Chapter 8. Just a Girl and Her Will to Be Strong
Liu Fengying had believed she would finish preparing all the materials for creating the formation by nightfall. However, carving the jade flowers proved to be much more difficult than she expected as her hands were not accustomed to such meticulous work, so she set down the chisel and the last flower when the clock struck 10 in the evening.
'Ugh, my hands. I don't think I can even lift a glass of water to my mouth anymore...', Liu Fengying complained in her mind as she massaged the wrist of the hand that had been holding the chisel. She began to regret not taking longer and more frequent breaks while sculpting the nine jade flowers, only pausing for a maximum of 10 minutes every two hours, a time insufficient for her hands to rest, but merely enough to relieve numbness so she could continue working.
Feeling incapable of preparing the ink needed for drawing the formation, Liu Fengying decided to cultivate for about two hours to help her hands recover as quickly as possible. So, she rose from her chair and headed towards the bedroom, intending to proceed as she did the day before when she cultivated while lying in bed, doubting that her body had made any progress regarding flexibility.
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"Ring! Ring! Ring!...."
Hearing the alarm from her phone set for 1 a.m., Liu Fengying stopped cultivating and opened her eyes. As she reached for the phone to turn off the alarm, she noticed only a slight discomfort in her joints and found that she could use her hands without any problems.
'Much better. Not only have my hands recovered almost completely, but I've also shaken off the mental fatigue from the nine hours of work on the jade flowers. But it's quite late... If I want to catch a few hours of sleep tonight, I should get back to work as soon as possible...', Liu Fengying thought, intending to finish the formation before going to bed so it would have enough time to gather spiritual energy for the next day, allowing her to start cultivating as soon as she woke up.
After struggling for a few minutes to get off the bed, which seemed determined not to let her rise until morning, Liu Fengying headed to the kitchen to prepare the ink for drawing the formation.
'Maybe I should eat something first...', Liu Fengying said to herself after opening the refrigerator door to take out the bags of herbs, as she noticed the shelves full of food and realized she was quite hungry.
Not wanting to waste too much time, Liu Fengying took out a container from the refrigerator containing a portion of General Tso's Chicken and she put its contents in a pan on the electric stove to heat. Then she began preparing the plants needed to create the ink, washing and cleaning them of any impurities.
'Hmm, if I put them in a pot and start grinding them, it will take quite a while to turn them into a paste. I think it would be much more efficient if I use the blender...', Liu Fengying thought, looking at the pile of plants that had begun to accumulate. She had no reservations about using modern technology to expedite the process of obtaining the ink.
Sensing the aroma emanating from the pan in which she had placed the food to heat, Liu Fengying interrupted her work and went to take out the food before it got too hot. Sitting at the table with a full plate in front of her, Liu Fengying quickly started eating, her chopsticks leaving afterimages, finishing everything in less than 5 minutes.
'Even though I've eaten a full plate, I still feel hungry... Hmm... Maybe I should also open a tray of cookies...', Liu Fengying thought, no longer intending to analyze why her appetite had increased so much after regaining memories from her previous life.
After eating half a tray of cookies, Liu Fengying resumed preparing the plants for the ink, spending almost an hour until she managed to empty all four bags. Then, after using a kitchen scale to ensure she adhered to the recipe she remembered, she put everything into the blender to grind.
"Bzzzzzzzzttt...."
'It seems fine. Let's prepare a pot of water to put the mixture in when it's ready...', Liu Fengying said to herself, seeing that the blender had no trouble pulverizing the plants.
While the blender turned all the plants into a paste, Liu Fengying prepared a large pot filled a quarter of the way with water, into which she then added the blended plant mixture and placed it on the electric stove to boil.
'I think I look more like a young witch than an alchemist...', Liu Fengying thought as she stirred with a large wooden spoon in the pot containing a green mixture over which large air bubbles had begun to form, the entire kitchen being flooded with a strong smell that made breathing difficult.
After keeping the pot on fire for half an hour, Liu Fengying passed its entire contents through a strainer because she only needed the soluble part to create the ink. Then, she cut her finger and added a few drops of blood to the vessel containing the liquid obtained through straining to ensure that it contained enough spiritual energy to activate the formation.
'I never thought I would ever consider my own blood as a spiritual treasure...', Liu Fengying said to herself, aware that she would have to resort to the same method in the future every time she created a formation until she managed to enter the Qi Refining Realm and could manipulate spiritual energy outside her body, the chances of finding a plant or an object with enough spiritual energy to activate a formation by adding it being almost non-existent at that moment.
With the ink almost ready, needing only to cool down and for the spiritual energy from her blood to be absorbed by the other ingredients, Liu Fengying entered the bedroom and prepared the place where she would create the formation. After thoroughly wiping an area near the bed with a wet cloth and then drying it well using a hairdryer, Liu Fengying placed the nine jade flowers in a circle in that spot, which no longer had a trace of dust, then she brought the vessel with the still-warm ink and began to draw the formation with the help of a new brush.
Although in her previous life, Liu Fengying had only created the Jade Flowers Formation once, after spending a night in an inn owned by mortals, where she created that formation as a gesture of gratitude for the owners' services, she had no trouble remembering the symbols she needed to draw, as the formation had a fairly intuitive design. Moreover, even if she hadn't remembered exactly what the formation looked like, she would have been able to improvise to make it work because formations were capable of undergoing modifications. However, this would have taken her a little longer as she needed to ensure that the resulting formation would be effective enough.
After finishing drawing all the symbols, Liu Fengying breathed a sigh of relief seeing that the nine jade flowers had started to glow green because this indicated that the formation had begun to work.
'From what I can see, the formation is working as it should, but it will take a few hours before I can tell how effective it is. Well, I'll see when I wake up because I don't want the sunrise to catch me awake. I think it's already past four in the morning...', Liu Fengying thought, intending to get into bed immediately after taking a quick shower.
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Waking up around 10 o'clock, Liu Fengying had a hearty breakfast consisting of a 7-egg omelet (like in Piedone's movies) and the remaining cookies from the tray started at midnight. Then, she quickly got down to cultivating, wanting to spend as much time as possible in the days to come while the effect of the formation was at its peak, in order to become more powerful.
Liu Fengying spent almost 6 hours cultivating, so deeply immersed in cultivation that her body seemed to belong to a person in a coma, until she was interrupted by a phone call informing her that the sports equipment she had ordered would be delivered in half an hour.
'Much, much better. The concentration of spiritual energy in the bedroom is almost as high as it was in the world where I spent my previous life. It was worth spending a quarter of my savings and working for a whole day to create this formation...', Liu Fengying said to herself, very satisfied with the progress she had made during the 6 hours of cultivation.
Although she used a simple cultivation technique suitable for all types of constitutions but not very efficient, Liu Fengying noticed that with enough spiritual energy, she could progress three times faster than in her former life. She suspected that the reasons behind this were her profound knowledge of cultivation and the fact that her soul was much stronger than that of a person who had just started cultivating.
'If I maintain this pace, I think it's possible to enter the Qi Refining Realm in about 3 months, but in two weeks, I'll have to start going back to school, so the time I can allocate to cultivation will be halved for almost a month. Besides, I need to find a source of money... Well, there's no point in thinking about these things. It's best to focus on what I have to do now...'
With these thoughts in mind, Liu Fengying entered the living room and began to make space for the sports equipment, sticking all the furniture to the walls. Then, when the courier called again, she went downstairs to receive the packages, needing about a quarter of an hour to carry everything up to the apartment, many of the ordered items being quite heavy and bulky.
After unpacking all the packages and inspecting the sports equipment, Liu Fengying couldn't say she was very impressed with its quality, but knowing that she had only paid around 6000 ruans for everything, she was aware that she couldn't have too high expectations.
'Maybe this sports equipment isn't of the best quality, but it will do its job. Anyway, I don't need it to last me a lifetime, just 2-3 months...'
After putting everything in order, Liu Fengying went to the bedroom to change into a set of sports gear, then returned to the living room, which looked more like a gym, and started the training routine she had planned. For the first half-hour, she performed stretching exercises to increase her mobility, then spent an hour doing muscle-building exercises to make her body stronger, and finally, for about 40 minutes, she practiced the combat moves she knew from her previous life, hitting the striking dummy hundreds of times with her fists and feet.
Even though her body had started to contain spiritual energy, the fact that she hadn't done much sports since she had knee problems caused Liu Fengying to be very tired at the end of the training session, so she consumed a large amount of water and food to rehydrate and replenish her body's energy reserves.
After getting up from the table, Liu Fengying filled a bowl with mint ice cream and sat on the couch with it in hand to enjoy it quietly, planning to relax for half an hour to prepare for the 8-hour cultivation session ahead.
'It's kind of boring to spend so much time cultivating, but this is the only way I can make up for the lack of cultivation resources... Yes, it's better to be bored now than to have regrets later...', Liu Fengying said to herself, aware that she needed to take advantage of the free time she would have over the next 14 days to become as powerful as possible.
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Wake up, breakfast, cultivate, workout, shower, lunch, bowl of ice cream, cultivate, snack before bed, sleep.
That's how Liu Fengying's schedule looked like for the next seven days. During this time, she didn't leave her apartment at all because she didn't want to waste the time she had available for cultivation, nor did she want to meet anyone who could cause her problems or irritate her. She was isolated from the rest of the world like a cultivator barricaded in a cave, unwilling to leave until their cultivation succeeded in entering a higher realm.
However, the fact that the food in her apartment had almost run out and that she finished all the ice cream on the seventh day prompted her to leave the apartment on the morning of the eighth day to go shopping.
Being a Monday, there were few chances of meeting someone she knew, so Liu Fengying hoped that she wouldn't be interrupted by anyone during that trip and could return home as quickly as possible.
Liu Fengying thought to visit a store containing traditional medicine items before going to the supermarket, as she wanted to buy a set of acupuncture needles, which were recommended for use in treating old wounds. She had noticed that her foot hadn't fully healed even after cultivating for 8 days and doing numerous exercises to stimulate its recovery, so she thought it would be a good idea to use acupuncture to channel more spiritual energy into it to enhance its healing, not wanting to limp until she managed to enter the Qi Refining Realm, when such a wound would heal on its own.
"Sister Liu Fengying! Sister Liu Fengying! Look here!", Liu Fengying heard as she headed towards the store specializing in traditional medicine, discovering that the one calling her was a boy behind the wheel of a car that could have been considered vintage if it weren't for the rust, parking 5 meters in front of her.
It didn't take long for Liu Fengying to realize that the one calling her was Jiang Wei, her cousin from her mother's side and one of the few people who had been on her side when she was at the Jiang family's house asking for help to confront her father, although she didn't expect to ever see him in a car that seemed to be worth less than 10,000 ruans.
"Sister, get in quickly! I'm not allowed to park here!"
Seeing that Jiang Wei seemed very eager to talk to her and considering the fact that he was among the few people she still had a good relationship with, even though he wasn't very useful to her, Liu Fengying decided to get into his car, hoping that it could withstand the weight of two people.
***Author's Thoughts: The chapter wasn't action-packed, but it was necessary to prevent Liu Fengying's power growth from seeming abrupt. Can anyone guess where I got inspired when I created the title of this chapter? For the first person who guesses, I will answer a question about the evolution of the plot of this novel.