《Virtuous Cultivation》70: The Worst Bathwater

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Normally, the body elder would likely be making sure the disciples were indeed cultivating, but after what happened earlier, he was nowhere to be seen.

Mei decided to take the chance, running as fast as she could to her room. It was a little far off, but she managed to return with 2 books and her qi lantern in 30 minutes, running non-stop!

Panting, she looked around the halls for a bit, making sure Ming Jiang wasn't around. She headed up a flight of stairs and into her assigned refinement room.

As expected, it was the exact same drab design. Mei lit her lantern with a wisp of qi before shutting the door.

Were there really no lights in the refinement rooms? She took out the black jade slip and checked... Nope.

Looking through the jade, the only instructions about the rooms were how to plug the hole and turn on the tap. Mei sighed. It couldn't be that expensive to install a light, could it?

Also contained within the jade slip were guides on how to better absorb the liquid, for every element.

For each element, there were a few different body types listed. Mei didn't really care enough to look through the other elements, so she only looked to wood. Disappointingly, there were only 2.

[Vital Body]

Recover from injuries fast, with the vitality of a plant and increase affinity with wood magic.

[Ironwood Body]

Make the body as tough as the toughest spirit trees and more resistant to fire, but at the cost of having rougher skin and slowed movement.

...

The toughness of the Ironbark Body was tempting, but Mei really didn't like the idea of being stiff and rough all over. As for Vital Body, the regeneration sounded nice. If she ever got a bruise or a toothache, it would help.

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But still, was this seriously all there was to wood? Maybe the body elder was being stingy and couldn't be bothered to list them all.

Mei thought hard about it. Was she really just going to pick Vital Body, without even confirming if there were any other wood body cultivation methods? After all, there was a good chance there was no going back after this, and that it would determine her body path for the rest of her life.

Eh... the sect master probably wouldn't let an elder mess around and teach disciples bad techniques, right? It was probably fine. Maybe he only transcribed the best body techniques, excluding the inferior ones?

And just like that, Mei shrugged off her concerns with flimsy excuses. She decided to read deeper into the descriptions of the two wood paths.

At high levels of the Vital Body path, the user would be able to... regenerate even limbs in an instant, only head injuries being fatal? That sounded amazing!

It would also grant the user better attunement with the wood element, greatly elevating the power of wood spells, and allowing them to identify all the needs of spirit herbs. To raise them to the highest quality possible...

...

Was she cursed to be haunted by farming?

She shifted her focus back to the Ironbark path. Maybe the issues would be resolved at higher attainment? Skimming through the description, it seemed that after the 5th stage, that would indeed be the case! ... but wasn't that the equivalent of Nascent Soul in qi cultivation?

In the meanwhile, the body would get closer and closer to the embodiment of wood as the technique progressed, to the point where they would need to levitate with qi if they wanted to even move.

Was this supposed to be horror?

As tempting as it was to eventually be tough enough to shrug off attacks like nothing, Mei did not look forward to spending years or even decades as a wooden statue. It could even be centuries or millennium if cultivation was as slow as fiction made it out to be...

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Mei read through the Vital Body's section. The circulation of qi was... very simple, just as the elder implied.

Though of note, apparently, simply soaking in a vault of body refining liquid would not be enough. The cultivator would have to drink it as well.

Mei was not very keen on drinking "water" she was bathing in, so she decided she would just prepare a batch separately tomorrow.

She took out the bottle of wood essence and body refining powder, placing it to the side, then, placed the jade slip on the tap. On the floor, 2 buttons appeared, Mei reaching out to press both A "clunk" sound could be heard as something covered the hole. Water began to flow out of the tap, the sound echoing through the small room.

Hurriedly, she popped off the lid and dumped in the entire jar of body powder, before jumping in and kicking to mix the liquid. From the light of the lantern, Mei could see the water was a mild green.

As the powder dissolved, a weird fizzling sound could be heard. She felt her feet sting and tingle from just touching the liquid. Was that normal?

Mei grabbed the jade slip and looked through it as the water filled. Eventually, the prologue caught her eye.

To cultivate your body is to rebuild it.

Body refining liquid slowly replaces your flesh, bones and organs with stronger materials, discarding the inferior remains.

The process is normally painful, but most body refining solutions in the sect contain painkillers.

...

So that weird fizzling sensation was flesh being dissolved... not disturbing at all.

This stuff, it wouldn't be harmful to the library books, would it? From a past accident, she found out the books were waterproof.

She dabbed some of the green liquid onto a page, watching as it slid off harmlessly, as usual. Perfect.

The next few hours were spent reading, Mei trying to ignore the fizzling sounds. It was a little hard to read under the dim light of the lantern, but she somehow managed. It would be a much better idea to look through the jade slip to see if there was anything important she missed, but right now, she felt more like reading fiction.

By then, the fizzling had died down. Mei looked down, only to see it had turned a reddish-black hue. Disgusting... she tried not to think about what the water was full of and quickly got out.

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