Chapter 157: The Secrets of Spiritual Sense in the Seven Treasures Pavilion

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Qin Haoxuan was secretly dumbfounded. It seemed Xing had been right. To think that he could learn to break the restriction in twenty days was a complete fantasy. Just copying a few of the inscriptions was this difficult. He sighed with emotion once again: cultivation truly was a profound and extensive field of study.

Qin Haoxuan copied for a full day and a night, yet he only managed to reproduce one-tenth of the restriction. Seeing the sky turn pale with the light of dawn, he was completely exhausted. His spiritual sense had also been greatly depleted from entering and exiting the jade slip so many times.

At this moment, Qin Haoxuan was lying motionless on his bed. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go and find Xing immediately, but that he didn’t even have the strength to lift a finger. For the past day and night, it had been an endless cycle of entering the slip with his spiritual sense, memorizing the inscriptions, coming out to copy them, and then going back in. His nerves had been stretched taut, and he had been terrified of making even the slightest mistake. How could he not be exhausted from such mentally and physically taxing work?

He had wanted to give up several times, but whenever he closed his eyes, he would remember the sinister and terrifying gaze of Master Chi Lian and his dreadful power as a Spirit Tree Realm cultivator. For the sake of his own life, he gritted his teeth and persevered. It wasn’t that he lacked perseverance or a firm Dao Heart; on the contrary, he had always possessed both in abundance. It was just that this restriction was infuriatingly complex.

After sleeping for an hour and recovering a bit of his energy, Qin Haoxuan finally climbed out of bed, gathered the copied portion, and went to find Xing.

Seeing his exhausted face, Xing, for a rare moment, did not show a look of contempt, likely because he knew his own spiritual sense was too weak and was embarrassed to mock him for it.

“This is only one-tenth of the restriction. I’ve only managed to copy this much after a full day and night. It seems that to copy the entire thing, it will take at least ten days,” Qin Haoxuan said with some frustration. He handed the paper to Xing and sat down, beginning to wonder if he should change his strategy. Otherwise, by the time he broke the restriction, he would only have ten days left to prepare.

Xing took the drawing and paid no attention to what Qin Haoxuan was saying. His eyes, glinting with a sharp light, were completely immersed in the world of the diagram.

“Brush.”

Xing held out his hand. After getting a brush from Qin Haoxuan, he began to write and draw on the paper.

At first, Qin Haoxuan was startled, thinking he was going to destroy his hard work. He was about to stop him when he realized that the parts Xing was adding looked very familiar. Weren’t they from the restriction in the jade slip? Although Qin Haoxuan couldn’t draw them from memory, he recognized them immediately. He even entered the jade slip to compare, and he had to admit that Xing’s skill was far superior to his own.

So as not to disturb him, Qin Haoxuan obediently ground the ink for him, playing the role of a study attendant.

It took a full two hours. Finally, Xing finished recreating the entire restriction from the jade slip. Qin Haoxuan stared at him in amazement. To be able to complete the remaining nine-tenths of the diagram based on just a small fragment… Xing’s ability was simply godlike.

“Why are you looking at me like that? I told you, I am a peerless genius of the Nether-race. I can learn anything with a single glance,” Xing boasted, though he looked visibly tired.

Qin Haoxuan automatically filtered out his boasting. “Does that mean you know how to break this restriction?”

Xing nearly leaped into the air. “Nonsense, of course! If I can memorize this entire little restriction, isn’t breaking it a simple matter?”

Qin Haoxuan nodded seriously. “That’s true. You don’t look like a stupid demon.” Although his words were a backhanded compliment, in his heart, he was incredibly curious about Xing. Just what was his identity?

Xing, however, didn’t notice Qin Haoxuan’s changing expression and began to explain the method of breaking the restriction, pointing to a spot on the diagram. “From the principles of the eight trigrams, this is the easiest place to break through. You just have to control your spiritual sense, condense it from a formless state into a mist, and after it permeates this area, you can destroy it. Then you move here, where you must atomize your spiritual sense into droplets…”

Xing spoke with great enthusiasm, not noticing that Qin Haoxuan’s face had turned extremely grim. When he had finished, Qin Haoxuan told him a very serious problem: “My spiritual sense is strong, but I don’t know how to control it. I’ve never learned how to manipulate it.”

Xing froze, completely dumbfounded. He stared at Qin Haoxuan in disbelief. “You’re sure you don’t know how to control it? Then how did you cultivate it? Were you born with it?”

“I think so,” Qin Haoxuan nodded very seriously.

Xing immediately began to wail at the heavens. “The heavens are blind! A genius like me was born with a weak spiritual sense! If you had given your spiritual sense to me, I would be the number one, heaven-defying demon in the Netherworld! I would lead the Nether-race to unite the cultivation world in no time…”

He suddenly paused his boasting and thought for a moment. “Uniting the cultivation world might be a bit much…” He then seamlessly continued his lament. “What a waste of a heavenly treasure! If I had your spiritual sense, I would ambush the Sect Master of your Taichu Sect, steal all his artifacts and spirit stones, and then suck dry his blood and essence! Tsk tsk… imagine how terrifyingly strong I would become!”

“Is my spiritual sense really that strong?” Qin Haoxuan asked in disbelief. “Strong enough to ambush the Sect Master?”

“There’s a ten percent chance,” Xing replied. “If your Sect Master were extremely distracted, maybe a ten percent chance of success. But under normal circumstances, his spiritual sense could crush yours easily. Of course, your spiritual sense is already very, very powerful. It’s a heavenly gift, and it’s truly wasted on you!”

Qin Haoxuan was secretly dumbfounded. He had originally thought that since he could use his spiritual sense, he was comparable to a Dao Fruit Realm ancestor. Now he knew just how vast the gap was.

“But if I can’t control it, it’s useless. Teach me how to manipulate it,” Qin Haoxuan said, placing his hope in Xing.

Xing’s face was a picture of bitterness. “I don’t know how to cultivate or control spiritual sense. If I did, would I still be afraid of your threats?”

“Then why were you acting so high and mighty, talking about ambushing the Sect Master?”

“I… can’t I just boast?” Xing’s face flushed slightly. “I really can’t teach you about spiritual sense, because I don’t know how myself…”

Qin Haoxuan sighed. “After all this trouble, I still can’t open the jade slip.”

But Xing said with confidence, “There is still a way. I’ve been chatting with some of the old menial disciples in the Spirit Field Valley, and I learned that your sect has a place called the Seven Treasures Pavilion. You can pay a certain amount of spirit stones to enter the first four floors to study things. It’s possible there’s a method for controlling spiritual sense in there.”

His words were like a new ray of hope for Qin Haoxuan. His eyes lit up. “The Seven Treasures Pavilion? I’ve been in the sect for half a year and I’ve never heard of it. Where is it?”

“A homebody like you who only knows how to foolishly cultivate, of course you wouldn’t know where it is,” Xing said, taking the rare opportunity to mock him.

Qin Haoxuan was unfazed by his sarcasm. He had to admit that Xing’s social skills were far superior to his own.

“Let’s go. To the Seven Treasures Pavilion,” he said, standing up without hesitation. He still had some savings from selling spirit stones. If he could learn a method to attack with and cultivate his spiritual sense, it would be a huge gain.

“I’ll go get Senior Brother. He’ll surely know more about it than we do,” he added, turning to find Ye Yiming.

The Seven Treasures Pavilion was located on the mountainside of Emperor Peak. It was a place specially set up by the sect to provide paid access to cultivation arts for its disciples. If a disciple was not highly valued by an elder who would personally guide them, their only option was to spend their own money to learn.

As long as one was a disciple of the Taichu Sect, they could pay the corresponding fee to enter the Seven Treasures Pavilion and study. The pavilion was divided into seven floors. The bottom four could be entered with spirit stones, but the top three required sect contribution points.

It was said that the pavilion contained not only practical arts like the Spirit Rain Art for farming but also low-level combat arts like the Heaven-Cleaving Slash, as well as many mid-level ones. It also held the written experiences of many experts in their specialized fields, such as tips on planting or how to learn a certain spiritual art more quickly. And if one had enough contribution points, one could even go to the upper three floors to study high-level combat arts.