The ninja dispatched by Rasa left Sunagakure alone and began heading toward Loulan.
Meanwhile, Li Fusheng in Loulan was completely unaware of this, having no idea that someone suspected him of hiring a ninja to investigate.
After a day of cultivation, he could barely manage to use the Calling Wind spell, but it was a real struggle.
The wind strength was roughly comparable to an electric fan on the third setting. This wasn't because his Dharma Power was insufficient, but purely due to unfamiliarity with the technique, resulting in a very low effective utilization rate of his Dharma Power.
However, with diligent practice, he would soon reach the maximum power attainable at his current realm.
Li Fusheng roughly estimated that once he mastered the spell, it should be able to produce the force of a gale-force wind around magnitude seven or eight.
This was a limitation of his realm; wanting howling storms required advancing his realm further.
Moreover, after these days of cultivation, Li Fusheng had discovered a problem—a rather serious problem concerning himself.
According to his family's ancestral records, during the Great Qin Qi Condensation era, the Dharma Power refined from consuming Qi circulated continuously within the body without a moment's pause.
The advantage was that one's realm grew every single second. The disadvantage was that it demanded an even higher concentration of Spiritual Energy from the external environment.
Later, as Spiritual Energy gradually diminished, the primary method of cultivation shifted to the Daoist Internal Elixir and External Elixir methods.
The Internal Elixir involved opening the Dantian within the body and gathering the refined Dharma Power inside it.
When the Dharma Power accumulated to a certain point and refused to expand further, one began compressing it, transforming it from a gaseous state into a liquid state, and finally solidifying it into an elixir—this was the Golden Core Realm.
Upon reaching this realm, lifespan increased dramatically, and everything changed to a great extent. The saying, "Once a single Golden Core enters the belly, my fate is up to me, not the heavens," referred precisely to this.
Correspondingly, however, heavenly tribulations would begin to appear. Survive them, and one shattered the elixir to birth a nascent soul; fail, and the body died and the Dao vanished.
According to the records, the family ancestor had also offered some speculations regarding the phenomenon of heavenly tribulations.
He believed that as Spiritual Energy diminished, the overall level of the world was also declining. The realm of strong individuals it could accommodate decreased accordingly.
Consequently, the tribulations that originally only occurred during the Qi Condensation era upon shattering the void began to appear early at the so-called Golden Core stage.
Regardless, none of this had much to do with Li Fusheng's current situation.
The problem he discovered concerned his own cultivation method.
Although the Qi Condensation Formula he used had been passed down since the Great Qin period and continuously improved by later generations, combining the core essentials of early Qi Condensation and the Internal Elixir method, the result was quite peculiar.
Right now, the Dharma Power in his body remained stagnant like a pool of dead water when he wasn't practicing, failing to circulate on its own. At the same time, he found no usable space to open up a Dantian.
This meant he could neither endlessly condense Qi like the Qi Condensation practitioners of the Great Qin until he shattered the void and ascended to the upper realms, nor could he gather Qi into an elixir, shatter it to form a nascent soul, and continue forward like Golden Core cultivators.
What Li Fusheng didn't know was that he had been completely scammed by his family's ancestor.
Cultivation manuals constantly changed with the development of Spiritual Energy. Back when Spiritual Energy was at its richest, there were no stage divisions like Foundation Establishment or Golden Core.
Competition came down to who could condense Qi the longest, who had the greatest affinity for Spiritual Energy, and who could refine more Spiritual Energy faster and more effectively to elevate themselves.
Once Spiritual Energy began to dwindle, the original Qi Condensation Formula was no longer sufficient; the density of the Dharma Power within the body was countless times higher than the external Spiritual Energy, making it utterly impossible to continue absorbing external energy.
Thus, high-level masters began improving the cultivation manuals, gradually giving rise to the Internal Elixir method.
In even later times, Spiritual Energy became further diluted, making it impossible for cultivators of the Golden Core method to achieve further breakthroughs.
The external Spiritual Energy simply could not support the process of gathering Qi into liquid and condensing liquid into elixir. Practitioners at the late Foundation Establishment stage of this era were already the strongest batch.
Consequently, the Li family ancestor planned to modify the cultivation manual so that later generations would at least have something to practice.
Drawing inspiration from the earliest versions and the contemporary Golden Core version, he created the ancestral version Li Fusheng saw.
Yet, as soon as this ancestor finished the manual, he didn't even have time to test it on anyone to see if it worked before passing away prematurely due to external causes.
No one suspected any flaws in the manual passed down by the ancestor, and everyone kept quiet about it. Before anyone could question the manual's problems, the dynasties shifted again, and Spiritual Energy vanished completely.
Only cultivation techniques with the efficacy of strengthening the body were passed down.
After discovering the cultivation problem, Li Fusheng still didn't suspect any flaw in his family's manual. Instead, he assumed it was a problem caused by coming to the Shinobi World and encountering a different environment.
After all, in the transmigration novels he had read, the effects of things protagonists used to do always changed after arriving in a new world. It would be abnormal if nothing changed at all.
Strictly speaking, they might not even be under the jurisdiction of the same Heavenly Dao anymore, so shouldn't every Heavenly Dao have its own rules?
Since he had arrived, he would make the best of it; since he was already here and couldn't go back, it wasn't as if he couldn't cultivate at all. It was just that he couldn't idle and cultivate automatically.
Suddenly, a knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.
Before he could walk over to open it, Sara staggered in. If not for his quick reflexes and steady hands, she might have collapsed straight onto the floor.
"Brother Fusheng, my, my body feels a little strange!" Sara said with a pale, weak complexion and a halting tone.
As their bond grew day by day, Sara no longer called him Fusheng-kun, instead using a more intimate form of address.
Hearing this, Li Fusheng's heart tightened. He hurriedly pulled her hand, channeled his Dharma Power into her body to check, and asked, "What did you do earlier? How long have you had these symptoms?"
"N-not long, just... just a moment ago after chanting the Calm Heart Incantation, I suddenly felt my head spinning..."
Precisely because she didn't know what was happening to her, Sara had come to find Li Fusheng right away.
After checking, Li Fusheng breathed a sigh of relief, but at the same time, he was quite startled.
There was nothing seriously wrong with Sara's body; it was simply that with the help of the Calm Heart Incantation, her mental strength had surged drastically, exceeding the level she could control, resulting in a state of mental strength overload.
The solution was simple: sleep. Allowing her body to gradually adapt to the massive mental strength through sleep would alleviate these symptoms.
However, for a full recovery, she also needed to elevate her physical fitness, though improving physical fitness required accumulated training over time.
Of course, there was also a shortcut, which was cultivation—refining spiritual power to nourish the body.
At this moment, the intensity of Sara's mental strength could already rival Li Fusheng's, but her physical fitness was only slightly stronger than an ordinary person in Loulan.
Having found the root of the problem, Li Fusheng first soothed Sara, telling her not to worry or be afraid: "Get some good rest for the next two days, and don't chant the incantation during this time. Once you recover a little, I'll teach you cultivation."
Hearing Li Fusheng's words, Sara finally set her mind at ease. She had been worried that she might die before she even got to marry Brother Fusheng and have babies with him.
Now, not only was she not going to die, but in a couple of days, Brother Fusheng was going to teach her cultivation—a realization that made Sara so excited she almost felt instantly revived to full health on the spot, though the slight surge of spirit quickly faded as she lapsed back into a deep sleep.
After all, intense emotional stimulation also affected the stability of mental strength.