Aimless Ascension

Gale had prepared an entire room for Xiaolin's training. Since she was going to use Pure crystal, which was generally poisonous to anyone who wasn't Iron rank, it was all he could do, considering there were a two-year-old baby and his copper ranker mother living with them. Vale and Gale were totally fine with it, though.

Gale had laid a few formations in the room, sealing it from outside energy flow. That way, the radioactive waves of pure crystal wouldn't travel outside. Moreover, this room would have several times the energy and spirituality density of outside to get most Xiaolin's constitution.

"Master, I'm ready," Xiaolin said in her white sleeveless practitioner's robe.

Gale nodded and laid a few thousand gold and silver spirit coins, even though the sealed room was already high in spirituality. With the scripts in place, the coins started to lose their spirituality the very moment Gale brought them out. Thankfully, none of the spirituality would be lost as the room was sealed for outside energy flow.

Gale then brought out the pure crystal slab. There were many ways to use the pure crystal, but now Gale was going to let Xiaolin absorb it in the most crude way.

"Run your Qi into this slab and try to absorb as much as you're comfortable with," Gale instructed, handing her the pure crystal slab.

Xiaolin took the pure crystal and sat cross-legged with the intention of meditative cycling. While Gale sat on the chair across from her, watching her.

Xiaolin pierced the pure crystal slab with her Qi as instructed and took in tiny wisps of radioactive waves of pure crystal. Changes appeared on her body almost immediately. It didn't take a master to figure out she was uncomfortable. But that was only the beginning.

Xiaolin's veins glistened slightly as wisps of spirituality surrounded her figure. A knit appeared on her brows as she remained close-eyed in her absorption of pure crystal.

A sheen layer of sweat covered her body as she was done absorbing the pure crystal. Now it was her turn to absorb spirituality from the coins. That hardly changed her situation. It brought in another inconceivable fatigue to her figure. First to her spirit and now to her body and eventually to mind.

Gale could see his disciple was in terrible pain as she gritted her teeth already, absorbing a large amount of energy with each moment. Indistinct sounds of whimper escaped from her lips as her clothes got all soaked.

She wasn't absorbing the pure crystal anymore, but the effect was already more than she could handle. An excessive amount of energy surged through her being profusely, as her cells processed the sheer amount of fatigue they were being put through.

But her pain wasn't without reward. Her Qi accumulation speed was several folds. In these few minutes, she had already done a couple of hours of work. The pure crystal was that amazing, apart from the terrible fatigue the practitioner had to put up with.

Besides, Gale left her with the highest grades of energy, silver and gold to process. Of course, her speed would increase by several folds.

From the looks of things, Xiaolin could boost her speed higher, though she didn't have the physical capability to handle all that pain that would come with it. In a way, this was her endurance training.

She needed to be ten times better than now, at the very least, to progress to copper.

After the ten-minute session passed, Xiaolin was barely holding on, drained almost completely, soaked in sweat thoroughly.

Gale altered the formation to decrease the energy flow in the room. He then took the pure crystal from her so that he wouldn't try to do something overboard in the intoxication of spirituality.

"Now do, simple meditation for the next hour," Gale instructed her, standing up. "Calm the Qi you accumulated so far. Then you'll use all the Qi though physical arts."

Leaving those words, Gale got out of the cultivation chamber and crept to the kitchen, where Wang Li was busy cooking. Gale had shown her a couple of ways Qi could be applied to food, and she was busy practising that. Honestly, her Life Qi made it easier to augment the flavour and quality.

Then again, it was too damn hard to cultivate Life Qi, unless you have some hidden lineage or inheritance. Wang Li had none, as far as Gale was concerned. So diligence and perseverance were the only way for her.

Besides, she seemed to enjoy doing stuff like cooking or brewing alcohol. She just had to do it zealously from now on.

Vale was already awake and left for his early day stroll on the mountains while the other kid was still sleeping.

"So how many ingredients have you wasted?" Gale asked.

Wang Li turned with her sweat-ridden face. She was too tired and lost to be angry at his jab.

"Not many," she said and pointed towards the two large trays where many baked and unbaked culinary disasters lay. Most of them looked fine to the naked eye and should be fine if eaten by a higher rank practitioner, but it would be a different case for those in the lower ranks of copper and below. Even Iron rankers would feel some demerits in their spirit arts if they ate them.

Gale picked up a loaf of bread from the baked goodies and bit a good chunk off it. He considered the taste and the Life Qi inside and gulped it down.

Wang Li looked at him for his assessment.

"It has too much of your smell," Gale said with a grin, earning a completely annoyed look from the woman.

Since last night Wang Li was sick of that term. Apparently, Linlin has a very keen sense of spirituality, and she could easily smell the Qi of different practitioners after getting in contact with them. So whenever she ate anything Wang Li made for her with Life Qi, she mentioned it had her elder sister's smell in it, leaving her completely embarrassed.

From his disciple, Gale had adopted the term and used it thoroughly to fluster her.

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