18 Learning to Pain

Cha Ming was sitting inside a meditation chamber in Green Leaf Academy. The young man's eyes gleamed with excitement, as he had just finished poring over five scrolls of a complicated technique. He had spent the last few hours fantasizing about this very technique, imagining himself executing it at its fullest potential and power. He soon woke up from this fantasy after he tried pouring his spiritual sense into one of the pearls and accidentally shot himself in the foot. Reality was very unforgiving.

Fortunately, Cha Ming had his set of healing pearls. He imbued the green pearl with wooden qi until it glowed emerald and placed it on his foot. Slowly, his foot started to mend, and within a minute a circular scar appeared where the wound had been. Apparently it was very difficult to bypass the scarring process. Everything healed with time, and the healing pearl simply accelerated the process.

After this event, he realized two important lessons. The first lesson was that healing skills seemed a lot more effective than they actually were. He had to be careful not to injure any vital points or bones in the future, because who knew what kind of trauma would remain after treatment. The second lesson he learned was that, like learning an instrument, he would probably need to practice.

The technique scrolls for each element contained drills for controlling each type of pearl. The more he read, the more he realized how fortunate he was for buying the full set of techniques. Each technique was very different and would allow him to practice using his soul power.

The metal pearl drill was very plain. He first practiced by willing the pearl to move from side to side, from left to right. He would then move it forward and backward, and finally in a triangular, square, and star-shaped pattern. Sharpness and swiftness was key. However, if he moved too swiftly, it would be easy to lose control of the pearl, so it was vitally important to restrain the strength of the pearl so it didn't travel too far. Once he had fully mastered these movements, he injected metal qi into the sphere, which was akin to adding weight to the small object. What had weighed as much as a coin now weighed several jin, and controlling its rapid speed became very taxing on Cha Ming's soul.

Controlling the fire pearl was very different. After injecting fire qi, he used his spiritual force to slowly draw a foot-wide circle with the pearl. Soon, he managed draw the circle quickly enough to make it appear like a small wheel of flame. This wheel of flame reinforced itself and made maintaining the circular path much easier. Once the flame wheel was created, he practiced juggling it between both hands, first in a circular motion and then in a figure eight. After eight revolutions, he would send the pearl out to the dummy, causing a burst of flame; the pearl would then move back in to a circle, and then a figure eight, accumulating energy for its next outburst.

The next drill was the ice pearl drill. He would make the frosty pearl circle around himself, taking great care in predicting the circular motion without looking. This circle would move around his head, around his waist, and around his legs. He practiced making the circle larger and smaller. Finally, he made the pearl dart out and orbit around the dummy, coating it in a thick layer of white frost. No contact was required.

The quake drill was very unique. For the first part of the drill, he would drop a pearl straight down, bouncing it off the stony floor to bring it back up to head level. Once it reached its peak, Cha Ming would bring the pearl straight back down with increased force, repeating the process over and over. The process was very similar to how a modern pile driver operated, detonating a charge once it hit the metal pile and using the shock to propel itself upward, only to land back down due to the force of gravity. Once Cha Ming got used to the motion, he practiced increasing the distance between himself and the pearl. Once this aspect was mastered, he practiced increasing the frequency, slamming the yellow sphere down into the ground in a pulsating manner.

Manipulating the healing pearl required a lot of subtlety. Cha Ming had to practice throwing the pearl and making it stick onto the dummy. Unfortunately, even a healing pearl thrown too roughly could kill or injure someone. He had to use the least amount of force possible to deliver it swiftly to his target.

Each drill needed to be practiced at least a thousand times to attain perfection, and it was very taxing on both the mind and soul. At first Cha Ming could only control a pearl for five minutes at a time. Eventually he was able to control a single pearl for an hour. Once his stamina reached an hour, he started jogging while performing the drills. Once he mastered them while jogging, he would perform them while doing footwork drills, and finally while attacking the dummy with his staff.

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Seven days later, Cha Ming was covered in sweat from head to toe. He had not changed robes; he hadn't slept. All he did for these seven days was cultivate and practice his soul pearl techniques. He had just broken through to the fifth level of qi condensation. The strenuous practice had caused his qi quality to improve by leaps and bounds. Every time he exhausted each of his five qi pools, he would meditate to replenish it. Each time, it became a little bit purer. Cha Ming wondered if perhaps the first cultivators began to practice martial arts purely for self-improvement; this was very similar to the way that Shaolin monks and Zen monks practiced martial arts for centuries on Earth, despite being very peace-loving organizations.

After meditating for half a day and restoring his stamina, he realized that he still had a few days left but had already mastered the first manifestation for each element. He would need more than monotonous practice to be able to control more than the first manifestation. The scrolls had been very vague about the process. Looking at the desk in his room, he realized that he still had over a hundred portions of each type of inscription ink. Why let it go to waste?

Sitting at the desk, he took out his fire element brush and one of his unpainted pearls. Just as he reached out to dip the brush in ink, he wondered just what kind of talisman brush the white brush was. He had used talisman brushes for long enough to tell that it was indeed one, but in his limited experience, talisman brushes were split up into different elements. While you could use an off-element brush to make talismans, the results would be substandard and prone to failure. Using opposing elements could directly reduce a brush to ashes and cause backlash to the user. Cha Ming's face was lit up with a thoughtful expression. What if this brush could paint multiple elements? After all, the brush was adorned with the five elements and was covered in elemental runic patterns.

Picking up the white brush, he moved to the wood-element pot of ink—that was safest. Wood-element talismans would rarely cause explosions if something went wrong. After a moment of hesitation, he lowered the brush into the pot of ink.

So far so good, he thought, recalling the first time he had suffered backlash from a brush. The pot of ink had exploded, coating his robes bright crimson and causing them to disintegrate.

Suppressing this thought in his mind, he drew the ink into his brush. A whole portion of ink was absorbed into the bristles, after which the tip glowed emerald green. On the white brush, runes representing wood glowed softly. This surprised Cha Ming. His experience was shallow after all, and he had never seen a brush have this sort of reaction to ink. Finally, he drew the low-grade emerald healing inscription on a blank pearl. Success! The glow faded from the brush as soon as the inscription was painted.

Next, he decided to try the Frost Mist inscription. After all, allied elements were fairly compatible. Once again, the brush lit up with a frosty-blue hue, which faded away once the inscription was complete. Before long he had cycled through the silver, quake, and blaze inscriptions. A five-element brush! Not having done a lot of research, he wasn't sure exactly how rare a five-element brush was. He assumed it was just as rare as people having all five-element combinations. After all, why make a brush for five elements when you could make five specialized ones at a hundredth of the cost? He then realized that he had painted five inscriptions in five tries. Five third-grade talismans. He frowned. His success rate for grade-three talismans used to be 33%. Was it just a coincidence that he had just had a 100% success rate, or was it due to his breakthrough in cultivation?

Cha Ming loved puzzles. He could spend entire days solving puzzles without pausing to sleep. He was extremely dirty and disheveled after his week-long practice, but he didn't care. All that mattered was solving this mystery!

After a full day passed, he had inscribed all forty-eight remaining pearls in the rosary with a single element. He had done this with ninety-percent success! Eventually, his curiosity got the best of him and he exchanged some of his third-grade talismans for twenty portions of fourth-grade talisman ink—he didn't have enough time to try more. The result was that he could make fourth-grade talismans with a fifty-percent success rate! At this point he had only expected to be able to make second-grade talismans with a ninety-percent success rate, and third-level talismans with a fifty percent success rate. With the help of the brush, his talisman-crafting rate had become a whole level higher!

While he was extremely elated with his good fortune, he once again started to ponder. The Clear Sky Brush was a very useful five-element brush. If it was possible for it to contain all five elements, was it possible for soul pearls to do the same? After all, soul pearls did not have a specific elemental alignment. In addition, while the bloody rosary was cracked due to external damage, the pearls themselves seemed to be a much higher quality than the lowest-quality pearls in the store. What would he care if he lost a few pearls while experimenting with such a cheap set? He only needed a set of sixty to execute the first manifestation of the technique, and the remaining pearls were just for backup or in case he was able to master a second manifestation of some other elements.

After making his decision, he carefully picked up a frosty-blue pearl from the rosary on his wrist. He chose a higher-quality pearl that was free of cracks and chips. If he chose a broken pearl to experiment with, he would never be able to tell. The pearl no longer had an inscription pattern, as the pattern had previously melted into the pearl once the refinement was successful.

After soaking the brush in green ink, he carefully applied the leafy inscription pattern onto the frosty-blue pearl. The process was a lot more taxing than the original inscription, and while he didn't make a mistake, the process took twice as long as usual.

As he completed the last stroke of the emerald healing inscription, the pearl let out a soft glow of acceptance as the rune soaked into the pearl. The pearl had now taken on a teal hue. Success! He then tested the pearl against the dummy and against himself. The pearl now required two kinds of qi to utilize, but the healing effect of the pearl had doubled. The frost effect remained the same.

Building off his previous success, he added a fire inscription to the pearl. The pearl took four times as long to inscribe as the originals, and it required three types of qi to activate. The healing function was still twice as powerful, and the blaze and frost functions were the same power as they had been originally.

Cha Ming frowned. The rewards were not worth the effort. Two-element pearls were worthwhile to refine, but the three-element pearls were a bit of a waste. Nevertheless, he continued to experiment to determine the limits of soul pearls. After all, his cultivation technique was a five-element technique, and he did not feel disadvantaged in the least.

By now the pearl had transformed into an olive-colored pearl. With the addition of a fourth inscription, the color lightened by one level. Only one last inscription was missing. Four elements seemed to be the limits of the pearl, as this pearl had cracked under the pressure after the last one. The inscription had also taken eight times as much time as the original.

Cha Ming hesitated as he pondered whether to continue his experiment. If the pearl exploded after adding the fifth inscription, he could get injured by the resulting blast. However, he had an inkling that drawing the fifth inscription would give him a pleasant surprise. Steeling his resolve, he began painting the final one—the metallic rune. This inscription took him eighteen times as long as the original inscription. As he finished his last stroke, the pearl pulsated as though it was about to release an explosion. Cha Ming quickly ducked for cover, awaiting the inevitable burst of power and shrapnel.

The explosion never came. After the time it took for an incense stick to burn, he finally crawled out from behind the worn-out practice dummy. He carefully approached the pearl on the desk, eagerly anticipating the result of fusing all five elements into a single vessel.

The first change he noticed was that, despite having been inscribed with five runes, the pearl was now a misty white color, which gleamed with the alternating colors of the five elements. The color reminded him of the white circle that connected his five qi pools. The pearl was neither hot nor cold, nor was it heavy. When he reached out with his spiritual sense, the pearl floated swiftly in whichever pattern he chose. He no longer needed all five elements to activate it, and it was perfectly capable of accommodating qi from any of the five elements.

With but a thought, the pearl quickly alternated between a frosty blue, an emerald green, a crimson red, an earthy yellow, and a silvery metallic color. He also tested its effect on the practice dummy and determined that the pearl had the same effects as any one of the originally refined pearls. Basically, this soul pearl could give him full versatility! He once again plucked the pearl out of the air and examined it closely. To his surprise, the original damage that had been dealt to the pearl due to stacking inscriptions had now completely disappeared.

Inspired by his sudden windfall, he continued to inscribe an additional four elements on each and every pearl. After a few days, he was rewarded with a misty white rosary, unblemished by the original damage that had been dealt to it. A full set of 108pearls at this grade would be worth well over fifty thousand spirit stones. In addition, it gave him full versatility in his techniques and could support his Soul Pearl manifestation technique through the second, third, and fourth transformations. In addition, the technique scrolls he had read stated that high-grade pearls could have their original runes removed and replaced with more adequate runes as time went on. Effectively, this was a treasure that could grow with him throughout the whole qi condensation realm.

Having finished refining the bloody rosary, Cha Ming was overwhelmed with fatigue. He had trained for two straight weeks, and it was time to shower and have a proper meal with his friends before they left for Green Leaf Forest the next morning.