The patriarch nodded and said to them, "The two of you may go."
Purple Vine and Green Viper didn't dare dilly-dally. They bowed quickly, said their greetings, and went away as soon as possible.
The avatar watched them leave with mixed feelings. She didn't know if she should be happy or sad that the cultivation technique of their sect is crippled.
In the Purple Flower sect, they have two main cultivation techniques that serve as the core and foundation of the sect. These two techniques are the body forging and the energy refining cultivation techniques of the sect.
The energy refining technique can reach up to rank 5, but the body forging technique can only help cultivators reach rank 4. This imbalance is a big problem for the sect.
Since one will need to cultivate both their bodies and energy to the peak of the fifth mortal coil with the same cultivation technique before they can advance to the sixth mortal, this imbalance means that the cultivators of the Purple Flower sect cannot advance to the sixth mortal coil.
This requirement to advance to the sixth mortal coil is not easily solved by cultivating the body and energy with separate cultivation techniques. She and the many patriarchs before her have confirmed that this won't work.
In fact, she is currently cultivating the rank 5 energy-refining cultivation technique of the sect and another rank 5 body forging that the previous patriarchs had bought from upstream.
Yet this couldn't help those patriarchs or her to reach the sixth mortal coil. The best that the rank 5 body forging technique can do for her is ensure that her body is not fragile like glass compared to her peers and to help her balance her emotions so that she isn't cold like those who only cultivate the energy refining cultivation technique.
Only a rank 6 technique that is used for both energy refining and body forging right from the second mortal coil can help a cultivator reach the sixth mortal coil. The Purple Flower sect doesn't have such a technique, which is why none of their patriarchs have ever advanced to the sixth mortal coil.
The Blood Skull sect, on the other hand, has at least two rank 6 techniques that have been confirmed to be capable of helping cultivators reach the sixth mortal coil.
In fact, they might have two more rank 6 cultivation techniques for those who can't cultivate the wood element or the lightning element to use to advance to the sixth mortal coil.
It is just that no one who uses those two techniques has ever reached the sixth mortal coil because the slots for the fifth mortal coil have always been monopolized by the disciples of the sect who cultivate wood or lightning elements.
This situation where the Blood Skull sect had more techniques than they needed is something that the Purple Flower sect has never experienced. This is as a result of a fundamental difference in their background.
The people who established the Blood Skull sect came from upstream, so they better have techniques, while the people who established the Purple Flower technique came from downstream, the Five Veins region.
This means that the Purple Flower sect is inferior in terms of background. In fact, they are so inferior that their original energy-refining cultivation technique wasn't at rank 5.
Their energy-refining cultivation technique is only rank 5 right now because many generations of ancestors of the sect have spent many years and untold effort to modify it and upgrade it to rank 5.
If they want to upgrade their rank 5 energy-refining cultivation technique to rank 6, they will have to first upgrade the body-forging counterpart to rank 5. Then they will have to fuse the two cultivation techniques into one and evolve the result of the combination to rank 6.
This is clearly going to be very difficult. Even someone as talented as Sword Flash, who created his own cultivation technique, is stuck at the fifth mortal coil like her. This shows just how difficult it will be.
For now, the cultivators of the Purple Flower sect will have to bear with the imbalance for much longer. This means that someone like Green Viper, who cultivates the body forging technique, has no chance of reaching the fifth mortal coil unless he also cultivates the energy refining technique.
This requirement means that Green Viper either will never become a patriarch of the sect or will be able to become a patriarch after he is finally able to balance his emotions with the energy-refining technique.
This made her relax because she didn't want to leave the sect in the hands of someone as violent and emotional as Green Viper.
But she isn't sure it is a good thing that Green Viper can't advance. After all, if the body forging technique was rank 5 and could help Green Viper advance, she might have the chance to advance to the sixth mortal coil.
She could only sigh and say, "I feel so cheated. If I had been told this before I entered this sect, I wouldn't be stuck like this."
Many people know that the Blood Skull sect is more powerful than the other sects, but few know just how wide the gap between them is. This is partly because the other sects don't have a habit of broadcasting their weakness to the world even when they should.
For instance, after the regional sect examination, when every participant is given an invitation by the five sects to be admitted into their sect, none of the other four sects ever mention that they can't reach the sixth mortal coil because they don't have a complete set of cultivation techniques for it.
This information is not useful for most people. But for geniuses like her, this information is critical.
If she had known that the cultivation techniques of the Purple Flower sect were crippled, she would have chosen to accept the grade A admission offer from the Blood Skull sect instead of the grade S admission offer from the Purple Flower sect.