Chapter 44: Upstaged
Fundamentally speaking, the Jade Toad Full Moon Painting absorbed the cultivator’s fortune to replenish their foundation. The inventor of this cultivation method, True Lord Tun Yue, was a Chosen One. After attaining great completion of his Dao, he came to believe that the effects of fortune were far too indeterminate and could disappear alongside a random twist in great fate just like that. It was far more practical to convert it into foundation instead. That was why he created this method.
The cultivation method converted roughly one-tenth of the cultivator’s fortune into foundation. Thus, the cultivator must possess an enormous amount of fortune for the cultivation method to be worth it. The more, the better. And of course, it was completely useless for someone who possessed no fortune.
Originally, this cultivation method was tailor-made for a Chosen One. However, people bearing fortune were as numerous as ox hair, and even Chosen Ones were appearing in batches in recent centuries. That was why the Jade Toad Full Moon Painting gradually grew popular and became one of the six universal body-tempering methods.
The disciples’ cultivation insights revealed that a cultivator who was measured to possess a foundation of one zhang during the aptitude test would have a corresponding image of ten zhang. Generally speaking, a cultivator with a fortune of one zhang could further expand the image by another zhang. Thus, eleven zhang was usually the ultimate limit of one’s image.
As for the over-achieving record holders, the greatest record they left behind was twelve zhang. They also recorded their images so that their juniors could use them as references.
It went without saying that every single one of these images was colorful and brimming with special effects. There were all sorts of exotic phenomena such as dragons, phoenixes and qilins; lotuses and pagodas. Even the color and composition of the images were well-balanced. To put it bluntly, they were the kind of extraordinary phenomena that anyone would realize was outstanding at first glance. Those who did not have a good-looking extraordinary phenomenon were too embarrassed to leave a picture behind.
Wei Yuan noticed a crucial detail while he was studying these images: their scale was measured relative to the ground. Their rocks and jade toads didn’t increase proportionally to the ground, and the full moon’s enlargement was even smaller. Although his image only spanned three zhang currently, the ground, the rock, the jade toad, and the moon—everything in the image was growing proportionally. That was why he still felt very cramped every time he transformed into the jade toad.
Maybe this is why my progress is poorer than the others? After a whole night of studying, Wei Yuan finally found an excuse that he could use to console himself.
Another reason why his aristocratic peers—Cui Yu, Bao Yun, Xiao Yu and more—were progressing so quickly was because they had refined their foundation long before they joined the sect. A refined child often became precocious at an exceedingly early age and progressed rapidly once they began cultivating. For example, Li Zhi acted and sounded quite mature for his age during the martial test. Cui Yu was eight years old and so had refined his foundation a couple years more than his peers, allowing him to increase his original foundation of seven chi to eight chi. He too progressed way faster in his cultivation than most of his peers.