Chapter 5
The interior of the ancestral hall was big, solemn, and made one feel a sense of respect. Inside the family kept the memorial tablet which listed the Lin family heads of past generations as well as those who made enormous contributions to the family. These people were all well known throughout the Wuhuan Empire, and once, the Lin family even had a Profound Immortal realm cultivator before.
Supposedly, the Lin family shouldn't be in such a third-rate town and c.r.a.ppy home. What exactly happened ten years ago? About this topic, the doubts in her mind increased.
Lin Haoxue respectfully wors.h.i.+pped her ancestors one by one. All these people had led the Lin family to prosperous heights at one time or another. However, they didn't know that their family was now going through hard times.
Lin Haoxue secretly vowed that she would bring glory back to the Lin family.
"Haoxue, come here."
Lin Haoxue looked at him and saw her grandpa standing all the way down in the corner of the hall near the back. In front of him was a crystal pillar with four sharp edges, and it was the Lin family's profound power pillar for testing one's profound power.
"Put your hand on the pillar and try your best to imbue it with your profound power," Lin Geng stood back giving her some more s.p.a.ce as he watched with expectation.
Lin Haoxue set both her hands on the pillar and poured her fire elemental profound power from her dantian into it. She also controlled her power carefully so that she didn't let her other elemental profound powers leak out.
Fortunately, the process was successful. Lin Haoxue used only her fire elemental profound power and all the other elemental profound power stayed quietly in her dantian without showing any movement.
In a flash, the transparent crystal pillar turned fiery and the red color was only getting darker.
"Nice, that's really nice. You've not only reached the Profound Pract.i.tioner realm, but you also broke through to the second layer!" Lin Geng was wild with joy. Now his granddaughter could go to the Profound Academy and it wouldn't be a problem for her to protect herself. Furthermore, the so-called genius He Lingyun from the He family only had his elemental profound veins awoken at the age of six, and it took him two years to acc.u.mulate enough strength, at the age of eight, to step into the Profound Pract.i.tioner realm. That was far from his granddaughter, Lin Haoxue, since right when her elemental profound veins awoke she was already at the Profound Pract.i.tioner realm!
His own granddaughter was the true genius.
Lin Haoxue saw her grandpa who normally didn't smile much was now smiling happily. She felt that he was a little funny but she was also happy as well.
Being able to make grandpa happy wasn't an easy job, so of course, it made her feel good.
"Grandpa, can I learn profound skills?" Lin Haoxue asked him as now she was pretty curious about them.
"Of course you can. But we don't have a lot of profound skills in our family, we only have fire elemental, gold elemental, and thunder elemental skills. We don't have any water elemental skills
Lin Geng showed his respect in front of their ancestor's memorial tablet and then took out two sheets that had profound skills on them. They were two iron sheets which had a faint red color to them.
Lin Haoxue looked at these two profound skills and recalled all the knowledge about profound skills that she knew.
In this world, profound skills had four ranks which were Zhen, Li, Heng, and Yuan. Yuan ranked skills were the most powerful while Zhen ranked were the weakest. Each rank was divided into low, medium, and high-quality skills. Now among all the skills the Lin family had, the best one was their thunder elemental skill, but it was merely a high-quality Zhen ranked skill.
In this world, superior skills could determine the result of a battle between cultivators of the same layer. Some profound cultivators could even jump ranks by using advanced profound skills and such an occurrence wasn't rare at all.
Therefore, even when two people with the same talent and strength fought, the one whose family was stronger would have an overwhelming advantage. This advantage was precisely profound skills!
Ceramic Flame was one of the two fire elemental profound skills the Lin family had. This skill was a low-quality Zhen ranked skill while the other one, Kindle Fall, was a medium-quality Zhen ranked skill.
"These are the only two fire elemental profound skills we have left in our Lin family. Ceramic Flame and Kindle Fall, you can choose which one you want to practice. Since you've just reached the Profound Pract.i.tioner realm, you better not bite off more than you can chew so just choose one for now."
Lin Haoxue picked up the first one, and after a while, she picked up the other. These two profound skills... She wanted both!
Lin Geng wasn't mad about her childish actions.
"This one," Lin Haoxue finally said as she pointed at the profound skill in Lin Geng's left hand.
"This one? Are you sure?" Lin Geng frowned because Lin Haoxue chose the low-quality Ceramic Flame instead of the medium-quality Kindle Fall. This choice confused Lin Geng greatly.
"Yes, that's the one I want," Lin Haoxue said confident in her choice.
Lin Geng shook his head to show that he didn't agree, but he didn't force her to choose the other profound skill either.
Grandpa didn't understand why she chose this skill, and she didn't tell him the reason either since she couldn't expose her secret.
When her fingers touched the low-quality Ceramic Flame profound skill, the ring that was hanging in front of her chest had faintly trembled.
Ever since her seal was removed by this ring, she realized that this ring which looked ordinary was actually extraordinary. It was just that this ring was too big to fit on Lin Haoxue's finger, therefore she found a white metal chain and hung it in front of her chest like a pendant.
Furthermore, it could be hidden in her clothes and wouldn't be discovered by others.
"Alright, after you finish studying the Ceramic Flame, you can move on to Kindle Fall," Lin Geng carefully put the other fire elemental profound skill away.
Afterwards, Lin Haoxue didn't go back to eat her lunch but went to her room with the Ceramic Flame skill in hand.
This was her first profound skill, and even though she had acted calm in front of her grandpa, she wasn't really so steady. After going back to her room, she impatiently took out the profound skill and explored it with her willforce.
There were not many requirements for practicing this skill, any cultivator of the fire element could practice it.
Lin Haoxue still thought that there was something else to this skill because this ring wouldn't just tremble without a reason.
She kept trying to figuring out the reason why the ring chose this skill, but she didn't find anything abnormal about it.
Now since she couldn't find anything special about this profound skill, she decided to just practice it.
According to the method written in the Ceramic Flame's sheet, Lin Haoxue started to compress her fire elemental profound power.
Without her noticing it, an extremely faint white thread came out from the ring and entered into her body. Then it blended into the fire elemental profound power in her dantian.
In less than an hour, Lin Haoxue had already learned the first layer of this Ceramic Flame skill.
There were three layers of difficulty to the Ceramic Flame. In the first layer one compressed their profound power to one-ninth its original state, the second layer was one-eighteenth, and the third layer was an astonis.h.i.+ng twenty-seven times denser than its original state!
In other words, now, she was able to compress her profound power to one-ninth of its original state causing her attacking power to be nine times more powerful than normal.
Slowly, she opened her eyes and the look in her eyes brightened. She felt that her fire elemental profound power had gotten a little stronger.
Learning profound skills was the most common way to consolidate one's strength. Lin Haoxue had already advanced leaps and bounds from where she was at the beginning, but her foundation was unsteady which was bad; it needed to be consolidated.
Now it seemed like this Ceramic Flame had the strange effect of consolidating one's power. It was just that what she knew about it wasn't much. It not only had such a strange effect but seemed to be nine times more effective than other profound skills.