The matriarch only gave him two of the Foundation techniques. He'd expected more, and Lin Yang said as much.

The matriarch and elder Bai exchanged yet another look. Elder Bai started to chuckle as he threw back his gourd once more, while the matriarch sighed as she turned back to Lin Yang.

“I'm pretty sure your master explained it to you last time you were starting your training... For most people, even cultivating two techniques at once is dangerous. Your understanding of a technique may be influenced by an unrelated technique, leading to mistakes in your energy circulation that can be fatal. There might even be qi deviation, or worse.”

Lin Yang hadn't known this at all. It seemed that almost all information concerning training martial arts was not part of his inherited memories. 

Still, he now has the joyful step, which he'd seen Yu Mo use before, and the lovers’ spurt. The second was a defensive technique, albeit a low level one supposedly. It was the only reason she could to give him both of them.

Now all he lacked was a way to attack.

He had a movement skill, and a weak defensive skill, but no attack skill. Only one more manual and he would have been golden.

In his private chamber, Lin Yang studied both techniques carefully. And then he studied the notifications he'd been getting all day. 

The flood was continuing even five hours after the meeting. If anything, it was getting a little out of hand. Now there were emotions like awe and envy mixed in there.

Earlier that day, Lin Yang had been struggling to barely make it to one hundred and forth points. Now in only a few hours, he'd beaten that goal with some time in the bank.

Ripple Points: 163.20931

It was a ridiculous number he couldn't have imagined two weeks before. Recently, he'd been forced to save points because there was nothing he could use them for. His realm travel function was on cooldown, and he didn't have any skills he could level up. Thinking about it, he'd been thinking one hundred and fifty points were what he needed to finally level up the palm of the enlightened skill.

…Upgradeable: ??? Ripple Points required…

For some reason, he still couldn't see how many ripple points it would take to upgrade the skill. Probably because he didn't have the number yet. But when the skill was just in fragments, the first few upgrades cost barely thirty points in total. Maybe it was because it was in fragments then compared to now that it was a complete skill.

Oh, well. He would upgrade it once he found the chance. For now he had to read his new manuals.

Skill Input Successful 

Skill Designation: Joyful steps. 

Effect: With a song in your heart, dance to every corner of the world, faster than light, more graceful than a swan.

Practice the skill to entry level to upgrade.

Lin Yang frowned. This was a new one. But he remembered that there were conditions to upgrading skills. It was just that the first technique he learned was so basic it didn't require a lot of practice. And then the healing art was an inheritance.

Reading the manual again, there were indeed a lot of terms he couldn't decipher. It described how to stand, how to breathe, how to circulate energy as one got ready to use the technique.

It was too technical to simply read and understand, with a lot of theory mixed in with the practical bits. It was the kind of thing he needed help with, and that was perhaps why he couldn't automatically achieve the entry level.

When he learned the flight or fight technique, he saw the practical bits and they made sense. They were simply exercises designed to induce adrenaline in the body, to make the body ready to act. After a few days of startling the body, the qi would get an adrenaline like quality whenever one was in grave danger. Just a little magnified, for a very tiny boost to physicality during fights.

This technique was a lot more complex. Probably it leveled a lot higher and cost a few more ripple points.

But even with all this complexity, it was only a foundation technique. He'd have to get core techniques at some point, which would irrevocably affect his qi. It was hard to imagine the complexity of that whole affair.

He still had another technique though. He didn't have much hope as he leafed through his latest manual.

Skill Input Successful.

Skill designation: Lovers’ spurt. 

Effect: A lover is like a magnet in a way. They can attract, but also repel.

Practice the skill to entry level to upgrade.

The skill effect was a little more interesting than Lin Yang first expected. The repulsion effect must be the defensive effect he'd been told about. But the attracting effect. Now that was something he would be interested in. Was it like a way to steal other people's weapons?

But the way it was named, and even the way the effect was described. Lin Yang felt the repulsive effect might be a lot more noticeable than the other one.

This new skill had a manual only half the size of the other’s. He read through it, and really this method seemed more straight forward to practice than the movement technique. 

It was easier to learn, but there was still a catch. Meditation and energy circulation were basics for any cultivator.

But these were things he did not, and could not, inherit from the original. When he came to this world three weeks ago now, Lin Yang had been unable to so much as sense his qi. So he'd taken a shortcut, learning his almost worthless first technique.

But now he could sense his qi at least. And now he needed to circulate it in a specific way. It might be complicated, reading about circulating qi, but this one actually made sense. Because Lin Yang could see what the method was trying to mimic. Static energy.

Deliberately rubbing his qi against the pathways was just the first step. The second step required trying to release his qi into a specific mineral, and trying to absorb it back. He had found a brown piece of iron ore in his chambers before, and wondered what it was for, but now he knew. The matriarch had prepared ahead.

This was a lodestone without its magnetism. Now it was just a training aid for people trying to learn this technique.

The two energy circulation methods made sense to Lin Yang, in that he could vaguely connect them to some of his scientific knowledge. But magic and science were very different disciplines, and trying too hard to understand why the spell worked the way it did only caused his head to hurt.

The rest of the steps, a few stances and physical exercises didn't make too much sense, but Lin Yang only had to follow the illustrations in the manual.

It was the energy circulation methods that gave him a hard time. Even though they made sense to him, he'd never circulated his energy deliberately before. 

During those two days, he mostly kept to his routine of treating the matriarch and meeting with his friends for a bit before returning to his work. He stopped writing poetry for a bit. 

He had considered asking Yu Mo for help with the joyful steps, but decided against the idea after some thought. For one, he really did need to learn energy circulation first. Which was easier to do with these methods he understood. For another, he thought that learning this technique and upgrading it fully might be enough to make it to the third layer of the initiate realm.

In those days, the ripple points kept pouring in, but the harvest distance seemed to be getting further and further from him.

Ripple Points obtained (awe): 0.000001…

He had never received ripple points that small, even at the height of his infamy in the lower realm he'd gone to. There was a chance that his fame in this world went far beyond the norm. He was thinking there was a chance the news of his recovery had crossed imperial borders.

Ripple Points: 186.094567

On the third day, there were perhaps only five days left to the day of the trial by combat. It was the day he was finally able to reabsorb at least a bit of his qi back from the lodestone before it was vented into the air. And then he kept improving every few rounds of practice.

By nighttime, he could vaguely force his qi to rub against his pathways. Practicing all day was impossible for most people, but the palm of the enlightened allowed Lin Yang to refill his qi whenever it was depleted, and to refresh his mind whenever he was mentally exhausted.

Finally, on the fourth morning, after his mandatory check up with his friends, Lin Yang returned to train. He took the stances as usual, stretched according to the instructions.

Then he sat down and meditated, circulating his qi according to the first technique. Then he let his qi out and into the rock, and absorbed it again. 

Conditions met.

Do you wish to learn skill, lovers' spurt, Y/N?

With wide eyes, Lin Yang stretched out his hand like he was interacting with a smart screen.