NOVEL WEB Chapter 120: Chapter 671: Bottleneck
Chapter 671 – Bottleneck
Inside the Great Void Sect, in the disciples' quarters.
On the second floor of the dining hall, in a private room—
Cheng Mo, Situ Jian, and the others were treating Mo Hua to a grand feast.
Outside the window: verdant mountains, lush waters, and drifting clouds.
Inside: spiritual fruits, fine wine, and exquisite delicacies.
This meal had cost them quite a few spirit stones, but since Cheng Mo and the others were all children of aristocratic families, they weren't hurting for money—so Mo Hua ate with a clear conscience.
Little Yu'er sat next to Mo Hua, happily munching and drinking alongside him.
Every dish on the table was one of Mo Hua's favorites.
Even those he didn't particularly like—given how expensive they were, he decided he liked them anyway.
There were especially many chicken legs—golden pheasant, pine fowl, cloud chicken—all kinds of spiritual poultry…
All of these were tribute, specially "offered up" by Cheng Mo and Situ Jian to their little senior brother.
Mo Hua held a chicken leg in each hand, devouring them with great joy.
This meal was a heartfelt thank-you from the five of them to Mo Hua, for saving their lives.
At the same time, they were grateful that—even if some of it was luck—Mo Hua had led them to a big pile of contribution points.
Over twenty black-robed traffickers had been killed, with only the leader managing to "escape."
The kidnapped cultivators had also been rescued.
They were mostly kids, aged ten to fifteen, all with high-grade spiritual roots, and all of them from noble families.
However, they weren't from Qian Province, but rather from small to mid-sized clans in other provinces.
They had arrived in the Qianxue border region early, seeking a chance to join a sect.
Because they weren't locals, once they were kidnapped, it became very difficult to track them down—most cases ended up unresolved.
Now, although the traffickers were dead—faces unrecognizable and no way to interrogate them—the fact that the children were rescued was a blessing.
The Dao Court didn't publicize the names of Mo Hua's group, to prevent them from being targeted by other traffickers.
But their merits were real.
So the Dao Court gave them each a spirit stone reward.
And unusually, each person was awarded 300 contribution points.
Mo Hua knew this was clearly an exception.
Because the contribution points were credited to their accounts very quickly.
Meanwhile, the points he was owed from the demonic lair raid and slaying Fire Buddha—that reward was still stuck in processing within the Dao Court, with no sign of when it'd arrive.
Three hundred contribution points!
Mo Hua wasn't particularly overwhelmed. He was happy, sure—but he wasn't some greenhorn who had never seen merit points before.
He still had over 1,000 contribution points lying untouched in his account.
And honestly, after killing so many traffickers and saving so many people—300 wasn't that much.
Still, for the Dao Court—notorious penny-pinchers—this was already quite generous.
And they'd thrown in 20,000 spirit stones too. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.
But for Cheng Mo and the others, it was a completely different story.
These kids had never seen so many contribution points in their lives.
Watching gates or sweeping streets might earn them a few points here and there.
Even going on a proper Foundation Establishment mission—split among them—they'd be lucky to earn a few dozen points, maybe just a handful sometimes.
Contribution points were priceless—you couldn't even buy them with spirit stones.
So to suddenly receive 300 points was like winning the spiritual lottery.
They were so excited their faces were practically twisted with joy, insisting they had to treat Mo Hua to a feast.
During the meal:
Cheng Mo passed Mo Hua drumsticks,
Situ Jian poured him fruit wine,
Yang Qianjun and Yi Li offered toasts,
Hao Xuan called for more dishes.
The room buzzed with warmth and laughter.
Mo Hua was thoroughly enjoying himself.
Little Yu'er mimicked Mo Hua, tiny hands gripping a chicken leg, gnawing away with delight.
They were all fellow sect disciples, and after surviving the battle with the traffickers—they'd been through life and death together. The atmosphere was joyful and lively.
After eating for a bit, Situ Jian couldn't hold back his curiosity any longer:
"Mo Hua… what exactly did you do before this?"
So young—and yet so proficient in concealment, scouting, ambushing, spell combat, assassination…
That really didn't sound like something a mere array cultivator should be capable of.
Mo Hua froze for a moment.
Situ Jian quickly added, with a touch of embarrassment:
"If it's inconvenient, you don't have to tell us."
He was truly curious—but everyone had secrets, especially cultivators. No one liked being probed.
Mo Hua thought for a moment. They were all sectmates, and he might need their help in the future. Better to share a little—save them from guessing all the time.
"I was a demon hunter!"
Mo Hua declared, full of pride.
Cheng Mo and the others glanced at Mo Hua's soft, delicate features, his thin arms and legs—and looked… skeptical.
He did not look like a demon hunter.
"Really?" Yi Li asked, curious.
"Of course it's true!" Mo Hua replied, annoyed.
His father was a demon hunter—so naturally, he was too.
It's just that his physical body wasn't very strong, so when it came to hunting beasts, he couldn't charge in and brawl like the others.
But whether it's brute force or using traps and formations—it's still a kill.
If you can hunt demons, you're a demon hunter. Period.
Besides, even a Demonic Dao fiend had been slain by his disintegration formation. If he's not a demon hunter, then who is?
Mo Hua explained:
"Melee fighting is just a lesser path. A real demon hunter must plan ahead—never fight unprepared…"
"If you plan, you stand. If you don't, you fall."
"Whether it's hunting beasts or fighting people—always have a plan, lay a trap, and be patient. If you can ambush, you ambush."
"Be steady. Hide deep. Strike hard."
"That's what my father taught me."
(Your Highness, there's more to this chapter—click the next page! It only gets better!)
Mo Hua looked very proud of himself.
"Ooh…"
Cheng Mo and the others saw how confidently he spoke—and what he said actually made sense—so they all nodded.
Even Yu'er, though she didn't understand, nodded along with starry-eyed admiration.
"Then…" Yang Qianjun couldn't help but ask, "What about scouting, tracking, covering your trail, killing people and… cough, ridding the world of evil—how'd you learn that stuff?"
Mo Hua thought for a second and answered directly:
"Uncle Gu taught me!"
"Uncle Gu?" Yang Qianjun blinked.
"From the Gu Clan in the Dao Court. A kind-hearted Core Formation-level officer—he taught me!"
Mo Hua sighed, genuinely grateful.
"He was worried I'd suffer in the sect, or get in danger on missions, so he shared his experience from the Dao Court—how to track, hunt, and capture criminal cultivators."
"Everything I know—I learned from Uncle Gu!"
Mo Hua repeated it firmly.
"Dao Court. Gu Clan. Core Formation official…"
Yang Qianjun and the others' expressions turned serious.
They glanced at little Yu'er beside Mo Hua and all nodded quietly to themselves.
This child named Yu'er was a direct descendant of the Shangguan family.
And the Shangguans and the Gu Clan were very closely connected.
Given Mo Hua's close relationship with the Shangguans, it made sense he'd have ties to the Gu Clan too.
The Gu Clan had generations of Dao Court officials, experts in justice and law enforcement—tracking and capturing criminals was their bread and butter.
If one of them had taught Mo Hua—everything made sense.
Even if his methods were a little… ruthless.
But when dealing with demonic cultivators—if you're not ruthless, they definitely will be.
With that, Yang Qianjun and the others suddenly understood everything.
So that's why—even as an array master—Mo Hua was so adept at tracking, ambushing, and assassinating.
Because he had good teachers.
So it was all taught…
The suspicions and inner doubts in the others' hearts gradually faded away.
They continued eating for a while, the atmosphere growing more harmonious.
After Mo Hua had eaten and drunk his fill, he lay back to digest—only to overhear Cheng Mo and the others whispering to each other, plotting how to spend their 300 contribution points.
Cheng Mo said he wanted to buy something like golden earth or fancy stones.
Situ Jian said he wanted to save up more and buy one of the Great Void Sect's custom-made Fire Spirit Swords.
Yang Qianjun and Yi Li said they were planning to buy some spiritual items to break through bottlenecks…
Mo Hua blinked in confusion and asked:
"Aren't you all from prestigious clans? Doesn't your clan provide cultivation resources? Why do you still need to trade with the sect?"
The group paused.
Cheng Mo scratched his head.
"Aren't you also—oh right, you're not…"
He explained awkwardly:
"When it comes to cultivation resources, you can never have too much. Forget spirit stones—things like rare spiritual items for breakthroughs, or spiritual tools needed for cultivating Dao arts… the more the better."
"The more spiritual items you use while cultivating, the stronger your spiritual power will be."
"The more precious the materials when forging a spiritual weapon, the better its quality."
"Top-tier disciples of noble families need to burn through a mountain of resources to reach peak performance."
"Even if the clan gives a lot, it's still limited. After all, there are many disciples in the family. Unless your talent is absolutely monstrous, they won't give everything to just one person."
"Especially for high-grade spiritual root disciples—cultivating high-grade techniques costs a huge amount of spirit stones and rare items."
"One or two isn't a big deal. But once you have a dozen, there's just not enough to go around…"
Situ Jian nodded and added:
"Normally, a clan only provides 70% to 80% of the resources a disciple needs."
"That's enough to help you progress, but not enough to reach perfection."
"If you want to lay a deep foundation, perfect your techniques, forge top-tier tools, and stand out among the elite—then you have to aim for the best, pursue perfection…"
"And that burns resources like crazy."
"Oh…" Mo Hua nodded, still a little dazed.
Situ Jian saw his confusion and gave a concrete example:
"Let's ignore spiritual root restrictions and assume perfect aptitude—you can cultivate up to 100 cycles (weeks) of spiritual power."
"Most clan disciples, relying on family support, might reach 70 to 80 cycles—that's enough."
"But if you want to go further, reach 90 cycles or even higher—you'll need extra resources."
"Each additional cycle past 90 becomes insanely hard, and costs astronomical amounts."
"The cost of going from 90 to 91 cycles might be more than everything it took to reach 80 in the first place."
"The closer you get to perfection, the steeper the price."
"If you want to stand out in the sect, you have to push for perfection."
"But that extra portion of resources? You have to earn it yourself."
"If your parents, grandparents, or close elders are powerful and influential in the clan, they might help cover some of it."
"The rest? You need to fight for it in the sect."
"Techniques, Dao arts, spiritual tools—all of it is the same."
"And sect contribution points, which act as hard currency to trade for resources and inheritances, are incredibly rare—you'll never have enough."
Mo Hua's mouth dropped open in shock.
Never before had he felt so clearly the massive wealth gap in cultivation.
The path of a prodigy disciple and that of a rogue cultivator like himself were worlds apart.
He'd always scraped by with whatever he had.
By these standards, forget reaching 80 cycles of spiritual power—even 60 would be pushing it. As for that dreamy "perfection" at 90 or 100? Out of the question.
He simply couldn't afford it.
It was just too expensive…
Even if he sold himself—not just in this life, but for another 108 lifetimes—he still couldn't afford it.
Mo Hua sighed, feeling a little gloomy.
But then he perked up again—he'd chosen the path of Dao-seeking through divine sense.
His foundation wasn't in flesh or raw spiritual power, and his strength didn't rely much on rare spiritual tools.
He didn't need to compete with them in that way.
Otherwise, no matter how hard he worked, he'd just twist himself into a spiritual pretzel—and still lose.
Mo Hua smiled to himself.
Still, he couldn't help but quietly ask:
"Is it really worth spending so much, just to cultivate a couple extra cycles of spiritual power?"
"How could it not be?" Cheng Mo said with feeling. "Every extra cycle of spiritual power makes you stronger."
"Even a little stronger is still stronger."
"And don't underestimate that little bit—your technique is a little weaker, your Dao art is a little inferior, your weapon is a little lower quality… All these little differences add up."
"And this is just Foundation Establishment. It only gets worse as you climb."
"Also—" Hao Xuan chimed in, "When the sect evaluates disciples, or when some Nascent Soul or Void-tier experts take on apprentices—they really care about how many cycles you've cultivated."
"Your spiritual root shows potential—but potential is just potential."
"If you don't have the resources to develop it, and can't cultivate enough cycles, then it's seen as wasted talent."
"So to have a future, you need high-grade roots, powerful techniques, and lots of spiritual cycles—you can't lack any of them."
"Even when it comes to arranged marriages."
"Even if you're dumb and useless, but you've got top-tier roots, excellent techniques, and you've cultivated over 95 cycles—your clan will still value you."
Mo Hua frowned.
"If someone's only good at cultivating… why would the clan value them?"
Hao Xuan blurted out:
"Breeding, obviously."
WHACK! Situ Jian slapped him on the back.
Hao Xuan winced, grimacing in pain, then mumbled:
"N-no, I mean… marriage alliances…"
"Marriage alliances?" Mo Hua blinked.
"Mm." Hao Xuan nodded. "My mom told me in secret: the bigger the clan, the colder the hearts, and the more calculating they are."
"Even if you're a total waste, as long as your aptitude is high and your spiritual cycles are many, the ancestors will pick out a fine match for you—just to help you produce better offspring."
Hao Xuan sighed.
"It's like… livestock breeding. Giving the best feed to the best piglets so—"
GLARE
Situ Jian shot him another sharp look.
Hao Xuan immediately covered his mouth, thinking:
"Whew… almost said too much again…"
Yi Li, sitting nearby, also sighed:
"Sometimes, I really feel like those powerful ancestors don't even see the younger generation as people…"
Hao Xuan turned to him, surprised:
"Isn't your Yi Clan one of the better ones? I've never heard of them forcing marriages…"
Yi Li muttered:
"I never said I was talking about my ancestors…"
...
Mo Hua sat to the side, listening quietly, brows furrowed deeper and deeper.
Mo Hua listened from the side, his brows unconsciously furrowing.
Seeing this, Yang Qianjun's thoughts stirred. He said:
"Of course, this is how things are in Qian Province. These things matter here…"
He knew that Mo Hua's spiritual root talent wasn't great, and his spiritual power cycles were… rather shabby. Worried that Mo Hua might feel bad, he offered some comfort:
"But our Yang family doesn't care as much about that…"
"Our family hails from the Dao Soldier Division. We value aptitude too, but we place greater importance on military merit. Whoever earns the greatest merit gets the family's attention."
"On the other hand, if someone has great talent but lacks the courage to enter battlefields, they're still looked down on."
Yang Qianjun looked at Mo Hua with warm hospitality:
"Mo Hua, during the next year-end break, how about coming to our Yang family as a guest?"
Mo Hua was stunned.
For a brief moment, he felt as if Yang Jiyong and Yang Jishan were both possessing Yang Qianjun's body.
The blood of the Yang family must be engraved with the words:
"Recruit more people!"
Cheng Mo wasn't having it.
"Yang Qianjun, don't talk nonsense. There's no family that doesn't care about spiritual root talent."
Yang Qianjun corrected him:
"It's not that we don't care, we just don't make it the be-all and end-all…"
Cheng Mo stubbornly replied:
"Same thing. At the end of the day, more spiritual power is still better."
Yang Qianjun shook his head:
"That may be true… but if your ninety cycles of spiritual power still can't beat someone else, does gaining one extra cycle really matter?"
"If the enemy doesn't fight you head-on and instead sets ambushes or sneak attacks, all your extra spiritual power is useless."
"Once you're on the battlefield, blades drawn and spiritual power flying like a meat grinder, what good are one or two extra cycles?"
"If death comes for you—unless you've planted a life-preserving talisman—then whether you have eighty, ninety, or even a perfect hundred cycles, you'll still die."
"In my opinion, Qianxue Province has been too peaceful for too long. That's why people waste vast amounts of cultivation resources on these meaningless things."
"Spending all those spirit stones and items just to squeeze out one or two more spiritual power cycles—and then not going to the battlefield, not fighting demon cultivators, not resisting the barbarians—just sitting pretty in Qian Province enjoying life…"
Yang Qianjun, a little fired up, couldn't stop himself once he started.
Situ Jian patted him on the shoulder.
He froze for a moment, then sighed and said:
"I misspoke…"
Cheng Mo, recalling the recent news of the Yang family's war efforts in the Southern Wilderness, poured him a cup of wine to console him:
"Let's just focus on cultivating for now. As for the Southern Wilderness… there's nothing we can do to help at our level."
Yang Qianjun accepted the drink, nodded, and drank.
After that, the conversation lightened up. They stopped talking about serious matters and instead chatted casually about the sect, missions, and miscellaneous stories. Once the food and wine were finished, they said their goodbyes and dispersed.
But Mo Hua remembered every word.
The Yang Family. The Southern Wilderness. Resisting the barbarian tribes.
Could these so-called "barbarians"… be connected to the so-called "Lord of the Great Wilderness"?
And the Southern Wilderness…
Wasn't that the vast desolate land south of Lìzhou?
That's… very far from Qian Province…
Mo Hua shook his head.
All these things still felt too far removed from him. Best not to dwell on them for now.
He took Yu'er out for a walk to digest their meal, then returned to his disciples' residence.
Lying on the bed, just as he was about to rest, he suddenly recalled what Cheng Mo and the others had said—and then it hit him:
The breakthrough bottleneck!
Cheng Mo and the others' Dao foundations were based on physical energy or spiritual power, so they'd need a lot of rare spiritual items to break through their next bottlenecks.
The more, the better.
That's why they were saving contribution points early.
But he cultivated the Tianyan Manual, which didn't require external spiritual items for breakthroughs. That was a good thing.
Still, that didn't mean his bottleneck would be easy.
The bottleneck in the Tianyan Manual was in spiritual sense (divine sense).
The bottleneck for breaking through the Qi Refining stage had been solved step-by-step by deciphering the Heaven-Obscuring Formation, eventually unlocking it and advancing to Foundation Establishment.
So what would be the bottleneck for Foundation Establishment?
Still deciphering formations?
But the Heaven-Obscuring Formation was already solved. What else was left to decipher?
Some Tier-2 formation?
Mo Hua frowned.
"It's possible…"
Normally, that would make sense.
But he still had a trace of doubt—could the Foundation Establishment bottleneck really be that simple?
After all, his divine sense was already very strong.
With a qualitatively transformed divine sense of sixteen patterns, deciphering a low-tier Foundation Establishment formation shouldn't be hard at all.
But… what if that's not it?
What would it be then?
Mo Hua frowned and pondered:
"From Qi Refining to Foundation Establishment… the sea of consciousness was reconstructed by the Heaven-Obscuring Formation, and divine sense was compressed and transformed…"
"Transformed…"
Mo Hua's heart skipped a beat.
"Could the bottleneck be… divine sense transformation?"
"It wants me… to undergo a further transformation of divine sense on top of its previous reconstruction?"
But how would he transform it even further?
Thinking back, the only method he had used before was—
Slaying the Goat-Horn Enforcer, killing those goat-horned demons to obtain faintly golden Divine Marrow, which furthered the "deification" of his divine sense.
…So doesn't that mean—
Mo Hua's mind spun.
He would need to continuously 'devour' Divine Marrow, allowing his divine sense to become more godlike—only then could he break through the bottleneck and advance in cultivation?
Mo Hua froze, then inhaled sharply.
"No way…"
"There can't be a cultivation technique in this world so outrageously absurd…"
"You have to eat gods to break through?!"
(End of Chapter)