Cultivation: I can solidify equipment attributes

Chapter 551 First Encounter with Nascent Soul

It was already evening when we returned to Wulinfang Market.

Upon entering the seclusion chamber, the stone door closed.

Li Yuan first checked the state of the withered wood spirit core. It had been continuously nourished with wood-type spiritual power for some time. After the completion of the Burning Wood Everlasting Spring Technique, the passive regeneration cycle of wood-type spiritual power greatly improved the nourishment efficiency, and the thirty-day condition had been met.

A panel pops up.

The conditions for the permanent transformation of dead trees into green trees have been met.

【Condition: Nurturing this item with wood-type spiritual energy for a cumulative period of thirty days √ (30/30)】

The phrase "dead trees come back to life (green)" has become a permanent entry.

The withered wood spirit core in the personal space shattered and dissipated.

A scene flashed into my mind.

A withered ancient tree stood in the middle of the wasteland, its branches and trunk gray and lifeless. A cultivator placed his palm on the tree trunk, and wood-elemental spiritual energy seeped into his palm, slowly spreading along the withered lines.

The image disappeared.

The efficiency of cultivating wood-type spiritual power increases by 20%, and the spiritual power loss when using wood-type techniques decreases by 10%. The benefit is not significant, but when combined with the passive regeneration cycle after the completion of the Burning Wood Everlasting Spring Technique, the efficiency of wood-type spiritual power circulation reaches a new level.

Li Yuan finished his practice and sat down cross-legged.

He took out three basic Nascent Soul cultivation manuals from his personal space.

The learning speed of "Wanfa Xizhen" doubles and the comprehension of "Wudao Qingming" accelerates by 50% simultaneously.

Read the basic termination procedure first.

The contents of the jade slip were more systematic than expected.

The process of forming a Nascent Soul is similar to that of forming a Golden Core, and is divided into four grades: low grade, medium grade, high grade, and supreme grade.

The Nascent Soul grade cannot exceed the Golden Core grade. A low-grade Golden Core can at most form a low-grade Nascent Soul, a mid-grade can be paired with a mid-grade, and a high-grade with a high-grade.

Theoretically, a Supreme-grade Golden Elixir can advance to a Supreme-grade Nascent Soul, but the description of a Supreme-grade Nascent Soul in ancient texts is extremely brief, consisting of only a few lines.

Li Yuan turned the page and continued reading.

The ancient texts listed rare and precious materials that could improve the success rate and grade of Nascent Soul formation. Li Yuan hardly recognized any of the items on the list; most were fourth-tier spiritual materials or the dantian essence of Nascent Soul cultivators—extremely difficult to obtain.

The Earthly Spirit Embryo was prominently listed, ranking among the top in the auxiliary category.

The annotations in the classic texts are quite straightforward: such rare and precious materials are already scarce when the spiritual energy of heaven and earth is abundant, and are even more difficult to find when the spiritual energy is declining. When cultivators are preparing to form their Nascent Soul, they should not place their hopes on external things, but should rely on their own foundation.

Li Yuan reviewed the basic Nascent Soul formation process in his mind, and then opened the Essentials of Soul Tempering.

This text overlaps significantly with the cultivation path of the Soul Condensation and Consciousness Control Method, but their focuses differ. The Soul Condensation and Consciousness Control Method emphasizes the construction and application of spiritual consciousness lines, while the essence of soul tempering emphasizes the strength and resilience of the soul itself. During the Nascent Soul formation process, the nascent soul needs to be nurtured and formed from the golden core. The soul is the core framework of the nascent soul; if the soul's strength is insufficient, cracks will appear or even the nascent soul will collapse during its formation.

The Outline for Expanding the Spiritual Sea is the thinnest of the three books, but its content is the most concise. The Spiritual Sea is the hub for storing and circulating spiritual energy. Before forming the Nascent Soul, the capacity and stability of the Spiritual Sea need to be increased to a level sufficient to support the Nascent Soul. Specific methods vary from person to person, and the classic texts provide three main expansion paths and corresponding cultivation frameworks.

After reading it, Li Yuan compared the contents of the classic text with the information he had previously obtained from the Nascent Soul Strengthening Technique and the cross-referenced data from the Loose Cultivator Alliance.

The Nascent Soul Strengthening Technique is the orthodox foundational cultivation method for forming the Nascent Soul, describing the standard procedure and ideal state. The materials from the Loose Cultivator Alliance provide numerous examples of non-standard situations. The three Tianyue Sect classics fall somewhere in between, possessing both a rigorous framework of the standard procedure and mentioning some common alternative solutions in the annotations.

By comparing the three aspects, a complete framework of basic knowledge about infant formation was formed in my mind.

After putting away the books, Li Yuan began the next stage of his cultivation.

The proficiency of the Life Flame Pursuit Technique and the Life Flame Reversal Technique needs to be improved.

Both spells consume lifespan. The permanent effect of the Heavenly Evolution Synessence can automatically offset the consumption of up to two percent of the total lifespan. The consumption during daily practice is far below this threshold and will not cause substantial damage to lifespan.

First, let's use the Life Flame Pursuit Technique.

The core of this spell is to trace the target's causal path by consuming a small amount of lifespan. In the beginner stage, one can only trace extremely recent causal remnants over very short distances. To advance to proficiency, one needs to backtrack and verify more distant and complex causal clues.

As you progress through the practice, a panel will pop up.

[Permanentization progress of Causal Insight (Green): 1/10]

A causal insight requires tracing ten different clues, and so far there is only one.

After three rewinds, the spiritual energy path of the Life Flame Tracing Technique became much smoother.

Proficient in the Life Flame Pursuit Technique.

He then turned to the practice of the Longevity Flame Reversal Mirror Technique.

The Life Flame Reversal Technique and the Life Flame Tracing Technique have different directions. The Tracing Technique tracks the target's movements along causal clues, while the Reversal Technique consumes lifespan to rewind to the afterimages of recent events in a specific area.

Li Yuan conducted a small-scale trial run using his own secluded room as the target audience.

The circulation of spiritual energy consumes a very small amount of lifespan, which is automatically offset by the Heavenly Evolutionary Synesthesia.

Several days later, he mastered the Longevity Flame Reverse Mirror Technique.

After mastering the two spells, Li Yuan shifted his focus to the Heavenly Evolution Divination Technique.

He has mastered divination, but still needs more experience to reach the level of minor mastery.

In the days that followed, Li Yuan spent one to two hours each day practicing the Heavenly Evolution Divination Technique to continuously assess the situation on all sides.

The divination targets are rotated.

The movements of the forces surrounding the Yuan Sect, the activity trends of the Demon Beast Alliance, the progress of the Tianyue Sect's Nascent Soul Ceremony, and the changing situation of the Sea Alliance were all calculated one by one. Each calculation only provided a vague directional guidance, but the passive perception of Tianyan Tongqian and the causal intuition of the divination were continuously strengthened through accumulation.

In a divination a few days later, the way the hexagram was presented changed.

Previously, the hexagrams from the mastery stage were a set of directional clues, which Li Yuan had to actively piece together to form a judgment. This time, the hexagrams spontaneously coalesced into a complete picture.

It's no longer a jigsaw puzzle, but a rough panoramic view.

The Heavenly Evolution Divination Technique, minor success.

Li Yuan accepted the divination result and sensed the changes.

The accuracy of divination at the Lesser Completion stage is a level higher than that of the Proficient stage. The spiritual energy consumption during divination is reduced, the clarity of the hexagrams is increased, and most importantly, the passive perception range of one's own causal clues is expanded.

During a break from his cultivation, Li Yuan handled some market affairs.

Trade between Wulin Market and Qinghe Market continued to grow. The flow of goods between the three Liangzhou Markets and Yunyang Market under the Tianyue Sect and the Mingyuan Chamber of Commerce became increasingly frequent, with the volume of spiritual materials, elixirs, and magical artifacts rising month by month. The ledgers submitted by Ji Wenyuan showed that profits for this quarter had increased by 30% compared to the previous quarter.

One afternoon, while restocking at a spiritual materials shop in the market, Li Yuan casually flipped through a batch of newly arrived miscellaneous items.

Two old books were tucked among the miscellaneous items.

The first book was a manual on weapon crafting, detailing a special forging technique for mid-grade second-tier magical artifacts. Li Yuan flipped through a few pages; the forging technique itself wasn't as refined as his own, but one section on the handling of material quenching frequency was worth noting.

[Equipable item detected: Refinement Manual]

[Equipment Attribute Preview: Weaponry Parameters (White)]

[Effect: Slightly improves the accuracy of perceiving changes in material properties during the crafting process]

White entries are made permanent.

The term "器理参微 (white)" has become a permanent entry.

The ancient text shattered and dissipated in his hands. A scene flashed into his mind: a weapon refiner repeatedly adjusting the frequency of spiritual energy used for quenching during forging, each adjustment causing subtle changes in the material's surface properties. The scene was brief, and the effect was extremely minor.

The second book was a talisman-related text, containing a variation on the drawing method of a second-tier high-grade spirit rune. Li Yuan also flipped through a few pages. The approach to this variation differed from his own talisman-making system, but the way certain spirit runes were drawn was indeed simpler.

White grade fluctuates.

[Equipable item detected: Spirit Rune Drawing Notes]

[Equipment Attribute Preview: Rune Vein Guidance (White)]

[Effect: Slightly improves the smoothness of the connection between spiritual energy patterns when creating talismans]

White entries are made permanent.

[The "Talisman Meridian Guidance (White)" entry has become a permanent term.]

The ancient texts vanished. The scene surged in and then disappeared again, a talisman master connecting several spiritual runes in one go with extremely smooth strokes, spiritual power flowing seamlessly between the runes.

The gains of the two white entries are extremely small, but they add up.

Li Yuan settled the bill at the spiritual materials shop and returned to his secluded cultivation room to continue his cultivation.