Chương 28: The Manual Is Useless

Transient Shield Formation was a fairly simple art. It was the single-technique art that Paike had received from the library. The reward had come from his achievement of being one of the top ten times in climbing the stairs when he first joined the sect. It had been hard to find an art that he could learn, but he was lucky enough to find one that he felt was just within his capabilities. The technique only required one meridian, which he had long been preparing to open.

That there was only one technique was for sure a strike against the quality of the art. If it didn't have more to offer, it wouldn't even be a proper art. Instead, it would have been just a simple trick. Those weren't usually passed along, and as it was, the Transient Shield Formation barely had enough to be kept in even the outer sect's library. The art was paired with a full-on fighting style, focusing on how to use transient shields that could be quickly generated and put in place to stop a single blow.

They could also be moved to intercept, but that required a decent amount of concentration and continuous physical contact. Still, it seemed to be the most straightforward art for him to learn. Anyone else would have had to learn a lot of surrounding skills to make use of such a basic art when they could just learn something better. Paike was confident in his martial arts background, and he was suspicious that his rather unique qi behavior wouldn't let the technique work as fully as intended.

The author of the book clearly tried to cast the art in a more favorable light, but it was apparent that its one technique was nothing special in the grand scheme of things. However, it fit Paike's needs almost perfectly. He wasn't exactly sure how the nature of his qi was going to change the art—maybe making it unusable, maybe making it better. Or even more mysteriously, how the odd attunement of his physical cultivation would affect it. That was not for lack of trying, though.

Unfortunately, he had spent several hours simply meditating, studying his body and dantian, trying to figure out exactly what was happening. He could sense the taint in his physical cultivation for sure. However, he still had no idea what it actually did or how that combat trance had affected him, let alone how he had even entered it. But it was something he was figuring out, and he was running out of tools.

There was only so much of staring at a brick wall and trying to smash his head through it that he could take. Eventually, he would need to do something else to get more data points, and opening a simple, unattuned meridian should be a good example. That raised another question. Could he even open unattuned meridians anymore, or had the aspect of that ancient spirit sunk so deep into him that he couldn't?

He was pretty sure that he had managed to purge it from his spiritual cultivation, and it was only affecting his physical cultivation. But, well, the meridian bridged the gap between the physical and the spiritual. So, maybe he wasn't entirely confident in the results he would get. Perhaps it would work. Maybe it would make this art useless, and he would never be able to learn a proper art again, forcing him to develop all of his techniques from scratch.

That would be as good as a life-ending injury to most cultivators. However, it wasn't any more dangerous than adapting arts to fit his crippling lack of talent. It might be slower, but he'd had to get pretty inventive with his own brief stint of cultivating, and he was maybe unfairly confident that he could figure it out. But that was an absolute last resort. Technique creation wasn't something that he knew anything about.

It wasn't until the fifth realm that his family encouraged it, maybe for some geniuses in the fourth. It was better to work from the near-endless selection of tried and true arts. Slowly, he began to bore the hole between his spirit and the world. Carving the channel through his soul into the physical world from his spirit was rough. He knew it would be, and the first several times he had tried to do it, he hadn't made much progress. But now, he had the time and the motivation.

Guan Li still wasn't back yet, and there was no class to attend, for the rest of the day. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. He was now in the advanced physical cultivation class with Elder Ji's direct lessons, though the elder hadn't said when they were meeting again. He had just assumed it would be the next day at the same time. Paike pushed that thought away, not letting it distract him any further as he refocused on carving his meridian.

He would trust his friend to make sure he wasn't late to the first class. It was excruciating. Not at first—at first, it was just uncomfortable, kind of like dragging his nails along a chalkboard, with a weird screeching sound that echoed through his body. But then it got worse, like taking a file and running it along his teeth. Even the comparison in his head made him wince. Still, he closed his eyes even harder, bracing himself against the discomfort. When it started to hurt, he was almost relieved.

The nerve endings lighting up all throughout his body made the mental anguish vanish, overwhelmed by a pure, singular fire of pain, something he could brace against. But soon, that swelled to a level where he was wishing for the distraction of discomfort once more. All throughout this tenuous balance he achieved in his meditation, Paike never once wavered. Repeatedly, he raked his will against the slowly forming channel, widening it and pushing through his qi.

And just as slowly as it had started, the pain began to fade. The qi began to ooze along the channel, slowly forcing its way out into reality. Paike opened his eyes as he felt the qi about to exit the channel he had carved along his arm and into the palm of his left hand. A glowing, translucent barrier began to form. But as it detached from his hand, it flashed slightly, turning the faintest shade of brown.

"Hmm," Paike hummed. There was no strain to maintain it. He attempted to move it, but it moved like a snail, as he had feared, and he also had to keep hold of it. It wouldn't move without him touching the edges of it at some point, but when he let go, it remained, and it was relatively sturdy. He poked at it gently. That wasn't how it was supposed to work. If he let go it should vanish in less than a second. If timed perfectly it could be used in a fight just fine.

Most of the time it was just maintained with constant touch. The shield was supposed to take a single strike from a Topaz cultivator, but it would break after anything solid. Paike wasn't exactly sure what that level of force would be enough to shatter it, but apparently, poking it didn't break it. He tapped at it a little harder, then a little harder. Confused, he reared back and struck it with his palm with all his force. He heard a slight crack, but the shield remained.

Pulling his hand back, he saw spiderweb cracks slowly running through the faintly brown-colored qi construct, like a rock cracking in slow motion. Reeling back, he struck it again with all his force, feeling the blow reverberate in his wrist, up his arm, and into his elbow. Cringing slightly, he pulled back, but only a new set of cracks began to expand from a point somewhat higher than the first strike. Paike frowned, stepping backward and lunging forward with a front kick.

Again, a new set of cracks started forming, but he still didn't break through it. Paike smiled.

"Well, that will be useful." He ran over to the wall where a series of hourglasses stood and flipped one over. Slowly, he watched as the cracks in the shield raced the hourglass. He had to turn the timer three more times before the shards of qi finally disconnected from each other and dissipated into a misty cloud. His eyebrows raised. Almost half an hour before the shield would disappear. Well, that was quite a bit excessive but near-impenetrable defense for up to second-round cultivators.

That was downright broken for someone in Middle Ruby like him. Now, the real question was, could he make more than one at a time? And how fast could he get at setting them up? And then, what about size? And what if multiple people attacked from different angles? Could he make different shapes? Questions filled his head, and his gaze fell back to the book. The technique manual, so carefully written and lovingly defended, was useless to him now.

Now that he'd learned it, he could go turn the book in and maybe get a different one. He supposed he'd have to earn that, but it was probably worth it, right? He couldn't help but keep the smile off his face. It was still there when Guan Li eventually knocked and let himself into the cultivation chamber. It was time for his first real lesson.