Fortune and Danger

Ancient and immemorial, it was simply called Furnace throughout the ages. It was a treasure bred by the Great Myriad Daos. It could refine everything and devour the whole world if the one wielding it had enough power.

The Furnace existed and jumped from owner to owner in seek of continuing its own existence, it needed enough energy to maintain itself, it was a bit like a symbiote.

However, it granted tremendous benefits to its owner. The first revealed ability was its ability to refine the owner's power to the utmost limit possible, and the second was the ability to refine anything into pure energy to increase the owner's cultivation. The Furnace had other abilities, but they weren't revealed to Yujin because of his small strength.

The next day, Yujin awakened with an unbelievable face, he still thought he was dreaming. From one night to the next day, he somehow gained a supreme treasure, how could he not doubt himself?

He could also feel the Furnace floating in the center of his Dantian quietly. He urged it with a thought and the spiritual qi around him was quickly sucked by it, exponentially faster than when he did it by himself.

The Furnace quickly refined it into a form of pure energy, which was fed to his spirit root, which had no difficulty in transforming it into true qi. It was so much faster than normal cultivation that Yujin again doubted his own sanity.

After another thought, the Furnace began to refine his true qi along the spiritual qi, and it began to turn purer and denser after each refinement. However, the quantity of true qi was also diminishing because of it, and Yujin had to refine more true qi to keep it balanced.

After a few dozen minutes, Yujin actually felt his cultivation hitting a bottleneck, he was about to break through. Not only that, but his true qi hit a limit of density as well. He contained his excitement and decided to not advance.

Moreover, he felt that his body was gradually being improved further by the purer and stronger true qi.

Although he was excited, he was more afraid of being discovered by others. Although he was a child, he already learned a lot about human nature. Both from his own experience and also from Yunwei's tales.

In some tales, a poor cultivator discovered a treasure and showed it to his beloved, but was betrayed by her and killed. His wife was greedy for the treasure and wanted to keep it to herself.

Even if Yunwei herself asked, Yujin wouldn't tell her a single thing about the Furnace, he couldn't trust anyone.

He spent the day with his happiness and excitement buried deep into his face and he made sure to show nothing on his face. When he was free of duties, he began to read another book he got, a technique for self-defense.

It was a Body Technique that used true qi to strengthen and protect the body for a short time. It was named the "Golden Diamond Body Technique."

It was a difficult technique to master since one could hurt himself while practicing, so Yujin was always careful. Unfortunately for him, the Furnace could do nothing about his own comprehension capacity.

There was another technique as well, a technique for escaping called the "Moonwalk Technique." It used true qi specifically to increase speed tremendously at the price of making the leg's muscles very sore.

Yujin didn't bite more than what he could shew and focused on the body technique for self-defense.

For the next few weeks, he just studied cultivation and practiced the body technique.

After three weeks, he finally managed to initially use the technique, but it was far from being useful in a battle situation.

Yujin was in a hurry since he knew he needed to accumulate merits from special tasks, but he never accepted them because of his lack of strength. He was afraid of dying outside without the opportunity of self-defense.

The sect gave the registered disciples a year to adapt during which they weren't obligated to do extra tasks, but that period would eventually end for Yujin.

He still had about eleven months to gather enough skill and strength to protect himself outside.

He only had one unsoulvable problem, how he would advance his cultivation quickly and safely.

He learned from Yunwei that those with five elemental spirit roots normally could take years to advance a small layer in the ordinary wild. But inside a place with full spiritual qi, it could be shortened considerably.

He learned by accident from the mouth of a servant that a registered disciple of the branch with a five elemental spirit root took a full month to advance from the first layer to the second despite the twenty times density bonus of spiritual qi.

Apparently, just increasing the density of spiritual qi didn't solve the problems brought by bad talents, it wasn't as simple as a mathematical problem.

After a short calculation, Yujin felt it would be safe if he waited at least a month and a half since his cultivation establishment before breaking through. This way, he wouldn't attract too much attention.

After about two weeks and a few days, Yujin was in his quarter sitting cross-legged on the bed. He smiled and began to urge the Furnace again, his cultivation base began to increase the small bottleneck was easily broken by his powerful, dense, and pure True Qi.

Now, not only did he have the advantage of having seven elemental true qi, but it was also insanely dense and pure.

His spirit root was inspired by the breakthrough and began to refine more true qi quickly, but it was slow compared to the Furnace. After a few minutes, his cultivation base stabilized in the second layer of the Qi Refining Realm.

He didn't stop and began to refine his cultivation to the limit again. The Furnace seemed a little more powerful after the breakthrough and the rate of refinement increased. After almost two hours, he hit the limit of his Realm again. However, it took about three times more time than when he was in the first layer.

He also learned from the Furnace that it depended a lot on the density of the spiritual qi to refine and advance his cultivation base.

If the density wasn't up to par, it simply would be ineffective in increasing his cultivation base because of his dense true qi.

It meant that in the future, he would need to seek better cultivation places to continue to increase his cultivation base quickly.

He began to study the changes in himself and felt he was about 30% physically stronger than before, it was just a small layer after all.

The quantity of true qi inside his dantian also increased by about 30% and it was also considerably denser than before. However, his Dantian didn't expand, it would only do so at specific points. From the third layer to the fourth the Dantian would normally double in size, and the same would happen from the sixth layer to the seventh.

After examining his condition, he went out to report his advancement, it was one of his obligations as a registered disciple.

He received nothing except a nod, though. Yujin wasn't disappointed, he was relieved he didn't receive much attention.

He then returned to his routine of being a servant called a disciple. He secretly tried to pry into more info about the disciple with the five elemental spirit root and discovered his rate of advancement.

After some calculations, he decided to wait four months to break through to the next layer. He spent that time doing chores and practicing the body technique.

After two months, he was finally able to use the body technique well enough to grant himself some protection capacity in a fight. Because he had no friends, he didn't tell anyone about it.

After another two months, not only he was about to advance his cultivation base, but his mastery over the body technique increased by leaps and bounds, and he felt he reached initial mastery over the technique.

Mastery over a technique was divided into three levels: Initial mastery, comprehensive mastery, and complete mastery. Before reaching initial mastery, a cultivator couldn't be said to even know the technique properly.

Yujin decided to switch his practice in the future and focus on the Moonwalk Technique.

After ending the chores of the day, Yujin sat on his bed as usual and began to break through. His Dantian and spirit root trembled for a brief moment and a large amount of true qi was refined.

Denser, purer... stronger. The small stream of true qi turned into a galloping river around his spirit root, it was the end of the cultivation technique.

Yujin refined his cultivation with the Furnace and after about six hours he hit his limit. It was already deep into the night and he missed dinner again.

He felt a strong bottleneck, it was the first major bottleneck of a cultivator, from the early stage of the Qi Refining Realm to the middle stage.

But although the bottleneck felt strong compared to the ones from before, Yujin was clear that his powerful true qi would have no problem in instantly destroying it.

He got up from the bed and felt the strength on his body clearly, he was about 30% stronger than before, and it was the same rate of increase as before.

He took a deep breath and left to report. He finally received a small worthless praise, and also another three books. One cultivation manual and two secret techniques similar in ranking to the ones he received before.

The cultivation manual was named "Small Abyss Formation Technique," and one of the secret techniques was actually a way to use the elements in the true qi to do basic things, and the other technique was named "Small Healing Spell."

It should be noted that he was able to use a healing spell because he had both the water and wood elements in his spirit root, and thus in his true qi. The sect considered it and gave him those two techniques.

Yujin felt a little happy to receive useful techniques, he finally felt a small sense of belonging to the sect.

He began to study the new cultivation manual and practice the Moonwalk technique every day from then on.

Unexpectedly, after just two months, he reached initial mastery over the escape technique and decided to switch to the "Basic Elemental Extraction Technique."

It was much easier than the other techniques since it had simple goals. For example, it could enable Yujin to light a fire with his true qi, but he was unable to use it to fight, the same thing with the other elements... except one, lightning.

Water, Wood, Metal, Earth, Fire, Wind, and... Lightning. Those were the seven elements of his spirit root and true qi. Lightning was the most powerful among the basic elements, and all cultivators dreamed of controlling it.

Although the basic elemental extraction technique was unable to make him capable of summoning lightning to kill enemies, he could still use small electric currents to cover his fists when hitting the opponent, it would certainly be somewhat useful.

After just one month, he was able to use all the elements to a small extent and to the limit of the technique, which didn't even have degrees of mastery.

He only had three and a half months left before the end of his "easy time" in the sect. But he was growing confident in surviving.

Based on his gathered knowledge and calculations, he knew he shouldn't break through again before at least two years passed since his advancement to the third layer. The great amount of time was due to the increased difficulty brought by the major bottleneck.

It was sad, but he had no choice at that time.

He spent that time practicing the small healing spell, which was surprisingly difficult. He took three full months to reach initial mastery, he was able to heal light superficial wounds, useless in case of grave wounds.