Over the past year and a half, while I had been researching and developing my new cultivation technique, Mei had been living a quiet life in my storage space.
“Alright. What element would you like to cultivate? Any of them will work, but if you want to cultivate inside the world orb, it has to be earth.”
Her reply was instantaneous. “Wind.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I saw the corner of her lip curl up in amusement.
I looked down and began tapping on my armrest.
Wind. Would… Would that be okay? Of all the people…
My fear wasn’t the element itself. It was the related profession—Gu Keeping.
The only things I truly needed to fear were things that could damage my soul, and soul gu had always worried me. However, I had more than enough protections in place by this point— from my soul cultivation technique to talismans to formation-enhanced refined items—that I was confident I could handle anyone below a Gu Sovereign. Even if I were infected, unless it were a Rank 7 gu or higher, I would be able to deal with it.
Instead, I was more worried about my clan. If someone began infecting them without my knowledge, it could be extremely troublesome. While I hadn’t studied gu in-depth, I had studied them enough to know that there were gu that could turn people into puppets and gu that could kill a person if they didn’t follow the keeper’s commands. Since these only affected the body, I hadn’t worried too much about them, but they could be devastating to my clan.
However, even putting aside the fact that cultivating wind qi wasn’t the same as learning gu keeping, would Mei be willing to use such creatures against me?
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
If she did, that would be the end of her. I would never bring her into the loop again, and if what she did was evil enough, I might even end up killing her at the start of a loop and moving my reset point forward to make it permanent. Her blessing should never allow that to happen.
Of course, even with this rationalization, there was no way that I was willing to immediately send her off to learn gu keeping. Learning to cultivate wind, however…
I nodded. “Alright. Wind.”
Mei smiled, seemingly knowing that she had just won some kind of victory.
I blew out a breath and tried to refocus. “Mei, I’m… working on a new path for learning cultivation, and if you are willing, I would like you to experiment with it.”
“Of course, Ancestor Su.”
I wanted to shake my head, but I remained stoic. “All I need to know is, which aspects of ‘wind’ are you interested in? What… features of wind do you wish to embody?”
Again, her response was instantaneous. “Freedom.”
I nodded slowly. “Anything else? Two more would be best.”
This time, she gave her answer a bit of thought.
“Speed and…” Mei paused. I sensed a mix of emotions from her, from worry to anger, but her next word was light and cheerful. “Vengeance.”
“All… right. Give me some time, and I’ll see what I can come up with.”
She smiled and bowed her head. “Of course, Ancestor Su.”
Over the next few months, I focused on researching wind techniques.
With only a cursory examination, I found that the Laws of Wind could be divided into two seemingly separate groups. Some of the techniques centered around freedom, speed, and happiness while others centered around vengeance, anger, and pestilence. I had Yellow-, Profound-, and Earth-Rank techniques that contained aspects of each of these two groups, but none of the techniques had aspects of both.
This made me curious, but before delving into the topic too deeply, I created a set of three basic techniques:
Mantra of the Swift Winds, Peak-Yellow Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Wind Qi, Effects: Makes one rasher.
Mantra of the Free Winds, Peak-Yellow Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Wind Qi, Effects: Makes one more rebellious.
Mantra of the Vengeful Winds, Peak-Yellow Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Wind Qi, Effects: Makes one seek revenge for any slights.
Because of my budding worry that cultivating a Low-Yellow technique might create lingering issues, I skipped them and only made techniques with Peak-quality filters. Then, I sent them to Mei so that she could begin her studies.
At this point, I had a problem, though. Mei didn’t have any affinities, I didn’t have a formation that could raise her wind affinity, and any purchases I made from the System to raise it would only be temporary.
Still, she was helping me research Law-based cultivation, and I had the credits to spare.
“System, raise Mei’s wind affinity to peak six-star.”
Purchase confirmed. Cost 16,177,600 credits. 900,014,662,435 credits remaining.
However, I chose not to raise any of her comprehensions since, in the past, she had been able to rise to Peak Lord without such boosts. I also chose not to copy these techniques into jade slips. Learning them in such a way would only hurt Mei in the long run since the memories from slips wouldn’t stick with her through resets.
With this settled, GuiAi’s team took care of arranging a teacher and quarters within Dragon Gate City for her, treating Mei the same as any other member of the clan.
Then, I turned my attention to researching more complex wind techniques.
Creating Profound-Rank techniques was far more complicated than creating Yellow-Rank techniques had been.
When I had been studying metal qi techniques, identifying the different Laws involved in a technique had been challenging, but it all made sense to me. In a way, I could feel which parts of a technique were connected to which Laws.
With these wind qi techniques, nothing evoked a similar feeling. I had to do everything through pure logical analysis.
Why? This might have been because I was more familiar with metal techniques, but I didn’t like that answer. I wasn’t familiar with the specific techniques I had been looking at, so why would a general familiarity with metal techniques matter? Instead, I began to suspect it was, again, related to Laws.
Whether it was because I had already cultivated metal techniques in this life, or whether it was for some other reason, I had a connection to metal Laws that I didn’t have to wind Laws. This allowed me to understand metal techniques more easily.
Still, even without this connection, Rank 1 techniques were simple enough, and my comprehension of cultivation techniques was high enough, that creating a handful of techniques wasn’t a problem.
I made three techniques for each level—Low-, Mid-, High-, and Peak-Profound. Twelve techniques in total.
After that, I made a single technique for each level of the Earth-Rank with each technique combining all three of the Laws that Mei requested. This was even more challenging since vengeance didn’t mesh well with the other two, but I found a way to make it work.
Writ of the Defiant Winds, Peak-Earth Rank 1 Cultivation Technique, Wind Qi, Effects: Makes one less willing to follow orders. Makes one desire vengeance on anyone who imprisons them.
What my analysis ability didn’t say was that this technique should also make one’s qi ‘faster’ and that it should be far more difficult for someone to usurp control of it, even with a much higher affinity.
Once this was done, I handed everything off to Mei and allowed her to decide how she wanted to proceed. The clan could provide her with any teachers or resources that she might desire, but they wouldn’t come free. She would have to work and earn them like anyone else.
Then, I returned my attention to my own progress.
All of my work and study on wind techniques had given me valuable insights into how cultivation techniques worked and functioned. I wanted to use these insights to create 8 more sets of techniques, one for each element, so that YuLong could train recruits using a Law-based methodology. However, that would have to wait. First, I needed to create Rank 2 techniques for both myself and Mei.
With everything I had learned, creating a new Rank 2 metal technique was no problem at all. It was done in less than a month.
Writ of Quicksilver, Peak-Earth Rank 2 Cultivation Technique, Metal Qi, Effects: Increases one’s integrity. Makes one more likely to react without thinking.
Creating a few Peak-Yellow wind techniques for Mei also wasn’t much of a problem. As soon as they were done, I handed them off to her so that she wouldn’t need to worry about not having them.
Creating Profound- and Earth-Rank techniques, though, was far more difficult.
Initially, I had wanted to do the same as I had with Rank 1, create 12 different Profound techniques and 4 different Earth techniques. However, after realizing how long this would take, I decided to save time and only made 4 Profound techniques, a Low-Earth technique, and a Peak-Earth technique. I could come back and do the rest later.