Ch142 A Taste of Honey

Four new booklets appear before me: Minor Water Control, Minor Earth Control, Minor Metal Control, and Minor Wood Control.

Warm glowing emblems of each element stand out on their brand new covers.

Each one has a detailed guide to learn basic element control, just like in my fire booklet. They are followed by their own distinct advanced sections, with the perfected versions of random spells I found in the city.

My only focus stays on the initial stages of each booklet, where the exact meridian pathways and practice movements to begin channeling elemental qi through the correct spirit root are shown.

To complete the set, I pull out my Minor Fire Control Booklet too, and begin to study.

The first thing I learn is that water infused qi flows faster than others, making it necessary to reinforce the meridians at their turning points.

Earth qi is much slower, but once its momentum builds, it is much harder to stop so it must be channeled with purpose in a single direction.

Metal qi needs to be compacted every step of the way, or it will break apart into shards and damage the meridians from the inside.

Wood qi is the most fragile, requiring a more composed and focused approach. It needs to be nurtured and cared for like a living plant. It appears to be the most complicated element to master.

The more I read, the more I find that fire qi really is the most simple.

Splashing sounds come from the shore, as a tiny white fox comes trotting back toward me with a fish in its mouth almost three times its own body size.

She sets it down in front of all of my open booklets, then hops into my lap with a confident smile ear to ear after her successful hunt.

I accept the fish and scratch her head to boost the little spirit beast’s confidence.

When I examine it though, the fish has faint traces of qi and water element energy inside it. Many wild creatures naturally pick up qi into their bodies as they live in energy rich environments like this, but I’ve never seen real elemental qi inside an animal that has no spirit roots.

Meimei falls asleep, and I decide to examine this lake more in the future to get to the bottom of this strange discovery. I pull her trophy fish into my storage for safe keeping, and continue to study my booklets as the sun sets.

After a while, I stand up and begin practicing some of the new movements and mental visualizations I’ve learned.

They’re not perfect yet, so I don’t activate my cultivation technique or stimulate any of my roots. It is just to get a general feel. Once the sun fully sets, I slip away into my hidden realm with Meimei, placing her deep in the metal portion to sleep, and continue my training in the center of the array.

Without an enlightenment talisman, it won’t be picture perfect, but I can’t be fully reliant on those to help me with every single task.

–

After a few hundred trial and error practice cycles, the entire night passes by. I feel as though I’ve memorized the correct meridians and element control patterns enough to try it for real.

However, I wait for another check-in notification to trigger in my inner ear. I use all of the new cards to create more heavenly grade healing elixirs.

“That should be enough if anything goes wrong…” I murmur.

Over the next few hours, I take the leap and try channeling qi through all 5 of my spirit roots one by one.

Other than my fire root, they’re all rigid and unresponsive at first. It takes a few hours to finally get small particles of blue qi to form through my water root.

Even though it’s a minuscule amount, the warnings in these booklets are warranted. At every curve in my meridians, they’re strained like rivers are trying to push them in unnatural directions.

The earth root is even harder, barely any brown particles make it out of the root, and I spend twice as long straining it.

Both the metal and wood roots do not even react. My mind and body are far too exhausted to properly control them.

I stop and take my first break, consume a healing pill, and cultivate raw white qi for a while to restore my dantian.

Meimei wakes up during this time, and comes to the center of the array to walk around me.

My souls aren’t strained, but she enjoys being nearby when I activate my cultivation technique.

As I slowly heal back to my peak state, the imagery of Lan Xin and her spirit beast both swallowing a drop of heavenly rock bee honey continues to come to mind. There are pins and needles all over my body, and the five sore roots almost feel like muscles in my chest pounding.

My plan was to become semi-proficient in every element before trying myself, but this might take weeks or months to really get them all to a stable point like my fire root.

I decide to pull out the vial of amber-colored rock bee honey.

Meimei’s nose starts sniffing the air, and she looks up at me when I uncork it.

Her tiny mouth opens, dripping with drool.

I send a small pulse of thought into the red section of this cultivation array, asking the flame toad if he’d like to join.

Little Red hops over, and I bring the enchanted honey to his nose. His eyes stay bored, and he hardly moves, but after a few seconds, the toad nods, sending me a pulse of understanding back, wishing to consume a drop too.

I crack a smile, and let a small droplet fall from the vial. Little Red’s tongue flicks out and catches it before he hops back to his fire element state in silence.

Another small droplet falls into Meimei’s open mouth next, and I give myself one last.

The vial now only has around 6 droplets left. I let it fall into my storage as the warm amber liquid dissolves on my tongue.

The light yellow particles of the enchanted flower nectar in this honey disperse throughout all three of our bodies, and react slightly differently in each.

It turns dark red, almost black inside the flame toad. All of the raw qi in the honey disperses unused out of him, but the particles of the honey’s enchantment fuse with his body.

For Meimei, the honey shifts in color to become pristine white. All of the raw qi floods into her dantian, and with a light pop, she breaks into the mid stage of level 4. The enchantment makes her physique’s mist glow even brighter.

The honey flares up with a bright flash of white aura as it dissolves into my energy pathways too.

All of my meridians glow bright, and expand outward to over double their normal size.

The raw qi and particles of enchanted nectar become trapped in my Jade Purity Soul Scripture’s repetitive cycle. Every time they flow around my body, another pulse widens my meridians. All my spirit roots become stimulated at once to make use of the excess waves of qi stored in the honey.

The tiny cracking of a bottleneck I felt back in the Wang Estate returns. The deepest fracture is still near my fire root, but similar small cracks appear at the tether points of the other 4 roots.

Every cycle, the bottleneck fracture points grow a little more. They all start to connect around the whole dantian.

Both of my souls grow warm, and extremely stable. Especially within Meimei’s mist, not a single strand falls out of place. My spiritual senses burst outward to an artificially inflated state, reaching over 100 meters, stronger than even that tier 2 perception enchanting pendant artifact I hold.

I try to take full advantage of this state, and follow the most natural element control practices while I have this moment of heightened stimulation.

A wisp of fire comes out of my palm first with ease in seconds.

Next, my water root easily fills up and flows through wide open meridians with nothing blocking it.

Water qi droplets come out of my other palm, turning into mist in the air.

Earth steadily flows through my meridians next, releasing small brown particles from around my feet.

My metal root is finally stimulated, creating dull silver bursts all over my body.

It is very unstable, never making it to an exit point, but metallic qi particles do cover my forearms, legs, and some on my chest and shoulders.

The wood element is last to show itself.

It makes a warm green glow near my dantian, but mostly fizzles out when I lose control of it.

A shattering sound echoes in my mind, as the roots hit their most inflamed state and break the minor bottleneck. I reach the mid stage of level 5.

All of the excess qi from the honey still cycling through my body flows into my dantian, and fills it up to the brim.

I fall to the array floor breathing heavily.

My robust souls slowly cool down back to their natural state, and Meimei circles my chest a few times before sitting on top of me. She lets her aura completely cover my body to counteract this and make sure neither becomes chaotic.

An overwhelming soreness and horrible knife-stabbing pain forms all over my body. It is especially bad in my spirit roots as I overstrained them way past their limits.

I eat two heavenly grade healing elixirs at once, and fall into a fully concentrated cultivation state with Meimei to recover.

The satisfied croak of a toad is the last thing I hear, as a pulse of dark red energy ripples through the array. Little Red’s natural flame physique reaches the late stage.