateful: "Donglai, I've already borrowed two spirit stones from Zhong Xuan, so I've scraped together enough for the spirit meals."
Lin Donglai nodded, and while telling him about what he had seen at Spirit Rhinoceros Peak, led him to the mess hall kitchen to find Peng Yue.
Peng Yue was very pleased that Lin Donglai had so quickly introduced a disciple to him. Taking the spirit stones, he patted his chest: "Leave it to me. I won't let you two suffer a loss."
Though Ding Zhen winced at spending two spirit stones in one go, a thought suddenly struck him: "Steward Peng, I'm a lower-grade five spirit root, with flourishing fire among the five elements. Besides smelting ores and forging artifacts, could I also study the way of spirit cuisine?"
"Theoretically, yes. The way of the kitchen is about balancing yin, yang, and the five elements. But just like alchemy, it requires a great deal of spirit ingredients as experience—otherwise you'll only manage to make food that's edible. To become a spirit chef, you must master at least three spirit recipes... without several hundred spirit stones' worth of ingredients to practice with, I'm afraid it would be hard for you to even get started."
Hearing this, Lin Donglai promptly said: "I chose farming, you choose spirit cuisine. The things I grow—the vegetables and spirit grain at the very least—we can eat ourselves, and we can raise spirit chickens and spirit pigs ourselves too. We were country folk to begin with. As long as you're willing to learn, it definitely won't be hard."
"Heh." Peng Yue shook his head. "You can give it a try."
After placing the order for the spirit meals, the two did not linger. They encouraged Ding Zhen for a bit, then passed on one or two pointers on the essentials of the Muscle-Tendon and Marrow-Cleansing Stance and the Origin-Nurturing Breathing Technique.
At least in these two techniques, having benefited from the dao seed's refinement and guidance, Lin Donglai's attainments were quite considerable.
Following what Lin Donglai said, Ding Zhen indeed discovered quite a few problems of his own—for instance, the rhythm of his breathing's qi flow and the natural coordination of his stance movements were still awkward, not yet reaching the state of effortlessness, of things falling into place naturally.
"Donglai, your comprehension is so high!"
"All of this was taught in the school lectures. But you can't just memorize it—you have to put it into practice. Otherwise, knowing something is one thing, and actually being able to do it is another."
Ding Zhen knew these principles, yet found them hard to put into practice—he simply buried his head in hard work, making it difficult to verify and confirm what he knew.
After finishing the guidance, Lin Donglai returned to his own quarters, intending to cultivate the Five-Elements Qi-Gathering Art.
However, at the early stage of Qi Refining, one could only cultivate for one hour (shichen) per day, so Lin Donglai planned to follow the guidance and cultivate only the Jiayin Life-Gathering Art, which could only begin at the yin hour.
So at this stage, he merely refined the spiritual qi that the portion of the Jianmu dao seed's roots responsible for [drawing qi into the body] had automatically accumulated over the course of a day into spiritual power.
Sensing the spiritual qi accumulated in the qi vortex of his middle dantian—roughly seventeen or eighteen strands—Lin Donglai recalled the division of cultivation realms.
Spiritual qi was measured in strands. Absorbing and refining ten strands yielded one wisp of spiritual power.
For the dantian's spiritual power, one needed to accumulate one hundred twenty wisps to count as Qi Refining Layer Two.
Going from Qi Refining Layer Two to Layer Three required two hundred forty wisps.
From Qi Refining Layer Three to Layer Four there was a bottleneck; once broken through, one could accumulate to three hundred sixty wisps.
Lin Donglai thought to himself: "This spirit root dao seed automatically draws spiritual qi from the void into my body, saving me quite a lot of time. In less than a single day it has already accumulated this much spiritual qi—enough to refine into one and a half wisps of spiritual power. At this rate, even if I don't actively cultivate, in just three months I could reach Qi Refining Layer Two."
As for how long a lower-grade five spirit root would need to cultivate through the Qi Refining Realm, Lin Donglai hadn't asked around yet. When he did find out, he would break through along with the general crowd—he must not expose his fortuitous opportunity.
As for the spiritual qi accumulated at present, Lin Donglai planned to use it to nourish his spiritual marrow and generate more essence blood, and later refine that essence blood into fetal breath, in preparation for cultivating an inner landscape blessed field.
Lin Donglai's body was originally deficient in essence blood—he had lost seven times seven, forty-nine drops in one go earlier, and another nine drops after refining essence into qi.
For now he could only practice Origin-Nurturing Breathing until the yin hour, using spiritual qi to nourish his spiritual marrow. With this kind of regulation, as long as he didn't practice stance work, he need not fear consuming too much qi, blood, and essence. With normal meals, he would always recover, and could then slowly refine the fetal breath.
When the yin hour arrived, Lin Donglai sat cross-legged as the qi-gathering method described, five points facing heaven, chest out and head raised, anus lifted and abdomen drawn in, tongue touching the upper palate, exhaling through the mouth and inhaling through the nose, sensing the Jiayin vital qi of the east.
As for the part about visualizing a great tree, Lin Donglai simply fixed his inner vision on the sprout of green from the Jianmu dao seed that had just germinated.
Sure enough, faintly, there was a strand of spiritual qi brimming with vitality that felt naturally affinity with him. This spiritual qi was precisely the Jiayin vital qi of heaven and earth—of the wood element among the five elements, though not simply wood-attribute spiritual qi either. After all, wood spiritual qi was divided into jia wood and yi wood; this portion was jia wood spiritual qi alone, and moreover the part inclined toward vitality.
However, this time the dao seed did not grow new root hairs. Only the root representing [drawing qi into the body] absorbed this strand of Jiayin vital qi and began transforming the technique, while simultaneously transmitting a thought.
[Yearning for a blessed field]
The dao seed had already germinated, yet without a blessed field as its foundation, drawing from the void on its own like this seemed to lack some essential nutrient. Its current growth was what Lin Donglai had obtained through his earlier painstaking gathering of the vitality of grass and trees and absorption of earth qi.
That said, this spirit root dao seed had originally filtered out the spiritual qi of the other four elements—metal, earth, water, and fire—leaving only wood spiritual qi.
Now, following the Jiayin Life-Gathering Method, it collected jia wood vitality to match with the wood-element spiritual qi, which saved a great deal of effort in distinguishing types of spiritual qi.
"Wood-element essence qi?"
When the yin hour ended, the Jiayin Life-Gathering Art naturally stopped, reverting once more to the qi-drawing technique.
However, around him there was now a tiny bit more essence qi, bright green like jadeite—and this essence qi had been filtered out from the spiritual qi.
Although he had cultivated for only one hour, he seemed to still have energy to spare; it was just that once the hour had passed, it was difficult to gather any more Jiayin qi.
Lin Donglai made up his mind: "When the noon hour comes, I'll try the Bingwu Yang-Gathering Method."
He planned to follow the Five-Elements Qi-Gathering Art and cycle through a full round—wood generates fire, fire generates earth, earth generates metal, metal generates water, and water in turn generates wood.
The hours needed for cultivation this way would come to five.
Setting everything else aside, he would first gather enough of the five elements' essence qi. The dao seed was still small for now; Lin Donglai thought he would first create an inner landscape blessed field one inch square to try, get the roots anchored down first, and then slowly expand it later.