Back when the Elental Lord struggled to survive against the progressively stronger tribulation waves, the powerful living ch had been forced to learn on the fly and hastily figure out how to chain several different elents together.
The five brothers who had just been born did not enjoy the ti to explore their own elents, let alone figure out how to fuse them together.
They were like babies who had been forced by circumstances to fight like adult soldiers!
There was no way for them to succeed in such awful circumstances. It would be like asking Andraste to fight against the Singularity Lord. The disparity in strength was simply too great for this venture to succeed!
As a powerful qi cultivator, Cynthia Larkinson definitely knew what she was talking about when she gave her advice on mastering the five elents.
Veronica listened carefully and took her mother's lessons to heart.
"There is nothing wrong with specializing in a single elent." The True God said. "Any elent can be exploited to produce results that are far greater than what is possible in nature. By lessening their focus on other elents, qi cultivators can dedicate enough ti, resources and other factors to transform the expression of a single elent in many powerful forms. A mono-elental qi cultivator is not necessarily inferior to a duo-elental cultivator. What is important to note is that the difficulty in making progress as the latter is at least several tis higher."
"A duo-elental cultivator has greater potential than a mono-elental cultivator, right?" Veronica asked.
"That is only true in certain cases. A duo-elental cultivator has more options at his disposal. If his cultivation is at the sa stage as a mono-elental rival, he can exert greater power through the synergies between the two elents. However, the ti and effort it takes to master twice as many elents makes it so that the duo-elental cultivator has often failed in their deeper anings and possibilities."
This was essentially a contrast between breadth and depth.
It reminded Veronica of the possible developnt directions of his design philosophy.
She was able to choose between growing a broad but relatively short tree, or growing a narrow but also taller tree.
Veronica had eventually opted to go with the forr because that aligned better with her own nature. She was way too curious about different stuff to stick to a single subject.
It appeared that the sa dynamic also applied to qi cultivation.
"The differences will beco even more exaggerated when more elents co into the mix, right?"
Cynthia smiled in a way that made it seem as if she was reminiscing about the past.
"Oh, that is most certainly the case. The difficulty and progression speed of triple-elental, four-elental and the most exceptional five-elental cultivators beco exponentially worse. Virtually no grassroots cultivator can ever succeed in them. It takes a strong background, many resources and most importantly talent in all of the relevant elents in order for a cultivator to make real progress in any of them. If any of these conditions are absent, it is always better to focus on a smaller quantity of elents."
That made a lot of sense. It sounded as if mono-elental cultivators were all poor fellows who had to make do with less, but as long as they worked hard enough, it was still possible for them to defeat multi-elental cultivators!
Veronica looked up at her mother again. "Hmm... you are a mono-elental cultivator who specializes in wood, am I right? You have never displayed any strong abilities that make think of the other four classical elents."
The cyborg cat received a small smack on her head as a response!
"It is not polite to point out soone else's cultivation!" Cynthia admonished the cat before smiling. "I can tell you that you are not wrong. My power is largely derived from wood. Due to my extensive exploration and mastery of this elent, I have fused it with my own comprehension and insights and mutated it to form my own dao. This has granted the ability to perform many thods and techniques that cannot be reproduced through shallower applications of the wood elent."
Veronica recalled the tis where her mother demonstrated her power as a qi cultivator.
Cynthia was frightening in how she was able to expand her nature-based domain to absorb any kind of energy and convert it into her own power!
"Is that the sort of strength and understanding that I must reach in order to sufficiently master a single elent?"
That caused her mother to chuckle. "Oh no, my dear. That is far too much to you, I believe. Your circumstances are different from mine. You do not have the ti or the need to explore one of the elents to such an extent. It is sufficient for you to master an elent to the point where you can solidly manifest all of its basic applications to a perfect degree. There is no need for you to develop more advanced techniques because you can rely on the combination between multiple elents to produce more comprehensive results."
"So you are saying that I am much more suitable to beco a multi-elental cultivator?"
"Only in the context of a creation cultivator." Cynthia affird. "Your goal in mastering the elents is to incorporate them better into your chs. You do not need to waste your ti on learning techniques that are only relevant to qi cultivators. That makes it much more practical for you to explore multiple elents. In fact, almost every ch designer is a duo-elental cultivator. They always have a foundation in chs, which is a derivative of the tal elent, and another attribute that is most closely aligned with their specializations."
Veronica nodded in agreent. She herself started out with a domain that was split between tal and life.
"Does this an that I should start out by deepening my understanding of the tal elent? That is my strongest so far, and I think I can make a lot more progress if I work together with Vulcan."
Surprisingly, Cynthia shook her head in disagreent.
"You are already working with tal practically every day. You have beco so exposed to it that it is difficult for you to accelerate your progress if you work on it more. It is better for you if you shift your focus and explore a completely different elent for a ti. You will make many new discoveries as you work towards deepening your understanding of it. Once you comprehend this second elent just as well as your original tal elent, you can begin to explore how you can produce truly powerful results by combining them together. Over ti, you can repeat this process with a third, fourth and ultimately a fifth elent."
This was the proper progression trajectory of a multi-elental cultivator. Veronica understood much better now how stupid she had been to design a five elent ch from the start.
She felt so embarrassed by her monuntally stupid mistakes that she wanted to crawl inside a box!
"Even though you make it sound like it is manageable, it will still take many years before I truly gain the qualifications to develop a proper version of the Elental Lord, right?"
"That is so, my child."
That would take way too much ti and effort! Veronica was not even sure if she and her incarnations could master the five elents to a sufficient degree in a reasonable tifra.
"Do I have to focus on the five elents at all? There are a lot of other attributes that I could explore instead in order to improve my ch designs. For example, I can choose to focus more on the attributes of space or death."
"Those are also valid approaches. There are many cultivators in the past and present who have done just fine without the five elents. However, I recomnd that you do not disregard their power and their usefulness to your work. The reason why they are so important is because they encompass virtually every phenona in our reality. You will not have any blind spots as long as you are able to master all five elents. Even if you fall short of that, mastering several elents will already equip you with the tools needed to address many different issues that you may encounter in the future."
Her mother made a good point. Veronica already had a firm foundation in the tal elent, so she might as well get started in the other four ones in order to round out her elental design applications.
Of course, she had to be careful about biting more than she could chew.
"I need to pick an elent to begin my foray into mastering the five elents." Veronica said. "I am thinking about increasing my comprehension of the water elent. What do you think, mother?"
"Why water?"
"There are three reasons for that. The first is that it is much easier for to progress in it than the other options. The latest freebie given by the Red Ocean has substantially increased my phase lord cultivation. My main self's body carries a lot more phasewater in his body than before, and that has likely boosted my affinity to the water elent. That ans that I can make a lot more progress if I delve into water as opposed to the other choices."
Cynthia responded with an approving nod. "That is a good observation. Cultivators must always make use of their advantages. You are not an innate five-elental cultivator, so you certainly cannot take this lightly. What else?"
"I have already learned a lot of insights and applications related to the power of blood." Veronica continued. "Just as chs are a derivative of tal, blood is a subcategory of water.
I can use my existing understanding of blood to quickly deepen my understanding of the water elent."
"That is also a good approach. It is not uncommon for cultivators to start with a narrow expression of an elent and slowly work towards broadening and generalizing their understanding."
Veronica was pleased to hear that her suspicions about this were correct.
"The final reason is that this elent synergizes well with phasewater and phasewater technology, which are highly relevant to chs. Both hyper technology and phasewater technology offer many uses to applications based on the water elent. Whether it is developing stronger azure energy shield generators or increasing the effective utilization of phasewater in a ch, a greater understanding of this elent will boost all of these useful applications."
The only problem that bothered Veronica was that the direct offensive applications of the water elent were rather... limited.
She could still think of a few ways for the water elent to enhance the attack power of her ch designs, but it was a lot easier to leverage the fire elent instead.
This was the nature of working with the five elents. Each of them possessed natural advantages and disadvantages.
By choosing to focus on the power of water, Veronica would find it a lot easier to improve the defensive properties of her ch designs in the near future.
She did not particularly mind this. Defense was of great importance as it was vital to preserving the lives of precious living chs as well as their ch pilots.
It was only when his living chs and his ch pilots were able to live long enough that they could grow into powerful legends!
"It appears that you have formulated a solid plan." Cynthia said with a hint of pride. "Know that the journey to mastering the five elents is destined to take a lifeti. The vast majority of cultivators never co close to it, and even the most talented ones often die before reaching their ultimate goals. The journey is much more important than the destination. Do not think about controlling all five elents in this century. Start by exploring what you can do with the power of tal and water before you branch out further. I suspect that it may take several decades before you are qualified to start the next phase."
Her mother really hit ho how monuntal it was to tackle the five elents. Veronica fully kept these words in mind.
"Thank you, mother. I will try my best not to skip over this process again. I have thoroughly learned my lessons."
The cyborg cat eventually left the design lab in order to sort out all of her thoughts and reform her ntal models.
The Oblivion Empress watched the incarnation of her son depart from her mundane sight while her own attention drifted towards the past.
She raised one of her pale and shining arms and ford a ball of wood energy.
She then summoned a second ball consisting of earth energy.
Three more balls of energy of the remaining elents quickly followed.
The balls began to orbit around each other under her careful direction. Wood followed after fire which followed after earth and so on. Slowly but surely, the cycle of elents started to rotate faster and faster, generating a lot of excess energies that took an exponentially greater effort for Cynthia to control!
Soon, the five balls of energy spun so quickly above her palm that it seed as if they were about to morph and rge into a single cohesive amalgamation of energy!
The five different representative colors of the five classical elents slowly made way for two contrasting colors.
Dark and light spun around each other in a mystical pattern that exuded a lot of power and sacredness!
Even though the Lady of the Night had invested only a trifling amount of energy in this little display, the power and other properties of this extraordinary energy ball would have shocked Veronica into silence!
Eventually, Cynthia closed her palm, causing the extraordinary energy interaction to disappear from sight.
To a cultivator like her, the five elents were the root of everything.
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