Chapter 77: Secondary Professions
Xiang Yu sat in a meditative posture, his expression troubled as he struggled to circulate the violent energy flowing through his meridians. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. Though clearly encountering difficulty, he still persisted with determination, refusing to give up despite the obvious strain.
The minutes stretched into hours as he maintained his focus, guiding the rebellious energy through his qi pathways.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of internal struggle, Xiang Yu’s tense muscles began to relax. His furrowed brow smoothed gradually, and his clenched jaw loosened. With a deep exhale, he released a significant amount of remnant qi that spread throughout the room in a colorful mist that dissipated shortly after.
As he opened his eyes, their usual sharpness dulled by fatigue, Xiang Yu frowned slightly. This wasn’t working as he had hoped. Although he could accelerate his cultivation with the help of spirit food, he felt certain there must be a more efficient approach. Just now, he had prepared a fourth-grade spirit meal with meticulous care, yet after consuming it, he had only managed to absorb a mere ten percent of its total medicinal properties.
It was the same frustrating pattern as before—when he had eaten fifth-grade food, he had only absorbed twenty percent of the benefits. Most of the precious energy was simply going to waste. The fundamental problem was clear: his medium-grade spiritual root simply couldn’t handle such concentrated power.
"If this continues," he thought, "if I ever manage to create first-grade spirit food, wouldn’t I be completely incapable of absorbing its benefits?" The thought was quite disheartening.
He had to find a way to overcome this limitation. The most obvious solution would be to upgrade his spiritual root, but Xiang Yu didn’t know of any reliable method to accomplish such a feat. Previously, he had theorized that consistently consuming high-level food might stimulate his spiritual root enough to trigger a slight advancement. Once even the smallest advancement occurred, his system could handle the rest and help him improve exponentially.
But now it seemed that not only was this approach failing to trigger any advancement, but he also suspected that his spiritual root might actually suffer damage if repeatedly overwhelmed by energy it couldn’t properly process. The delicate channels might become permanently blocked or distorted, setting back his cultivation permanently.
Xiang Yu stared at the floor, deep in contemplation. After several minutes of intense thought, his eyes suddenly brightened with inspiration. With swift movements, he reached toward his spatial ring.
From the spatial storage, he retrieved three items: a round pill that emitted a faint golden glow, and two paper talismans covered in intricate calligraphy.
"The path forward might lie in secondary professions," he mused, studying the pill carefully. "Mostly pill refining." He had kept the foundation-building pill because he had no use for it, at least not at the moment. But now, he saw a different purpose for the item.
He recalled how he had acquired the cooking profession. After cooking for a few days, the profession had suddenly appeared in his system, complete with levels and capabilities. Could the same principle apply to other professions? The possibility was tantalizing.
Xiang Yu decided to test his theory. He would study the pill’s composition carefully and attempt to replicate it, learning the fundamentals of pill refining in the process. Additionally, he found some blank papers and carefully cut them to match the shape of the talismans he possessed. He wouldn’t limit himself to pill refining alone—talisman drawing might prove equally valuable.
Before embarking on this new path, however, Xiang Yu remembered another pressing matter. His Fire Palm technique had just broken through to the minor success realm the day before and still had zero experience points available to double. In order not to waste his system’s function, he realized he needed to advance this technique first.
He began practicing the palm technique. This time, he practiced just the fire palm technique, deliberately ignoring his other techniques, not wishing to waste precious time on skills that already had experience points to double.
He decided that from then on, he would only practice techniques when they had no experience points, otherwise, he’d just leave it to the system unless he really wanted a technique to reach mastery quickly. That approach would save time for learning professions and other valuable skills. With his current strength, techniques and scriptures might not increase his strength by much, he could only rely on secondary professions to boost his cultivation speed.
After just a few minutes of focused practice, Xiang Yu managed to gain two points of experience for his Fire Palm technique. The soft red glow on his palms dimmed slightly until it went off completely.
With that out of the way, he turned his attention back to the pill and talismans.
...
Xiang Yu started with the pill, turning it carefully in his palm as he considered his approach. He possessed no formal knowledge about pill refining—only fragmentary bits of information gathered from overheard conversations and stories. Such hearsay could hardly be considered reliable guidance for something as complex as alchemy, but it was all he had to work with.
He began by inspecting the pill with meticulous attention. Closing his eyes, he deactivated the qi sense that normally blanketed the entire pavilion, instead concentrating all his sensory ability on this single small object. The pill seemed to magnify in his perception as he focused, allowing him to examine its structure with much detail.
For anyone else, such a thorough inspection would have been nearly impossible, but Xiang Yu’s uniquely powerful qi sense, when concentrated on such a tiny target, allowed him to perceive details that would remain hidden to most cultivators. As his awareness penetrated the pill’s structure, he could discern how different properties interacted and fused with one another. The energy pathways twisted and flowed in complex patterns, creating a harmonious whole that was far greater than the sum of its parts.
Though he couldn’t identify which specific herbs had been used—his knowledge of medicinal ingredients was still too limited—he gradually developed a rough understanding of the formation process itself. The way the energies had been bound together, the layering of effects, the stabilization of volatile elements—these aspects began to make sense to him even without knowing the specific ingredients.
With this preliminary understanding, Xiang Yu gathered some herbs he knew possessed medicinal properties. He didn’t attempt to recreate the foundation-building pill—such ambition would be foolish at this stage. Instead, he decided to create his own original concoction using random herbs with medicinal qualities. His goal wasn’t to create a functional pill but rather to practice the formation process he had observed. He reasoned that with enough attempts, he might accumulate sufficient experience for the profession to manifest in his system, just as cooking had done previously.
He summoned his spirit fire. With careful concentration, he used the fire to heat the herbs while simultaneously manipulating his qi to shape them into a pill form. The delicate balance required intense focus—too much heat would scorch the ingredients, while too little would fail to activate their properties.
As he worked, he attempted to refine the medicinal properties of the herbs, encouraging them to blend into the pill structure rather than remaining separate entities. Without an alchemy furnace, he was forced to perform this delicate process by hand, leaving the process vulnerable to atmospheric contamination and energy leakage. Professional alchemists would have considered his method crude and inefficient, but Xiang Yu, lacking any formal training, pushed forward with determination, unaware of these shortcomings.
Hours passed as he made attempt after attempt. Each failure taught him something new—how quickly certain herbs burned, how others resisted blending, how his qi needed to flow to maintain the proper structure. Though he achieved no successful pills, his understanding gradually deepened.
Eventually, Xiang Yu noticed the light changing around him. Glancing toward the window, he saw the sun hanging low on the horizon, its golden rays stretching across the sky. The day had slipped away while he was absorbed in his practice. Looking down at the floor around him, he observed the scattered remnants of numerous failed attempts—scorched herbs, malformed lumps, and powdery residues that had once been promising ingredients.
Despite the evident lack of progress, Xiang Yu felt no discouragement. This was merely the first day of what he knew would be a long journey. As for the depleted herb supply, he wasn’t concerned. These were merely low-level medicinal plants that grew abundantly throughout the forest. He could easily gather more.
And if they proved insufficient, a mischievous smile crossed his face as he considered another solution. He could always "borrow" some from the master’s personal supply. Surely the master wouldn’t be too reluctant to part with a few herbs. After all, Xiang Yu reasoned with amusement, if he ate the meat, wouldn’t the master drink the soup?
...
Author’s Corner:
I don’t know if that’s the correct translation of the quote but who cares.
Thanks ❤️