Aimless Ascension

"Still, this isn't bad considering it is your first day," Gale said. "Copper rankers will only have some trouble with their bowels not being able to digest the life Qi."

Not everyone was like Xiaolin, who was built differently, as most spiritual toxicities didn't work on her. Xiaolin's constitution took in whatever it considered necessary and emitted everything out. However, a normal human's body wasn't that magical.

A normal human or practitioner's body tries to take it all and wastes most of the elements of the ingestion. In the process, they barely had the latent ability to differentiate between harmful and harmless substances.

"The reverse cycling technique is too weird for me," Wang Li said. "It's like I'm losing my Qi the more I practise it."

"That's because you're losing your Qi," Gale chuckled. He had taught her that technique last evening when they were preparing food for dinner. Everyone in the Shen family turned up on the occasion, as Gale could finally return the favour. Except for the sneaky Twilight, who had her mystique persona to keep up.

"Although I taught you the basics of reverse cycling technique, you need to have a full grasp of it to brew wine. Becoming a master chef should be your purpose now. You can't become one without mastering it, either."

Apparently, a practitioner's personal Qi was toxic to other practitioners. Although it could be digested through cycling, it leaves dents on the foundation, which are too hard to clean up the more you accumulate.

However, master chefs and other culinary artists were highly sought out for their high flavoured culinary delights, even though their foods were full of energy.

That's where the Reverse Cycling technique came in. The basics weren't really that great, it just let the practitioner reverse their Qi to energy without all the toxicity, while keeping all the good qualities intact. That sounds like the right solution to the problem, right?

But honestly, Reverse Cycling was too hard to master. Several times more than the normal cycling technique, at the very least. Ignoring the weird process you have to leave your Qi, though, the Reverse cycling was too slow, and could leave one's spirit arts damaged with how easy it was to lose control and release your Qi.

Naturally, Wang Li wasn't a great talent in spirit arts, and hadn't been devoted to practising them for many years. So the reverse technique would be profoundly hard for her to master.

It was a twist of fate, really. His disciple releases her energy naturally, with no effort, and it was almost without toxicity in normal cases. That had been her worst enemy since she started practising spirit arts. Yet here Wang Li had to practise doing exactly that, but with more precision.

"Keep at it, and you'll be fine," Gale said. "If you aren't motivated, think about the profit you can bring with it. Once you master the basics, you'll earn ten times what you earn now easily."

Honesty, once she mastered the basics, she could even apply for an apprenticeship under some master chef. Although the treatment of master chef apprentices was too tough since there was always a low number of people who could master even the basics, it was still the only viable option for her to grow.

"You mentioned Rong'er would be fine eating my cooking," Wang Li asked. "Will it create any issues if I let him eat them every day?"

"Definitely not every day until he learns to cycle Qi," Gale said, gesturing to everything she laid on the table. "Also, these had too much life energy for him to handle. Even though he was still in the grace period not affected by his mother's Qi all that much, his body has not grown enough to handle so much Qi. I would advise about 10% of your output for his meal, as for Linlin you can do whatever you can."

"Linlin," Wang Li said, "how's she now?"

"She was barely holding in," Gale said. "I left her to rest through meditation."

"Isn't that a bad idea?" Wang Li asked. As far as she was concerned, meditation needed some mental energy to work with. Since Xiaolin's specialised training left her completely drained, shouldn't meditation on her drain state cause complications?

"Your concern is valid," Gale said. "But it was only where we can push her. Although her spirit was more resilient than any normal copper ranker, we couldn't push it past what we're doing currently in case of her breaking down. The same is true for her physique. However, mind was a different business. Not entirely, but somewhat.

"Xiaolin was diligent, but perturbed by her training. I guess years of hearing people calling her useless affected her mind. She either didn't have the hunger or lost it in the way she had been practising useless for these few years. I want to introduce or bring that back to her.

"Without the hunger for more, there was no way she could improve."

"And the only way to do it is through putting her through overwhelming mental fatigue?" Wang Li's expression was sceptical, but she didn't question his teaching, not like how an elder sister should.

"There's no learning without failure, and there's no gain without pain."

"What if she breaks?" Wang Li asked, evident anxiety jittering her expression as she forgot she was still baking.

"Then she had to forge herself back, forge herself into something that won't break in such situations."

"It is too easy for you to say," Wang Li mumbled, biting her lips.

"It wasn't easy," Gale said. "But I hadn't taken Xiaolin as my disciple out of pity or to do charity. I said that very clearly before, and now you're seeing it in practice."

"You're much harder than you act," Wang Li said quietly, "but please don't try to make Linlin another copy of yourself."

Gale blinked at the woman, who stared at him firmly. He sighed, considering what she meant by that.

"I won't, I promise," Gale said eventually. "And she won't become me. She had you, Grandma, Little Rong'er to turn up as a miserable wretch like myself."

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