Chapter 83: Upgrading A Sutra
Chapter 83: Upgrading A Sutra
Chapter 83
Li Yu immediately got to work. If he continued cultivating with the Foundation Breathing Sutra that the Clan Lord had given him, then he would be stuck spending close to fourteen hours just to form a single qi bead; that was far from sufficient.
So, he would alter it himself. Thanks to his comprehension being greatly boosted by his Divine Grade Spirit Root, coupled with his own talent and the assistance of the Origin Eyes, he had already understood every single inner working of the Foundation Breathing Sutra.
He was more than certain that he could push the sutra from the Bronze Rank directly to the Emerald Rank; perhaps even all the way to the Obsidian Rank. And who knew? Maybe it would even cross into the next grade entirely... the Sky Grade.
Thinking about it now, the grading system of most things seemed to follow exactly the same pattern as Spirit Roots. For example, cultivation techniques, spells, skills, arrays, artifacts, and numerous other things were all classified from Earth Grade to Sky Grade, then to Heaven Grade, followed by Supreme Grade, and finally Sacred Grade.
Each grade was further divided into five sub-ranks, starting from the weakest: Bronze Rank, then Silver Rank, followed by Gold Rank, then Emerald Rank, and finally, Obsidian Rank. It suddenly made Li Yu curious: do Spirit Roots also have rank divisions?
Unable to resist, he threw the question toward his system. The reply came almost immediately; its tone remained just as grumpy as before... it seemed the brat was still very, very angry... but Li Yu waited for the answer.
The system’s voice sounded particularly harsh: "Host, I would advise you to get to work. Upgrading a cultivation technique is not something simple. Although you sound extremely confident that you can accomplish it, I should remind you that it will require you to use all of your brain cells... instead of the quarter you normally use."
Li Yu’s eyes twitched. This damn system is openly roasting me now. "Just shut up, Sys. I want to concentrate." Since the system refused to answer his question, he would simply discover the answer himself one day.
Pushing aside his curiosity about whether Spirit Roots also possessed ranks, Li Yu shifted his complete focus toward the Foundation Breathing Sutra. He activated his Origin Eyes; immediately, the entire inner structure of the cultivation technique laid bare before him.
He slowly stretched his fingers as a brilliant gleam flashed across his eyes: "Time to get to work..." The moment he made up his mind, he summoned the Foundation Breathing Sutra from the depths of his consciousness.
A translucent cultivation manual slowly unfolded before his eyes; to most cultivators, apart from noticing that the amount of qi threads absorbed was rather small, they would discover little to no flaws within the cultivation technique.
But the very moment Li Yu observed it through the Origin Eyes, countless flaws immediately revealed themselves. After all, the Origin Eyes belonged to the Divine Grade; although they were technically still at the Basic Rank, even at that level, their capabilities were already astonishing.
Golden lines gradually appeared across every page as Li Yu concentrated, and the recorded circulation routes detached themselves from the manual before transforming into a translucent human figure. Inside the transparent body, a complete meridian network appeared before his eyes, and qi immediately began flowing through it.
At first, everything appeared perfectly normal, but then, the flaws slowly started revealing themselves.
The first flaw: the qi threads were taking the longest route possible before arriving at their gathering point. As a result, they required far more time than necessary to converge, creating a bottleneck that significantly reduced the cultivation speed.
But that wasn’t the only flaw; it wasn’t even close. Another flaw soon revealed itself: among the circulation pathways, two separate qi routes actually crossed one another. Whenever qi flowed through those intersecting pathways, the two currents collided violently before continuing onward.
Although most cultivators would never notice this... since the qi threads gathered at this stage were extremely tiny, and two threads colliding wouldn’t produce any noticeable pain... it still came with many disadvantages.
Every single collision wasted a minute amount of qi; individually, the loss was insignificant, but over months or even years, those tiny losses accumulated into an enormous amount. And that still wasn’t all. In fact, the longer Li Yu observed with the Origin Eyes, the more flaws continued revealing themselves.
One flaw became ten, ten became hundreds, then several hundreds. The deeper he analyzed every single inch of the Foundation Breathing Sutra, the uglier his expression became. "Just which novice designed this cultivation technique?" he couldn’t help but wonder.
Another flaw appeared: using this cultivation technique within a high-pressure environment caused the lungs to expand beyond their natural breathing rhythm. The result? Unnecessary strain, wasted effort, and reduced efficiency.
More and more flaws continued surfacing before his eyes; Li Yu couldn’t help but rub his temples. He really had a tremendous amount of work ahead of him, didn’t he? Looking at the entire thing, it looked like a large, crumbling building structure of some sort.
Li Yu couldn’t help but realize that this was no wonder why geniuses such as Yuexin, Feng, and the others had almost slowed to a crawl in their cultivation. Although to most people they were still cultivating at an insane pace, to Li Yu they seemed way too slow.
One had to know that they had been in the Qi Gathering Realm for more than a year now, with only Yuexin managing to reach the peak of the Qi Gathering Realm while the other three were still lingering in the late stages.
Li Yu had initially thought that they were simply not as talented as he had believed, but now he could tell that this was the real reason why they had been unable to reach the peak of the Qi Gathering Realm yet, and none of them had realized where the fault lay.
Well, why would they? Perhaps he had been giving them too much credit after all; he was nothing like them. He was simply just that amazing that there was no comparison.
"Host, would you please stop procrastinating and get your hands moving? Your energy is being drained by a great deal as we speak."
Li Yu’s expression immediately became serious because he could feel it as well; the major reason why he had not decided to make use of the Origin Eyes despite the fact that it possessed tremendous potential was because of its terrifying energy consumption.
The longest he could maintain it was perhaps a few hours... five hours at most... and any longer and he might collapse entirely. Li Yu sighed and focused back on the translucent human figure flowing within his field of vision.
The white ring surrounding his irises made him look even more profound; he observed more carefully, and soon he had managed to identify every single flaw within the sutra.
Li Yu frowned slightly before speaking: "I can see all the flaws, but seeing them doesn’t mean I know how to fix them.
Sys... any hints?" The system answered immediately, and Li Yu instantly knew it wasn’t going to be a pleasant response: "Host, you already possess every tool required to upgrade the technique.
Your physique grants you the insane physicality required to manipulate energy pathways, while your Origin Eyes allow you not only to perceive them but also to completely understand them. If you’re expecting me to teach you, then you’d have better luck asking a rock, because there is absolutely no way I’m assisting you with this one.
Do your thing and stop disturbing me." Li Yu couldn’t help the twitch at the corner of his eyes; like, what the heck? How petty was this annoying system of his going to be?
Well, it almost seemed to be just as petty as he was, which was definitely not good news.... not good news at all. It almost looked as though the system was expecting him to apologize. Was he going to do that, though?
Well, being who he was, absolutely not. Never. Li Yu scoffed as well before turning his gaze back toward the matter at hand: "Who even needs your help anyway? I’m way too smart to need help from a dumb system like yourself.
You just watch and see how I do this." The system merely snorted inside his mind and didn’t utter another word.
Li Yu turned his gaze back to the translucent figure before him and decided to begin the alterations, following both his intuition and the subtle guidance the Origin Eyes provided.
He had to admit that if the Origin Eyes were at a higher rank, perhaps he would have been able to do this much more easily, but, well, he had no idea how to increase the rank of the Origin Eyes; after all, all it had ever said was that it would grow alongside him.
Li Yu carefully decided to alter the first circulation pathway. The very moment he did so, a sharp tremor ran through the translucent figure, and it seemed to cough out a mouthful of blood; of course, it was all within Li Yu’s vision and not actually real, at least in the natural sense. "I guess that is a failure," Li Yu thought, but he didn’t give up.
He himself never expected this to be easy; if altering cultivation techniques were an easy thing to do, then shouldn’t the clan elders have improved the Foundation Breathing Sutra by now?
So yeah, he expected it wouldn’t be easy, but he was a genius... an unparalleled one.... so he would succeed. And so he tried again. This time, the circulation pathway remained stable, but the absorption speed decreased tremendously.
Another failure. Li Yu thought before trying again... and again... and again, yet he was met with only one thing: failure and failure, then another failure. Several minutes passed, then an hour passed, then another hour passed.
Li Yu was starting to feel slightly fatigued, yet he had still been unable to make any meaningful adjustments; if anything, it almost seemed as though he had ruined the sutra even more.
Li Yu groaned. He had even asked the system for assistance, but the system had responded with only one sentence: "You can only learn from your mistakes. Aren’t you an unparalleled genius?"
Li Yu’s face twitched as another failure struck, and the translucent human figure hovering before him seemed to be looking at him as though it were begging him to do at least a single thing right. Li Yu’s gaze twitched as he focused even harder; this was far more difficult than he had expected, but he couldn’t quit.
After all, one day he was going to design Divine Grade techniques for the followers who would serve him after he became the strongest. If he couldn’t even alter the lowest grade of cultivation technique... an Earth Grade one... then how could he ever hope to create something at the Divine Grade?
With renewed vigor, Li Yu continued trying to fix every flaw. And he failed. He tried harder and failed even harder; yet with every failure, his Origin Eyes continued capturing every tiny change.
Every successful adjustment... no matter how insignificant... and every failed attempt were reflected directly into his mind, engraving themselves there permanently. Slowly, his understanding deepened.
After hundreds of adjustments, the scattered pieces finally began fitting together; with every mistake, he learned another principle behind cultivation pathways, and with every failure, he eliminated another impossible solution.
Then, after what felt like an eternity, things finally started moving the way they were supposed to. Well, mostly. Most of the circulation paths still moved the wrong way, while only a very small few flowed correctly.
Still, that technically counted as progress, and no matter how tiny that progress was, a win was still a win.
Li Yu smiled slightly as he made another alteration, and this time it held without failing. He made another successful adjustment, then another, then another, and then... failure.
But instead of getting frustrated, he focused entirely on why it had failed; he quickly found the solution, altered the pathway again, and this time it succeeded as well.
Soon, the circulation route became shorter, the breathing rhythm became more natural, the collisions between the Qi threads gradually reduced, then disappeared entirely, and the energy leaks also began shrinking before eventually vanishing altogether.
He was getting close to finishing it; and yet, just as he thought that, a flash of white-hot pain shot through his skull, making him groan in agony.
"Host, you should deactivate the Origin Eyes. It is rapidly consuming your energy, and there is very little left. Don’t push it." For the first time in a while, the system sounded genuinely concerned. Li Yu shook his head, his eyes still shining with the white rings of the Origin Eyes:
"No... I’m close... really close. I can’t lose now." He gritted his teeth as he continued making alterations; at this point, he already had a complete understanding of how to optimize the technique, and the only thing limiting him now was time.
As he continued pushing himself, his eyes began trembling violently, his hands moved continuously, making more and more adjustments, and his movements became shaky. His body slowly turned numb as his remaining energy rapidly depleted, yet his hands never stopped moving. Instead, they moved even faster... and faster.
His heartbeat accelerated wildly as wave after wave of pain assaulted his skull; soon, another thirty minutes passed. Blood began dripping from the corners of his eyes... drop... drop... drop... yet he still didn’t stop.
No matter how much it hurt, he refused to stop; after all, if he stopped now, then everything he had endured until this point would have been for nothing. He had to finish it.
He continued. Another hour passed. His body was beginning to feel unbelievably light, his eyelids grew heavier and heavier, and his consciousness began wavering as darkness slowly crept into the corners of his vision. Still, he endured.
Then, after another twenty minutes, his hands suddenly stopped moving. He froze for a brief moment, then a grin slowly spread across his face: "It’s... done..." The system immediately confirmed it:
"Ding! Foundation Breathing Sutra has been fully optimized. Foundation Breathing Sutra Rank has been elevated from Bronze Rank... to Obsidian Rank." Li Yu smiled when he saw the notification. He had succeeded; in the end, he really had done it.
The numbness that he had been suppressing finally caught up with him; his body swayed. The white rings within his eyes gradually faded as the world returned to its original colors; soon, even that world disappeared. Li Yu’s eyes slowly closed, and his body collapsed onto the floor the very next moment:
"I... did it..." Those were the last words he muttered before losing consciousness completely.