The Spiritual Control technique was a mid-grade technique that was could only be cultivated once one was at the Foundation Establishment1 stage. But mid-grade techniques were stored at the second level of the library and low-level disciples like Lin Xuan did not have the right to read them.
But in his trip to the Soaring Cloud sect, Lin Xuan had surprisingly acquired two such mid-grade techniques. One of them he had acquired by trading his medicinal pills, the other was his spoils from killing the Yan family patriarch.
Lin Xuan pulled out those two jade slips, inserted his spiritual sense into them, and started to read. He chose to skip the first section that described cultivation techniques because they required a cultivation base of Foundation Establishment, he would only be able to helplessly look at them right now. Instead, he moved onto the section that described the Spiritual Control technique and started to carefully read over it.
After that, he started to compare the two manuals. These two cultivation manuals, the first one was the one he traded for called the Frozen Heart Art; the other was acquired by killing the Yan family patriarch called the Violet Sun Origin Art2.
This Violet Sun Origin Art was originally reserved by another large clan, the w.a.n.g clan, and was later acquire by Yan TianHeng when he ambushed their members. In other words, this manual must be better than the Frozen Heart Art that was being sold publicly. But speaking strictly about the Spiritual Control technique, the two manuals did not have that many differences, they were virtually the same.
Therefore, there was no need for him to pick between the two, so he casually picked one up and started to practice the technique in accordance with the manual.
This so-called Spiritual Control technique was of the same breed as the Telekinesis technique, except the latter was much simpler and only a basic technique. But the Spiritual Control technique was a much more complicated and delicate technique.
The following dozen days, Lin Xuan suffered a lot. There was only one reason for his suffering and that was because his cultivation was simply too low. Although the manual clearly stated that latter stage Spirit Condensation3 disciple could cultivate the Spiritual Control technique, but that was only in theory. In actuality, to be able to grasp this technique, having a cultivation base of Foundation Establishment was much better.
But failure did not affect Lin Xuan. Not everything in the world was so easy to acquire, it was much better to slowly practice. Like back then when he was first starting to learn the Ice Needles technique, wasn’t it just as hard?
With this kind of mentality, the more he failed, the harder he tried. But after a dozen days, he still had not made any progress.
What caused Lin Xuan to be ever more depressed was the fact that he could not figure out why he was unable to grasp the Spiritual Control technique, he would just fail every single time and could not make heads or tails of it. This cause Lin Xuan to endlessly sigh, could it be that his innate talent was really that horrible?
But whining and complaining would not solve the problem at hand, so he bore it, clenched his teeth, and started bitterly practicing again. But after one month, he came out of his house, his situation had not even slightly changed for the better.
Looks like just relying on practicing to the bitter end would not change his situation.
“Should I ask for guidance from the elders?”
Lin Xuan shook his head. To be able to practice the Spiritual Control technique at the Spirit Condensation stage, in the Floating Cloud Valley, there were only those few geniuses. He did not even have Spiritual Roots, if he was to ask for guidance on this issue, he would definitely arouse suspicion.
“Sigh. If I could openly and righteously show my cultivation of the sixth layer, and make it clear my status of being an elite disciple, how great would that be.”
The reason that Lin Xuan was having thoughts like this was because, for low-level disciples like him, they could only go to the Young Hawks Pavilion to listen to lectures by the elders. But elite disciples were different. Even though the were in the same Spirit Condensation stage, because they had a possibility of breaking into the Foundation Establishment stage, the sect specially tasked some cultivators with profound cultivator of guide them. When they faced any questions about their cultivator, they could seek out these cultivators at any time and ask for guidance.
If he himself was an elite disciple, then he would be able to seek out one of these elders and ask for guidance on the Spiritual Control technique.
However, this was only his wishful thinking, based on Lin Xuan’s situation, he was afraid of revealing his cultivation. Since he had nothing better to do, Lin Xuan pull that blood red jade slip out of his bosom and started to glance through that cultivation technique left behind by the demonic cultivator. He would not practice the cultivation technique, but the methods of moving spiritual power through his body he could learn.
“What!?” Both of Lin Xuan’s eyebrows rose in surprise and a look of ecstasy came over his face. Although there way no one else here, but even for the ever shrewd Lin Xuan, it was still very rare to see him lose his composer over anything.
“Demonic Disguise technique!”
Lin Xuan’s spiritual sense fell upon a small technique that was recorded in the last section of jade slip. The was a supporting type of technique and was created by a demonic cultivator elder over a thousand years ago.
According to the manual, this was a technique that used spiritual power to change one’s appearance and physique. Lin Xuan was not a stranger to these types of techniques, for example, the sect also had the Simple Appearance technique, the Form Shift technique, etc.
But these kinds of techniques were looked down upon because as long as an opponent had a higher cultivation, even if it was just slightly higher, they would be able to easily see through the disguise. Thus, these techniques were not very practical.
Originally, Lin Xuan also did not pay much attention to it and was only casually flipping through it, but seeing the Demonic Disguise technique really caused him to be overjoyed. The demonic cultivator ancestor that created this technique was definitely a gifted genius. After he had collected many different disguising techniques, he had fused them together, using the strengths of one technique to cover the weaknesses of others, and finally created this completely unique appearance changing technique.
There was quite a few clever and wonderful points to this technique. Firstly, the requirements were low, even a mid-stage Spirit Condensation cultivator was able to learn and grasp it. It was not like the other techniques that required a minimum cultivation of the Foundation Establishment stage. The second point was also the most important point, it did not have the weakness that the other techniques had, mainly being see through to others with higher cultivation.
If one wanted to see through the Demonic Disguise technique, then their cultivation must be two ranks above the one who was using the technique. Note that it is two ranks, in other words, if the user of the technique was a low-level Spirit Condensation stage cultivator, then to see through the technique, one needed at least a cultivation base in the Core Formation stage. If the user was in the Foundation Establishment stage, then only an eccentric in the Nascent Soul stage would be able to see through it.
The benefits were very clear, but that did not mean that the technique was without flaws. Nothing is perfect in the world. Firstly, the duration of the disguise was limited, it could at most sustain the transformation for two hours, after which it would require an interval of at least twelve hours before the technique could be used again.
In other words, the Demonic Disguise technique was not a technique was could be used to impersonate someone for a long time and was only a short term stratagem.
This was only one of its flaws, but even then, it was still a very powerful technique. But the second flow was the one that deterred all the previous owners of the jade slip and caused them to abandon the technique.
The second flaws the technique must be used in conjunction with a certain medicine, one must first ingest the medicine before revolving their spiritual power and thus succeeding in transforming.
Renaming Foundation Building to Foundation Establishment to attempt to follow the Noun way of naming stages instead of the Verb way ↩
I am renaming all cultivation techniques to arts to avoid confusion with techniques used for fighting and such. ↩
Renaming Spirit Gather to Spirit Condensation to attempt to follow the Noun way of naming stages instead of the Verb way and because it is more accurate