Chapter 13: Tempering and Crash
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Qin Xi suddenly felt spiritual power surging wildly through his body!
Only then did he realize what Jiang Baiqiu had been doing over the past two days.
As it turned out, Jiang Baiqiu had been using the unique properties of her spiritual root to extract the essence from the inferior spiritual liquid, then storing it within her own body.
The spiritual liquid aboard the flying vessel contained an extremely thin amount of spiritual power, but it had two advantages: it was free and there was plenty of it—so much that quantity made up for quality.
Jiang Baiqiu had not drunk dozens of barrels merely to get her money’s worth. Her purpose had been to condense and extract the spiritual power within the liquid, gathering the energy from dozens of barrels of watery trash into a single drop of pure spiritual liquid in her dantian.
And that single drop of pure spiritual liquid was enough to temper Qin Xi’s body and allow his meridians to contain spiritual energy.
Generally speaking, disciples of cultivating clans—and independent cultivators who were not short of money—would temper their bodies with spiritual liquid before entering the Qi Refining stage. The extent of this process varied. Some great clans even used rare heavenly treasures to prepare their spiritual liquid, then had their descendants soak in it for a hundred days before guiding spiritual energy into their bodies and entering the Qi Refining stage.
Unfortunately, Qin Xi had crossed over only recently, and he was so poor that he could barely scrape together a living. He had no way to buy spiritual liquid to temper his body, leaving him far behind other cultivators his age.
Jiang Baiqiu’s purpose in doing all this was to bring Qin Xi up to the average level of the children of cultivating clans before the entrance examination for the Great Thousand Sect!
The only problem was that the process was both painful and undignified. Even as a spiritual root, she could not endure holding in her urine for so long.
“Old Jiang... so that’s why you were drinking all that spiritual liquid.”
I thought you just liked iced tea!
Qin Xi was deeply moved!
This could easily earn a place among the Ten Most Inspiring Figures of Great Qi.
“As your ever-present great-grandma, of course I have to look after you! If you get yourself killed one day, I’ll be done for too! Besides, I’m a dignified Confucian Sage spiritual root. How could I possibly allow myself to have a useless host?”
Within Qin Xi’s body, Jiang Baiqiu assumed the form of a spiritual root and held the drop of purest spiritual liquid in her hands.
“The spiritual liquid aboard this vessel is diluted with an absolutely insane amount of water. I drank thirty whole barrels! Thirty! And held in my urine for two days! That’s what it took to extract a single drop for you!”
“Hurry up and absorb it. Don’t let your mother’s efforts go to waste!”
Qin Xi felt a warm current flow upward from his dantian into his sea of consciousness, then stream back down and surge toward every part of his body.
His sinews, bones, flesh, and even his meridians all began to feel light and airy, as though he were immersed in mist. That mist was the embodiment of the spiritual liquid, continuously nourishing every pore.
Even with his eyes tightly shut, he no longer saw only darkness. A hazy radiance had begun to appear!
When he opened his eyes, he saw...
Who the hell had opened the luggage-rack cover?
The person who had opened it said to Qin Xi, “Hey, brother, this is my spot. I bought a reclining ticket.”
“Oh, sorry. I’ll find somewhere else.”
“No worries, no worries.”
Qin Xi found a corner, leaned against the wall, and quietly sensed the spiritual liquid gradually pouring into his meridians.
There was only one word for it:
Wonderful.
The drop of spiritual liquid was quickly drained dry by Qin Xi. Once he had absorbed it completely, he felt as though his body had been reborn.
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But at that moment, the flying vessel shook violently, sending everyone inside tumbling about.
Qin Xi nearly lost his footing as well.
“The flying vessel is passing through a thunderstorm cloud layer. All passengers, please hold on to nearby fixtures to prevent injury from the turbulence!”
The flying vessel trade association used a voice-transmission spell to notify everyone aboard. It seemed the vessel had encountered a natural disaster.
Hearing this, everyone hurried to look outside through the windows, only to find that the vessel had entered a cloud as black as ink.
Then a sharp-eyed cultivator with extensive knowledge suddenly cried out, “These are tribulation clouds! A powerful Golden Core cultivator is undergoing tribulation here to break through to the Nascent Soul realm!”
“What?!”
The people inside the vessel instantly fell into chaos, their shouting filling the entire cabin.
Flying through tribulation clouds was almost certain to end in disaster.
“What do we do?”
“What else can we do? Run!”
Boom!
The flying vessel was struck by tribulation lightning. In an instant, its entire balancing system failed, and the vessel began to tilt slowly. If this continued, there was virtually a hundred percent chance it would crash on the spot!
Its altitude began to plummet. From several hundred miles above the ground, it rapidly descended toward the earth.
“Your calculation was pretty accurate, Bu Weiwei!” Qin Xi clung to a nearby railing, barely maintaining his balance. “The great fortune has come true!”
“That’s impossible! It shouldn’t be like this!”
“From now on, we’ll have to get you to tell our fortunes before every trip. We can only leave the house if you predict great misfortune!”
At that moment, several sharp-eyed cultivators discovered a large number of swords hidden beneath the seats.
The swords were light and clearly not meant for combat. Instead, they were suited for flying through the air.
“There are emergency flying swords here! They’re single-use, but they can carry people without cultivation safely down to the ground!”
“Then hand them out, quickly!”
The cabin erupted into a scramble. Many people snatched up a flying sword and rushed onto the deck before leaping overboard. The entire vessel descended into utter chaos.
Amid the disorderly crowd, Qin Xi once again spotted the girl named A Ling.
The girl neither fought nor scrambled for a sword. She merely stood there in silence, watching the others compete for them.
In the confusion, Qin Xi managed to seize two swords and tossed one to Bu Weiwei.
As for Jiang Baiqiu, she was still inside her own body refining the spiritual liquid, so fortunately, she did not need a sword.
Before long, only a few dozen people remained in the cabin, and barely any flying swords were left.
Qin Xi counted the swords, then looked at the number of people. With a solemn expression, he said:
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“There are ten of us and eleven flying swords!”
The instant he finished speaking, A Ling’s expression became resolute. She charged toward the wall of the flying vessel’s cabin and smashed a person-sized hole through it with one punch.
As she did so, she shouted, “It’s fine! I’m at the ninth level of Body Tempering. This height won’t kill me!”
With that, she leaped out.
“...”
“Now there are nine people and eleven flying swords.”
Qin Xi wanted to say something, but he could not think of anything. He could only turn around and stare silently at the others.
“She really is a good girl. It’s just a shame she isn’t very bright,” Bu Weiwei sighed.
“By the way, what does the ninth level of Body Tempering mean?” Qin Xi asked.
“Before body cultivators enter the Qi Refining stage, they have an additional realm called Body Tempering, which they use to forge and strengthen their bodies... But this probably isn’t the time to focus on that.”
Bu Weiwei felt that Qin Xi’s priorities were somewhat misplaced.
“It’s fine. We have two extra flying swords now. If you want to tie three of them together and spin them like the blades of a helicopter belonging to the Jail Boss, you could land that way too.”
“What is a Jail Boss? And what’s a helicopter?”
...
“Heh. Once I survive this tribulation and shatter my Golden Core to form a Nascent Soul, I’ll be able to swagger across the entire Dongchen Continent!”
The Golden Core cultivator laughed wildly, unable to contain his delight.
“The Nascent Soul realm—the goal of how many cultivators who set foot upon the path to immortality! And I, Dai Qingxu, will finally enter that realm as well!”
“Two stages of the threefold tribulation have already passed. Of the essence, energy, and spirit, the essence and energy have both been tempered by the tribulation lightning. Only the spirit remains!”
“Although I failed several times before, the experience I accumulated has made this tribulation exceptionally smooth. I am certain to succeed this time.”
But as he spoke, he suddenly realized there was a problem.
Why had the third tribulation lightning not descended after such a long time?
He raised his head and saw a gigantic shadow in the sky, crashing downward like a mountain.
It was the flying vessel.
“Huh?”
He stared blankly as the enormous object bore down upon him.
Boom!
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