2 Hidden Ability

They both left the store to check. Without Wang Jiaohua noticing Li Pingjun had put on a heroic face. He stood straight like a sword ready to fight evil. Li Pingjun readied himself, lowering his center of gravity such that he would be able to launch at the perpetrator in an instant.

"oh, a cat made that noise, damn cat." Wang jiaohua's words was like a bucket of cold water had doused Li Pingjun, he froze in his place.

Wang Jiaohua looked around and noticed a couple on the middle of the street, the man was on his knees holding out a ring to woman. the woman can't seem to contain her happiness and was screaming. "so that's what it was" Wang Jiaohua had a weird look on his face.

"It seems it's nothing serious Pingjun" Wang jiaohua said, looking over at Li Pingjun before immediately being stunned. "And what exactly are you doing?". A moment later Wang jiaohua burst out laughing having realized what Li Pingjun was doing.

"f*ck..." Li Pingjun felt like crying, he thought that it was his time to shine.

"what? were you trying to save a damsel in distress?" wang jiaohua mocked Li Pingjun after trying hard to contain his laughter, his face looked like he was looking at an idiot.

"f*ck you man, i'm outta here" Li Pingjun Cursed at Wang Jiaohua and left. Stomping on his way.

"you might want to go to the slums, maybe there's a damsel in distress there." Wang jiaohua said while laughing a bit.

Li Pingjun ignored him, only giving him a universal sign of 'goodbye' with his hand.

Li Pingjun walked through the usual road to his house, his house is actually outside of the city, The house is not far away enough from the city that beasts wander about there. since the soldiers of the city regularly sweep the surroundings of the city clean of beasts, it's pretty safe.

while walking to this house, he thought about his cultivation, cultivation consist of five stages, with each stage having 9 sub stages.

Water gathering, Seed creation, Budding, Leaf Creation and Wood Consolidation. cultivation is like cultivating a giant tree inside your body, at water gathering you are preparing the necessary ingredients to start cultivating a tree, mainly spiritual energy or qi.

Water gathering is a stage where you build up spiritual energy inside your body, to not only have enough energy to go to the next stage, but to also temper your body, your body is like the soil, you nurture it such that a tree can grow safely in it. at seed creation you use the gathered spiritual energy to create a seed, this seed is something you will nurture to a great tree by giving it nutrition. At this stage the seed becomes a vessel for spiritual energy, the seed will fill up with qi to the brim until the seed cracks and a bud will grow from it. that's about as far as Li Pingjun knows about cultivation, he doesn't even know anything specific about what the budding stage is.

Li Pingjun was only able to enter the cultivation world because he found a book, detailing a breathing exercise to absorb spiritual energy in the air through breathing. with the breathing exercise he was able to get to the first stage of water gathering and start his journey to immortality!, but without a cultivation manual he can't go any further. He went through countless near death experiences, becoming tour guides for foreign cultivators, climbing dangerously high cliffs to get low leveled spiritual herbs, only to scrape enough spirit stones to buy the most basic cultivation manual, Tree of life.

Cultivation manuals will direct what kind of tree you will be able to nurture inside your body, as the name suggests tree of life is just a normal tree that is filled with your life force, basically just a normal tree. Not like anybody has ever grown a majestic tree of life, the ones using this cultivation manual are talentless blokes who doesn't have the resources to go further than water gathering stage. Not to mention this cultivation manual can only be use to the peak of water gathering.

Other basic cultivation manuals are similar with the tree of life, Li Pingjun had only seen a few people with special cultivation manuals, he had seen a person became bathed in fire, and using it to fight. It seemed that the tree that person will nurture will be fire elemental. he also heard from fellow low levelled cultivators, tales of how wood consolidation experts fought. They had a massive and majestic tree projection lush with leaves and tons of branches behind them, the tree fuels their techniques, and they can even use the tree themselves to fight.

'That sounds so cool!, having a huge projection behind you' thought Li pingjun. He had started his cultivation journey 7 years ago, he found the breathing exercise book when he was 12. He is now 19 years old , what is his cultivation right now?, surely he should be at least be in the middle stage of water gathering right?, no he is still at the 2nd stage of water gathering. He is a talentless person that will die with getting at most to 4th stage in his life time.

other people would have just given up and lived their lives like mortals, with the added benefit of being stronger and a longer lifespan that their tiny cultivation gives. Li Pingjun would have also given up had he not awoken a certain ability, as he thought about this, a window appeared in front of his eyes detailing an information on someone.

_____________________

Name: Cui Yan,

Cultivation base: 7th stage of water gathering,

Hidden Ability: Eye of Doumu,

Hidden Ability awakening: Both eyes poked by her friend accidentally,

Estimated cultivation achievement: 8th stage of wood consolidation,

_______________________

Yes it was a detailed information of the super smoking hot babe that he saw from before. turns out she was part of the Cui family, the familiy that governed Menglong city.

When Li Pingjun was just starting cultivation he suddenly awoken an ability to...,

anyway Li Pingjun can see how far someone can go in their cultivation journey. he can also see their hidden heaven defying ability, the first time he used this ability his eyes felt like they were burning and he fainted on the spot immediately, but after waking up he was able to bring up the information he just gathered.

who was the first person he checked?, it was the lady selling buns across the street from his house. and the result is unsurprisingly she didn't have any talent for cultivation. Li Pingjun also tried to use this ability to check his own talent, but his eyes only felt itchy for a little bit, no window showed up detailing his information.

Getting back to the topic at hand, that woman named cui yan had already reached 7th stage of water gathering, good thing he bailed after realizing she was going to leave the restaurant, if not he will be beaten up for sure. It's also estimated that she will get to wood consolidation. That is the reason Li Pingjun suddenly day dreamed about marrying her and having her carry him to the top.

Surely this ability that is able to tap into the potential of others will help him get to the top in the cultivation world right?, as Li Pingjun was thinking about how this ability can help him get to the top. He read the way she gained her hidden ability, he walked home blankly,

'There's no way' he thought.

After about an hour, he finally arrived back home, his house was small, made of wood. The inside only had one room ,a wooden bed covered with animal skin, a table and a chair adorned his house. there's not even a window. He entered his house, for some reason his eyes were red and tears are pouring out. he used a bucket of water beside his bed to wash his face and soothe his eyes.

He moved to his bed and sat crossed legged on his bed. Li Pingjun calmed his heart and took out a pill bottle from his sleeves, he opened the bottle and looked at the contents. 3 pills were inside, they looked coarse and smelled a bit bad because of how much impurities were in them.

Li pingjun let out a sigh. every time he took pills like this he also need to work extra hard to expel the impurities from his body, 50% of said impurities he expelled through the act that women absolutely does not do.

he put one inside his mouth and it melted instantly and flowed directly into his stomach, it gave him a really bad aftertaste but he ignored it. A burst of spiritual energy spread out to nurture his meridians, he controlled it such that it would nurture his meridians evenly. The body itself is actually like a tree, the meridians and blood vessels carry nutrition's and spiritual energy throughout the body, nurturing it. it only took half an incense stick of time for the power of the pill to subside. afterwards he nurtured his body with the remaining two pills.

The three pills increased his spiritual energy about as much as he would get absorbing spiritual energy from the air for half a day.

After finishing that, Li Pingjun worked hard to expel as much impurities from his body, after each revolution of spiritual energy through his meridians, a tiny amount of impurities is expelled through his pores. This process was actually quite pleasant, it's like taking big d*mp after being constipated for a long time, it felt relaxing.

By the time he was finished, the sky was already dark. He opened his eyes and stood up, his body is now covered with impurities and smelled bad. He walked to the nearby river to cleanse his body and to also expel the remaining impurities in his body.

The river is surrounded by a bunch bushes and trees , this part of river is a bit far from the city and thus, it has become Li Pingjun's personal spot. Though if you follow the river downstream it will lead you to the neighboring town, Li Pingjun heard that there was a lot of people using the river there to take a bath.

Li Pingjun took of his clothes, he washed his body of all the impurities in the river and after finishing, he bent his knees and put his palms together infront of him, making a horse stance to train inside the river. He closed his eyes and held his breath.

unknown little blobs of black matter surfaced from the waters bellow drifted away from him.

He exhaled.

'Inner peace' Li Pingjun recited a mantra inside his head.

After a bit of time Li Pingjun finished his training, what did he train?, breathing exercises.

After training he started hand fishing for his dinner, although his 2nd stage water gathering cultivation, just barely helped him at fighting spiritual beasts. He became fast enough that catching fish is like taking a candy from a baby, after catching 3 fishes for dinner, he changed his clothes and walked back home.

At his house he sat on a rock in front of the house, and used a convenient magic tool that creates a small flame to make a campfire, he cleaned the fishes he had, stabbed the fishes with a stick and started cooking the fish by the fire.

As the fish is cooking, Li Pingjun took out his pouch and emptied it's contents to his hand. Three rough rocks shining with a dim light rolled out. He looked at them with a self depreciating smile.

"Such is the life of an average cultivator"

His main income comes from hunting low levelled spirit beast and occasionally when he is lucky he would find spirit herbs, his hunts starts before the sun comes up all the way to the afternoon. the first few years of his cultivation journey he worked hard to obtain the tree of life cultivation manual, many times he almost died.

Now he follows a safe routine of hunting spiritual beasts and searching for spiritual herbs. he used to be more reckless, going through countless life threatening events. But starting from 4 years ago everything changed.

Li Pingjun stared at the campfire, listening to the crackling sounds of the campfire. His mind wandered off and his vision blurred as he started reminiscing about the past.