Incomplete Immortal Yin Flower Manual

"Yeon, where were you?" Emily asked.

They had all just rejoined at the meeting point since the deadline to explore the hall was coming to an end.

"And why are you with Disciple Elrod?" Mia added on, confused since he had shown up with her.

"Elsher and I are great buds now," Yeon said while prodding at Elsher's side with his elbow.

Elsher slapped Yeon's arm away, "We're not friends. And you are to address me as Disciple Elrod or Senior Sister Elrod," she said coldly.

"Really? Senior Sister? We're both outer disciples, Elsher," Yeon said, casually ignoring what she had just said.

"I placed much higher than you on the disciple trials, as such I am your senior. Why? Do you need proof of my strength as well?" she hissed.

"Nah, I'm good," Yeon said. It was fun teasing Elsher, but he didn't want to start a fight he couldn't win.

"Yeon, I really think you should address her as Disciple Elrod. She's super powerful, you know. We didn't get to see it, but she came first in the trials…" Mia said, eyeing Elsher cautiously.

Elsher raised her chin and puffed out her chest as Mia complimented her.

"She may look unapproachable and cold, but she's actually a big softy. You should have seen the way she was cheering and clapping after every piece, she was like a seal-"

"DISCIPLE YEON," Elsher loudly interrupted, "that's enough now."

Elsher motioned towards Elder Lucas who had just arrived. It seems that he had just had some food since he was giving off a delicious scent of meats and spices.

"Has everyone gathered? Good. You lot have to leave now. Apparently, me wanting a food break isn't a valid reason for allowing you to wander here unsupervised. Something about ruining the opulence of the Yellow Lily Pond Hall," he said sighing, almost as if he had just been shouted at by the more senior elders.

'What an easygoing elder,' Yeon thought. Elder Lucas seemed like the hippie teacher equivalent of an elder at a prestigious sect.

The outer disciples were quickly herded outside, and they went their separate ways.

"Goodbye, Elsher. I'll see you around," Yeon waved at her departing figure.

She could have ignored it to walk off but instead turned around to have the last word.

"And I will pray to the Heavens that I will never have to run into you again, Disciple Yeon," she quipped back, her tone seething with disgust.

"Shall we head home, girls?" Yeon said while addressing Mia and Emily standing beside him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Reuben staring at him.

He looked much more haggard and messy after the duel.

Yeon playfully winked at him.

Reuben flinched and shivered, his face turning pale as if he had just seen something terrifying. Reuben quickly scurried away with his head down.

"Who were you winking at?" Mia asked curiously, her finger at her lips.

She scanned the area to see if there was anyone she needed to look out for, a rival for Yeon's affection.

"He was scaring Rueben away," Emily explained, "not sure why he had to go about it in that way though..."

The girls and Yeon continued their banter on their way home when he was invited to join them on a special day.

"You should come to watch the Day of The Dark Night with us," Mia said.

'Sounds like something Batman would love,' Yeon thought.

She was referring to the solar eclipse which would occur a week from now.

"Sure," Yeon said.

There was a lot of mysticism and mythology about the Day of The Dark Night, but he now knew that it was just when the moon aligned with the Sun. It no longer felt as special, but it was still a wonderful view, so he decided to watch it with them anyway.

"I'm going to buy some dinner for Sylvie, I'll see you in a few days," Yeon said.

They said their goodbyes and Yeon walked towards the food stalls.

He looked around for someone who was making some easily digestible soup and bread where he bought 2 days' worth of food and made his way home.

***

"Sylvie, I'm back."

"Welcome back, Master," a voice echoed from the bedroom.

Yeon opened the door to see Sylvie who was putting on her shoes to go greet Yeon.

"No need, stay in bed," he said, slipping the shoes off her and placing them to the side.

"Did you get any sleep?" Yeon asked. It was visible from her haggard eyes and black circles underneath them that she did not. But he asked in hopes of being proved wrong.

"No, Master."

"I see… Let's eat some soup first and you can try again after that."

Yeon was like a mother bird as he blew a spoonful of soup before feeding it to Sylvie.

"Master… I am capable of eating my own food," she said.

"You can eat on your own? Without mommy's help?" he teased playfully. It felt like only yesterday when she accepted the food without a care in the world.

"… Yes, Master."

"Well too bad. You're a patient and a patient needs treatment," Yeon hummed.

Sylvie was responding and interacting with Yeon better than ever, and it gave hope to Yeon about her recovery.

However, she still ignored Mia and Emily, only responding if Yeon asked her to answer.

Yeon continued to cool the soup and feed her, mouthful by mouthful.

Admittedly, he was half doing this for his own enjoyment. There was something addicting about the way she would emotionlessly open her mouth and accept the food, chew it, and then swallow it.

It was all so rhythmical and mechanical like a robot.

As Yeon was doing this, he was thinking about something else.

It was finally time for him to break through into the Flesh Cleansing realm. He had hit the top point of the Bone Cleansing realms quite some time ago and had been solidifying his base as preparation.

The lower your realm, the less control you have over your stabilization process after you've broken through. This meant that Yeon would have to immediately stabilize his cultivation base instead of holding it off until it was comfortable.

That was the main reason why he had yet to break through.

He had already told Mia and Emily that he would not be seeing them tomorrow since he was planning on breaking through and would require the next day to stabilize.

Interestingly, after a certain point, the more powerful you got, the less control you had over when you could stabilize, making it difficult to delay the process. This was common knowledge since this was the most vulnerable time for powerful Martials and the only time a lower realm Martial could kill a higher one.

It was like a curve where the difficulty was highest for the higher and lower realms.

However, what Yeon was pondering over wasn't the act of breaking through but something else entirely.

He had unexpectedly received a gift that he presumed was from Sect Master Reina, since he couldn't think of anyone else who would act in such a grandiose yet inexplicable manner.

'The incomplete version of the Venerable Yin Flower Palace's Immortal grade manual, the Immortal Yin Flower Cultivation Manual…'

The Immortal grade was the highest grade that was said to exist, the grades starting from Poor, Common, Rare, Elite, Mortal, Earth, Sky, Heaven, Immortal.

Although incomplete, it was still at least at the Sky grade, much higher than what he had been practising. Even the most heavily guarded manuals of prestigious clans would be at the Elite of Mortal level.

Large sects in Central monopolized any precious manuals above the Mortal grade making them practically impossible to come across.

A portion of this priceless treasure had directly been inserted into his brain through some mysterious technique.

But there were certain limits put in place so that he couldn't exploit this knowledge.

Rather than it being a manual, it was more like receiving the muscle memory of someone else.

When he tried to write out the manual, he simply couldn't, as if he had forgotten it completely, it eluded him. He concluded that the Fairy Empress' technique made it impossible for him to share this knowledge.

Moreover, he only knew the feeling of cultivating the incomplete manual, not knowledge of the incomplete manual itself.

If the manual was like an instruction guide on how to drive a Formula 1 car and knowledge about the course you would be racing-

Then it was like receiving the muscle memories of the world's best F1 driver when he drove around that specific course, except you had no idea what a car was and no idea that you were driving around a course in the first place.

But what really bugged Yeon was-

'This can only be cultivated by a woman…'

To Yeon as a male, it was completely useless. He couldn't even circulate his qi and adsorb the heaven and earth energy according to the knowledge he had gained.

It was like being handed a gun whose bullets simply didn't exist.

Lastly, he could already feel his knowledge of this manual fading away. It wasn't permanent knowledge.

Yeon was sure that this gift was only supposed to be a vague and momentary inspiration to help guide his future cultivation and development, but he had no plans to just leave it at that.

"Well done," Yeon said as he fed Sylvie the last bite of dinner.

It was unclear whether her appetite had returned, or she had force-fed herself since Yeon was feeding her. But either way, it was only a matter of time before her strength returned.

Yeon looked at Sylvie who sat upright on the bed.

'There's no reason for her to tell anyone and who would she even tell?' he thought to himself.

He came to the decision that Sylvie was both harmless and trustworthy.

"Sylvie, close your eyes. I'm about to show you a magic trick," Yeon said, his lips curling up playfully.

After making sure that her eyes were closed, he began transforming into his other form.

His hair began inverting colours and he shrunk down to 5ft 9.

His sizeable third leg receded, and he grew a pair of sizeable breasts. Yeon enjoyed the benefits of being above average in both genders.

"You can open your eyes now," Yeon said, her voice now a bit softer and higher in pitch than before.

Sylvie's eyes opened wide in surprise but quickly returned to their normal size.

"I see," she said nonchalantly.

"… That's it? I'm a real woman now. The real thing," Yeon said, desperately trying to elicit a more dramatic reaction from her.

She grabbed her breasts and pushed them up for her to view, "I'm telling you that these are real! I'm still Yeon, but now I'm a woman!"

"I see."

Yeon slumped onto the bed, hanging her head in defeat.

"… You can't tell anyone about this, Sylvie," she finally said after a moment of silence.

"Yes, Master."

It was an indifferent voice, one unphased by the miracle that had just occurred.

"Well done on looking past genders and seeing people for who they are, Sylvie. You're ahead of your time," she said, mocking herself for her failed attempt at shocking Sylvie.

"Thank you, Master," she said, not understanding what Yeon was talking about.

"I'm going to cultivate in the…"

Yeon couldn't cultivate in this form outside just in case someone was walking by: It was safer to cultivate indoors.

Normally, breakthroughs were supervised by elders in a protected environment to prevent sabotage. But Yeon couldn't do this since this would out her as a freak of nature that could freely change genders, and she was more likely to be sabotaged by an elder 'by accident'.

"I'll be cultivating in the bath. Do you mind not going there until I come out?"

"Yes, Master."

"I'll leave the soup here. You should eat it tomorrow and focus on resting. I'm afraid you'll have to settle for cold soup," she said apologetically before making her way to the bath.

She stared at the tub, wondering whether she should cultivate inside the tub or beside it on the floor.

She giggled to herself before deciding to break through in the tub. She found the idea of such an important event in her life occurring inside a bathtub to be hilarious.

She settled down and calmed down her breathing.

She had no plans of letting the Fairy Empress' gift end as just a momentary source of inspiration.

She planned on using this 'muscle memory' that came directly from the Fairy Empress itself to cultivate the manual. It was a completely unexpected boon since there was no way the Fairy Empress would have gifted Yeon her knowledge if she knew what Yeon could do.

By following through with this inserted knowledge, Yeon would be given a chance to understand more about what she was doing.

This way, she would still remember the knowledge even after the 'memory' expired since the knowledge would be one that she experienced herself, and not vicariously through the Fairy Empress. Yeon hoped that this would act as a loophole to prevent him from forgetting.

Lastly, since Yeon could now actually cultivate the manual, she planned on reverse engineering it. She would not be able to pass on the comprehension and knowledge that would be contained in the original manual since it was not contained in the knowledge he received.

However, she would be able to pass on the framework without the comprehension, the ability to 'cultivate' the incomplete Immortal Yin Flower manual.

This meant that Yeon, and whoever she shared this knowledge to if she managed to reverse engineer it, would be able to cultivate at a much faster rate.

However, this also meant that they would only be able to cultivate faster. They would only receive a tiny portion of the normal benefit of cultivating a high-grade manual, which was the additional attribute and characteristics bonus.

For example, cultivating the Divine Sword manual slowly moulded your body to be more suited to the Dao of the sword and gave you overwhelming power.

Yeon breathed in deeply, feeling the rush of heaven and earth energy enter through his breath.

Instead of thinking, she let her instincts take over to allow the muscle memory to active by itself.

As more and more qi was drawn in from her surroundings, she began her breakthrough.