Chương 3

After buying food and a few cheap materials for practicing cultivation arts, Elara returned to her courtyard. Then she opened the Grassweaving Art manual and got to work. Despite technically being a player, she still felt helpless whenever she had to learn an art from scratch. Back when Seed of Ascension had only been a game, learning skills had been easy. Spend the points. Click the button. Wait for the skill to load. Done.

She had never imagined she would one day have to study the hand signs, control her qi, understand the underlying principles, and actually perform the art herself. Elara might still have a player interface, but most of the conveniences players were supposed to enjoy were completely gone. Based on the timeline of Seed of Ascension, she had arrived long before the game's official launch. For now, the cultivation world was still relatively stable. The Outer Demons hadn't invaded yet. That alone was a blessing.

Once the player-era storyline began, cities were destroyed and sects vanished almost overnight. Elara doubted a dozen lives would be enough to survive that mess. One of the central events in Seed of Ascension's lore was the invasion of the Outer Demons. As the world slid into an age of decline and countless people died, the great Divine Sects of the Central Lands joined forces to preserve their inheritances before they were lost forever.

Those preparations eventually became the foundation for many of the game's challenge dungeons, hidden realms, and high-level trials. Players could enter them and earn extraordinary rewards. Unfortunately, none of that should exist yet. The Outer Demons hadn't invaded. Even the Moonwatch Sect still ruled a vast territory, never mind the far more powerful Immortal Sects and Divine Sects above it. For Elara, those legendary opportunities might as well have been myths....

By the time she finished reading the Grassweaving Art manual, Elara had confirmed one thing. Practice Makes Perfect was incredible. Normally, even simple arts like Raincall and Soften Earth required several readings before she could barely retain the important parts. This time, most of the Grassweaving Art already made sense after a single pass. Elara picked up a bundle of spirit-rice straw she had bought at the market. The stalks came from spirit rice grown outside Valehaven.

Even after the grain was harvested, the leftover straw retained traces of qi. It could be fed to livestock or dried and used as fuel for alchemy furnaces. Under the Grassweaving Art, however, that lingering qi could be put to much better use. A properly woven straw servant could develop a rudimentary awareness and follow simple commands such as walking, running, or chasing away small animals. It probably couldn't beat a wild dog in a fight.

But for a professional Spirit Gardener, it was still one of the most useful basic arts available. Elara selected several thinner stalks. Following the manual's instructions, she folded, overlapped, and twisted them together to make the smaller pieces she would need. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Then she chose a straight stalk for the main frame. She fed qi into it, reinforcing the straw until it turned rigid. That became the spine.

A second stalk went across it horizontally. Elara sent qi into both ends, strengthening them to serve as arms. She pinched the intersection with her left hand, grabbed a cord of braided straw with her right, and began wrapping it around the frame. Once. Twice. Three times. When the binding was tight enough, she pulled sharply. The knot bit into the crossed stalks. A crude straw figure took shape. The material she had bought wasn't especially long, so the finished servant stood only about a foot and a half tall.

Still, that was more than enough to scare off sparrows and other small pests.

"Now for the important part." Elara studied the little figure.

"Awakening it." She gathered qi at her fingertip. Then she tapped the straw figure between the eyes. Qi rushed into it. The little servant began trembling violently. Its face remained blank, but its body moved. One arm slowly lifted. Elara's heart leaped. Then her concentration slipped. Just a little too much qi poured in. The straw figure exploded. Bits of straw flew across the courtyard. [Grassweaving Art proficiency +5.] [5/100] Elara stared at the wreckage for a moment. Then she smiled.

"Failed, but I had it." The method was correct. All she needed was practice. With Practice Makes Perfect, learning basic cultivation arts had become absurdly easy. At her current pace, weaving and awakening one straw servant took less than an hour. An afternoon should be enough to truly learn the art. Before gaining the Talent, she could have studied for days without food or sleep and still failed to get this far.

"What kind of miserable life was I living before this?" Elara ate a quick meal, sat down in the courtyard, and went right back to grinding proficiency. [Grassweaving Art proficiency +5.] [10/100]... [Grassweaving Art proficiency +5.] [15/100]... [Grassweaving Art successfully cast.] [Proficiency +5.] [50/100] By sunset, Elara's face was covered in dust from repeated failures. But this time, a complete straw servant stood in front of her. Its head tilted slightly to one side as it stared blankly ahead.

Elara pointed toward the Glowmist Grass.

"You're guarding those from now on." She thought for a second.

"If any birds show up, pick up a rock and throw it at them." It was a simple enough command. Exhausted from the day's practice, Elara couldn't even be bothered to wash up. She stumbled inside, collapsed onto the bed, and fell asleep.... The next morning, Elara opened the door and found the little straw servant sitting beside the spirit garden. Its knees were pulled to its chest, its head tilted as it watched over the plants. Apparently, it had been there for quite a while.

The moment it heard the door open, it tried to stand. It wobbled upright. Then immediately fell back onto its rear. Elara couldn't help smiling.

"Not bad. Keep it up today." She crouched and touched its back, feeding it another small stream of qi to replenish its energy. Then it was time to tend the garden. As usual, she started with Raincall. Then Soften Earth. The two arts swept across the spirit plot one after another. Maturity bars climbed rapidly. One stalk of Glowmist Grass after another reached full maturity. And then the reward orbs began to appear. Elara looked them over. Nine herbs. Nine white orbs. Apparently, luck wasn't on her side today.

[White Random Reward collected.] [Reward: One Day of Cultivation.]... Of the first six orbs, four granted a day of cultivation each. Her cultivation progress climbed at once. [Qi Refining Tier 1: 71/100 → 75/100] The other two restored small amounts of qi. Not exciting, but every recovery reward saved her meditation time.

"Three left." Elara looked at the remaining white orbs.

"Come on. Give me something interesting." She wasn't expecting much. Her status screen made her natural luck painfully clear. [Fortune: 1] One. Fortune in this world followed a fairly simple scale. Ordinary people usually ranged from one to ten. Past ten, however, Fortune became something else entirely. Finding money on the road. Getting lost and accidentally stumbling into an ancient hidden realm. Running into opportunities that should have been nearly impossible to encounter.

Those were the kinds of things that happened to people with truly exceptional Fortune. Elara touched the seventh orb. [White Random Reward collected.] [Reward: Fortune +1.] Elara froze.

"Fortune?" That could drop from a white reward? For several seconds, she didn't know what to say. There was no way Fortune itself was merely a White-grade reward. But if the orb's color represented the minimum quality of the reward, along with the odds of drawing something rarer... Then it made perfect sense. Her status changed immediately. [Fortune: 1 → 2] And whether it was coincidence or those two points of Fortune already at work, the final two white orbs gave her completely different rewards.

The first granted ten full days of cultivation. A ridiculous jackpot compared to the usual one-day reward. The last orb produced a yellow paper talisman. Elara caught it before it could fall. [Soul-Calming Talisman] She recognized the item almost immediately. Soul-Calming Talismans had existed in Seed of Ascension from the beginning. More importantly, certain versions of them functioned as entry passes to the Ember Sanctums—the hidden legacy realms created by the ancient Divine Sects to preserve their inheritances.

Elara turned the talisman over in her hands and sighed.

"The Divine Sects haven't even fallen yet. Where am I supposed to find an Ember Sanct—" She stopped. There, on the back of the talisman, was a symbol she knew all too well. A golden-crimson flame. The mark of a Divine Sect Ember Sanctum. Elara stared at it. This really was an entry talisman. Which meant that somehow, in an era when the great sects still stood at the height of their power, she had obtained direct access to one of the most valuable trial vaults in all of Seed of Ascension.