After another 1 years and 8 months (20 months) passed, Fang Hao had spent a total of 6 years in the Jade Pagoda Sect. By now a couple of members of his clique during Outer Disciple days, namely Fatty Lin and Fatty Ning, had been promoted to Inner Disciples. Unfortunately, both of them weren't allotted residences on his peak. But they made it it a point to meet each other at least once in a couple of months in the sect market. Co-incidentally, on one of these meets a couple of months back, they had met with Senior Fatty Chen!
Senior Fatty Chen was the one who had handed this clique of fatties to Old Man Zhu, when they had joined the sect. Senior Fatty Chen was enthusiastic meeting them and inquired about their cultivation bases. While he had expected Fatty Lin and Fatty Ning to be new inner disciples who just stepped into Qi Condensation stage, he was surprised at Fatty Hao's cultivation to be in the intermediate Qi Condensation stage. Fang Hao had sheepishly explained it away as the result of free spirit wine from his Master Zhu.
Senior Fatty Chen gave a meaningful look to Fang Hao, and congratulated him on the matter of his master. He had informed that while Old Man Zhu was eccentric, being his disciple was a great stroke of good fortune. This had surprised Fang Hao's fellow fatties. But clearly, Old Man Zhu had more to him than it meets the eye.
These 20 months, Fang Hao's skill/xp/contribution point farming progressed at a steady pace. It took him roughly 2 months to learn a spell from scratch to the Expert Tier, and another 6 months to improve its proficiency to the Master Tier. Although he had only trained Aura Infusion to Master Level without the use of skill points. He could significantly increase the speed of learning and improving spells, but that would mean sacrificing a lot of the time spent practicing Divine Vajra Body Scripture.
In fact Fang Hao would have been OK with slowing down skill point gain if he could speed up his Body Refining Scripture practice. But without supplementing the body refining practice with spirit wine, his speed was significantly slower. As for Qi Cultivation, the steady stream of xp from the Arena and his selected chores.
Fang Hao had learned the Aura Fist spell when he reached the 3rd layer of Qi Condensation, which he had immediately trained to the Expert level. With a punch like gesture and circulating the Qi in a specified manner with Aura Infusion active, Fang Hao could unleash a silvery translucent fist to smash his opponents at range! Fang Hao had refrained to use this move in his non lethal arena matches, as the “charging turtle” stratagem was the most efficient and least troublesome way to farm xp. Quite a few times, his mobility would be too heavily restricted to make use of the said stratagem, but he graciously conceded the match as he could easily maintain a stable rate of xp farming. In fact, he never revealed a single new spell/magic tool/talisman in the non-lethal arena.
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After Fang Hao reached the 5th layer of Qi Condensation, he learned the 3rd spell of the Aura Fist Manual. The spell was named as “Phantom Aura Steps” and was a movement technique! Like Aura Fist and Aura Infusion, the spell had no verbal components and relatively simple somatic components (movements). As with all other spells, he could simplify the spell casting process with increasing proficiency.
Phantom Aura Steps created translucent silver phantoms moving at high speeds, while his real body received a speed boost and was hidden among the silver phantoms! It was a movement technique and evasive technique combined into one! While it would not fool any foundation establishment cultivator and had a significant Qi Cost, it could change the course of battle if he used it at the right moment.
Soon after Fang Hao had learned the Phantom Aura Steps, he contacted Great Elder Shi regarding permission to participate in missions outside the safe zone of the sect. The Great Elder had given him a few life saving measures, and instructed him how to use them to save himself at critical moments. The Great Elder had explained that until Core Formation, disciples were not allowed to leave the Celestial Abode Peak ( where the Jade Pagoda Sect is located). However, only a small region on the Celestial Abode prohibited fights between disciples.
Most of the lucrative missions were held outside this region, and hence killing and stealing was very common. The sect did not pursue these acts, unless there was concrete evidence of the same. And generally, those who were of note were usually bestowed life saving measures. If they died despite these, then they deserved being dead and most elders would not pursue it, for fear of losing face. The Great Elder Shi emphasized that Fang Hao that he could not participate in the lethal arena matches until he completed several missions without using any of the life-saving measures he had been given.
He was also encouraged to kill any aggressors who dared to attack him and not worry about offending any eccentric elders who might stoop to get revenge from a junior as he would take care of any fallout. Furthermore, Fang Hao would only receive the resources necessary for a smooth breakthrough to the Foundation Establishment stage, if he completed certain number of missions outside the Safe Zone of the sect, to the Great Elder's satisfaction.
Fang Hao had permission to engage in missions outside the safe area and it was even a requirement for higher tier resources, he still decided to refrain from immediately doing so until he had accumulated enough consumables and a few magic tools as per his original plan. He didn't want to rely solely on the life-saving measures given by Elder Shi as they were quite valuable unless absolutely necessary. There was no guarantee that the Elder would generously supply such valuable life saving measures after he used up his present ones. Fang Hao was no fool. He understood that he was shown such favor because the Great Elder saw potential in him. If he performed like a completely inept nincompoop, then he wouldn't continue to receive such favors.