[...]

[Time Remaining: 00:00:00]

[Cleansing Complete]

[Awakening Host]

[Operation Successful]

[Congratulations, your spiritual roots have been cleansed!]

Han De opened his eyes. Before activating the token he was just leaning on the side while looking at the scrolls. Now, he was sitting in the lotus position. ‘Creepy...’

He tried sensing the changes but he couldn’t tell that there was anything out of the ordinary. It felt as if nothing had happened. He looked at his status screen without delay.

[Roots: Light (100%)]

‘I guess it is the new normal, it is so normal that it feels normal. Completely normal…’

Han De breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the result he was hoping for. He ignored the rising sun and looked at the scrolls in front of him to reconfirm his build order. He checked his inventory once again.

[Inventory]

Martial Arts Method Fragment x200

Derive Cultivation Method Token x 5

Spiritual Roots Cleansing Token x4

Spiritual Roots Seed Token x5

Random Constitution Token x5

Random Bloodline Token x5

Potential Point Upgrade Token x1

Bloodline Removal Token x4

The next stage of his plan was the most crucial. He prayed to any deities that might be in range and listening.

‘So. The seed token. How do I even do this, how do I provide the Qi required?

[Spiritual Roots Seed Token] x5

[Creates a new spiritual root on the target. The element depends on the Qi provided during the seeding progress.]

[Warning: Adding a root with an existing element will cause complications. Adding conflicting elements will cause complications. Please refer to Spiritual Roots Removal Token.]

The System was obstinate as always. Han De could not get any more information after trying for half an hour.

‘Logically speaking, this should add a new elemental root and make me a dual element cultivator. Hopefully, the new roots won’t start at 1%. Even if they do, I can wait for a while my disciples can farm points for me I guess.’

Han De removed the unremarkable box from his storage ring. He hadn’t touched this since he got it from the cockroach. Although he wanted to give this to Ning Bi, he kept delaying it again and again. Like before, a dense cloud of Fire Qi appeared as he opened the box. Han De started the process without delay.

[Spiritual Roots Seed Token Invoked]

[Gathering Statistics]

[Heavenly Tribulation Strength: Average]

‘Wait, what? WAIT!”

[Perfect Fire Qi Detected]

‘NONONONO STOP’

[Fire Element Selected]

‘CANCEL! STOP!’

[Calculating...]

Han De realized he couldn’t move a muscle. He wanted to at least close the Crimson Terror’s box but he couldn’t. He kept shouting for the System to stop in his mind.

[Calculating...]

[Qi Source Insufficient]

[Process Aborted]

‘...’

Han De looked at the System UI in complete bafflement. He didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry. He looked at the Crimson Terror once again and slowly closed the lid of the box. His entire body was covered with sweat. This was the hardest 20 seconds of his life by far. After a while, his brain started working again.

‘In hindsight, adding a new root to someone would be a heaven-defying action and would naturally attract heavenly tribulation. Still, if this was in the description all of this could have been avoided! Why would you even assume I have the common sense of a cultivator?! F#$%!!’

Han De felt better after verbally abusing the (most likely) inanimate System. He didn’t have any other outlets to vent his frustrations.

‘If a 1000 years old flower with perfect Fire Qi isn’t enough, then what would be? What is the correct amount here? 10 Crimson Terrors? 100? 1000?’

‘Maybe if Ning Bi was 4 or 5 big realms higher and agreed to provide her Fire Qi, then it might be enough. But even then the threat of the mighty ‘Average Heavenly Tribulation’ remains. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is actually at the planet shattering level. The act of shattering a planet would be at least ‘Average’ in System’s eyes, surely it wouldn’t be any less than that, right?’

The System kept mum as usual. Han De went over his notes again. His original plan was to create a new Fire element root and become a dual element cultivator. Then he would derive a new method from the Starfall and the Blazing Sun scriptures. If his new fire roots were too low in quality, he would slowly improve them via upgrade tokens.

The System had provided many tokens related to spiritual roots. Upgrade, Removal, Seed, and Healing tokens were available in the shop. He had even received a gift of 5 free seed tokens. It was clear that the System intended its host to go with the multi-element route.

Han De didn’t have any grand ambitions. As long as he could increase his survivability rate, he could stomach reducing his cultivation speed in the short term. Of course, he wasn’t going to ignore the path that the System laid in front of him.

However, Han De really did not have any grand ambitions. If that path meant going through an ‘Average Heavenly Tribulation’, he would decisively ignore it.

‘Well, my build order is completely useless now. I guess I can just roll for a random constitution and a random bloodline and call it a day...’

[...]

[Activating Random Constitution Token]

[5]

[4]

[3]

[2]

[1]

[...]

[Congratulations!]

[You have received Luminescent Body!]

‘...’

Before he could even look at the description, Han De noticed his skin had actually started glowing. Every inch of his skin was glowing with pure white light. Han De immediately noticed a problem. His eyelids were also glowing. Instead of the usual darkness, he saw pure white when he closed his eyes. He instinctively facepalmed, but his hand was glowing as well.

[Constitutions]

-------------------------------------------

[Luminescent Body (Awakened)]

[Progress: 3.0%]

[Power: Average]

[Effects:]

[Moderately increases the efficiency of Light element body cultivation methods.]

[Slightly increases the passive healing speed.]

[Passively absorbs all Light Qi that comes in contact.]

[Passively cleanses the body by emitting Light Qi.]

[Further effects are locked.]

‘A-Average?!’

“HAHAHAHAHA”

‘Seriously?! You are giving me an average constitution? On the first try?!’

Han De forgot that he was glowing and started laughing and jumping around like crazy. After a while, he remembered how Ning Bi could see through the walls after her breakthrough. He froze, then took a deep breath.

‘You know, even if it was ‘Very Weak’ I would’ve been over the moon as well. I guess ‘Average’ is synonymous with trash for you to give it out so easily. Heh, one System’s trash is another Arrogant Young Master’s treasure.’

‘More importantly, I’m guessing there is no limit to constitutions or bloodlines in a body, only the Random Tokens have that limitation. Well, I guess that’s useless to know, it’s not like compatible constitutions or bloodlines grow on trees.’

His body was still glowing, so he forcibly calmed himself down and concentrated. Cultivation always felt weird to Han De. All of it felt very natural to him. As if he woke up to a 3rd arm one day and immediately started using it with near-perfect precision. Completely natural. His new body constitution felt like he just woke up to the 4th arm.

[Passively cleanses the body by emitting Light Qi.]

Turns out his body was indeed in cleansing mode! It wasn’t just his skin, his entire body was radiating Light Qi through his meridians and that was slowly cleansing him of impurities. Increasing or decreasing the Light Qi he emitted controlled the intensity of the glow. Thankfully he was able to turn this feature off after some practice.

‘Not bad! It might be useful for scamming as well!’

[Moderately increases the efficiency of Light element body cultivation methods.]

Han De had no idea what ‘Moderately’ meant. He wasn’t a masochist so he didn’t have any intention of practicing body cultivation. It was one thing to read about the suffering of an MC, but actually experiencing it was another. Han De vividly remembered some of the descriptions. ‘If another man had experienced this pain, they would’ve died long ago...’ That was Han De. He was that ‘another man’. He wasn’t an MC, he wasn’t about to seek death via masochism.

[Slightly increases passive healing speed.]

‘Well, I’m not going to experiment with that. No way.’

[Passively absorbs all Light Qi.]

After some experimentations, he concluded that his body really did absorb all Light Qi it came into contact with. Han De suspected that this ability was the one that inflated the power rating of this Bioluminescent Body. He was practically immune to pure Light Qi based attacks. It was a shame that it was a rare element.

‘Overall much better than I expected!’

His control over this ‘new feature’ required some more practice. At least for a while, he needed to put conscious effort into keeping that cleansing feature off. It was like a new arm, he suddenly didn’t know what to do with it.

Han De moved on to the Random Bloodline Token. Since he had some Bloodline Removal Tokens he could take a more risky approach with it. He could ‘reroll’ until he got something vaguely useful like the Luminescent Body. His expectations weren’t high, but he prayed to Ning Bi just in case.

[...]

[Activating Random Bloodline Token]

[5]

[4]

[3]

[2]

[1]

[...]

[Congratulations!]

[You have received Primordial Void Dragon bloodline!]

[Bloodlines]

-------------------------------------------

[Primordial Void Dragon (Unawakened)]

[Concentration: 0.01%]

[Power: Extremely High]

[Effects:]

[Aura of the Progenitor]

[Higher beings touched by the aura cannot be disrespectful.]

[Notes: Cannot be detected by lower beings.]

[Scent of the Progenitor]

[Beings evolved from spiritual animals will pay their respects when they detect the scent. Beings evolved from the netherworld will accept your rule when they detect the scent.]

[Notes: Effects will be extremely limited on lower beings.]

[Further effects are locked.]

‘...’

‘...’

‘Holy shit!’

Han De actually hadn’t read the description yet. His reaction was based entirely on the ‘Extremely High’ evaluation. He slowly moved his eyes down to the description. His feelings became complicated upon reading it.

‘This… This is kinda useless…’

Han De eyed the Bloodline Awakening Token and the Bloodline Purifying Token from the shop. They were 100 and 500 points respectively. He was itching to use them.

‘Wait, no. Even Jin Shu’s bloodline had a heavenly tribulation triggering chance upon removal. Will this cause tribulation if it is awakened? Shit wait no! Can I even remove it now?!’

‘Logically speaking, 0.01% concentration should not trigger a tribulation, right? Maybe awakening it also wouldn’t cause tribulation since its concentration is so low?... Is that stretching it?’

He really wished that the System would provide better feedback for its tokens.

‘Alright, it’s not so bad, that scent thing will have some effect at least. Even if it says extremely limited, that doesn’t mean anything. It didn’t say the effect would be nearly zero, just extremely limited.’

Since he couldn’t even check the description of the items in the shop without buying, he decided to leave this for another day. Awakening token’s cost was only 100 points. He could buy it when he had more points and maybe experiment with it at a later date. He also thought about removing and adding another bloodline in case of an emergency. The adding/removing processes were so quick, he could do it on the fly as a trump card when all else had failed.

Now that his preliminary evaluations were done, his focus was back into his notes. Most of them were now useless, like the 5 Spiritual Roots Seed Tokens in his inventory. Han De wished he could sell them to the shop, but naturally that was impossible.

Requirements to create a new root was simply too strict. He probably needed a thousand-year plan just for its preparations. While Han De liked that idea because it sounded very Xianxia-like, he didn’t know if he could survive that long.

There was only one thing left to try on his notes.

[Redeeming Cultivation Method Upgrade Token for 200 Profound Points]

[Using Cultivation Method Upgrade Token]

[Starfall Scripture requires 114 Profound Points to advance to the Grand Master level]

[Starfall Scripture (Earth)]

Power: Extremely Weak

Mastery: Grand Master

Stage: Core Formation (Mid-Stage)

Both Han De’s understanding and the quality of the Starfall Scripture itself had gone through qualitative changes. Before, he had some hesitation towards using the derive token for light element methods. Now that he had reached Grand Master level with Starfall Scripture, he knew he had made the right call.

The methods and scriptures he had access to were all branches of the same tree. There was nearly nothing to be gained from combining them. Starfall Scripture was the most comprehensive one among them. He needed a different school of thought if he wanted to gain benefits from the token. He didn’t know how to achieve that in the short term.

Increasing his comprehension to the Grand Master level also provided him with a new perspective. The difference between him and the cultivation idiot was truly massive. In Earth’s terms, the latter had created calculus, while the former had only studied it. Understanding something didn’t mean one could meaningfully contribute to it. The cultivation idiot was truly a genius. It was a shame that he was only an arrogant young master.

1 cycle.

2 cycles.

3 cycles.

4 cycles.

5 cycles.

6 cycles.

7 cycles.

8 cycles.

9 cycles.

10 cycles.

[Cultivation: Core Formation - Mid-Stage ((+480) 7796/500000)]

His overall base speed was essentially quadrupled. It could be increased further with pills, but by their very nature pills were flat value increases, not percentage increases.

Han De did not get any bonuses to pill absorption as he had hoped. The passive Light Qi absorption of the Luminescent Body wasn’t helpful either. The spiritual springs that he had on his abode were mostly non-elemental, but he had one that partially released Light Qi. No matter how much he absorbed, none of it went towards his cultivation. All of it was used on nurturing and cleansing his body.

Han De sighed with regret. He had master-level comprehension of the Blazing Sun Scripture and had a very good idea of its capabilities. The difference between the two scriptures was tear-inducing.

‘Should I… maybe... look at body cultivation methods?’

* * *

[Congratulations]

[Host's disciple Ning Bi successfully reached Qi Condensation Level 8]

[Issuing 75 Profound Points as a reward.]

[Congratulations]

[Host's disciple Yao Qing successfully reached Qi Condensation Level 5]

[Issuing 45 Profound Points as a reward.]

Han De spent the next 5 days getting used to his bioluminescent ability. Keeping his new glow mode off was harder than he thought it would be. Once he got distracted it would turn itself on again. Still, hard work paid off. Mostly.

Once he had some level of confidence, he left his chambers to find his disciples. He couldn’t get new roots, so there was no need to stay longer than necessary.