"Hm… the Undead Converter should go on the schedule too. If I can purify all the female ghosts to Sequence 7, the Ghost Gundam could reach Sequence 5."
Li Fei muttered to herself. She sorted out her thoughts before putting pen to paper, so the notebook wouldn't end up covered in scribbles.
By the standard of [Nicole's Edition of Soul Gathering], a hundred Sequence 7 wraiths could hold their own against the weakest tier of mid-Sequence Transcendent beings. A Ghost Gundam condensed from three hundred wraiths was something few Sequence 6 Transcendents would dare face head-on.
Over a thousand wraiths matched Sequence 5.
At ten thousand, nobody below Sequence 4 could beat it.
"I'll need to recruit a batch of wraiths when the time is right."
"But a Ghost Gundam needs a pilot. Who should I pick?"
"And the female ghosts, plus all the wraith sisters who'll join later, need somewhere to live… The Ghost Gourd is nice, but it's still an airtight cage. If conditions don't allow, fine, but if at all possible I should build them a nest. A good living environment will make them work themselves to death for me with total devotion, especially the [Qian] division."
Amid the muttering, the last and least urgent item got jotted down on the page.
Li Fei flexed her wrist a little, then picked up speed and wrote out the tasks for the next few days:
Contact Qin Zhihua's master Margaret, secure a partnership with the Potioneers' Guild, and research the [Longevity Fruit] together to see whether this life-extending medicine from the Demon-Sealing Continent can be mass-produced.
She had originally meant to hand this project to City Hall and the Magic Academy, but after a little asking around, Li Fei found that the Potioneers' Guild was far better at cultivating Transcendent materials.
The pen tip paused. Li Fei started a new line and wrote four words, pressing so hard they nearly tore through the page:
Advanced Battle Qi!
She had saved up enough Wealth Points and had Potential Points to spare. In a week she'd be fighting the Magic Academy's prodigies over the [Spell Altar]. If she didn't max out battle qi and magic resistance now, when would she?
Li Fei was about to close the notebook when she suddenly froze and frowned.
Did I forget something?
Oh, right. Perfected Ge, who's waiting around to seek the immortal way.
Never mind, then.
Li Fei breathed out in relief.
Let him wait. Miss Top Courtesan, as the host, was only on the hook for that one gold ingot. The rest of his room and board came out of that old Daoist's own pocket. So let the guest keep sightseeing in the immortal realm. He'd enjoy himself and chip in a little to Loxibrook's GDP too. A win-win.
—Although she really should have booked him into a rip-off inn and collected a referral fee. What a waste.
Miss Philanthropist reflected on where she'd been less than thorough, closed the notebook softly, and murmured:
"System."
There was no need to pick a fight with Miss System at all. The Li Fei of an hour and thirteen minutes ago had been downright childish.
Li Fei admitted her fault as her gaze swept across the panel.
Level: 36
EXP: 81732/10800
…
Charm: 649
Morality: -44
…
Potential Points: 14
…
Wealth Points: 1185028
Lottery Draws: 13
…
In the relay race between Lady Annie and Lilith, the stepmother, who'd served as the track, the baton and the whistle-blower all at once, had lost a point of Morality.
The Loving Blood Bank plan had cost her another point.
As for Wealth Points, the imperial physician miss, thanks to her miraculous conditioning skills, had earned the cost of the next layer of [Furnace Battle-Qi] from the nobles before the doctor-patient relationship could sour. But then she'd spent on a Meditation Technique, essence blood, and a huge haul of materials for the Witch Sickness Suppression Ritual, and her balance had slid to around eight hundred thousand.
Luckily, [Succubus's Kiss] and [Justice Sanction] from the Academy treasury had given her a fresh infusion. One was a quality Dawn-grade piece of gear. The other was a very special piece of equipment you could call "Witches Must Die" or "Li Fei Must Die Die Die." Together they were worth a full two hundred and fifty thousand, which put her Wealth Points back into seven digits.
When she'd sent Eva and Qiao'er off to be reborn as witches, she'd also completed the "public-interest bounty" for collecting [Justice Sanction] and received twenty thousand Witch Points. If you bought Mana Crystals with gold and exchanged them for Witch Points, the rate was 7:1. But the purchasing power of Witch Points against gold was about 1:6. Admittedly, points could buy things gold couldn't, such as a "custom witch class." None of that stopped Miss System from giving Li Fei only one hundred and twenty thousand Wealth Points.
As for EXP, the gains matched her expectations. The amount earned each day was slowly declining while the EXP needed per level kept climbing. In the first few days after she'd bludgeoned Lu Qianfan and finished seizing power, Li Fei had gained a level nearly every day. Going from 35 to 36 had taken two. She'd hit level 36 the day before yesterday, and barring accidents, wouldn't reach 37 until tomorrow, with the pace dropping further after that.
Still, tens of thousands of EXP rolled in every day, which satisfied her needs for now. Clearly, Miss Philanthropist leaving the mountain of gold from the confiscated, wiped-out households in the Great Song's treasury had been her most successful investment so far. If not for the sake of real gold and silver, why would those arrogant, battle-hardened soldiers of the Demon Suppression Bureau work so hard at slaying demons?
Anyway, the fifth layer of [Furnace Battle-Qi] was still up in the air, and Potential Points still never quite stretched far enough. But at least Li Fei could now ascend to Sequence 6 at any moment, on a foundation so solid it was almost unbelievable.
"I've had plenty of resources for ages, yet I wallowed in chaotic Depravity, tangled up with women, and lost a full three days… Hah. Women really do just drag down my cultivation speed."
Li Fei sneered. "Farewell. No, goodbye forever, the weak me of the past!"
"System, purchase the fourth layer of [Furnace Battle-Qi]."
Advanced [Furnace Battle-Qi] (unlocks the next-tier [Furnace Battle-Qi] after ascending to Sequence 6):
Strength +60; Constitution +60; Agility +60; Attack Speed +60%; Physical Penetration +60%; Destructive Power +60%; Resistance +30%; also boosts burst power, wound healing speed, lifespan, stamina recovery speed, and more.
Battle qi can be consumed to accelerate the spin of the battle-qi vortex, up to a hundred revolutions per second. As the spin speeds up, it grants extra Strength, Constitution, Agility, Attack Speed, Destructive Power, Resistance, dynamic vision, nerve reflex speed and more, and adds fire-attribute damage.
"System, allocate points!"
The Potential Points turned to firewood and fed the scalding battle-qi vortex.
A crackling roar of burning rose from inside Li Fei. Her heartbeat turned low and drawn out, like a howl from the abyss.
A surging heat spread through her skin, bone, flesh and blood to every limb and organ, scorching and tempering every inch of her body.
Li Fei could see it. The blood boiling inside her glittered, each drop as clear and deep as red agate, yet heavy as quicksilver. Her reddened bones shone with treasure light as the faintest impurities burned away, leaving them lighter and sturdier, like divine iron hauled up from the depths of a volcano, warm and flawless.
[Five Elements Meditation] and [Furnace Battle-Qi] were both supreme cultivation scriptures. They were brutally hard to train, but they forged a perfect foundation. Once she stepped onto the fourth rung, the battle qi and mana she tempered were pure and powerful enough that even mid-Sequence Transcendents found them tricky to master.
And Li Fei was a low-Sequence witch whose Aptitude barely cleared two digits. Holding both energies in her body at once naturally carried a risk of losing control.
Deep crimson light burst from her eyes, and a violent, greedy aura swept out of her like a young evil god about to spread slaughter and calamity.
"A bit bloated… and a bit hot."
Li Fei staggered forward one step and stomped straight through the floor, her whole leg sinking into the hole.
She snorted, slowly pulled her leg out, and sat down cross-legged right there.
Fully digesting this power and wielding it freely in battle would take a good deal of sweat. But simply reining it in so it wouldn't interfere with daily life wasn't hard. She only needed to circulate her battle qi through a few more cycles and let herself adjust a bit.
But just as Li Fei was about to calm her mind, a startled cry floated up from the hole.
She glanced down and spotted a pair of shredded wine-red stockings on the carpet in the room directly below. They looked a little familiar.
They were the younger bunny maid's.
As the saying goes, those who stay near vermilion turn red. With the young madam setting the example, you could imagine the household's atmosphere. At the moment, besides her assistant Qiao'er, and Sofia and the mother-daughter pair Yawen, everyone in the sprawling villa, from head maid Ram down to the temp maids, had been involved with the young madam. That Li Fei had lived this long in peace owed a great deal to Lady Zhihua's indulgence.
Of course, if you read it as a conspiracy, maybe Lady Zhihua was playing a long game. Every time she came home now, her cultivation speed shot up. Once she'd endured the hardship and ascended to Supreme, she'd fire every maid in the house. Hehe.
Anyway, with such a corrupt climate, the empty rooms in the house could be put to use by the maids at any time, as long as they cleaned up after themselves.
Clearly, after failing to coax the young madam earlier, the bunny maid sisters had gone hand in hand to find an empty room and carry on with their holiday, and that room happened to sit right below the young madam's bedroom.
None of that was strange in itself. But where had the two of them found a carrot?
Li Fei squinted. Oh, it was Eva, all wrapped up. Never mind, then.
The little red-brown-haired sprite, trussed up in her own wings like a zongzi, really did look rather like a carrot at first glance.
"Average."
Li Fei calmly withdrew her gaze and gave a small nod.
In ancient times, Mulan took her father's place in the army. Today, Eva shared her mother's burdens so that her mother could focus on cultivation. Good. Very filial.
She stopped getting distracted and concentrated on adapting to her suddenly enlarged battle qi.
Meanwhile, after their initial scare, the two bunny maids grew even more excited, as if trying to lure the young madam into joining them.
But Li Fei turned a deaf ear to the bunny squeals.
Advanced Furnace Battle-Qi was fierce, but it still couldn't burn off the mint scent that calmed a black dragon in breeding season.
—I'm not the weak me of the past anymore. A mere bunny hop will never shake my composure!
When the wind and rain finally died down, Li Fei slowly opened her eyes. She spread her pale, glistening palm and closed it again, and the air burst with a sonic crack.
After an hour of effort, every move she made still carried a surging sense of strength. In battle she might lose control and turn a friendly spar into a murder scene, but for walking, sitting and lying down she was fine now.
Still, Li Fei didn't hurry to stand. She stared at her remaining Potential Points, her gaze flickering.
Every school of Transcendent knowledge had one core knowledge, two auxiliary knowledges and one special knowledge, and the core and auxiliary knowledges could differ by at most one tier. The only exception was to first raise a battle qi or Meditation Technique level through one core knowledge, and then train another school from scratch.
For example, before Li Fei could put points into the Advanced Meditation Technique, she had to master Intermediate Natural Magic and the Basic Principle of Cycles. Chaos Magic, though, was a very low tier, so that was no problem.
That meant that to take battle qi to the fourth layer, she had to first master [Intermediate Combat] and [Basic Weapon Mastery].
Intermediate Combat:
Allows learning and use of Tier 3 combat skills.
Basic Weapon Mastery:
Increases melee damage while wielding a weapon by 20%.
Advanced battle qi corresponded to the mid-Sequence tier and cost two Potential Points. The other two were low-Sequence tier and cost one each.
Four of her fourteen Potential Points gone in one go, leaving ten. That was still comfortable.
"Advanced Natural Magic is a must, or I can't learn Tier 4 spells through the Spell Altar… but there's no rush. I'll think about it after I'm back from Folded Space B-01."
Li Fei muttered, sinking into deep thought. "Should I max out [Magic Resistance] and [Soul Summoning]?"
A student qualified to enter Folded Space B-01 was at the very least a gifted mage with a Silver Brooch. Li Fei might even run into a Gold-tier Sequence 6 student, one of those dazzlingly brilliant figures whose Innate Talent rivaled the Magic Academy's Twin Stars.
Prodigies of that caliber already had the best Innate Talent and fed on the best resources. They could visit the Spell Altar, tour the great Folded Spaces, and enjoy guidance from high-Sequence experts. Raised on a model of high investment, high returns and acceptable risk, these talented mages had Meditation Techniques, gear and casting skill that ordinary Transcendents couldn't touch. They were the very definition of invincible at their rank, and some could even fight across ranks.
Li Fei had killed more than one mid-Sequence Transcendent, but that didn't mean she was confident of beating Irena back when Irena was at Sequence 6…
What's more, Folded Space B-01 would only be open for a short ten days, and it was an "extra-small" space.
That meant a horde of the Magic Academy's prodigies would be fighting over a handful of precious resources in limited time and space. The intensity of the competition was easy to imagine.
That would sharply limit what her Charm could do. Everything would have to be settled with a staff.
Unless…
"System, Advanced Resistance."
Spell Encyclopedia Lady said.
She planned to let her Dragon's Strength do the talking.
Advanced Resistance (unlocks the next-tier Resistance after ascending to Sequence 6):
Resistance +80%
Eighty percent Resistance was already a terrifying number, and it stacked with Entry-level, Basic and Intermediate Resistance for a total of 200%. That didn't just mean Li Fei could take double the beatings. Negative effects like frost, burning and lightning would be weakened, and the duration and potency of Curse magic like [Aging] and [Slow] would be heavily cut. If an enemy's casting ability was far weaker than her Resistance, she could even shrug off many spells entirely.
No doubt about it. In a contest between talented mages, a monster would sneak in, one who'd mastered [Advanced Battle Qi] and [Advanced Magic Resistance] and had already applied the Dragon's Strength buff.
So when a lovely, delicate little mage girl came swinging the Blade of Joy and slaughtering everything in sight, would the Magic Academy's prodigies despair?
They'd probably leak.
Li Fei didn't hesitate much over putting points into Advanced Magic Resistance. What really left her unable to decide was [Soul Summoning].
The core knowledge of the Death school of Transcendent knowledge was [Death Magic], its auxiliary knowledges were [Meditation Technique] and [Spirit Lore], and [Soul Summoning] was the special knowledge. It was also the pillar behind a whole series of calamity-grade tactics, such as the "Skeleton Sea," the "Ghost Sea," and even the "Blood Clan Sea."
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