Chapter 20: Chapter Twenty: Forming the Array

Mo Hua returned and tried drawing the array patterns several times as Yan Jiaxi had instructed, and indeed felt a sudden clarity.

At night, while sleeping, he practiced on the stone tablet and made noticeably faster progress in comprehension.

For anything he didn't understand, drawing it several more times gradually revealed its secrets.

As long as the basic array patterns were firmly mastered, learning variations wasn't too difficult—the real difficulty was having no one to guide him; without direction, Mo Hua wouldn't think in that direction at all, and thus remained stuck in futile contemplation.

After another day of familiarity, on the third evening after class, Mo Hua began formally drawing the Solid Earth Array.

His first strokes were clumsy, but after stumbling through, he finally completed it—though it took a long time.

The four-pattern Solid Earth Array took Mo Hua an hour and a half to draw; after finishing, he needed another hour to rest due to excessive spiritual sense depletion.

By the time Mo Hua finished drawing the Solid Earth Array, it was already midnight.

Mo Hua checked it over and, as expected, found he had drawn it incorrectly.

Mo Hua sighed.

He had drawn only one array all night—and it was wrong.

To complete ten arrays within five days was extremely tight on time.

"What should I do?"

Mo Hua thought it over, and finally, with no other option, decided to skip some cultivation classes.

Courses like cultivation history and fundamentals couldn't be skipped—they improved perspective and cultivation experience.

Alchemy and talisman-making required spending spiritual stones on herbs and talisman jade, plus renting the sect's alchemy furnaces, so the costs were high; Mo Hua selectively skipped some of these classes.

After all, in these spiritually expensive cultivation disciplines, he had no hope of ever achieving anything in this lifetime.

He could skip all the physical cultivation classes too.

Cultivators cultivate spiritual energy through cultivation methods and wield it through Dao techniques.

Dao techniques fall into two major categories: spell-based Dao techniques and martial Dao techniques.

Spells manipulate spiritual energy through spiritual sense to form attacks, while martial techniques stimulate the body's potential with spiritual energy to engage in close combat.

Those who cultivate spells are called Spirit Cultivators; those who cultivate martial arts are called Body Cultivators.

Among Qi Condensation stage cultivators, Spirit Cultivators are rare, Body Cultivators numerous. Especially in Xiancheng, most cultivators earn their living hunting demons; Spirit Cultivators are physically frail and unsuited for hunting, so most hermits follow the Body Cultivator path.

For this reason, Xiancheng Sect specifically opened a physical cultivation course to let disciples train their bodies in advance.

But Mo Hua was destined never to practice physical cultivation.

He hadn't inherited his father Mo Shan's talent for physical cultivation; instead, like his mother Liu Ruhua, he had been weak since childhood—even weaker than Liu Ruhua.

According to Master Feng of Xinglin Hall, cultivators are born in accordance with the Dao, with spiritual sense and physical body in relative balance.

When Mo Hua was born, he possessed memories from two lifetimes; his spiritual sense was innately too strong, causing imbalance between spiritual sense and body—this imbalance meant that from birth, Mo Hua was frail and frequently ill.

Others could easily lift a hundred-kilogram stone tripod; Mo Hua strained with all his might and couldn't budge it an inch. His peers were generally a head taller and a full circle broader.

Though Mo Hua's frame was slender and weak, his features were beautiful, his demeanor gentle, lips red and teeth white—he looked like a porcelain doll at age ten.

His appearance wasn't bad, but Mo Hua still felt a true man should be imposing and powerful.

Like his father: tall, handsome, and radiating authority.

In Mo Hua's dream, he would wear a white robe, cultivate a peerless cultivation method, wield a spear like a coiling dragon, stand alone against ten thousand foes.

Sadly, such a scene could only be seen in dreams.

"Oh, by the way."

Mo Hua remembered that after falling asleep, his spiritual sense automatically entered his spiritual sea—he couldn't even dream…

The instructor teaching physical cultivation had originally intended to enforce strict standards on Mo Hua, but after Mo Hua pushed against several stone tripods without moving them even slightly—and then twisted his own arm—the instructor became much more lenient toward him.

Cultivation is like this: sometimes effort alone cannot solve the problem.

The instructor understood Mo Hua well.

When the Dao closes one window, it may intend for you to find another door—not to beat your head against the wall.

So Mo Hua selectively skipped these classes, using the freed time to lock himself in his room and focus entirely on drawing the Solid Earth Array.

On the fifth day's ten-day break, Mo Hua finally used up all ten sets of materials, succeeding with six out of ten.

Not only did he not lose money—he even earned four spiritual stones; Mo Hua was fairly satisfied.

During his ten-day break, Mo Hua went to North Street's Youyuan Studio and delivered the completed Solid Earth Arrays to Fatty Manager.

Fatty Manager examined them and said to Mo Hua: "Your elder brother's foundation in array art is truly poor, but he learns quickly—these arrays are visibly better with each one. But…"

The manager pulled out the first array and criticized it again: "This one looks like a beginner's work—some basic array patterns are drawn clumsily…"

Mo Hua was used to the manager's complaints—he let them flow in one ear and out the other.

Besides, the manager was talking about his elder brother—what did that have to do with him?

He didn't even have an elder brother.

Mo Hua cut straight to the point: "Can I exchange these for spiritual stones?"

The manager gave Mo Hua a look but counted out four spiritual stones: "Tell your elder brother to draw better next time."

"Yeah yeah," Mo Hua nodded repeatedly as he took the spiritual stones.

Mo Hua spent all four spiritual stones on pastries—ate two himself, saved two, and gave the rest to Brother Da Hu and the others.

Brother Da Hu and the three saw so many pastries and were deeply moved; they asked Mo Hua if he still wanted meat—they'd seen an elder cultivate a colorful duck, very fat.

Mo Hua's head ached; he told them to stop stealing, or else the sect would notify their parents and they'd be beaten so badly they'd lose a layer of skin.

Only then did Brother Da Hu and the others reluctantly give up the idea.

After that, Mo Hua kept drawing the Solid Earth Array, for over two months.

The more he drew, the more thoroughly he understood it.

Previously, drawing one Solid Earth Array—including rest time to recover spiritual sense—took nearly three hours; now it took only an hour and a half.

First, because practice brought mastery—the deeper his understanding of the array patterns, the less time he needed to draw them; second, through relentless day-and-night practice, constantly consuming, recovering, and using his spiritual sense, his spiritual sense had been subtly strengthened and grown considerably thicker than before.

A powerful divine sense brings very obvious benefits to drawing arrays.

The success rate of the Earth-Stabilizing Array had also reached eighty to ninety percent, and occasionally all ten sets would succeed. Each array could earn two spirit stones. Over the past two months, after deducting his daily expenses on food, clothing, and other necessities, Mo Hua had earned a full one hundred spirit stones.

Mo Hua planned to save up two hundred spirit stones, then go to the sect to choose a mid-grade, lower-tier cultivation method.

Once he had chosen, he would tell his parents. Otherwise, they would surely insist on paying for the spirit stones themselves, telling him to keep his own for his cultivation, or to save them for the future to take a Dao companion or buy a cave dwelling, and the like.