After achieving a level-up and learning a new spell, Fang Hao's frustration had dissipated somewhat. As for his rapid level-up, he decided to use the huge amount of foundation establishment pills as an excuse. He had used an obscene amount of resources to breakthrough at the Foundation Establishment stage. With a bit of digging, it could be easily verified that he had acquired a total of twelve foundation establishment pills.

Even the trashiest pure Qi Cultivator could breakthrough with four Foundation Establishment pills. As for Body Cultivators would also focus on Qi cultivation, would rarely use more than five or six foundation establishment pills to breakthrough. Fang Hao's use of twelve foundation establishment ills along with two jugs of Grade 3 spirit wine and a hundred or so low quality spirit stones would cause an uproar.

'My violet thundercloud breakthrough is a largely unknown factor, which might require to consume additional resources in the eyes of others. That combined with my body cultivation, I can safely claim six foundation establishment pills were used for my Foundation Establishment breakthrough. As for the other five, I could claim that I used it to breakthrough into the Foundation Establishment equivalent of Body Refining. However, I dunno why but as a side-effect I also broke through to the 2nd level of Foundation Establishment.' pondered Fang Hao.

'Yep lets go with that. Attempted to use Foundation Establishment pills to achieve body cultivation breakthrough, but the residual medicinal effect was enough to propel me to the 2nd level of Foundation Establishment. A year of cultivation for a “talent” like me plus doping with pills should be sufficient to explain it. Now to experiment with Directed Discharge, and perhaps upgrade its proficiency.'

Fang Hao resumed blowing stuff up with Directed Discharge. The first thing he noticed that the power of the spell was significantly lower now. Even the time required to set it up was noticeably higher. He was stumped for a while before he guesstimated the cause for it. As he was feeling quite agitated and frustrated when he first cast the spell, it somehow resonated with the caged lightning in his body. When the lightning released, it was as if he chad channeled all the frustration and agitation built up till then and let it free, boosting the power of that first Directed Discharge by a large amount.

He then simulated agitation and irritation building up in him as he channeled the subdued Primal Thunder Reinforcement spell. When he felt the powerful lightning raging around his body caged. He imagined directing all his built up agitation through his punch to another tree, which represented the Great Elder Shi in his mind. This particular cast of Directed Discharge was more powerful than his regular casts, but not as powerful as his first cast. While the power boost was nice, it wasn't very practical. Getting emotional in fights could cloud his judgment.

He didn't want to sacrifice his presence of mind trying to boost a particular spell. But still, it was good to know. After several more tests he came to the conclusion that the act of letting go of restraints during the casting of the Directed Discharge spell seemed to boost it significantly. The more intense emotions he was feeling, the more powerful was the resulting cast when he finally released the Directed Discharge associating it with a mental Fuck You.

The same tactic of building up agitation and letting it go free also worked with his other lightning element spells, Thunder Sparrow and Static Web. He noticed that this act of letting go emotions after suppressing it did provide a significant boost to lightning attributed spells. He then tested his fire attribute spell with various emotions. He found that outright anger and rage worked the best in boosting the fire attributed spell.

As for Acid Splash, the earth attributed spell he had; it was boosted the most with an indifference arrogance. The attitude that nothing can shake him worked best with the Earth Attributed spell. For the Wind Blade spell, and to a lesser extent the Floating Leaves step, a playful evasive attitude had the best results. As for the other spells, he really couldn't figure it out. This emotional roller-coaster experimentation had taken him around three weeks to perform and confirm.

Despite the boosted power in some cases, Fang Hao was still of the opinion that being calm and retaining a razor sharp focus during actual fighting would be for the best. Sure the emotional aspect of the spells felt good and boosted power somewhat, but intentionally leaving mental flaws in battle for a bit more power wasn't something he would make an habit of. Of course if there was a situation that was desperate, he could exploit it to his benefit.

While his study had concluded for the time being, he had spent a total of twelve years in the sect. It had been almost a decade since his Master Zhu had left on “sect business”. After exhausting his Qi after grinding the Directed Discharge spell, Fang Hao was laying on the ground in his courtyard. His surroundings were a total mess. There were long partially-conical trenches crisscrossing the ground everywhere. The few trees present in the yard had been blasted to smithereens with shrapnel and ash spreading in the yard.

Fang Hao instinctively searched his storage pouch for some spirit wine, but he was reminded yet again that he had none left. He checked the small crystalline bottle of nourishment pills and idly counted them. He had around a dozen or so remaining, which could only sustain him for another six months if he was stingy. Shrugging, he popped one of the nourishment pills and felt a surge of satiation permeate him.

He wasn't really hungry, but he was bored. Usually when he was bored, he would get tipsy on spirit wine and resume with his grinding afterwards. But now, he didn't have spirit wine, nor was he allowed to leave to exchange his contribution points for some wine. Sighing wistfully, Fang Hao softly muttered:

“Master Zhu, I miss you. When will you return?”

'And hopefully give lots of good spirit wine to me for free.'

He heard an amused chuckle nearby. Getting somewhat surprised and a little alarmed, he stood up and turned towards the source of the chuckle. Standing there, was Master Zhu along with Great Elder Shi, who had just teleported nearby.