Chapter 153 - 149: Permanent Aura Concealment
Li Yuan sat at the stone table in the main house. The aura concealment suppressed his overt Spiritual Power fluctuations, keeping them at the level of the Qi Refining Sixth Level.
A sheet of golden talisman paper was spread on the table, and the Dark Gold Spiritual Ink at the tip of his brush glowed faintly. He held the Jade Cloud Talisman Brush, its shaft heavy and smooth in his hand.
He was halfway through the fourth circle of the Concentration Pattern—
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps came from outside the courtyard gate.
Two people.
The footsteps of the person in front were steady and forceful, while the one behind had a quicker pace, as if following.
The talisman brush in Li Yuan’s hand paused.
The next instant, an oppressive pressure crushed down from beyond the courtyard walls.
It wasn’t a Spiritual Power attack or a fluctuation from a Magic spell; it was the sheer weight of a being’s presence.
Spiritual pressure.
The spiritual pressure of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator.
It was different from Pill Refiner He’s. His spiritual pressure was like an anvil resting on a table—quiet, its weight only felt when one drew near. This spiritual pressure was far more overt; it could be felt even before the person entered the gate.
The courtyard gate was pushed open.
Two people walked in.
The one in the lead was an old man in his sixties. He wasn’t tall, but his posture was exceptionally straight, his spine as rigid as an iron pillar.
His face was gaunt, with high cheekbones and graying temples. His eyes were small but incredibly bright.
He wore a deep cyan robe with no embroidery, but the fabric was of excellent quality, shimmering with a subtle luster in the sunlight.
Foundation Establishment.
Following behind him was Wang Lu.
The old man didn’t stop after entering the courtyard. His gaze swept over the stove in the corner, flickered across the main house’s doorframe, and finally settled on Li Yuan, who was standing by the stone table.
When he reached the stone table, he ran a fingertip lightly along its edge. He glanced down at the trace of Spiritual Ink powder that came away on his finger and flicked it off with a neutral expression.
Then his gaze returned to Li Yuan.
His two skills, Aura Concealment and Aura Obfuscation, were operating at full power, and the effects of the Concealing Breath Pill had not yet faded. The triple layers of concealment suppressed his Qi Refining Seventh Level aura down to the level of Qi Refining Sixth Level.
After a moment, the old man’s gaze moved from Li Yuan to the half-finished Spirit Refining Talisman on the table. He looked down at it for a second, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly.
The very instant the old man looked away, a familiar line of text surfaced in the depths of Li Yuan’s mind.
[Condition met for permanent activation of Aura Concealment (Green)]
[Activate permanently?]
Li Yuan’s expression didn’t change in the slightest.
’Yes.’
[Permanent activation successful]
[Aura Concealment (Green) has become a permanent skill]
[Equipped item has been consumed]
An equipment slot opened up.
Li Yuan remained motionless, his expression unchanged.
The old man’s gaze lingered on the Spirit Refining Talisman for a couple of seconds.
"Your technique is passable."
He traced an arc in the air above the table with his index finger.
"By the fourth circle of the Concentration Pattern, most Talisman Masters run into problems with increasing the density. Your method is correct. You increase it at a steady pace, without any sudden jumps."
He lifted his finger from the table and gestured toward Li Yuan.
"But as you brought the fifth circle into the Talisman Core, a trace of your Spiritual Power leaked out. Not much, but it was there. That leaked trace of Spiritual Power will interfere with the settling of the Talisman Core, reducing the quality of the final product by ten percent."
He pulled his hand back behind him, his tone less like he was teaching and more like he was simply stating a fact.
"Not bad."
With that, he turned around.
He took two steps, then stopped again.
He turned his head, his gaze sweeping over Li Yuan from across his shoulder.
"Which Talisman Hall are you from?"
"The Qinghe Marketplace Talisman Hall. I’m a Class C Talisman Maker."
"Class C." The old man repeated the two words, his meaning unreadable.
The old man took out a thin booklet, casually placed it on the stone table, and pushed it toward Li Yuan.
"Take a look at this."
The booklet felt slightly heavy in his hand. Its cover was wrapped in dark gray beast hide and had no title, only three small words carved in the bottom-right corner: Talisman Making Essentials.
From entering to leaving, the whole visit took less than ten minutes.
Wang Lu didn’t leave with him, remaining in the courtyard.
He waited until the sound of the old man’s footsteps had completely faded before turning to face Li Yuan.
"The Great Elder of the family. One of the two Foundation Establishment Cultivators in the family."
His tone was flat, as if introducing someone who needed no further explanation.
Wang Lu sat down on a stone stool in the courtyard, tucking his hands into his sleeves.
"The Great Elder came here to find Senior He."
Li Yuan sat down opposite him, waiting for him to continue.
"He’s looking for Senior He to refine a Foundation Establishment Pill. This isn’t some secret. Everyone knows Senior He’s rules: he turns no one away. As long as you pay, he’ll refine it."
Wang Lu held up a finger.
"But he has his own principles. For example, the Wang family and the Li family are fighting, and both sides need Foundation Establishment Pills. Senior He won’t just help one side because he has a better relationship with them. His rule is to refine one for each side. If the Wang family asks him to refine one, he’ll also refine one for the Li family if they ask. He’ll do it for both sides, even if it means charging fewer Spirit Stones."
He lowered his finger.
"To put it bluntly, it’s about balance. If he only refined one for the Wang family, the Li family would likely hold a grudge."
Li Yuan grunted in acknowledgment, then asked a question.
"The main ingredients for the Foundation Establishment Pill that were stolen from the herb garden... weren’t they lost? What will the Great Elder use for the refinement?"
"The one lost was the one in that particular herb garden." Wang Lu pulled his hands from his sleeves and patted his knees twice. "The family has more than one herb garden. The most crucial medicinal ingredients are fully protected; we’d never risk keeping them in an outer garden."
He glanced at Li Yuan.
"Losing the plant that was stolen from the garden is a shame, but it wasn’t the only one. With the family’s deep foundations, losing one plant is a major blow, but it won’t sever our roots."
Li Yuan nodded, not pressing the matter further.
After a moment of silence,
Li Yuan spoke.
"There’s something I’d like to ask. Regarding aura convergence, besides external concealment, what other methods are there?"
Wang Lu’s gaze lingered on Li Yuan for an extra moment. He didn’t ask why, but after some thought, he began to speak.
"The circulation of Spiritual Power within a Cultivator’s body inevitably leads to leakage. The amount of leakage depends on the refinement of that circulation. The cruder the control, the more it leaks. The more refined the control, the less it leaks."
"Let me give you an analogy. If you carry a bucket of water, the more it shakes, the more you spill. The steadier you hold it, the less you spill. Spiritual Power is the same. If you circulate it crudely within your body, it can be sensed from the outside. If you circulate it with such refinement that not a single trace escapes, it will seem as if you have no Spiritual Power at all."
He paused.
"At the highest level, the circulation of Spiritual Power in the body produces almost no leakage. But achieving that degree of control is nearly impossible through practicing Spiritual Power manipulation alone. You’d need a special Cultivation Technique or Skill to aid you."
"What kind of Cultivation Technique?"
"I don’t know the specifics." Wang Lu shook his head.
Li Yuan committed these words to memory and nodded.
Wang Lu then took two beast-hide scrolls from his sleeves and placed them on the stone table.
"The creation methods you asked for have arrived. The Blood Replenishing Talisman and the Investigation Talisman."
He pushed the scrolls over, then stood up, pushed the gate open, and left. The courtyard fell quiet once more.
Li Yuan opened the thin booklet.
The first page wasted no words, getting straight to a Spirit Pattern.
It was a complete diagram for a Fire Gathering Pattern, from the first stroke to the last. Every turn was annotated with precise values for Spiritual Power density and the angle of the wrist’s rotation. This was not some vague description like "apply force evenly" or "keep a steady hand." It was so precise as to specify that at the third turn, the Spiritual Power density should increase by twelve percent from the baseline, with a seven-degree outward rotation of the wrist.
Li Yuan’s brow twitched slightly.
He had never seen annotations of this precision before. The training manuals at the Talisman Hall also had diagrams of Spirit Patterns, but their precision was leagues below this. Those manuals followed a "one-size-fits-all" approach, suitable for most people but lacking in refinement. The diagram in this booklet was like looking at the same Spirit Pattern through a tenfold magnification, with every inch of detail deconstructed.
He turned the page.
The second page was the Armor Condensation Pattern. Same precision, same meticulous detail.
Li Yuan continued to flip through the pages.
The third page, the fourth, the fifth.
Each page was a deep analysis of a Spirit Pattern, covering common patterns for the five elements: Fire, Earth, Wood, Metal, and Water.
But what truly made Li Yuan pause and read carefully were not the precise numerical annotations, but the notes scattered in the corners of each page.
They were short passages of text, some three to five lines long, others just a sentence or two, like insights the author had jotted down on a whim after a sudden realization while drawing talismans late one night.
"The essence of a Spirit Pattern is not the drawn line, but the trace left by Spiritual Power on the talisman paper. The line is merely the vessel; the flow of Spiritual Power is the core. The same Fire Gathering Pattern, drawn with different Spiritual Power flows, can look identical but differ in effectiveness by as much as thirty percent."
"The Talisman Core is not the end point. It is the starting point of the entire talisman. The process of drawing a talisman moves from the first stroke toward the Talisman Core, but the flow of Spiritual Power on the paper runs from the core outward. The direction of drawing is the reverse of the direction of use. Once you understand this, you will no longer struggle with the force of your finishing stroke."
"Once your talisman making reaches a certain realm, the greatest bottleneck is not technique, nor Spiritual Power control, but your understanding of the Spirit Pattern itself. Every Spirit Pattern has its own ’temperament’—some like to be guided with pressure, others prefer to be led gently. Once you grasp their temperament, your failure rate will naturally decrease."
Li Yuan flipped through the booklet from beginning to end, then from end to beginning, reading it twice over.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t remember it, but that some of the notes required his own experience in talisman making to be fully understood. There were a few points that he only felt made sense on the first read, but only on the second did he grasp which specific step they were referring to.
The half-finished Spirit Refining Talisman was still on the table. He had stopped midway through the fourth circle of the Concentration Pattern, and the Spiritual Ink had already dried, making it impossible to continue.
Li Yuan peeled the ruined talisman off and set it aside, then laid out a new sheet of golden talisman paper.
As the final stroke was completed, a dark gold light converged layer by layer from the outside in, condensing into a single point of light at the Talisman Core.
The point of light didn’t flash—previously, every time he succeeded, it would flash once before sinking into the paper. This time, it didn’t flash; it sank directly in.
It was unbelievably stable.
A panel popped up.
Li Yuan’s gaze swept over the words on it.
His Talisman Making Skill proficiency had increased by a large amount.
Li Yuan placed the Spirit Refining Talisman on the table.
This was the highest quality one he had ever made.
He then re-equipped the Soul Nourishing Pill into the empty slot.
Then he unrolled the beast-hide scroll for the Blood Replenishing Talisman’s creation method.
The Spiritual Power flow of the Blood Pattern had some similarities to that of the Rejuvenation Talisman, but its core principle shifted from Wood Element nourishment to accelerating the return flow of Qi Blood.
He dipped his brush in ink and set it to paper.
The first attempt was a failure. The Spiritual Power in the middle of the Blood Pattern sank too abruptly.
On the second attempt, he adjusted his force, and it succeeded. A dark red luster floated to the surface of the talisman, deep and dim, carrying a warm, heavy feeling.
He switched to the Investigation Talisman.
A combination of the Sensing Pattern and the Expansion Pattern, with Spiritual Power radiating outward. He succeeded on the first try. A very faint silver luster surfaced on the talisman, spreading outward from the Talisman Core in concentric circles.
He got the hang of the two new talismans extremely quickly. The structure of a Tier One Low Grade Spirit Pattern no longer posed any technical difficulty for him.
Li Yuan stacked the finished products on the corner of the table, then took out a Spirit Refining Talisman and used it to enhance his Divine Soul.