Chapter 4307 — The Mutant Spirit Root Attribute
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
To have come by such strength as she now possessed was already satisfaction enough; to advance further still and become a formidable Nascent Soul cultivator would far exceed anything she had ever expected—there was truly nothing to regret. When all was said and done, Huang Xiaotao had never harbored ambitions of that magnitude.
"What? Xiaotao, have you ever had your spirit root attribute properly tested? And it came out as a single-attribute spirit root?" Wei Zhao asked upon hearing this.
"No, not at all. I come from a cultivator tribe, and the conditions for cultivation there weren't good—no decent resources to speak of, either. At the start, someone just handed me a mental cultivation method and a martial technique manual, with no guidance whatsoever, and I simply began cultivating on my own. I never had my spirit root attribute tested. Later, when I joined the Threefold Pavilion, I just carried on with the advanced mental methods and never underwent any such testing either," Huang Xiaotao said, shaking her head.
"Uh, Xiaotao, you really did have luck on your side. Cultivating so haphazardly—if the mental method and martial technique had been mismatched, it would have been all too easy to suffer qi deviation and land yourself in serious trouble..." Wei Zhao said, breaking into a cold sweat.
Had Huang Xiaotao not told him, he would never have known the conditions in the cultivator tribes of Cloud Terrace Island—so it turned out they were that harsh. He had assumed that being situated on Cloud Terrace Island, they must surely be far better off than the mortal realm; even if they could not match the conditions of the Welcome New Pavilion, they should not be too far behind.
What he did not realize was that the cultivator tribes, though a part of Cloud Terrace Island, were its very lowest stratum. Their cultivation conditions were scarcely better than those of the mortal realm; the only difference was a thicker and more widespread cultivation atmosphere.
"Well, there was nothing to be done about it. My family was never a great clan or noble house, so we had no more to offer. And the mental methods given to us were generally rather mild and conventional. Even if something went wrong, the worst was usually damaged meridians that left you unable to cultivate—cases that cost lives were not all that common..." Huang Xiaotao explained weakly.
"All right. But even so, Xiaotao, why would you say you can at most cultivate to the Nascent Soul stage, when you don't even know whether you have a single-attribute spirit root?" Wei Zhao asked, puzzled.
"Didn't you tell me that? You said before that I had a fire attribute, and that was why I could cultivate the Frenzied Fire Eight Trigrams Combined Strike Palm alongside you, isn't that right?" Huang Xiaotao countered.
"Uh..." Wei Zhao was rendered speechless. So that was the basis for her claim. He could only shake his head with a smile. "I only noticed that your true qi carried a fire attribute when I was channeling true qi into you. I never said it was the only one—there might be other attributes too, simply undiscovered for the time being."
"Oh, so that's how it is." Huang Xiaotao nodded, blushing slightly.
"Look, it says here in this booklet as well—even if one truly has only a single-attribute spirit root, there is no need to lose heart. Every cultivator's body may harbor hidden attributes and pseudo-attributes, which ordinary methods simply cannot detect. It is hard to discover them on your own as well; only extremely specialized testing methods can bring them to light. There may well be a pleasant surprise in store," Wei Zhao comforted her, reading dutifully from the text.
"Mm-hmm." Though Huang Xiaotao harbored few ambitions, hearing these words, a trace of longing nonetheless crept unbidden into her gaze.