The Science of Cultivation-Chapter 273: Revisiting the Five Elements

It took an entire two weeks for Li Lang’s group to return to Emberglow City.

Even on the move, Li Lang’s schedule was still as packed as ever. That was thanks to playing around with his new transmission jade. He couldn’t help himself and repeatedly tested it. The issue was that he only had one jade, which meant he could only test it in the real world.

Those who owned communication jades were all part of the upper echelon within their respective forces. After finding out how easy it was to contact Li Lang, he soon received regular audiences with various powers, trying to befriend him.

He happily played along during his travels, as it could be boring sometimes, but his mind quickly changed once he arrived in Emberglow.

“Telly, please refuse all incoming calls,” Li Lang pleaded with his new Saint-grade artifact.

“Understood, Master,” a somewhat robotic voice replied. “Refusing direct calls. I will record any incoming messages and only alert you of communications deemed urgent.”

His new artifact had quickly submitted to him after a nice chat that just so happened to include Ruby. For the past week, Li Lang had been analyzing the Qi signature of this jade, trying to figure out how it communicated.

Unfortunately, all he learned was what the artifact spirit itself told him, which consisted of its functions. It basically boiled down to calls, voice messages, and the ability to turn on airplane mode.

“Thank you.”

Exiting his room within the Crucible, he took a stroll around their residence that was located in the Southern Dark Spot. It had been a fine residence so far, but his students could be seen gathering their belongings, preparing for the eventual move.

No matter how much they liked it, there was no way they could stay there for any longer. Once they started exerting their influence in order to find the Abductress, they would inevitably be asked to settle somewhere that was more neutral. For now, it was still fine, as they were too weak. The other forces wouldn’t care too much yet, as they still had the excuse of just starting out.

Another problem was how they would eventually need to accept guests visiting from afar. Having their location located deep into demonic cultivator territory was one problem, but being inside the heart of the city where many mortals gathered was another.

Truly powerful groups had city-sized headquarters that were exclusive to them. They were always located a distance away, or at least on the outskirts of towns. It was to prevent spies from blending in with the crowd and give them enough room to set up powerful formations.

It didn’t take long to tour their estate, and he soon found Wei Ping and Long Yi chatting with a few students in the courtyard right next to the main hall.

“Hey, are our guests from Sword Saint Isle settled in their room?” Li Lang asked as he approached.

“Yea, should we be preparing the other one for Sima Xue, too? Considering we’re not leaving right away like you said,” Long Yi replied.

“No need to prepare for something that may or may not happen.” Li Lang glared at his humongous companion with a reproachful gaze. “And yes, we’ll be staying until we’re fully prepared to settle somewhere new—in the wilderness, of all things.”

“It shouldn’t be that hard. We just need somewhere to set down the Crucible, no?”

“That may work for some time until we start having guests. It’s not just an area for us to live, but a place that symbolizes to the rest of Violet Isle that we’re not just a joke.”

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“Well, but we really are when compared to a stage that grand, considering we’re a dozen strong group with a little more than a handful of Foundation Establishment cultivators.”

“That’s why we’ll be focusing on training a new batch of students and our cultivation for the next year. Then we should be in a position to at least send out our current students to start scouring for clues. It’ll be an opportunity for them to see the world.”

“Yeah, and get killed—not that I’m completely opposed,” Long Yi quickly backtracked.

Even he knew of the cruelty of the cultivation world and the practices of the organizations and sects. They couldn’t protect every single one of their members, and they preferred not to coddle their people. In their opinion, cultivators only grew through adversity, and battle was the best way to temper them. Li Lang couldn’t exactly disagree either, considering what he had learned about willpower so far.

“Anyway, business as usual. I’ll be working on standardizing a way to train willpower before we start recruiting. I’ll be in the Crucible.”

Without waiting for a response, Li Lang returned to his own chambers to begin his studies and cultivation.

For willpower training, the best he could do was ask a few of his students to help test out methods he found had potential and use their subjective opinion to evaluate the results. It wasn’t reliable in the least, but it was all Li Lang could afford to do right now with everything else going on. Once he settled on a few methods, he would then do a more methodological test on his new students.

The type of willpower training he had so far took time before he could evaluate the results, so he simply incorporated it into his daily cultivation routine before focusing his mind on the five crafts.

So far, he had gotten quite far in both woodsmithing and formations by relying on the knowledge from the Crucible alone. It helped that he had others who could take the trials as well, giving him access to various techniques for each craft.

He had already mastered a basic formation technique called the Scour Earth that allowed the user to detect the flow of Qi underground. Finding hotspots called ley lines was important to set up the more powerful formations, which was something Li Lang was looking to do in his upcoming residence.

As for woodsmithing, he made even faster progress, due to this craft having the most in common with his study of bio-defense. The only bottleneck was that the creations of this craft took time to grow. So even if he managed to learn to create the most basic Skyrunner, it would take at least a year to grow absent of any assistance.

“Blue, for this next formations trial, be sure to give me something about formations that can accelerate growth. We could really use it in the Crucible as well, if we are to have more people visit. Quotas into this place is one of my trump cards right now in dealing with other forces.”

“Understood, Master. We will definitely pick out the perfect manual for you.”

Like that, Li Lang was completely absorbed into his studies as the time to leave the city grew closer. An entire month after his return from Sword Saint Isle, Li Lang finally mastered enough about his two new crafts that he felt confident in attempting a five-element cultivation technique again.

Before he dove into the nitty-gritty details of creating a technique, he summoned all five types of energy within his dantian to verify his latest results. It only took him a few moments before the energies of the five elements came into existence within him. Their attraction to each other was almost instant, forming the feedback loop he had previously seen.

The five motes of Qi fed into each, allowing the total sum of energy to increase slowly, completely breaking the law of energy conservation.

After some time, each of the five elements could be observed flaring up occasionally, becoming stronger than its peers only for the other energies to unite and restore the balance. Visually, it created a flickering wheel of energy. It was something only Li Lang could see right now, as there was no way for others to observe what was happening in his spiritual sea.

However, all Li Lang cared about was that the reaction was stable. Thankfully, it was.

A full hour went by, and the reaction remained in effect. The extra energy it created simply leaked out of his body after some time.

“I need to create a cultivation technique that will allow these Qi energies to meld into my spiritual sea instead of dissipating,” Li Lang muttered to himself. “I’ve studied Earth-grade cultivation techniques every day for quite some time now, but I still can’t shake the feeling that the technique I’ll create will be missing something. It really hurts not being able to test these techniques somehow.”

Letting out a weary sigh, Li Lang resigned himself to his fate. He couldn’t have everything be perfect for him. Even he knew that wasn’t how the world worked. The venting was something he needed to do before he embarked on an intensive session of technique creation.

Let’s see what I can do. It’ll be my first if you don’t count the black hole method, which I don’t. It’s too simple and hard to replicate without a lot of studying about black holes. If my theory about why I am able to control five elements proves to be true, a few of my future students will surely be able to do so as well. I need to create a technique that others can use as well!