Returning to the inn, Ian Song did not see Chris Chen. He didn’t think much of it, assuming Chris had gone out for a stroll, so he went straight back to his own room.
He sat cross-legged on the bed, letting his mind sink into his dantian.
After mastering the Breath-Gathering Art, both his dantian and meridians had greatly expanded.
At this moment, there were three clusters of energy inside his dantian.
One was inner qi cultivated from the Jadebreaker Method, another from the Blazing Sun Method, and the third was true qi produced by the Breath-Gathering Art.
Previously, he'd planned to collect five manuals of the Five Elements and then deduce an Innate-level method, but unexpectedly, a single lake trip had netted him both an Innate-grade cultivation art and sword technique.
Thinking back, his smooth progress was likely due to his high Qi Luck. Before fusing the two arts, his Qi Luck had reached over three hundred—hundreds of times that of an ordinary villager. With such luck, even picking up silver coins while walking wouldn’t be surprising.
An hour of cultivation passed.
During this hour, Ian used true qi to absorb and refine the other two clusters of inner qi, raising his cultivation to the peak of the early Innate stage—just one step away from mid-Innate.
However, at the time things were urgent; worried that Chloe Cao might not be a match for the water monster, he hadn’t bothered to correct the Breath-Gathering Art and had simply spent Qi Luck to learn it.
As for the Sword of Drizzling Rain, he hadn’t learned it yet.
With a thought,
Ian took out the Breath-Gathering Art manual and began slowly flipping through it.
Though it was an Innate-level method, among Innate arts it was fairly low-grade—at best, it could only be cultivated to the peak of early Innate.
After reading it once, Ian began modifying the technique.
The revised Breath-Gathering Art could now be cultivated all the way to late Innate, and the true qi it produced was much denser and more explosive. Ian named it the Harvest-Haze Art.
Because Harvest-Haze Art was built atop the Breath-Gathering Art, relearning it only cost fifteen points of Qi Luck.
"Spend fifteen Qi Luck to learn Harvest-Haze Art!"
After issuing the command to the System, a gentle force arose within his body, restructuring his dantian and meridians...
By the time it was over, nearly a quarter-hour had passed, and Ian’s cultivation had jumped straight to the peak of late Innate.