Mo Hua went back and tried drawing the array patterns a few times according to Instructor Yan’s instructions, and sure enough, he felt a sudden sense of clarity.
When he went to sleep at night and practiced on the stone tablet, his comprehension was noticeably faster.
For the parts he didn't quite understand, drawing them a few more times helped him gradually grasp the key points.
As long as the basic array patterns were firmly mastered, learning the variations wasn't too difficult. The hard part was that without guidance, Mo Hua wouldn't think in that direction, and naturally, he would find himself stuck with no way forward.
Mo Hua spent another day familiarizing himself with the process, and by the evening of the third day after class, he began to formally draw the Earth-Solidifying Array.
He didn't have a smooth start, but after some stumbling, he finally managed to draw it, though it took quite a long time.
For an Earth-Solidifying Array with four array patterns, it took Mo Hua an hour and a half to complete. After finishing, he had to rest for another hour due to the excessive consumption of his divine sense.
By the time Mo Hua finished the array, it was already midnight.
Mo Hua checked it once and found that, unsurprisingly, he had made a mistake.
Mo Hua sighed.
He had only drawn one piece all night, and it was wrong.
With only five days to finish ten pieces, time was very tight.
"What should I do?"
Mo Hua thought for a while, and in the end, he had no choice but to find a way to skip some of his cultivation classes.
He certainly couldn't skip courses like History of Cultivation or Common Knowledge, as these could broaden his horizons and experience.
As for Alchemy and Talisman-making, since they required spending spirit stones on herbs, talisman paper, and jade, as well as renting the sect's alchemy furnaces, the costs were high, so Mo Hua selectively skipped some of those classes.
In any case, he was unlikely to have much of a future in these spirit-stone-draining branches of cultivation anyway.
As for the Body Refining classes, he could skip them entirely.
Cultivators cultivate spiritual power through techniques and use Daoist arts to drive that power for attacks.
Daoist arts are divided into two major categories: spell-based arts and martial-based arts.
Spells use divine sense to manipulate spiritual power, condensing it into attacks, while martial arts use spiritual power to stimulate the body's potential for physical combat.
Those who practice spells are called Spirit Cultivators, and those who practice martial arts are called Body Cultivators.
In the Qi Refining stage, there are few Spirit Cultivators and many Body Cultivators. Especially in Tongxian City, most cultivators make a living by hunting monsters. Spirit Cultivators are physically weak and ill-suited for hunting, so most rogue cultivators follow the path of Body Cultivators.
For this reason, the Tongxian Sect specifically opened a Body Refining course to allow disciples to train their bodies in advance.
But Mo Hua was destined not to be a Body Cultivator.
He didn't inherit his father Mo Shan's talent for body refining; instead, like his mother Liu Ruhua, he had been physically weak since childhood—even weaker than her.
According to Old Master Feng, an alchemist at the Xinglin Hall, cultivators are born in accordance with the Heavenly Dao, and their divine sense and physical body are relatively balanced.
When Mo Hua was born, he possessed memories of two lifetimes, making his innate divine sense too strong. This caused an imbalance between his divine sense and his body, and as one grew while the other waned, Mo Hua had been weak and sickly since birth.
A hundred-kilogram stone cauldron that others could lift with ease was something Mo Hua couldn't budge an inch, no matter how hard he tried. Cultivators of the same age were generally a head taller and a circle broader than him.
Although Mo Hua was thin and weak, he was fortunately handsome, with a gentle temperament, red lips, and white teeth; at ten years old, he looked just like a porcelain doll.
This appearance wasn't bad, but Mo Hua still felt that a real man should be mighty and imposing.
Like his father, who was tall, heroic, and looked majestic.
In his dreams, Mo Hua imagined himself in white robes, practicing peerless techniques, his spear moving like a dragon, standing alone against ten thousand foes.
Unfortunately, he could only see such scenes in his dreams.
"Oh, right."
Mo Hua remembered that after he fell asleep, his divine sense would automatically enter his sea of consciousness, and he couldn't even dream...
The instructor who taught Body Refining had originally wanted to be strict with Mo Hua, but after Mo Hua tried to lift the stone cauldron a few times—only for the cauldron to remain unmoved while Mo Hua sprained his arm—the instructor became much more lenient.
Cultivation is like that; sometimes, effort just can't solve the problem.
The instructor was very understanding of Mo Hua.
When the Heavenly Dao closes a window for you, it might be trying to get you to find another door, rather than forcing you to bang your head against a wall.
So, Mo Hua selectively skipped these classes. With the time he squeezed out, he locked himself in his room and focused on drawing the Earth-Solidifying Array.
Five days later, during the ten-day break, Mo Hua finally used up the ten sets of materials, succeeding in six out of the ten pieces.
Not only did he not lose money, but he also made four spirit stones, which Mo Hua was quite satisfied with.
Taking advantage of the one-day break, Mo Hua went to the Youyuan Shop on North Street and handed the completed Earth-Solidifying Arrays to the fat manager.
The fat manager looked them over and said to Mo Hua, "Your brother's foundation in arrays is truly quite poor, but he learns things quite quickly. These arrays are visibly better one after another. It's just that..."
The manager picked up the first array to criticize it again: "This array is drawn like a beginner's work; even some of the basic array patterns are drawn in a stumbling manner..."
Mo Hua was already used to the manager's grumbling; it went in one ear and out the other.
Besides, the manager was talking about his "brother," so what did that have to do with him?
He didn't have a brother.
Mo Hua went straight to the point: "Can I exchange these for spirit stones?"
The manager rolled his eyes at Mo Hua, but still counted out four spirit stones for him. "Tell your brother to draw better next time."
"Mm-hmm," Mo Hua nodded repeatedly as he took the spirit stones.
Mo Hua spent all four spirit stones on pastries. He ate two himself, saved two, and gave the rest to Dahu and the others.
The three of them were moved to tears at the sight of so many pastries and asked Mo Hua if he wanted to eat meat again; they had seen the Elder keeping a colorful duck that looked very fat.
Mo Hua felt a headache coming on and told them not to steal anymore, or else the sect would notify their parents, and they would be lucky if they weren't beaten to a pulp when they got home.
Only then did the three of them reluctantly give up the idea.
After that, Mo Hua continued to draw the Earth-Solidifying Array for over two months.
The more he drew, the more thoroughly he mastered it.
Previously, drawing one Earth-Solidifying Array, including the time to rest and recover his divine sense, took nearly three hours; now, it only took an hour and a half.
This was partly because practice makes perfect—the deeper his mastery and understanding of the array patterns, the less time it took to draw them—and partly because practicing day and night, with the continuous consumption, recovery, and application of his divine sense, had invisibly strengthened his divine sense, making it much more robust than before.
The benefits of a strong divine sense for drawing arrays were very obvious.
The success rate of the Earth-Solidifying Array reached eighty to ninety percent, and occasionally he succeeded with all ten. Each array could earn him two spirit stones. Over these two months, after deducting his daily expenses for food and clothing, Mo Hua had earned a full hundred spirit stones.
Mo Hua planned to save up two hundred spirit stones before going to the sect to choose a mid-grade, lower-tier technique.
He would tell his parents only after he had chosen it; otherwise, they would surely insist on paying for it themselves, telling him to keep his own spirit stones for cultivation or for buying a cave dwelling or finding a cultivation partner in the future.