After parting ways with Liu Yu, Ji An returned to his bamboo loft.
He picked up the wooden carving, thinking about when he should go find Liang Qiu for some fish bladder glue, excellent stuff for mending wood.
The carving was made of silverleaf pine, joined from two pieces of timber with nothing more than ordinary tree sap.
Silverleaf pine was a fairly common wood. Ji An had seen several trees while collecting wood-essence pearls.
Almost absentmindedly, he held the carving up to the light, then froze. Stepping outside, he placed it under the sun.
Light passed through the small hole, and Ji An noticed that the wood at the center was a different shade, as though some inner layer had been filled with something.
There's something hidden inside!
His heart leapt. Could it be a treasure map? That would be something!
The carving had been made by his father's own hands. If there was something inside, it had to have been left there by him.
The moment that thought arose, Ji An immediately cast a spell, releasing the Flamefire Incantation.
The technique produced a modest heat, perfect for softening the resin holding the carving together. The temperature was low enough that it wouldn't ignite paper or burn the wood, nor the hidden contents.
After two casts, Ji An seized the carving and gave it a hard twist.
"Open!"
Crack! The carving split neatly in two, revealing a tightly folded piece of animal hide pierced straight through the middle by the very hole he had made earlier.
Damn it… Please don't let it ruin anything important.
He held his breath and carefully unfolded the hide.
He understood why his father hadn't used a jade slip; those carried a faint spiritual aura. A Qi Refining cultivator might not notice, but a Foundation Establishment cultivator certainly could.
When Ji An had committed every word to memory, he carried the hide to the kitchen and burned it to ash.
The hide contained a secret method for cultivating treasure-seeking mice. There were two kinds: spirit-seeking mice for locating herbs, and ore-seeking mice for finding mineral veins.
Back then, his father had raised the first type. For a rogue cultivator, ore-seeking mice would have been useless.
Although some lines of text had been blurred by his spell, none of the crucial details were lost. Ji An could still reconstruct the method.
The method was incomplete at best; it could raise treasure-seekers to the mid-Foundation stage, but even so, for a rogue cultivator, it was as precious as gold.
Perhaps his father had once harbored hopes of founding a family. Used well, such a technique could nurture a Foundation Establishment cultivator, forming the core of a clan inheritance.
If he had obtained this secret when he first entered the sect, Ji An might have sold it to Zhang Yuanshan and the others without a second thought. But now? He wouldn't be so rash.
For one, he wasn't sure of its true value, making it impossible to sell for a good price. And more importantly, he had already weathered his most difficult days. He could afford to use the method himself, turning it into a long-term venture.
After destroying the hide, Ji An went out and cut a silverleaf pine branch as thick as his arm, leaving it to dry by the fence. The carving still had to be repaired.
Harvest after harvest, the spirit rice ripened. Half a year slipped by in a blur.
The silent Cold Moon cast its slanting glow across the bamboo loft.
Ji An sat cross-legged on his meditation mat, guiding his mana to hammer again and again at the bottleneck.
From the twelve pills he had gotten from Wei Songnian, he had only used two bottles before sensing resistance.
His aptitude might be average, but with near-reckless use of pills and spirit rice, his cultivation speed outpaced most peers. It was no surprise he was already pressing against a bottleneck.
Thanks to Liu Yu's advice, he hadn't rushed into a breakthrough. Instead, he had spent four months patiently grinding at it, wearing it down bit by bit.
Now the barrier had loosened.
Not only that, but two new spiritual veins had sprouted in his body, each an inch long; his very aptitude had improved slightly. An unexpected joy.
His mana was nearly depleted, no longer enough to gather the force for another strike against the bottleneck.
Ji An ended his meditation, eyes gleaming with excitement.
He had a strong hunch the time to break through was tonight!
After a short rest to steady his mind, Ji An took out a jade bottle and tipped out a sky-blue pill.
It was a Jadegrain Pill, gifted to him by Wei Songnian, a medicine meant for Qi Refining mid-stage disciples to expand their mana.
For someone at the third level of Qi Refining, it would normally be wasteful, but to smash through the bottleneck into mid-stage, it was perfect.
He sat cross-legged again on his meditation mat, tilted his head back, swallowed the pill, and began cultivating the Clear Source Sutra.
The power of the Jadegrain Pill was far fiercer than that of the Yellow Sprout Pills. As the technique circulated, the spiritual energy contained within was rapidly refined.
His body couldn't hold so much at once. Large amounts of qi spilled out through his pores, a waste that made his heart ache.
Even so, waves of mana crashed and surged, one following hard on the heels of another. The bottleneck, already loosened, could not withstand such a pounding!
Before long, as another great tide of mana struck, his qi sea expanded and stretched several degrees wider.
All the refined mana poured into his dantian, and then, with a different texture than before, a new current of Qi Refining mid-stage mana surged into his meridians.
Ji An immediately noticed his immortal veins had grown thicker.
At the same time, three more tiny offshoots branched outward, each an inch long.
A sudden sense of lightness swept through his body like shrugging off heavy winter furs at the first breath of spring.
Like having taken a supreme tonic, his five viscera and six organs glowed with warmth.
His bones gave off soft crackles; a hot current rose from the base of his spine, rushing up into his waist.
After refining the pill's remaining medicinal force, Ji An opened his eyes.
For a fleeting instant, the dim room was crystal clear, and every detail stood out as if under sunlight.
Clenching his fists, feeling the new strength coursing through them, Ji An whispered to himself:
"After a year… I've reached the fourth level of Qi Refining.
Still far behind the geniuses, but I have my own pace."
He sank his awareness into his qi sea and linked with the Stone Turtle.
[Master: Ji An]
[Dao Resonance: 0]
[Spiritual Qi: Kan 0.3, Kun 0.2, Xun 0.1]
[Spells:
Minor Rain Technique (Great Accomplishment 81%)
Thick Earth Formula (Great Accomplishment 50%)
Withering-Bloom Formula (Great Accomplishment 15%)
Flamefire Incantation (Proficiency 38%)
Sharp Gold Technique (Small Accomplishment 21%)]
After half a year of seclusion, the Minor Rain Technique was already close to perfection. Ji An was confident that within three months before the next harvest of spirit rice, he would push it to full Great Accomplishment.
According to sect records, the fastest anyone had ever achieved full Great Accomplishment of a planting spell was several centuries ago: a spirit farmer named Yang De Cao.
He had joined the sect at twenty-six, and at forty-two finally perfected the Thick Earth Formula.
His story was legendary. Each advancement into mid-stage Qi Refining, late-stage Qi Refining, and Foundation Establishment was achieved at the very last possible moment.
But he lost the favor of heaven. Attempting to break through to the Origin Ascension stage, he perished. His life marked the highest peak ever reached by a spirit farmer in the sect.
Ji An pushed open his window, gazing at the white jade plate of the moon hanging high in the sky, exhaling a long, slow breath.
Unknowingly, he had already lived in this world for a full year.
Those once-vivid memories he thought he'd never forget had, in the endless act of remembrance, slowly faded.
Now, he had truly become part of this world; what was once foreign had become his home.
Cool night winds rustled the leaves outside the loft.
Under the moonlight in his vegetable garden, green leaves parted to reveal a few jade-like cucumbers glistening in the silver glow.