Chapter 19: Holy Spirit Disciple, The Confusion of Teaching
Spirit Tool lamps were embedded in the rock walls. Under their light, Chen Ming flipped through the books Zhang Peng had left behind, enriching himself bit by bit. Whenever he grew hungry, he ate and drank, then immediately circulated his Meditation Method to refine the energy.
Without any reference point or clock, Chen Ming did not even know how many days he had spent inside the stone room. Aside from going to the toilet once, he did nothing else, burying himself in the room and cultivating with all his strength.
As his situation gradually stabilized and his condition recovered, Chen Ming's previously numbed emotions also began to return.
The sorrow over the deaths of people he had known, his anger toward Shrek, his confusion about his own future...
One thing after another flooded into Chen Ming's mind, leaving his Spirit dazed. Sometimes he stared blankly at the ceiling, lost in thought. Sometimes he turned off the Spirit Tool lamps and immersed himself in complete darkness, trying to empty his mind. Sometimes he hid inside the blankets and quietly wept.
The emotions that had been forcefully suppressed by his survival instinct when he was on the verge of death had never truly disappeared. They had only been pushed into a corner of his heart. Now that Chen Ming's life was no longer in immediate danger and his situation had stabilized, those deeply suppressed emotions began rebounding violently.
When Zhang Peng returned with supplies after handling the follow-up matters, his first thought, upon seeing Chen Ming's hollow eyes, was that someone had somehow ambushed his cheap Disciple while he was away and caused a mental collapse.
Only later did he realize that Chen Ming was simply emotionally unstable.
The moment he saw Zhang Peng return, Chen Ming was like a child who had finally found someone to lean on. Tears poured out uncontrollably as he spilled out his experiences and everything in his heart to Zhang Peng.
Looking at Chen Ming, who was only 6 or 7 years old, Zhang Peng's heart could not help but soften. He could only sit silently at Chen Ming's side, listening to his story and occasionally offering a few words of comfort.
After an unknown amount of time, Chen Ming finally stopped crying and gradually regained control of his emotions. Looking at Zhang Peng sitting beside him, he revealed a shy and somewhat embarrassed expression.
"You've had a hard life. But then again, how many people in the Holy Spirit Cult haven't?"
Zhang Peng casually patted Chen Ming on the head and handed him a medallion.
It was a waist token shaped like a round disc, forged from some unknown heavy metal. It was entirely black, and faint skull patterns were carved into the center on both sides. One side bore a string of unknown patterns, while the other side was covered in strange runes.
"This is the waist token of a Holy Spirit Disciple within the Holy Spirit Cult. The patterns on the front are internal code, recording the holder's identity rank, along with the time and place where the token was forged. The runes on the other side are a symbolic blessing, a product of a certain faith characteristic within the Holy Spirit Cult."
"The waist token is anonymous. Whoever holds it is a Holy Spirit Disciple. Within the Holy Spirit Cult, as one's identity and strength continue to rise, the number of waist tokens one holds will also increase. It serves as proof of identity and as a symbol of certain permissions. All later tokens are built upon this first one."
"Once your cultivation reaches a certain level, I will take you to further understand the system and rules within the Holy Spirit Cult. This waist token will also be needed later for handling certain special matters, so make sure you do not lose it."
Hearing Zhang Peng's instructions, Chen Ming carefully stored the medallion away.
Afterward, Zhang Peng placed a hand on Chen Ming and inspected his condition. He found that although Chen Ming looked haggard and had dark circles beneath his eyes, his physical condition was not weak at all.
In the 3 or 4 days Zhang Peng had been away, Chen Ming had even relied on devouring and refining energy to raise his cultivation by another rank, becoming a Rank 15 Spirit Master.
Ordinary Spirit Masters absolutely did not cultivate at such a speed. Only Evil Spirit Masters possessed this sort of growth rate that went beyond common sense. Generally speaking, as long as an Evil Spirit Master could develop properly, reaching Rank 50 through devouring and evil methods was not a problem at all.
Only after reaching Rank 50 would their cultivation speed begin to slow, and only then would differences in individual talent and ability start drawing clear boundaries between them.
The Spirit Master stage was often the easiest period for an Evil Spirit Master to improve.
The Spirit Scholar stage lacked a 1st Spirit Ring and had no true combat ability.
A 1 ring Spirit Master, however, marked one's official entrance onto the path of a Spirit Master, and that 1st Spirit Ring completely separated a Spirit Master from ordinary people. At that point, Evil Spirit Masters also began to use their talents and gained the ability to actively "perform" cultivation.
A 10,000 year Mighty Deer was not considered particularly valuable to a high level Evil Spirit Master, but even though an Evil Spirit Master's combat strength was stronger than that of an ordinary Spirit Master, one still needed to be at least a Rank 40 Evil Spirit Master to be qualified to hunt a 10,000 year Spirit Beast and use it as cultivation material.
Even if some energy was lost in the process of devouring and absorption, and even if his own Meditation Method imposed extra requirements regarding the purity of energy, Zhang Peng judged that if Chen Ming completely devoured the flesh of this 10,000 year Spirit Beast, he would still rise by at least 3 or 4 ranks and rapidly approach the threshold of Spirit Grandmaster.
If it were an ordinary Evil Spirit Master who did not care about the purity of energy at all, then after consuming this corpse, it would not even be impossible to rise by 6 or 7 ranks.
After all, even though a Mighty Deer was not particularly powerful, it was still a genuine 10,000 year Spirit Beast. It was comparable to a Spirit King level Spirit Master with an ordinary quality Martial Soul. For a Spirit Master, the amount of energy contained within it was still unbelievably abundant.
After bringing Chen Ming to a dark corner to wash himself clean, Zhang Peng hauled him straight back to the cultivation room and began stuffing all the knowledge he thought Chen Ming needed into his head in a force fed manner.
Zhang Peng's speaking ability was terrible. He practically did not know how to teach.
The knowledge he explained came out dry, cold, and like a pile of hard facts. Although the content itself was extremely valuable, it was very difficult for an ordinary Spirit Master of this era to understand.
On top of that, Zhang Peng had never accepted a Disciple before. Even when he occasionally gave guidance in the past, it was to Spirit Masters who were at least Spirit Emperor or Spirit Saint level. As a result, he subconsciously assumed that certain pieces of common sense did not need to be explained at all.
Even Chen Ming, who in his previous life had extremely strong reading ability and had survived the Sea of Questions Tactic, sometimes could not understand what Zhang Peng was trying to say because his own Spirit Master knowledge was still too shallow.
However, Chen Ming did not know how to properly judge his own situation. He only assumed that his Comprehension Ability and foundation were a little lacking, so he simply memorized everything by force. Only when there was something he truly could not understand would he ask Zhang Peng about it.
After several days like this, Zhang Peng and Chen Ming reviewed their progress, only to discover, somewhat awkwardly, that although Chen Ming had studied for several days and had even learned many insights related to high level Spirit Master cultivation, he still had many deficiencies in his fundamentals.
Moreover, because Zhang Peng had been teaching him from the perspective of a Super Douluo, Chen Ming had also ended up making mistakes in some details.
For example, something that seemed "slight" to a Super Douluo was actually "extremely powerful and impossible to resist" to a Spirit Master. Because Zhang Peng was too old and too strong, he often unconsciously ignored things that seemed only "slight," "not worth mentioning," or "not a threat."
Zhang Peng perfectly demonstrated one truth.
Having great strength did not mean one had great teaching ability, and having great Comprehension Ability did not mean one had strong expressive ability.
.....
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