“By the way, what’s your talent like?” Lu Ye turned his head and asked.
Although by looking at Yu Xiaodie’s demeanour it was apparent that her talent couldn’t be poor, Lu Ye still couldn’t help but want to compare. He had to know just how bad his talent was that it made senior brother San change his tune towards him on a dime.
Yu Xiaodie was originally holding her jade card in her hand but after hearing Lu Ye’s question she instinctively withdrew it. It wasn’t that she wanted to hide it from him; she just didn’t want to hit him when he was down.
Lu Ye teased: “Do you look down on me? For men like me, the more they are knocked down, the more determined they are to get back up again!”
Yu Xiaodie said helplessly: “Brother Lu, you really want to see my results?”
Lu Ye smiled and said, “No matter how you look at it, the results have already come out. No matter how bad mine were, it’s impossible for them to get worse.”
Yu Xiaodie thought for a while and said, “Since you can say that, then you’re really carefree and easygoing.” She said admiringly.
Since Lu Ye had put it that way, how could she refuse? Besides, it was not like the information recorded on the jade card was something that couldn’t be shown to others.
She reached out her hand to give her jade card to Lu Ye.
Lu Ye looked a little dumbfounded. ‘This seems…somewhat different from what I had thought?’
He asked, “No, Miss Yu, how can this be thirty-eight? Isn’t the highest eight?”
He remembered very clearly that there were only eight young saplings beside the disc, so how could there be such an outrageous number like thirty-eight on Yu Xiaodie’s jade card?
“The highest is sixty-four.” Yu Xiaodie was a little confused by Lu Ye’s words, but let it pass unquestioned as she further muttered: “Eight trees and eight leaves is sixty-four. Theoretically, the highest talent would be 64 leaves.”
Lu Ye turned his gaze from the jade card up to look at Yu Xiaodie, his eyes slowly losing their lustre…
Yu Xiaodie was startled, and whispered softly: “Brother Lu? Are you okay?”
Just now, didn’t he boast that for a man like him, the more they were knocked down, the more determined they were to get back up again? So why, in a blink of an eye, did he seem to be knocked down and out ?
‘Sure enough, I shouldn’t have showed him my jade card.’ Yu Xiaodie secretly blamed herself.
“Cheer up, Brother Lu.”
“Let me have a moment to calm down!” Lu Ye waved his hand at her and looked up at the sky in a daze, his eyes soulless.
Lu Ye was realizing that the word engraved on the back of his jade plate did not represent a small tree sapling, but a leaf on a small tree sapling!
In the talent test, each sapling could give birth to eight leaves. There were eight saplings in total; therefore the limit was 64 leaves.
Yu Xiaodie’s thirty-eight on her jade card represented that in her talent test those small saplings gave birth to a total of thirty-eight leaves. Meanwhile, in his test, only one of the saplings produced a single leaf!
With this revelation, Lu Ye had really gotten the rug pulled out from under him.
He had tried his best to psychologically lower his expectations, but in the end he realized that the expectations he thought were already at the absolute lowest they could be were actually nowhere close.
To be at the bottom of eight levels and to be at the bottom of 64 levels were completely different things.
“Brother Lu…” Yu Xiaodie looked at him worriedly. It seemed like Lu Ye’s whole body was enveloped in a greyish aura; his vigour had disappeared completely. “Although talent is important, it does not mean everything. Brother Lu, I once heard someone say that heaven rewards the hard-working…”
“Then you must have not heard them say that life’s uncaring; to the heavens, we’re no different than dogs.”
“Hey, it’s not that bad?” Yu Xiaodie felt a bit bewildered.
Lu Ye took a deep breath and recovered. Although his heart still ached, as he said before, since the results had come out, he could only face them calmly.
What’s more, he still had his talent tree!
Even though his talent was not high enough, his magical talent tree should be able to make up for it.
“Yu Xiaodie, can you tell me what the talent test is based on? How does it determine talent?” Lu Ye asked. Although he had just had his talent tested in the tent just now, he didn’t know exactly how the test worked. He had had his eyes closed during the whole process.
Yu Xiaodie did not explain immediately, but instead looked at him seriously.
There was still some worry in her eyes so Lu Ye smiled and said, “I’m really fine.”
Yu Xiaodie sighed and said, “Since Brother Lu wants to know, then I’ll tell you what I know.”
She immediately explained the main idea behind the formation and the testing process.
Lu Ye understood: “That is to say, it is difficult for spiritual energy to be drawn into my body? As a result, my talent is deemed to be very low?” He couldn’t help but think of his own feelings during the test. All that external energy had harshly tried to burrow into him but couldn’t get in, causing stabbing pains all over his body.
Yu Xiaodie nodded and said: “Exactly.”
“So that’s it!” Lu Ye probably understood, and then he was puzzled: “But what can this explain? How can you judge a person’s talent from this? Don’t get me wrong, Miss Yu, I don’t care about my low talent. I just want to know why.”
Seeing his serious and honest expression, Yu Xiaodie was a little bit dumbfounded, and patiently explained: “Brother Lu should know how a cultivator can become stronger?”
Lu Ye said: “You could eat a spirit pill, intake the spiritual energy in the environment, refine your own body’s energies, or use a spirit stone?”
“That’s right.” Yu Xiaodie nodded, “But the most important two things are to intake the environment’s spirit energy and use spirit stones. The other two methods are just auxiliary methods. If it is difficult for external spiritual energy to be introduced into the body, the cultivating efficiency will naturally be low, and so that cultivator’s talent will be considered low. With the same time and resources, a cultivator with high talent can open more spiritual apertures, and their future achievements will naturally be higher. Since Brother Lu has already opened a spiritual aperture you should also have felt the difficulty of cultivating.”
Lu Ye remembered the days when he was in the dark mine, eating Qi and Blood pills every day, and then refining qi, feeling that he became stronger bit by bit. It didn’t seem to be very difficult. On the contrary, he had only felt…a little happiness?
He thought to himself, ‘Yu Xiaodie said that cultivation mainly relied on taking in spiritual energy from the environment and using spirit stones, whereas taking spirit pills and refining the body’s energy into spiritual power were supplementary means. But for me it seems to be…the other way around.’
He vaguely sensed something was wrong, and he asked: “Miss Yu, how long did it take you to fill up the first spiritual aperture after you opened it?”
If he had a direct comparison, he could judge the efficiency of his cultivation. He felt that his talent should not be nearly as low as the test had indicated.
“It took about twenty or so days.” Yu Xiaodie replied. She didn’t ask about Lu Ye’s experience because she felt that this question would hit the other party’s sore spot again.
As a one-leaf talent, if he wanted to fill his first spiritual aperture, even with the aid of a spirit pill, it had probably taken him several months.
She still felt grateful to Lu Ye for the kindness he had shown her when he had saved her. At this moment, the more she looked at Lu Ye, the more pity she felt for him…
Sure enough, after she said those words, Lu Ye was stunned, and repeated the sentence in a whisper: “It took about twenty or so days?”
Yu Xiaodie hurriedly said: “Brother Lu, our situations were different. I was taken away by a disciple of Evil Moon Valley. She probably wanted to use me to practice some technique, so she helped me open my spiritual aperture and gave me a Spirit Gathering pill. Using the pill, I was able to fill my Source Aperture in just over 20 days.”
‘And this was with the added cultivation speed from the spiritual pill?’ Lu Ye thought.
Lu Ye thought about his own circumstances and how he had eaten the cheapest Qi and Blood pills. From opening his Source Spiritual Aperture to filling it completely, it had only taken him about a dozen days, twice as fast as Yu Xiaodie.
Lu Ye thought, ‘What’s going on here?’