Breakthrough

In his past life, Xu Yuan had seen plenty of luxury estates built inside wetland parks, but he had never seen a wetland park built inside a luxury estate. It truly lived up to that old joke about needing to drive a car just to use the bathroom. Walking through the gardens, Xu Yuan saw many servants and maidservants bustling about. Just as in the original host's memories, some of the reasonably attractive maids in this Jingjiang Xu Manor showed no fear toward this notoriously dissolute playboy. As he walked past, a few maidservants even gave subtle hints of wanting to cozy up to him. Perhaps to them, no matter what fate ultimately awaited them, latching onto this Third Young Master of the Chancellor's Manor was their only chance in life to climb the social ladder. Passing through the gardens, he entered the Xu Manor's reception hall. The massive hall seemed very quiet, the bright-pattern lamps mounted on the walls casting pools of gentle glow. In his memory, this place sat idle most of the time. Only on the rarest occasions, when important officials from Jingjiang Prefecture came bearing gifts, would the manor's stewards personally receive them here. "A gatekeeper to the Prime Minister ranks as a seventh-grade official," not to mention the stewards. Matters like accepting gifts were always entrusted to them. After entering the hall, Xu Yuan didn't hurry inside the inner chambers. Instead, he first reached behind a hanging scroll on the wall of the reception hall and retrieved a few banknotes. Not many—just two sheets, each with a denomination of a thousand taels. This sprawling Xu Manor was practically paved with hidden treasures—stashed by the original host. His cheap dad didn't care about his absurd antics, but his two older brothers, Xu Changge and Xu Chang'an, certainly did. Sometimes, even his fourth younger sister would step in. The original host couldn't beat those three bandits. Whenever he was caught, the silver he had painstakingly hoarded by racking his brains to sell off manor property would all be snatched away. Over time, the original host had cleverly learned to break his hoard into scattered stashes. This time, Xu Yuan had made a deliberate detour through the gardens outside the residence to collect the money he hadn't had time to grab last time. Excluding the five thousand taels he had previously rewarded to Zhou Chen, nearly twenty thousand taels still remained. If his memory served him right, back in the residence in the Imperial Capital, the original host had tens of thousands of taels in banknotes stashed away as well. Naturally, there had been instances in the past where servants sweeping the dust stole the money. But after the steward uncovered them and had them strung up and beaten to death in public, even servants who knew about these stashes rarely dared to touch them. Human life—especially the life of an ordinary person—was truly worthless in this extraordinary world. With the money all collected, the next order of business was cultivation. The Xu Manor had dedicated cultivation chambers equipped with a spiritual spring, enclosed by a Spirit-Locking Array to keep the Source Qi within from leaking out. The cultivation grounds were split into an outer and an inner courtyard. In the outer courtyard, the Source Qi was relatively thin, free for the manor guards and servants to use in their spare time. In the inner courtyard, the Source Qi was rich and concentrated, requiring payments of silver charged by the hour or internal contributions to the Chancellor's Manor to exchange for allotted time. Naturally, Xu Yuan didn't need to abide by any such rules. Guided deferentially by the gatekeeper, he went straight into the innermost chamber housing the spiritual spring. Once the gatekeeper left, Xu Yuan brought out the Source Crystal Xu Changge had given him, popped his pills, closed his eyes, and began circulating his cultivation art to breathe in and out Source Qi. Zhou Chen arrived the following day. After properly arranging the investigation Xu Yuan had requested, he hurried immediately to Xu Yuan's cultivation room. Because he had promised that his cultivation art could assist Xu Yuan's cultivation. That was something he hadn't forgotten. In cultivation, time slips away unnoticed. Xu Yuan discovered that the assistive effect of Zhou Chen's cultivation art was truly peerless. After using his intent-soul to draw qi into his acupoints and meridians, even a top-tier art like the Blood Yuan Heart Calamity Art required more than a dozen cycles along the meridians and acupoints to refine this natural qi into his own Source Qi. Yet with Zhou Chen at his side helping refine it, Xu Yuan only needed to circulate his technique once or twice to achieve complete refinement, without even having to distract his intent-soul to gather the qi. With an almost tenfold increase in cultivation speed, Xu Yuan's mind went completely blank at first, but once he adapted, he was overwhelmed with ecstatic joy. After all, the reason an Innate Dao Body was called an Innate Dao Body was that before reaching the Grandmaster realm, it possessed practically no bottlenecks. At this pace, his strength would grow at a terrifying rate. Cultivate, cultivate, and cultivate more. Bolstered by top-tier medicinal pills, a Source Crystal, the Spirit-Locking Array, and Zhou Chen's refining assistance—buffs of every kind—the cultivation speed of his Innate Dao Body could only be described as advancing thousands of li in a single day. No one knew how much time had passed. Inside the secret chamber illuminated by the bright-pattern lamps, absolute silence reigned. Seated cross-legged in the center, the brocade-robed young master quietly kept his eyes shut in meditation, while beads of sweat were faintly seeping from the forehead of the stubbled burly man beside him. Zhou Chen looked at Xu Yuan cultivating with eyes closed before him, an expression of sheer agony on his face. Several times he wanted to speak, but ended up swallowing his words back down. For ten whole days, the Third Young Master hadn't budged an inch from his spot. Whenever he grew hungry, he would take a cup from his Sumeru ring and sip a bit of spiritual spring water. Whenever the medicinal potency of his pills ran out, he would immediately take out several jade vials, pop out a few pills, toss them into his mouth, and swallow them down. As a Grandmaster, Zhou Chen naturally recognized what kind of pills were inside those jade vials. Dammit. The raw materials used to concoct those pills were more than enough to brew spiritual elixirs and powders that could advance his own cultivation! Yet now, every last bit of these top-grade medicinal herbs had been wasted on concocting pills to aid low-ranking cultivators! What was worse, Zhou Chen realized he was barely holding on. This Third Young Master's intake speed was simply too fast. Refining Source Qi outside the body and refining Source Qi inside one's own acupoints and meridians were two completely different concepts. The difference in difficulty between the two was more than a hundredfold. Yet Zhou Chen was, by all accounts, a Grandmaster. The Third Young Master was a mere Ninth Rank Body Tempering cultivator; even with pills and a Source Crystal, he shouldn't have been able to absorb qi at such an absurd pace. It seemed that not only did the Third Young Master possess an Innate Dao Body, but the cultivation art he practiced had to be an apex supreme art of the contemporary world! After a brief flicker of thought, Zhou Chen settled his mind and focused on channeling his technique to assist Xu Yuan's cultivation. Perhaps the current Third Young Master truly was worth wagering heavily upon. In the quiet cultivation chamber, Source Qi surged and flowed in silence. As his cultivation art completed cycle after cycle, Xu Yuan acted like a greedy sponge, relentlessly drinking in the steady stream of pure Source Qi around him. Time seemed to lose all meaning within this confined chamber. Until a crisp pop sounded softly from within his body. Just like the previous two times, Xu Yuan felt something inside him rupture without any warning. Did he... break through again? Sensing the surges of Source Qi within him, Xu Yuan slowly brought his cultivation art to a halt and raised his eyes toward Zhou Chen across from him. Before he could speak, Zhou Chen smiled and took the lead: "Congratulations, Young Master, on breaking through to the Eighth Rank Meridian Tempering." His voice was quiet, but rang crisp and clear in the silent cultivation chamber. Hearing this, Xu Yuan finally confirmed that he had indeed broken through to the Eighth Rank. Since he hadn't encountered the slightest obstacle, there naturally wasn't much jubilation to speak of. Still, breaking through and growing stronger was a good thing after all. After a pause, Xu Yuan nodded slightly. "Mister Zhou, you have worked hard." "It is nothing, just a bit of fatigue." Zhou Chen shook his head with a smile, though his face looked faintly pale. Naturally, this was an act. Assisting a Ninth Rank wasn't enough to deplete or damage the internal qi of a Grandmaster; it was just exhausting. Yet anyone with half a brain could foresee that after experiencing this once, the Third Young Master would certainly want his assistance in future cultivation as well. For such exhausting labor, he needed to get some benefits. Seeing this, Xu Yuan understood clearly, but he didn't mind. If a subordinate truly desired nothing and had no ambition, that would be the real cause for worry. Moreover, helping someone else refine Source Qi was bound to carry severe restrictions; that Zhou Chen's cultivation art could bypass such limits was rare enough on its own. However, aside from silver, he currently couldn't afford what Zhou Chen truly desired. Pondering for a moment, Xu Yuan cupped his hands slightly and said in a clear voice, "Changtian will report this matter faithfully to Father. My thanks to you this time, Mister Zhou."