Archfiend Chapter 78

Chapter 78: The Middle Stage of Qi Condensation (1)

"Master, according to what I know, the number of commissions accepted by Senior Jadewave is approximately several tens, Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment ones. However, under the premise the senior is interested, there is another, and that is a commission only it can solve. Moreover, no matter the cultivator, the senior won't covet the commission."

Xu Yangyi took Li Zongyuan's proffered Fasting Capsule: "This is the last?"

"Master… I'll find another way." 

Xu Yangyi nodded: "Wait one more month for me. In month, I will personally go to the Four Great Joint Pools." 

"Yes!"

He stood up and took a Cleansing Talismans to bathe his body, stepping into the the cultivation room without a second glance.

Such an old monster… He didn't believe for a second that the counterpart's strength was inadequate. It dared so fearlessly to accept decryption expense from all parties, abstaining from neither human nor demon. This wasn't it being reckless, but rather the other possessed such confidence! Even though it persevered for a millennia, content with its place, Xu Yangyi still had to make absolute preparations. 

Sitting before the pill furnace, he needed to wait for a month because… 

He, was on the verge of breaking through!

Back then, he ought to have broken through, yet an unknown person imperceptibly interrupted him. While a Qi Condensation cultivator wouldn't suffer damage to their foundation, the one breaking through would lose a portion of their qi.

Absent of Heavens Law's conditions, it took him more than half a year to refine this qi back once more. Following the growing proficiency of Wind Brandishes Traces, he could also feel simultaneously a kind of full swelling within his dantian become increasingly apparent!

The fire control art was an elementary arcane effort of the Eternal Alchemy Canon. Once it was mastered, the other arts no longer required as much time. Before the veil of solving the Emperor Armament, to gain another hidden ace was just a hidden ace. He didn't have to cultivate right away, but by peacefully sitting in this secret room, he could arrange his thoughts.

"Money is never saved, but rather spent…" He seemed to soliloquize to himself: "To open a water source, but control the flow, the open source forever before the throttle. Rather than skimp out and live frugally, it is better to put forth an imposing style in collaborating with others."

"No matter who it is. Be they demon, human, or cultivator. So long as the heart is unswerving, how are the comments of the world's peoples related to me?"

The world's peoples laugh at my madness, I laugh at them because they cannot see through. 

Carrying the trace of a smile, he shut his eyes, and his spiritual sense erupted with a rumble! After the passage of half a year of bitter refining, his spiritual sense like that of a tide seemed to be a myriad tentacles, wildly extending within the room!

Compared to half a year ago when he had begun training, it had expanded a tenth at the minimum! If this figure was spoken of, it would surely cause other cultivators to go mad! This was equivalent to a gratuitous qi absorption rate of over a tenth! 

Inside the cultivation room, his meticulous spiritual sense could almost be considered to appear like fine hairs. Sensing the fruit of his half a year of hard work, the solitary and loneliness scattered away like ash in an instant. All that remained was only the gratification of his strength rising to a higher level.

There was no delay whatsoever. He manipulated the entirety of his spiritual sense, and in the space of a twinkling, pulled all the surrounding air into the suddenly ignited flame beneath the furnace. Closing his eyes, he carefully manipulated each sliver of spiritual sense. He was rather moved because of the ancient cultivation alchemy technique. 

Not only had the mere Wind Brandishes Traces tempered the solidification rate of his spiritual sense, but it had even furthered the degree of attentiveness! He was very understanding of his own body. The progress of this half a year was even faster than two or three years at Heavens Law! If not, because of the one-time consumption of so much qi to breakthrough, it would've been impossible of him to refine it back in half a year. 

He learned how to exercise spiritual force with extreme precision, not using a bit less and by no means using a bit more. Furthermore, it tempered his hard-obtained meticulousness, ability to multitask, and his manipulation of spiritual sense to draw upon wind power. From the very beginning of the flame extinguishing in just a couple minutes, presently... 

He was already capable of persevering for five hours and fifty-five minutes!

He was only short five minutes from being considered at minor completion in the Eternal Alchemy Canon and entering the next phase. Alchemy hammered his spiritual sense in refinement, and spiritual sense was capable of deepening one's acuity towards the qi of heaven and earth, directly increasing the absorption rate of qi. Thus, it repaid oneself. In the past few days, he had secretly calculated it, and his current cultivation speed ought to have been approximately three-fold greater than some cultivators on the outside!

Of course, that wasn't to say he was capable at all. He was only at stage where he "could use" it, still far from being "able". Merely, this ability to employ it was representative that he could cultivate the next step!

Already, he was impatient to break through this final obstacle! At the same time, that swelled sensation within his qi sea reminded him, as well. Perhaps that step of treading into the Eternal Alchemy Canon's introduction was the instant he would assail the middle stage of Qi Condensation. 

Originally, he had already bought the materials, but the sole matter worthy of rejoice at the moment was that these materials weren't required for the time being. They could be stored and used later as soon as he reached great completion in the way of alchemy. This was also not considered a waste.

He just hadn't anticipated the fire control art would be so difficult to train. Time passed by day by day. More than twenty days had already went by.

"You feel anything?" On the twenty-first day, Zhang Gongchang, who was bored senseless scrolling a web page, suddenly furrowed his brows. He raised his head and asked Li Mu who was in the middle of playing with his cell phone.

Li Mu paused, set down his cell phone, and strained his senses. He said suspiciously: "The qi… has increased?"

"It's become strong." Wang Chunlai drank his boiled water and followed up: "It started yesterday."

"What's going on?" Zhang Gongchang placed his computer mouse down: "A location's qi density is constant. It gets weaker the bigger the city, and higher the closer to nature. This place is already considered decent, so how can it actually be THIS dense?"

"Not necessarily." Li Mu stopped playing on his cell phone and murmured: "If some heavenly treasure ripened in the vicinity, the qi density would also rise significantly. However, this would persist for nothing more than a few days."

The three of them were just chatting in their down time. They were unaware that within the cultivation room, there was a flame burning continuously for five hours and fifty-nine minutes!

Xu Yangyi didn't loosen up by a hair. A travelled distanced of ninety li was merely half of a hundred li journey. For the past ten straight days, he had fallen at this final minute. It seemed that even the surrounding air knew that this minute possessed a difference in quality in comparison to those other several hundred minutes.

Irregardless, the fire would die… He shuttered gaze slightly trembled, and he wordlessly pursed his lips. This, was the reason he had failed countless of times in the last minute. As if the six hours were a cycle, once six hours passed, all the follow-up techniques afterwards weren't the same.

"Ordinary methods can't be utilised to accomplish the final minute…" Xu Yangyi didn't have the least bit of a thought to skimp out on the minute. The Eternal Alchemy Canon had written it rather clearly; three two-hour periods were three two-hour periods. It was said skill training could never be done half-heartedly. 

However, the ten days of defeat weren't only just failure. In any defeat, there would be a kind by-product.

Experience.

"I've already experimented with over a dozen techniques, but none were capable of allowing the flame to continue burning." His gaze glanced over at the clock ahead. There was still five seconds. If there was no mishap, the alchemy flame would die out this time, as well.

Five seconds later, the flame before him faintly flashed; this was tell-tale sign of its extinguishment! He muttered for a brief moment. At this time… even in this second, there was no error. This time, he was planning to fearlessly fight it out.

"I don't believe that while I've went through all the techniques, this flame still won't burn!" His spiritual force completely withdrew, and the flame suddenly became unstable. Followingly, a milky-white qi wall, like a barrier, tightly enclosed the entire pill furnace.

Since the wind was inadequate, then he would just try without it.

He was already banking on another failed plan, yet at this instant, he unexpectedly discovered to his surprise that after the flame flickered twice, it actually stabilized once again! Furthermore, there wasn't any indication of it dying out! 

In his mind, a divine light seemed to flash through, and he abruptly opened his eyes, coming to a sudden realization of this minute and what he was lacking!

"Sizzle…" With a ripple of his mind, a single unsteadiness, the flame faded away in an instant. However, this time, Xu Yangyi didn't have a shred of a disappointed expression, instead his gaze burned.

"So it was like this…" He looked at the pill furnace in front of him complicatedly: "This, is the starting move—the cycling force—the process of restraint."

The revelation of a single thought connected a hundred. His thinking immediately diverged. If his guess was correct, there wasn't an issue with what he was doing before, merely, at that final step, a misconception had arised. He once also suspected that while all arcane efforts could be easily grasped, they were difficult to master. All excessively complicated arcane efforts had silently vanished in history's long river in their entireties. This was because they were in-adept at fitting into history's tide of development. They were unfavorable to spread extensively and research.

He was puzzled; how could the difficulty of this arcane effort by so high? By no means were his talents weak, yet unexpectedly in his study of more than a year, this first step was unable to be taken?

Like a living organism's history of development, any creature unsuited to the world's structure disappeared. For instance, dinosaurs. Creatures that survived were the ones that conformed even further with the world's structure, such as humanity.

This was natural selection. If an arcane effort caused all to fall back, especially in the situation of an alchemy technique filled with ancient cultivation, then it simply failed to be in accord with law of the world's development. Moreover, it was unsuited to be a scripture!

"After the ignition of the flame, the medicine placement follows. As for this process, spiritual sense is incapable of attending to both feats. I once read that ancient pill formulas have at least five to six kinds of heavenly treasures or at most over a hundred. In comparison to only relying on pure spiritual sense right now to control the furnace flame, the mutual pairing, the harmonization level, and greatness of the undertaking is like the light of a firefly beholden to a shining moon."

Perhaps ancient cultivators had special medicine placement and firestarter boys. However, a good arcane effort was in no way only focused on extraordinary appearance. Only one enjoyed by the common man and the intellectual alike can be called a scripture. The Harmony of The Trium was capable of becoming Daoism's scripture; this point absolutely cannot be underestimated…"

He sucked in deeply: "Thus, after five hours, or maybe five and a half, once five hours and fifty minutes go by, the furnace flame ought to be stabilized, and the phase of placing heavenly materials is to be prepared. This phase is like restraining force. Stabilization is vital, rather than the continuous drawing of wind power. I have to keep on putting on the pressure." 

"Before five-plus hours, it must be tested like when a new car leaves the factory. Its stability has to be tried." His gaze flashed: That's it. Just now, when I stopped the wind power, the flame wasn't extinguished. That must be the truth behind this minute!"

Deeply breathing a couple times, he closed his eyes again.

There was no joy, rather his heart welcomed reverence. In this cultivation of over half a year, the Eternal Alchemy Canon's effect on the advancement of spiritual sense was as clear as day. Furthermore, spiritual sense could be used to support oneself, accelerating the absorption of qi. In the modern era, arcane efforts that could advance spiritual sense had scattered like ash to the four corners. The value of this arcane effort was far more precious than whatever enlistment of the Bountiful Treasures Pavilion and the Featherwood Guard by ten thousand-fold!

"The first step… will succeed in a few days!"

Chapter end