The soft light in the study was on. Qin Ran sat at the desk, taking out all the cultivation techniques he had bought during the day from his Universe Bag and neatly arranging them on the desk.
He picked up a pen and paper, prepared himself, then took a jade slip and placed it on his forehead. With the unsealing incantation, he opened it and carefully read the cultivation technique within.
These cultivation techniques were bought cheaply and of uneven quality. Or rather, there were useful techniques among them, but it took a discerning eye to find them.
As a poor cultivator, Qin Ran had to have such an eye. He had to sort through these techniques and find the useful ones - just like a trash collector.
Most of these techniques were garbage, too low in quality to be worth the effort.
After discarding the true trash, what was left most were incomplete techniques, or rather, potentially useful incomplete ones.
This incompleteness was not just missing the first or last parts. No, the pages were eaten by bugs, chewed up in tatters. Forget the text, even the sentences were unreadable.
Next were the fakes. Some idle cultivators would carve gibberish on jade slips and pass them off as top-tier techniques to sell to ignorant, low-level cultivators. And so on.
Then there were jade slips without incantations. These were like blind boxes - if you were skilled in arrays and managed to open them, you might find an ancient master's secret manual inside. Of course, more often after all that effort, you'd get a fake.
Finally, there were the weird techniques with extremely high cultivation requirements. Rarely anyone would need these, so they were hard to sell.
In short, he had to pick out treasures from the trash heap.
Ideally, he wanted to find very powerful techniques without follow-up parts. Qin Ran wanted such techniques to give Li Shiyin a solid foundation.
He was already skilled at this task. In small sects, you had to be familiar with finding good techniques.
He moved swiftly, first skimming through each technique, then sorting them into categories based on the above five types.
After organizing them, he evaluated each technique one by one.
Those too incomplete to salvage were decisively discarded.
Confirmed fakes were of course also discarded.
Jade slips without incantations were kept for later attempts to open them when he had time.
Techniques with cultivation requirements too high to be useful were discarded.
There was another type to discard - very good techniques but with completely unattainable follow-up parts. These had to be discarded as well.
After a whole night of writing and sorting, Qin Ran finally finished organizing all the techniques. The useful ones were kept, the useless discarded.
By now the moon hung over the western mountains, its soft light shining down on the forest treetops outside. Qin Ran stretched and a breeze blew in through the window, fluttering the papers on the desk.
Those papers were full of writing, categorizing:
Techniques without follow-ups:
1. Dayan Sword Canon, first two levels, able to reach Core Formation, but missing follow-up parts after Core Formation. Top priority. Contains Dayan Sword Technique, three moves.
2. Green Cloud Sword Art, first five levels, able to reach Infant Transformation, but only foundation techniques without skills or divine abilities. Secondary priority.
Techniques with requirements too high:
1. Underworld Spirit Immortal Art, complete edition, cultivatable to Unity Realm. Requires Underworld Spirit physique. Excellent skills and divine abilities, can try extracting parts later when have time.
2. Control Spirit Beast Magic Book, first half. Cultivation technique for beast masters to control beasts, but requires blood of intended spirit beast. Somewhat niche, keep as backup.
3. Divine Demon Nine Transformations, first seven transformations. Movement technique, requires several dozen top-tier pills like Divine Demon Pill, Bloodthirst Pill, Immortal Connecting Pill etc. Extremely painful to cultivate, but excellent effects, keep for now.
Techniques needing restoration:
1. Refine Spirit Eight Stages, soul technique. Extremely difficult to restore but still a soul technique, keep for now.
2. Spirit Gold Ten Thousand Refining Art, only first two levels and heavily damaged, but resonates very well with Metal spirit root. Try to restore as much as possible.
3. Gale Nine Transformations, moderately damaged, resonates with existing Gale Steps movement technique, can try restoring.
4. Geng Metal Flying Sword Art, Metal attribute skill.
And some other jade slips without incantations.
After stretching, Qin Ran pressed down the fluttering papers and put a book over them. Though this was proper immortal cultivation, his pre-rebirth habits still lingered, so he decided to rest for now and deal with things tomorrow.
He got up, closed the window, stretched again and walked out the door, directly passing through the exercise room and into the corridor outside. Glancing around, he noticed a shadow down the corridor leaning over the railing looking towards the study.
Following the line of sight back to the study, he saw the light was still on instead of automatically turning off when he left.
Looks like something's wrong with the sensing array in the study, he thought. As a diligent all-nighter cultivator, he loved working at night the most.
The study lights saw the most use and were prone to problems. He would have to find time to adjust the sensing array soon.
But first things first, he had to scold that silly disciple. "You're not asleep yet?!" It was almost dawn.
The shadow at the railing watching the study was of course his silly disciple Li Shiyin. During her medicinal bath earlier she had dozed off, only to be woken by the cold, and had hurriedly gotten out. Looking out the window then, it was already midnight.
Just as she was about to go to bed, she noticed the study light was still on.
Master must still be busy, she thought, and came out to lean on the railing watching the study, lost in thought.
So engrossed she didn't notice her master's approach until he spoke up, startling her.
"Master, what are you doing here?!" she cried in shock.
"What are you doing here?" Qin Ran discretely looked Li Shiyin up and down. His disciple was still wearing his clothes, hanging loosely on her body with a different allure, and temptation.
"I was here after my bath!" Flustered like she'd been caught red-handed, Li Shiyin hurriedly explained, "I came out for some fresh air!"
Qin Ran glanced at her. "Seems like today's training wasn't enough..." With that, he entered his room.
"No no, Master! It was enough! More than enough!" Li Shiyin quickly called out, but Qin Ran ignored her and closed his door, leaving her in the corridor.
She pouted resentfully. "Stinky Master!"
Speaking of stinky, she sniffed herself again and frowned at the medicinal smell. What kind of aroma was that for a girl?
...She didn't know what kind of image she presented earlier, motionless as a statue.
But her master had already gone in, so she was too lazy to care and returned to her own room.