Chapter 96: Third Qi Bowl!
When Fengyu first looked at the cultivation stages, he assumed that it would be rather easy to construct.
3% at the early stage, 32% at the mid stage, 60% at the late stage and 5% at the peak stage.
The difficulty seemed to lie in the breakthrough to the peak stage...
But at that time, he hadn’t yet realised that he could only go 0.99% beyond his current stage in each stage.
Creating the whole framework for the late stage bowl’s foundation with less than a single percent seemed quite difficult.
He had thought about it many times during this month, finally understanding why many people who spent their last decade or two in this stage. Simply reaching it would be a huge hurdle for most!
The emphasis lay on most –
Maybe it was because rogue cultivators generally lacked systematic education, which was why the difference between them and family or sect cultivators was so large.
Fengyu might have been a rogue cultivator for this whole life, but he had enjoyed the systematic education of the modern times.
So when he came upon this issue, he remembered his art class.
While he hadn’t been the best in art class, he was still quite good in his class.
In arts you also learn architecture, at least he did.
The foundation of a Qi Bowl is as much as 30% of the whole Qi Bowl, meaning in the case of the late-stage, the foundation would have to be a total of 20% of the whole 60% of Qi Bowl.
For cultivators the task of filling 20% of space with 1% of material might be difficult, and they might resort to creating thin and stretched outline of the foundation... but Fengyu knew a better way.
A house might look like every part is important, but in fact, the core are the load-bearing walls!
Fengyu split the 0.99% in two – one part would be an extremely thin foundation, the other part would become pillars along the bottom of the bowl.
While he couldn’t avoid the thinness of the bowl, he could ensure he wouldn’t leave behind any mistakes that might cause the foundation to crack in the process of breaking through!
His mind moved rapidly and the faintly constructed third Qi Bowl in his dantian changed in mere moments.
The thin outline instead turned into a small circular table with various small pillars below it.
Fengyu opened his eyes and looked at the drawing in front of him –
Every distance from pillar to pillar had been calculated to the exact point where they had to stay, to ensure the highest stability.
A single small mistake might not cause his breakthrough to fail, but solving the issue after the bowl solidified would become extremely difficult.
After the first construction, he instantly saw more than five mistakes.
He didn’t hesitate to reconstruct, straining his mind slightly.
The second round was better, leaving only two mistakes.
He didn’t allow this and once again reconstructed.
This time, there were three mistakes.
Another round of construction began.
...
The night was long and Fengyu’s mind was exhausted, causing more issues to appear.
He took a break for the night and slept to recover his mind.
The next day, he was better and the construction felt smoother, his mistakes reduced to only two or one, though even today he didn’t manage to break through.
Finally on the third day, he woke up energetic.
Before the sun rose in the east, he had already entered his dantian and used his mental power to direct the construction of the third Qi Bowl –
"The idea of having a few large weight-bearing pillars can be used but it would delay me by at least another month, which isn’t recommended.
Although that one would have less mistakes, its stability would also be lower, so I can’t exactly recommend using it.
This way of doing many small pillars is extremely difficult but the stability should be the best.
A smooth breakthrough shall commence!"
Fengyu’s thoughts gathered and condensed, the construction finished in a single moment.
When he compared it to the sketch in front of him, he saw that... there wasn’t a single mistake!
The Qi Bowl was perfect, extremely perfect to the point where Fengyu doubted himself.
He checked it again and again, only to realise that this bowl actually had over three mistakes – but somehow, these three core mistakes balanced each other, causing the bowl to appear stable and perfect when it wasn’t.
"Never mind, pursuing perfection is a mistake in itself. As long as the bowl is stable and there won’t be any damage afterward, I can directly proceed to the next step!"
"Fweeeee"
His flute sounded, forcing his mind to gain the most concentration he could bring –
DING
DING
DING
He started using his spiritual power to hammer his bowl –
At first it appeared shaky, and when he hit it casually, it seemed like the bowl would break.
Fengyu changed his tactic and instead changed to throwing small spiritual power stones onto the bowl – they were extremely small and targeted exactly those pillars.
The pressure instantly caused the pillars to manifest.
But because he had constructed many such pillars, the process still took him quite some time.
After an unknown time passed, he finally completed this first step.
The pillars were stable, the next step was to stabilise the whole platform!
Instead of stones or hammers, this time he transformed his spiritual power into heavy sheets of paper, falling onto the platform, putting pressure on everything evenly.
Supported through the already manifested pillars, the thin layer above was barely able to withstand it.
Fortunately, the sheet’s pressure was rather low compared to the stones and hammers. Spread along the whole platform it was quite weak.
DING
DING
DING
Fengyu moved from the platform to the small edge around the platform.
This edge would be the foundation for the future construction of the whole bowl!
DING
DING
DING
Time passed slowly in this tedious process, Fengyu becoming weary and wishing to take a break several times.
But he held on, his goal a perfectly stable foundation –
When he thought he couldn’t hold on anymore...
DING! DING! DING!
Three loud dings sounded in his dantian, and suddenly, a stream of spiritual power gathered around and entered his dantian!