5: Chapter 5 Wasted Spiritual Root? No, it's an incredibly lucky start!

[Trait: Five Elements Spiritual Root (Green)]

[Effect: You possess the Five Elements Spiritual Roots of Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. Although hailed as the number one trash Spiritual Root of all time, with a Qi sensing speed as slow as a crawling turtle, congratulations—you can now Cultivate.]

[You stare at this line of text on the panel, stunned for three seconds.]

[Then, an indescribable ecstasy, like a volcanic eruption, surges from the depths of your heart!]

["Haha... Hahahahahaha!"]

[You can no longer suppress your emotions and burst into loud laughter.]

[The laughter echoes in the small woodshed, filled with the bitterness and anticipation suppressed for over forty years, and the exhilaration of finally getting what you wished for.]

[As you laugh, two lines of turbid tears stream down from the corners of your eyes.]

[Sixty years!]

[Do you know how I've lived these sixty years?!]

[From eighteen to sixty, from a hot-blooded youth to a white-haired old man, what you've been waiting for is this day!]

[So what if it's a trash Spiritual Root?]

[So what if it's as slow as a crawling turtle?]

[I can finally Cultivate!!!]

Tang Xun, in reality, was also deeply moved by this surge of emotion, his eyes growing warm.

Even though it was just a simulation, he could fully empathize with 'his' current feelings.

It was the excitement of finally seeing a glimmer of dawn after trekking through endless darkness for half a century.

This wasn't just a trait; it was a ticket to a whole new world!

[You laugh for a long time before slowly calming your heart.]

[You impatiently open the trait panel, preparing to make a replacement.]

[Currently Equipped Traits (3/3): Life Simulator (Prismatic), Full of Energy (White), Swift Footwork (Green)]

[[Life Simulator] is the foundation; it cannot be moved.]

[[Full of Energy] and [Swift Footwork] were your guarantees for survival and training during your time as a Mortal. But now, you have a more important goal.]

[You are already sixty years old, and your bodily functions are irreversibly declining; the effect of [Full of Energy] has already significantly diminished.]

[Without hesitation, you replace [Full of Energy (White)] with [Five Elements Spiritual Root (Green)].]

[Trait replacement successful!]

[Currently Equipped Traits (3/3): Life Simulator (Prismatic), Swift Footwork (Green), Five Elements Spiritual Root (Green)]

[The moment the trait is equipped, you feel a profound and mysterious change occurring in your body.]

[It's as if a long-sealed door within your body is being slowly pushed open.]

[You close your eyes, focus your mind, and follow the crudest sensing method you heard from an old utility worker years ago to perceive the Spiritual Qi of heaven and earth.]

[In the past, your world was one of dead silence.]

[But now, you 'see' it.]

[You see countless multicolored points of light, like fireflies, floating in the air.]

[Golden ones are sharp; green ones are gentle; blue ones are agile; red ones are scorching; yellow ones are heavy.]

[They are everywhere, yet separated from you by a thick layer of glass.]

[You can see them, but you cannot touch them.]

["Is this... Spiritual Qi?"]

[You reach out, seemingly wanting to grasp those points of light, but they slip through your fingers like air.]

[You try to attract them, to mobilize them.]

[You feel like a Mortal holding an embroidery needle trying to stir the ocean—it's incredibly strenuous and difficult.]

[You work hard for an entire hour, sweating profusely and feeling dizzy, and you only manage to make the closest blue light point wobble slightly.]

["Holy crap... this is way too trashy, isn't it?"]

[You plop down on the bed, gasping for air.]

[The number one trash Spiritual Root of all time truly lives up to its name. This sensing speed—forget about a turtle's crawl; a turtle would offer you a cigarette and say, 'Brother, take a break, let me crawl first.']

[If it were anyone else who had worked hard for over forty years only to get such a result, their mentality would have collapsed long ago.]

[But not you.]

[Not only did you not collapse, you rubbed your hands together in excitement.]

["As long as it moves! As long as it can move, there's hope!"]

[To you, going from 0 to 1 is a qualitative leap. As for whether the speed from 1 to 100 is fast or slow, that's secondary.]

["As long as I live long enough, if ten thousand years won't do, I'll take a hundred thousand! Constant dripping wears away the stone; a metal rod can be ground into a needle! I'll wear you down until I enter the Qi Refinement Stage!"]

[A raging fire ignites in your heart.]

[However, having a Spiritual Root alone isn't enough; you also need a Cultivation Technique.]

[As a Utility Disciple, the only thing you can access is the most common technique of the Azure Cloud Sect, known as the 'Cultivator's Introductory Discouragement Guide'—the Qi Guiding Art.]

[This technique is public, and any Menial Worker can go to the Laborer Courtyard's Library to transcribe it for free.]

[It has only one advantage: it is gentle and won't lead to Qi Deviation.]

[Its disadvantages are too numerous to count: low efficiency, complex energy circulation routes, and high requirements for Spiritual Root Aptitude.]

[It's said that with this technique, even a Genius with a Heavenly Spiritual Root would take a month to draw Qi into the body. As for ordinary Disciples with three or four Spiritual Roots, don't even think about it for a year or so.]

[And you have the trash Spiritual Root with all Five Elements.]

[The Qi Guiding Art plus a trash Spiritual Root—this combination is simply a full stack of debuffs.]

[The next day, you, a sixty-year-old man, happily ran to the Laborer Courtyard's Library.]

[The manager of the Library was a Cultivator even older than you, at the Second Layer of Qi Refining. He was in the same batch as you back then; he relied on a bit of luck to draw Qi into his body, but it ended there. He spent his whole life stuck at the Second Layer of Qi Refining, only able to watch the door here while waiting for death.]

[When he saw you coming, he didn't even lift an eyelid.]

["Tang Xun? You old fellow, why aren't you staying in your vegetable patch? What are you doing here? There are no vegetables for you to plant here."]

["Senior Brother Zhang, I've come to transcribe a copy of the Qi Guiding Art," you said with a smile.]

[The old manager surnamed Zhang suddenly looked up, his turbid eyes filled with shock.]

["What did you say? The Qi Guiding Art? Are... are you crazy?"]

[He sized you up as if looking at a monster.]

["You're already at this age, why are you still daydreaming? Isn't it better to honestly grow your vegetables and spend your late years in peace? Cultivate? With your Aptitude? Don't make me laugh!"]

[His words were full of 'advice' from someone who had been there, along with a trace of hard-to-detect jealousy.]

[He himself was a failure on the path of cultivation, and he couldn't stand to see others, especially a Mortal even worse off than him, still harboring hope.]

["Just giving it a try. As long as one is alive, shouldn't they have some dreams?"]

["Dreams? Hmph, your dream is just to die faster!"]

["Transcribe it, then. Give up on this idea sooner!"]

[You didn't get angry, either. You picked up the booklet, found a corner, and began to transcribe it very seriously.]

[You transcribed with extreme care, checking word by word, for fear of making any mistakes.]

[It took you an entire day to finish transcribing this thin Qi Guiding Art.]

[When you left with the transcription, Senior Brother Zhang looked at your back, shook his head, and sighed.]

["Another madman."]

[From this day on, your life became even more disciplined.]

[During the day, you still worked in the vegetable patch. Growing vegetables was your source of income and also your camouflage in this cruel world.]

[At night, you no longer went out for runs; instead, you devoted all your time and energy to cultivation.]

[You sat cross-legged on the bed, following the methods recorded in the Qi Guiding Art, trying over and over again to draw those visible but untouchable points of light into your body.]

[Day one, failure.]

[Day two, failure.]

[...]

[Month one, failure.]

[...]

[Year one, failure.]

[You felt as if you had returned to that first night of sensing Spiritual Qi; no matter how hard you tried, those light points simply ignored you, at most giving you some Face by wobbling slightly when your Mental Energy was nearly exhausted.]

[This kind of feeling was enough to make anyone with a firm mind collapse.]

[But not you.]

[Because every year, you could still draw a card.]

[At sixty-one, you drew a white trait—[Optimistic].]

[You looked at this trait and smiled.]

["System, you really understand me."]

[At sixty-two, you drew a white trait—[Perseverance].]

[You nodded, feeling that this trait came just at the right time.]

[...]

[At seventy, you had been cultivating for a full ten years.]

[In those ten years, you hadn't guided a single shred of Spiritual Qi into your body.]

[Your body had aged beyond recognition. Your Face was covered in wrinkles like knife carvings, and you had lost several teeth. If [Swift Footwork] weren't still supporting you, you might have had difficulty even getting out of bed.]

[In the Laborer Courtyard, everyone knew that the 'Vegetable Madman' named Tang Xun had truly gone crazy in his old age.]

[He locked himself in his room every night, and no one knew what he was up to, but he had turned himself into something that looked neither like a human nor a ghost.]

[You became a joke and a negative example in everyone's eyes.]

["See that? That's what happens when you don't accept your fate."]

[Faced with all this, you turned a deaf ear.]

[Your eyes remained bright.]

[Because you knew you were accumulating, waiting.]

[You were waiting for the next trait that could change your destiny.]

[You firmly believed it would definitely come.]

[At seventy-nine, you drew a white trait—[Good Memory].]

[On your eightieth birthday, you felt that your end might truly be near.]

[Your body was like a lamp running out of oil, and even breathing became difficult.]

[You lay on the bed, without even the strength to sit up.]

[You performed the sixty-second card draw of your simulated life.]

[You no longer had the strength to feel anticipation; you just numbly watched the wheel spin.]

[However, just as you were about to close your eyes, a brilliant green light suddenly illuminated your eyes!]