The three sharks soon perceived the boat and were about to attack it. With a wave of his hand, Renyu created several water shields all around the boat in just a moment. They only shielded the boat and not the people. Then, he controlled a bit of water and pushed the boat upwards.
The boat was quasi-floating in the air as the sharks below became easier to see. This method of fighting came up as his idea. As long as he didn’t need to participate personally in the fight, there was no problem. It would be better if he wasn’t so disconnected from the water in normal situation, but he wasn’t the fighting force, so it didn’t matter.
Although surprised, Huo didn’t say anything and just waited. The moment the head of one of the sharks became visible, he instantly pushed all his energy into his right arm and the whip it controlled, while his left arm balanced his position.
The whips sharp tip flew around and swung in the air for only a single second before it came back. The next moment, a thin hole in the head of the first shark appeared, and the shark instantly lost all control.
Renyu was shocked, this power was greater than he had thought would be. He didn’t expect that this was so strong. The flaws of the power were quite obvious, without the surprise effect and the short preparation time, it would be impossible to do that, but such a power was like an ultimate attack. He was especially surprised because in that split second, the whip actually stretched to over five metres before hitting the target.
Prior, the whip was only around two metres long. For it to stretch so much and actually have even greater power instead of lower because of the reduction of density is immensely interesting to Renyu.
After that one swing, the whip seemed to have taken a different stance and instead of having a very sharp tip, the sides became sharp instead as Yu Huo kept hitting the sharks and injuring them on their flosses and other essential external parts.
Seeing that the situation was progressing slowly, Renyu took it upon himself to hasten it up. He first used the Water Ball spell, then put a Water Shield around the ball, he controlled and willed the shield to compress the ball into a circular disc. Lastly, he cast two Water Blades to make the edge of the disc incredibly sharp.
With control again, he willed the water ball to swirl in the air and generate power through fast movement. This was a new spell he ‘invented’. Theoretically he would have to make it a proper spell which would take much longer, currently it is only a combination of spells.
He repeated the process and now had two Water Discs and waited for a good moment. Huo had somewhat seen the process and tried to create an opening. He hit the sharks at the back so they would focus there.
Renyu took the chance and instantly willed the two discs to hit the respective shark. With a *swish* the discs flied at great speed and in just a moment they arrived above the heads of the sharks. They fell down at a neckbreaking speed and cut off the heads before instantly dissipating. The spells were unstable, so they had greater power but were only one-hit spells.
The young man looked surprised at him, still he took out a Water Ball talisman and was about to use it to take the blood and corpses of the monsters that were sinking. Renyu looked at the talisman and simply used the pressure of his natal talisman to hinder it’s usage.
He looked at the young man and said with a flat face “How can you be so slow!”
Then he simply used the Water Ball spell and did the job himself, without sacrificing a talisman that would take him at least a day to write. ‘No wonder this kid was buying so many of these… he’s wasting them like they’re really scrap paper.’
Somewhat embarrassed, Huo couldn’t keep it and made a snark remark “Your excellency is so great with his spells, why doesn’t he go alone?”
Renyu turned to the young man, jumped off the ship onto the water as he walked on it to inspect the corpse in a show-off fashion. “It doesn’t hurt to be around people. I am surprised, you didn’t come off to me to be a Spiritual Panter!”
The young man was immediately shocked, but before he could regain himself, Renyu continued “This whip should be your natal plant, right? I assume it’s a vine, one with great affinity for metal. You use metal to strengthen your plant and disguise it. It’s not a wrong approach, wood and metal are indeed closely related, but you skipped an important step. Earth is the element that connects them, deep in the earth metal is formed while above the earth wood thrives.”
These words didn’t seem to be too new to Huo, but he was surprised his secret was revealed so easily. Cold aura spread out from him, but Renyu acted as if nothing changed “It seems like you have wood and metal spiritual roots, in normal circumstances, everyone would be happy about being a double-spirit root and would detest triple-spirit roots. In your case it’s exactly the other way round, triple spirit root is much stronger for your path.”
“I know.” A cold answer came.
“Then what are you going to do about it?
“What?”
Renyu had the urge to roll his eyes, and he did. “You are so snappy with your answers, I thought you had a plan to solve the issue. Or are you planning to just let things go till you get your heavenly opportunity and everything suddenly becomes clear?”
Without giving him a second to think, Renyu naturally continued “That’s the right way! Because here is the opportunity!”
The young man was confused beyond measure, but Renyu just continued “You have the upper effect of earth and the lower effect of earth. Since when has effect existed without cause? The best source of earth has always been with you, and it’s of a higher compatibility since it was with you for your whole life, while you can still retain the great cultivation speed of a double-spirit root!”
This time Renyu was somewhat dramatic. When he was the head of a temple, he would teach so many young visitors and his own priests of the temple, naturally his understanding towards Daoism was beyond normal people. Yet the whole time he taught others, he used the textbook righteous way. Over time it bored him, and he created his own ideas and understanding of Daoism, his previous natal talisman was the masterpiece of his own.
Now in this new world, he wasn’t shackled and wanted to try and spread some of his unrighteous ideas and test them. He himself couldn’t test everything, this would be dangerous and not so healthy. For others, he cared less. The decision was with them, he wouldn’t force them to change their path, nor would he give them crap, he would give them his true thoughts regarding Daoism, whether they were right or wrong didn’t matter. In the first place, Daoism has always been different for other people, and there is no objective right or wrong.
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“Your body! It is the gift of Earth, while your soul is the gift of Heaven. We are born on earth but strive for heaven till we fall back into earth and repeat the circle. Heaven is something you can only access to at much higher stages, if that is possible in the first place. But earth in comparison is something you can influence from the moment you are born.
Don’t misunderstand, as the origin of all matter, earth is naturally not a single step behind heaven, both are equal but different.” Renyu muttered some inexplicable words about Daoism then came back to the topic “So, are you willing to use your body as the source of earth to connect your natal wood with the essence of gold?”
Yu Huo was astounded. He had heard never considered the way of using his own body as a connection. He didn’t know how that would work, but he was sure this would somehow be body disfigurement, which is a great taboo in the way of cultivation. There were naturally arts that would change ones’ body, but doing so blindly would mean the end of one’s path. This wasn’t something he could accept.
“Alright, don’t give me a reply. Just keep the thought in your heart and mind, maybe one day you will want to take my help with this, maybe you won’t, everyone has to make their own decisions regarding their path. Now, just sit down and gather your spiritual power, I will bait some more after a short break, you better be ready.”
Renyu proceeded to ignore Huo, sat on the surface of the water and began to absorb the water-attribute spiritual power all around. The day went on with the same repeat of baiting the monsters below, killing them in unison, take a rest, then repeat.
This went on for the whole day. At the end of it, Renyu took all the blood, stored each blood separately, marked them and asked Huo to take them back with him. He led the little whipmaster to his mortal hotel, where he unloaded all the blood he gathered.
Huo was beyond surprised when he saw that Renyu was living in a mortal hotel, but he didn’t ask, after all, everyone had their secrets.
During the fight the whole day, Renyu finally gained the key to advance to the fourth stage of qi refining. It wasn’t a bottleneck or something like that, no, it was his understanding of waterbodies and how they function.
His art ‘Monarch of the Boundless Ocean’ is about dominating waterbodies, seas, lakes and rivers are naturally included. Feeling the waterbody and it’s movement first hand gave him inspiration and allowed him to take the step forward.
He stayed in seclusion for a few days till he finally advanced and officially became a fourth-stage qi refining cultivator. With the advancement, he fell into contemplation and put his whole heart and mind into his spell ‘Water Saw’.
Renyu sat on his bed after he advanced and focused his mind on the spell. As he did so, he willed the lifeblood in his talisman to be consumed by ‘Grace of Water. With the boost in comprehension brought by the enhanced talisman, he was finally able to comprehend the spell and instantly tested it out.
Spiritual power poured from his dantian into his fingertips as he performed the spell and recited an accompanying he thought of on the spot. Anyways, it wasn’t too difficult, he had a rich fantasy and in the past his life as a temple head, he had spent a lot of time fantasizing.
One might assume he didn’t have many things to do, but he was just good at outsourcing.
A few tries later, the Water Saw spell fully formed for the first time, and Renyu felt a new power fill his dantian, stabilizing the new realm and instantly strengthening it, he could feel that he wasn’t far away from the next rank-up.
This was the feedback from heaven for enriching it and creating a new spell. One could say this is a transaction between heaven and all the creatures living under it. No one knew the reason, but people assumed it was because heaven liked seeing new things.
Naturally this benefit was minimal and only helped for the stage the spell was created. A strong man making weak spells such as Water Saw wouldn’t benefit him, no, it would actually bring the hate of other people since he is claiming a possible future achievement of a talented person. It was an unspoken rule not to make any spells for the levels below you except it is for your direct inheritance.
Renyu being on this level and creating this spell is evidence of his high comprehension talent. But instead of keeping the excess heavenly power and consuming it, he pushed it into his talisman.
A few more days went by, all the containers were now empty and the talisman finally advanced to the middle-level of qi refining, another stream of heavenly power landed on it, finally acknowledging it’s existence. Creating new talismans or generally something totally new in the creation arts will also give you feedback from heaven. Naturally creating a Water Saw Talisman won’t give any feedback since the spell already gave back feedback and for one thing there will only be one reward.
This new feedback was split between the talisman and Renyu, strengthening both equally.
He didn’t wait any longer and instantly casted the Water Saw Spell. This was much faster than casting the three different spells one after another, it rotated faster and was more solid, for proper examination he would have to test it, but for now he knew it was much better.
Then he thought about it and worked on the talisman. It took him several tries till he finally succeed.
“Hmm, this seems to be an early-stage talisman with nearly the power of middle-stage. I should work on upgrading my talisman art to the middle-stage, this Water Saw should be a good talisman, it’s a good way to upgrade it since it has a strong power and I have a high comprehension of it since I was the creator of it.”
Unlike one might imagine, just because you created a spell, it doesn’t mean you have full comprehension of it. Especially not spells that are born from spell combinations. If Renyu had reached Great Perfection with the spells, he might start at the great achievement, but he started at the initial stage and barely upgraded it to the small achievement after some tries.
After all, spells have their own laws behind them. Just like how someone who doesn’t know anything about the physics behind fire can create a fire, someone who doesn’t know the deeper law of a spell can still create and cast the spell.
“It’s been a month now since I took the trip. The upgrade of the talisman sucked most of the blood, the remaining should be enough to create a few dozen, thankfully we hunted a lot. Let’s hope that I get at least five talismans to sell.”
With those last words, Shui Renyu once again fell into a seclusion. He had already learned how to be in seclusion for several weeks at a time in his previous life.
In this life there are so many benefits to it, how could he be resentful.
At the end of his seclusion which took over a month, he finally stood up and looked at the seven talismans in front of him. The last one shined brightly and was infinitely close to the middle stage, so he put it away separately before putting all his belongings into a bag.
He went to the main market; this time he didn’t go to the far end but took a stall closer to the centre. Naturally it was still far away from the centre, but there were more customers here than where he was previously.
A bit of coercion and an evil look was enough to get this nice stall place. Setting up wasn’t difficult and he was basically doing it with spiritual power now, once he sat, he used the communication talisman and called for the young man.
It didn’t take long till he arrived. He looked at the talismans then at Renyu. He wanted to say something but stopped slightly before cupping his hands “Hello fellow Daoist!”
Renyu smiled at him then waved his hand “No need to be so formal, no need!”
Yu Huo had the urge to hit Renyu, but after seeing the power of Renyu last time, he was sure that he couldn’t win, especially not after feeling the stronger power. It wasn’t that Renyu could defeat him, the only reason he knew he wouldn’t win was because Renyu already saw his hidden card.
Ignoring the annoyed look of Huo, Renyu said “Do you wish to go out tomorrow again?”
Huo nodded slowly. “Good, then you can go away now. These talismans are useless to you, when I refine some Water Shield talismans again, I will offer you some.” Although it was somewhat subtle, Renyu meant that he wouldn’t sell attack talismans to him anymore.
The reason was simple, not only would Renyu be with Huo anyways, no, Renyu didn’t want to equip a potential enemy with a weapon. As for defensive talismans? His own natal talisman was able to delay the talisman for a second, even a split second is important so naturally the natal talisman wouldn’t really have any use against Renyu.
In general, using talismans of the same level as the opponent if the opponent was a talisman master is truly idiotic. Don’t say talisman masters are useless, since they can make sure that all talismans used by the enemy are delayed and debuffed, they are a natural barrier. Of course this is only if the enemy doesn’t have a talisman master themselves, then this ability only works if one is at least a full minor realm higher.