'This checks out,' Xue Ren thought while nodding his head. 'I wouldn't be the greatest underdog in history if my talent was any better than the absolute worst. Though, with these two Highest Affinities, I believe someone else has already taken my spot.'
"Even… Even among Lowest Grade Spiritual Roots, Empty Spirit Roots are the worst of the worst," Fang Ren muttered with a despondent look. "To find someone with them is even rarer than uncovering someone with Pinnacle Holy Grade Spiritual Roots…"
'Oh?' Xue Ren's brows raised. 'Perhaps I really do have the humblest of beginnings then. Good. I like it when the challenge is more difficult.'
"We-Well, at least he has Highest Affinities in both the Fire and Blank Elements," Fang Ren added with a bit of hope. "Getting a single Highest Affinity is extremely rare, let alone two! It's just that… the Empty Spirit Roots make it virtually impossible to use the Elements… and the Blank Element is the most useless of them all…"
'Damn,' Xue Ren thought as he turned around and walked back toward the glum group. 'My stats really were maxed out in the negative. I wonder if anyone has had it worse than me, ha?'
He became a little whimsical while approaching Elder Gu and his family. They seemed to want to say something with how heavily contorted their faces were, but the words got stuck in the back of their throats.
Nothing was said between them on the entire return trip home.
Meanwhile, back in the pagoda, Elder Gu was still lamenting the fate of the one whose sister was sure to leave him far in the dust.
"That boy's temperament was so good as well," he murmured. "Sometimes, destiny can be so cruel to those who deserve better—"
CRACK—
"Hmm?" Elder Gu looked over at the High-rank Talent Testing Stone, swearing that he heard what sounded like the cracking of glass. "That's odd. After I got it repaired because of the Linghua incident, it should've become even more robust than before. Not even Holy Grade Spiritual Roots could affect its structural integrity."
Surely, he was just hearing things.
"Whatever, I should get back to the studies and review that brochure again—"
CRACK—!
The sound of glass cracking worsened. And with a chain reaction of cracks that had never before happened in the history of the Golden Root Kingdom, a High-rank Talent Testing Stone…
Shattered!
"Huh!??" Elder Gu's jaw dropped to the floor as he rushed over to the shards scattered about. "What in the hell just happened??"
Picking up one of the shards to inspect it, Elder Gu was instantly surprised by the heat coming off it. He immediately tossed it to the ground, only to realize that his finger had been badly burnt and that all of the shards were melting into the earth.
"A second longer and I would've lost this finger…"
Elder Gu had never witnessed anything like this in his entire life!
What sort of malfunction could produce a reaction like this one!?
"Those damn Spiritual Stone Specialists!" Elder Gu cursed. "I'll make sure to pummel them for fucking with me like this!!"
…
Even with Xue Ren's pathetic Awakening, the seasons continued to change.
A year passed in a flash.
"Just as Elder Gu said, the wall that separates me from the Qi Condensation Realm seems like it'll never come down in this lifetime of mine," Xue Ren brooded while sitting atop a boulder in the forest without his shirt on. "I reached the Half-step Qi Condensation Realm 8 months ago, doing so in an even shorter amount of time than my sister. But after that point, I feel as if all the time I've spent cultivating has amounted to nothing."
Even with the assistance of the |Blue Cyclone| cultivation technique—the best one in the Blue Moon Sect—the gap between the Body Refinement and Qi Condensation Realms didn't shorten.
"An unbridgeable chasm," Xue Ren stated, yet wasn't disheartened in the slightest. "But in the end, this just means I have to work a hundred times harder than everyone else to achieve the same result. So let's go again, this time harder."
Jumping off the boulder, he headived into the wall of a massive raging waterfall at full force. This nearly knocked him completely out, but he practiced it enough times to know how hard he should go.
He did this so he could endure the thousands of pounds of water beating down on him while in a barely conscious state. Only this way could gains be maximized, for his body resisted the waterfall's hydro-pressure the least when it didn't know whether to protect or try to wake him up.
This training method was called, "Either live or die!", and was merely one of the many techniques in the series.
After a few hours of his body convulsing and bubbling up all over, with countless bones on the verge of breaking, Xue Ren finally willed his body awake. He then rolled out of the way of the raging water just before the final nail could be hit into his coffin.
"Now time for phase 2," said Xue Ren as he got into a meditative position on the boulder, circulating the |Blue Cyclone| cultivation technique. "To maximize gains, one must be willing to go the extra mile."
It was this principle of his that had him cultivating while his physical body was on the verge of complete collapse.
— Next time on Spamming Fireball: Where's The Protein!? —