Chapter 346 - Seamless Exchange and the Cloudshift Art

Chapter 346: Chapter 346 - Seamless Exchange and the Cloudshift Art

By evening, Su Bai had already moved on to refining the exchange itself.

The robes could now replace one another correctly. What remained was making the transition seamless.

The delay was not long by ordinary standards.

For most techniques, such a tiny pause would have been meaningless.

For a dressing technique, the pause was unacceptable.

Su Bai stood in the middle of his room after another attempt and stared at the robe now sitting perfectly on his body.

The exchange had taken less than a breath.

That still meant there had been a moment when absolutely nothing had been covering him.

Su Bai’s expression became serious.

He had survived heavenly lightning, soul pressure, the Heavenly Burial Palm, death itself, and several months inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary.

None of those experiences had prepared him for willingly creating a technique that could turn him into an exhibitionist every time he changed clothes.

The technique needed to become seamless.

Su Bai resumed experimenting.

The problem was no longer the spatial positioning of the robes. His body map solved that reliably.

The delay came from the exchange itself.

His circulation first pulled the old robes away, allowed the storage transition to complete, and only afterward released the replacement.

Those actions needed to overlap.

Su Bai adjusted the circulation.

The Myriad-Path Meridian Web shifted immediately.

Several pathways redirected Qi through his torso and limbs, allowing the retrieval and storage processes to occur through the same circulation rather than one after another.

He tried again.

The result improved.

The old robe vanished from his shoulders while the new one began appearing around them almost simultaneously.

There was still a brief gap near his waist.

Su Bai changed the route.

Another attempt reduced it further.

He continued throughout the evening.

Every failure taught him something.

One circulation route exchanged the upper robe faster than the lower portion.

Another made the sash appear before everything else, which was impressive but entirely useless.

A third worked so quickly that the old sleeve and new sleeve collided during the transition and twisted together.

Su Bai calmly untangled himself.

At least the robes had stopped appearing inside his body.

Progress deserved recognition.

Night settled over Clear Cloud Peak.

Su Bai kept working.

Eventually, he discovered the circulation he wanted.

The exchange no longer treated removal and dressing as separate actions.

The technique maintained the mapped outline of his body while the old robes entered storage at precisely the same moment that the new robes emerged along that outline.

For an observer, there would be no visible interval.

One set simply became another.

Su Bai tested it.

His current robes vanished.

A dark set replaced them instantly.

There was no exposed skin between the two transitions.

The cloth settled naturally around his body as the final thread of Qi passed across it, tightening the sash and smoothing the outer layer.

Su Bai looked down.

Everything was correct.

He changed again.

Dark robes disappeared. White robes appeared.

Another exchange replaced them with blue, then gray, then back to the original set.

Su Bai’s satisfaction grew with every attempt.

"This is much better."

He was about to consider the technique finished when another problem occurred to him.

The robes were currently arranged beside him.

That was useless.

Nobody carried five sets of clothing around in their arms while waiting for an emergency wardrobe change.

They belonged inside a storage ring.

Su Bai placed every practice robe inside one.

He extended his spiritual sense.

Several objects immediately entered his perception.

Pills. Jade slips. Spirit stones. Tools. Robes. More robes. Other robes.

Su Bai frowned.

Finding the correct set was not difficult for him.

It was simply inconvenient.

If the storage ring contained hundreds or thousands of items, searching through them every time would undermine the entire point of creating an instantaneous technique.

He sat down again.

The solution came much faster this time.

The robe did not need to be rediscovered every time.

It only needed to be identified once.

Su Bai retrieved one set and placed his hand against it.

His spiritual sense entered the fabric.

Carefully, he left a small spiritual imprint inside the robe.

It was not a controlling seal and carried almost no power.

Its purpose was identification.

At the same time, Su Bai encoded the robe’s structure and intended orientation into that imprint.

Every important reference was stored within it.

He placed the robe back inside the storage ring.

The moment his spiritual sense touched the ring again, he found it.

There was no searching.

The imprint answered immediately.

Su Bai smiled.

He selected it, then his Qi traced his body.

The imprint supplied the robe’s prepared orientation.

The exchange happened.

His worn robes disappeared into the storage ring at the same instant that the marked robes emerged around him.

The final pulse of Qi settled the clothing into place.

Su Bai looked down.

’Perfect.’

He changed again.

The same result followed.

Now the technique finally behaved the way he had imagined when the idea first occurred to him.

A cultivator could prepare several robes beforehand, leave a spiritual imprint on each one, and store them inside a ring.

When needed, spiritual sense would identify the chosen set immediately.

Qi would establish the body’s current position.

The old robes would enter storage while the replacement emerged according to the prepared map.

The final circulation would settle the clothing.

Su Bai leaned back.

He had finished the technique.

For himself.

That distinction bothered him almost immediately.

The current version depended heavily on the Myriad-Path Meridian Web.

Whenever he needed another circulation route, his meridians simply adjusted themselves.

Other cultivators could not do that.

If Liu Meng tried to imitate what he had just done, her Qi would reach an ordinary meridian junction and stop.

Others would have the same problem.

Even Lu Canghai could not simply rearrange his meridian pathways whenever he pleased.

Su Bai looked toward the moon outside his window.

He still had an entire night.

A useful technique should not remain useful only to him.

He retrieved a fresh jade slip.

The difficult part began again.

Su Bai first recorded the exact circulation his Myriad-Path Meridian Web had created.

He traced every route carefully.

Some pathways were impossible for an ordinary cultivator because his web had formed connections that normal meridians did not naturally possess.

Those had to be replaced.

Su Bai used the Dao-Shattering Jade once more.

The strange clarity settled over him as he began rebuilding the technique around a normal human meridian structure.

The direct route from his chest to his arm was replaced by a longer circulation through several established meridians.

Another pathway that his Meridian Web crossed freely needed two separate branches.

Several transitions required temporary shifts in Qi direction that ordinary cultivators would struggle to perform through thought alone.

That was where hand seals became useful.

Su Bai began designing them.

A change in finger position altered Qi pressure through the wrist.

Another seal encouraged circulation through the arm and chest.

A third redirected the flow downward before returning it toward the Dantian.

Cultivators had used hand seals for countless generations precisely because physical movements could guide complicated internal circulation more reliably.

Su Bai had rarely needed them.

His Meridian Web made most fixed routes unnecessary.

Now he had to think like someone without it.

The process consumed the entire night.

More than once, Su Bai erased part of the jade slip and began again.

A circulation route could work perfectly inside his body and still be useless to everyone else.

He simplified, redirected, tested, and rewrote.

By the time the first morning light appeared above Clear Cloud Peak, a complete technique rested inside the jade slip.

Su Bai read through it once more.

The requirements were straightforward enough.

The cultivator needed spiritual sense strong enough to mark and identify the prepared robes.

A storage artifact was required.

The robes themselves needed to be imprinted beforehand.

The user had to learn the body-mapping circulation and the exchange sequence.

Several hand seals guided the Qi through the proper meridians during activation.

Once practiced sufficiently, the entire process should take only an instant.

Su Bai placed the jade slip down.

He was pleased.

There was only one remaining problem.

He had absolutely no idea whether the version designed for ordinary meridians actually worked.

Su Bai needed someone normal.

He paused.

Perhaps calling any cultivator in Radiant Sky Sect normal was already questionable.

Still, he needed someone whose meridians did not rearrange themselves according to convenience.

Before dealing with that problem, he considered another one.

The technique needed a name.

Su Bai crossed his arms.

Calling it the Quick Dressing Technique lacked dignity.

Instant Robe Changing Art sounded accurate enough to make him dislike it.

He considered several increasingly grand names and discarded them when they began sounding like techniques capable of destroying kingdoms rather than putting on trousers.

Eventually, his thoughts settled.

He looked up.

Clouds changed shape without anyone seeing the exact moment one form became another.

The robes did much the same.

Su Bai nodded slowly.

"Cloudshift Dressing Art."

It was simple and respectable. Most importantly, nobody hearing the name would immediately realize how many hours he had spent accidentally dressing himself incorrectly.

Su Bai recorded the title at the beginning of the jade slip.

The first technique he had created specifically so that other cultivators could learn it was complete.

At least in theory.

He stretched and stood.

Now he only needed someone willing to test it.

Just then, a familiar presence approached Clear Cloud Peak.

Su Bai turned toward the entrance.

A moment later, Ji Ruyue appeared along the mountain path.

Her expression was as calm as usual as she approached his courtyard.

Su Bai’s eyes immediately brightened.

He looked at Ji Ruyue, then at the jade slip, then back at Ji Ruyue.

The perfect test subject had arrived on her own.