Aimless Ascension

A couple of minutes later, Xiaolin came back, barely carrying a large metal chest spending all her spiritual capability. The chest had runic patterns carved into it, all of its functions laid bare to Gale's sight. A couple of defence mechanisms, durability scripts with an adhesive sealing which kept all characteristics of the content sealed.

. She gasped, dropping the lock box next to the pile of coins. She wasted no moment on collecting her breath and collected the marks into the chest.

"You only lost about a couple of iron marks." Gale smiled.

"Why is that?" she asked, failing to contain her curiosity. "I didn't see such a manifestation with copper or iron marks. Is it something unique to silver and gold marks?"

"Nah, just some energy 'exosmosis'." Gale paused, unable to come up with a familiar term in the common tongue. "Or something similar."

"Exo, what?"

"I don't know the word in the common tongue."

"The energy density of this region is a lot lower than what is contained in those concentrated silver marks," Grandma Wang answered. "Energy density always wants to get into equilibrium, and such low density in the natural ambient energy causes all the non-concentrated energy inside the coins to flow out. The ambient energy density isn't low enough to cause this to iron marks, though it tends to happen over time."

"Oh," Xiaolin nodded heavily as the realisation dawned on her.

"You should have realised all this on your own. Now quit wasting time and collect your money."

Gale watched the interaction quietly and then suddenly his eyes widened like saucers. Those white mists—the energy that drifted out of the coins—Xiaolin was absorbing them. No, it wasn't like how a dry sponge absorbed water, as she wasn't doing it intentionally, but it was something.

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Gale couldn't do that when he was barely an initiate or even a copper.

"Are you seeing this?" Gale couldn't help but ask.

Grandma Yushen nodded as if it was nothing new to her. "If it wasn't for her faulty meridians," she sighed, "Xiaolin would already be an iron ranker."

"It's not faulty," Gale murmured, eyes glued to the smoky energy soaking into Xiaolin's skin. "Meridians were meant to transfer energy. The problem is that she couldn't store it.

"She wasn't even doing it intentionally. The energy was flowing on its own. It's like a natural 'endosmosis' process."

Xiaolin turned her head to look at him, probably wondering what the hell Gale was murmuring about. "Is there something wrong, Senior?"

"Your condition is more unique than I thought," he said. "You have no trouble absorbing energy above your rank, do you?"

Xiaolin considered for a second and shook his head. "Energy builds pretty easily, but at some point, they leak no matter what I do."

Gale frowned. The energy has not transformed her body in any way, but she should be capable of using them through some skills. "You can apply the Qi in skills, like strengthening the body, starting any construct, right?"

"I can, but all the Qi lost in the application is lost for good. Qi doesn't recover unless I cycle and absorb energy again from the start."

Basically, she would probably need half a minute to waste a full day's progress. If Gale had such a problem, he probably would be dead, mining spirit coins miles under the earth.

"From the looks of you, I can guess you haven't applied Qi in any physical enhancement arts, keeping your physique fragile like a mortal girl."

Xiaolin perked an eyebrow, but didn't question. She was utterly conflicted about using her Qi, as her tank would hit zero in no time. All she was hoping for was to hold the Qi long enough to reach copper, after that she would decide what to do.

"What do you intend for her to do?" Grandma Wang asked after a while.

"If Xiaolin cultivated her physique to some degree, perhaps she can bind a Fate-lock with no problem."

"Fate-lock?" Grandma Wang shook her head. "They are too expensive. Even selling her entire property will get her useless stuff. Besides, without enough Qi, what's the point of having a fate lock?"

"Your concern is genuine, but there is a type of artificial fate-lock core which is used for a supplement Qi source. Normally something like that would be nothing to a normal practitioner, but to someone like Xiaolin, it could change her whole life."

"You mean those fake fate locks that some artisans came up with?" Elder Wang asked in a neutral voice, though her tone contained a staid detest to it.

Gale sighed, hearing her. The people of Tainhui were really old-fashioned, still resolute in keeping the traditional way of practising spirit arts. There's nothing wrong with that, but eventually, they would have to bend, today or tomorrow. The only problem with that was time–the exact factor that couldn't be controlled.

To Gale, it's always better to solve a problem today than to hold on to distorted tradition. Well, the creation of artificial fate locks was new, and not widely known in the east, much less in this unremarkable town. Considering that, her scepticism wasn't unwarranted.

It was that scepticism that was stopping many from advancing further into their path, as they would need something to lock their fate. Not everyone can afford genuine fate locks. Besides that, it's an artificial fate-lock or cultivating natural law to accumulate a fate out of it. But you have to be either a genius like Sage Heartflame or have good fortune, like our Dragon Prince, and search for waterfalls all over the world.

Neither of them was that common, leaving only one choice.

"There's a kingdom in the west, Keldor," Gale said after some deliberation. "Have you heard about it?"

"I have lived over a hundred and fifty years. Of course, I have heard about it, boy."

"Well, my mistake," Gale smiled. "Anyway, in Keldor, there's a special division in the king's army called the Burners. Thousands of practitioners of silver and gold, each with devastating firepower. Do you know how they are formed?"

Grandma Wang didn't have to ask. Finding her curious, he continued:

"The Royal family of Keldor has the richest source of fire spirit stones, but they don't use all of it on cultivating practitioners directly, instead they use a large portion of it though some special means and augment them into fire spirit gems. It didn't end there. Keldor possesses the highest number of artisans too, and they put them to good use, using all those fire spirit gems to create artificial fate-locks, ignition weapons with immense firepower.

"Keldor is the youngest nation, barely having a few hundred years of history, but they know how to transform wealth into strength and they did a great job of it."