While Xiao Ling was shocked by the frightening technique provided by the sect, the other disciples could barely contain their terror.

Unlike her, who possessed spiritual roots of a single element, the others had mixed roots, which had always forced them to adopt cultivation methods incompatible with their talents.

Until that moment, each of them had grown accustomed to cultivating using only one of the elements of their spiritual root, as balancing multiple elements simultaneously was simply impossible with just one mind.

But the technique they received, was something completely different.

A visionary and revolutionary approach that nourished all elements simultaneously, without requiring multiple constant focuses, which was almost impossible.

And the cultivation speed granted by the technique…

… Was terrifyingly fast.

…

While the sect was beginning to structure itself, Aotian was starting another day of cultivation.

A short time later, his body trembled slightly, and he broke through to the third level of Qi Refinement.

His dantian strengthened, becoming more solid and crystalline than before.

“Haah…”

He let out a deep breath, feeling an indescribable comfort spread through his body.

Without wasting time, he immediately began stabilizing his cultivation.

And, less than an hour later, he completed the stabilization process.

Aotian opened his eyes, stood up, and went to bathe.

Even though he knew that his body no longer produced impurities—since they had been completely eliminated—and that his spiritual energy circulated constantly, preventing the accumulation of dirt, he still maintained the habit of taking a relaxing bath after a successful breakthrough.

As the water flowed over his body, he couldn’t help but be amused as he remembered the expressions of pure shock on the disciples’ faces.

The equipment they received was real.

The information about the functions of those artifacts was true.

But… about the Crystal Library?

It was all a farce.

The crystal ball was nothing extraordinary.

It was just a common sphere, with formations that emitted mystical lights to create a sense of grandeur.

The techniques inside it?

They were the ones Aotian had already prepared in advance, after analyzing the disciples’ talents through Elder Lie Zheng.

That entire spectacle…

… Was simply to create the illusion of depth for the sect.

This way, the disciples would believe that the sect had an extraordinary foundation, rather than thinking that the sect leader himself was capable of creating personalized cultivation techniques for each of them.

This illusion would also serve to justify the sect’s rapid growth in the future.

And it was also a way to instill fear and respect for the sect in the disciples.

‘I’d love to see their faces while they practice the technique… Maybe Xiao Ling won’t be too surprised, but the others must be completely stunned. My technique is simply visionary.’

He thought, amused and narcissistically.

Little did he know…

… That Xiao Ling nearly had a heart attack.

Aotian had based the creation of the techniques solely on the vast collection of knowledge he had purchased about Qi Refinement, meaning he had never actually trained the techniques to gain experience for synthesizing them.

Because of this, he had no practical experience to compare the efficiency level of common techniques with the monstrosity he had synthesized.

He understood the difficulties of mixed roots better, after all, he knew the challenges of those roots and was aware that the effect of his technique was devastating.

But even for single-element roots…

His techniques were simply supernatural.

As for the techniques created for mixed roots, Aotian developed an innovative method, allowing disciples to cultivate without needing to divide their attention between multiple elements.

After all, he couldn’t just give them the Enlightened Mind technique, taught by Rihai.

Even if he did, it wouldn’t help them much.

For those with five-element roots, the difficulty of cultivating multiple elements was colossal, and in Qi Refinement, they would have only one Enlightened Mind, which would be good, but far from perfect.

So, he completely restructured the traditional cultivation method for this type of root.

Although each disciple with mixed roots had received a single jade slip, inside it, there were actually two different techniques:

The Root Nourishment Technique

The Qi Condensation Technique

The Root Nourishment Technique was both simple and complex.

The process consisted of four main steps:

First, it was necessary to accumulate pure spiritual energy in the dantian.

Second, this energy had to be guided to completely fill all of the user’s spiritual roots.

Third, the elements contained in the spiritual roots had to be released simultaneously, polluting the spiritual energy at the same time.

This created a dynamic balance within the spiritual veins, where each element fought to strengthen itself against the others, generating a controlled war between the different elemental attributes and dividing the energy poles of different elements within the veins.

Finally, the remaining energy in the dantian rotated in complex patterns, attracting spiritual energy from the surrounding environment.

Due to the balanced struggle between the elements inside the roots, the identical elements from the external environment were naturally absorbed, while the different ones repelled each other, preventing them from entering where they didn’t belong.

This meant that all affinities were nourished simultaneously, making the process as efficient as a single-element root cultivator cultivating.

Of course, this method had disadvantages.

For it to be effective, the environment needed to contain balanced amounts of all elements corresponding to the cultivator’s roots.

If there was an imbalance, only one affinity would be nourished, and the other affinities would steal the nourishment, returning to the initial problem, where only one element was cultivated.

In other words, it was impossible to cultivate properly in extreme environments, such as volcanoes, deserts, or underwater, where only one or two elements predominated.

But this was also a limitation of single-element roots, which lost efficiency outside of their ideal environments.

The real drawback of the technique, however, was something else…

Unlike traditional methods, which allowed cultivators to accumulate spiritual energy directly while cultivating and strengthening their roots, this technique only consumed energy to strengthen the roots, but did not accumulate it.

That’s why Aotian placed a second cultivation method in the jade slips of these mixed-root disciples…

The Qi Condensation Technique.

Well, this one was nothing special or innovative—it was merely an optimized version of a single-element Qi Refinement cultivation technique.

Ineffective for nourishing multiple roots, but perfect for accumulating energy in the dantian, assisting both in the use of the Root Nourishment Technique and in breaking through or simply ensuring energy reserves for combat.

Basically, the disciples would spend all their energy nourishing their roots with the first technique, then use the Qi Condensation Technique to replenish their spiritual energy in the dantian, and then restart the cycle.

Even with the need to pause occasionally to replenish energy, cultivation was hundreds of times more efficient than the traditional method for mixed roots.

With this technique, high-quality mixed-root disciples were no longer very different from high-quality single-root cultivators.

Aotian finished his bath with a satisfied smile and closed his eyes, entering meditation.

While reflecting, he felt the flow of knowledge that his avatars were acquiring.

But it wasn’t just them.

There was another group from which this knowledge was being transmitted.

The sect’s disciples.

Aotian opened his eyes, recalling the screen that appeared shortly after he recruited his first disciples and upgraded the sect’s level.

[Nine disciples have been added to the connection. Do you wish to activate knowledge feedback?]

[[Yes] [No]]

At that moment, he didn’t immediately understand what that meant.

After questioning the system, he discovered that there were concrete benefits to recruiting and training disciples, beyond just upgrading the sect.

The main benefit came in the form of knowledge feedback.

Everything his disciples learned—whether through experimentation, training, reading, fighting, or any other learning activity—generated direct feedback to him.

That’s why Aotian, using Elder Zhao, encouraged them to cultivate and also to fight to earn contribution points for the sect.

At the moment, they were still few in number and very weak.

But in the future, when thousands or even millions of extremely powerful disciples were spread across the world, experimenting and learning everything possible…

Aotian didn’t even dare imagine the absurd level of knowledge he would receive.

This benefit was what made Aotian stop hesitating and create the best possible techniques for his disciples, even though they were still newcomers to the sect, and there was a risk that such techniques might leak.

But he did it anyway, for two reasons:

First, because they were only Qi Refinement techniques, nothing that could truly harm the sect, even if they leaked.

Second, because, based on Lie Zheng’s judgment, they were neither evil nor traitorous people.

The question asked during recruitment was simple:

“Have you ever harmed innocents?”

But Lie Zheng’s abilities went far beyond simply detecting truth or lies.

He possessed an almost supernatural ability to read a person.

Whether they were lying, hiding something, had ulterior motives, felt desire for what they said, or didn’t truly believe in their own words—and many other nuances that few could ever notice.

In truth, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that Lie Zheng was a true Sherlock Holmes of Xianxia.

Therefore, Aotian knew that, at least on the most basic level, all the accepted disciples were honest.

If not for this strict criterion, perhaps 40 or 50 disciples could have been recruited that day based solely on the quality of their spiritual roots.

Yes, many were rejected during the recruitment process.

With a population of 30,000 cultivators, it was obvious that the number of high-quality roots was much greater than just nine people.

Moreover, there was the incident with two participants—one who was crippled and another who was killed.

But both had committed grave sins and had the audacity to lie blatantly.

This discouraged many others who, even though they had good qualifications and were not criminals, still had a guilty conscience or were simply cowards.

In the end, the recruitment was too sudden, so it was natural that many talents didn’t have enough time to appear.

If there had been more time for recruitment and a greater trust in the sect out in the world, the number of disciples would have certainly been much higher.

After all, Aotian imposed no restrictions on age, number of affinities, or origin—he only required good character and good qualifications.

And it was precisely because of this that, at this very moment, among the new disciples, a white-haired cultivator with wrinkled skin, over 70 years old, was diligently cultivating inside his cave-mansion, in the outer disciples’ area.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep