Practicing skills

[Star grasping hand], star path yellow rank skill...let's start!

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A day later...

"Still not quite right."

Looking at the blob formed by starlight that dropped to the ground Fang Qiu knew he still had some ways to go.

The [star grasping hand] skill made use of star element qi in the form of starlight specks to form a complete arm which could move just like a regular one. The arm was meant to be used as an offensive star element skill just to launch the projectile, but Fang Qiu wanted to use it as a [phantom arm] permanently.

It could channel star element qi and condense it into a ball within the palm of the star element hand, after which the cultivator would launch the star element qi ball at an opponent. The main advantage of this skill is the ability to channel way more power through the star element arm than human meridians can.

At the highest rank this skill could according to rumours harness the power of an entire star. Although, Fang Qiu was still long ways off from even forming the hand, let alone trying to condense an offensive attack within.

This skill was perfect since it meant Fang Qiu would have a second hand to use his bow, and on top of that in emergencies he could use it as a close-range trump card by "throwing" a close-range starlight ball at an enemy.

The reason it's considered a trump card is because condensing the "star" takes up most of a foundation realm cultivator's qi.

In fact, condensing the arm didn't consume all too much starlight qi, it mainly needed practice to get everything right. But just making the "star" required a star path cultivator to be at the seventh tier of foundation realm at the very least!

Otherwise, the cultivator wouldn't have enough qi to even use [star grasping hand].

Fang Qiu estimated he could at most use it twice with his peak foundation qi, unless he had Little Black use [dig in] in order to replenish his qi.

Archery should still be his main means of attack since [star grasping hand] was not a long-ranged skill and was a trump card attack. His main reason for picking this skill was not for the [star grasping hand] attack but because the starlight arm perfectly fixes the issues Fang Qiu had.

The main issue previously when browsing skills was the lack of a [phantom arm] type skill. The light element did have these skills and the void path of the space element also had one. But Fang Qiu wanted the mobility from the warp path over the damage of the void path. The second issue he had was the lack of offensive power.

The warp path focuses more on mobility and being unpredictable which the illusion path compliments well, but Fang Qiu still felt like he was lacking the deadly offensive power a cultivator should have. Which is where Steward Chen's advice came in clutch.

He suggested cultivating a third path which was the star path. It is one of the most lethal rare elements and just so happens to be a rare element made up of the space and light elements. Which meant Fang Qiu could use it, just like how water element users can cultivate the ice path which is also a rare element.

This fixes all of Fang Qiu's weaknesses and issues all at once! He had speed due to the warp path, unpredictability due to the illusion path of the light element, strong offense with the star path offensive skills* and his lack of defense could be compensated for with his healing, speed and him being long range.

Realizing he wandered off in his thoughts Fang Qiu quickly returned to analyzing the ability [star grasping hand]

Cultivators would easily be able to dodge the "star" if he threw it at an enemy that was far away since every cultivator had incredible senses and reaction speed.

Fang Qiu had two main issues currently when trying to use the skill. Firstly, his elemental comprehension was not up to par yet, this made it difficult to create the arm, let alone using it.

To increase his star path cultivation, he had to use nature stones of light and space elements simultaneously, but this didn't increase it instantly. It takes time to absorb the information within and understand it deeply enough to comprehend it.

In total he had enough nature stones on his person to reach ninety percent towards elemental seed realm for all three of his chosen paths, which was the limit for external means like nature stones.

But in this one day's worth of time, he only managed to have Little black consume half of each, which increased his total comprehension of the star path to ten percent.

This barely put him at the basic comprehension threshold which was just enough to be able to use the skill at basic mastery level once he actually managed to use it once.

Skills utilised profound ways of using the elements so without the corresponding elemental comprehension it would be impossible to use the skill because he wouldn't know how to utilise the element to form it.

Of course, a cultivator could gain comprehension by trying to master the skill. But this usually happened when increasing mastery of an already mastered skill, not when the cultivator is learning how to use it.

Right now, his elemental comprehension was just barely enough, so learning the skill was not easy and would get easier the more his mastery increased.

Thinking back to when he fed Little Black the nature stones, he truly felt like he was one with the world, all sorts of foreign concepts and ways of utilising the element appeared inside his mind one after the other, the more he tried to focus on a particular part the vaguer it seemed to be. Yet when he got out of his enlightenment all those foreign concepts seemed a little easier to understand. Only to realise an entire day had passed.

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On the second day he reached twenty percent star path comprehension and managed to use the skill for the first time.

At first it just took the shape of the hand, and he couldn't make it move, but after a couple more failures he succeeded again and managed to make the hand move its fingers which truly felt like it was his real arm, yet when he accidentally exploded the arm, the expected pain didn't arrive.

By the end of the third day, he completely managed to gain initial mastery over the skill and reached thirty percent comprehension. The arm could finally move and channel qi which it previously couldn't as Fang Qiu still had troubles creating the starlight meridians at the same time when condensing the arm.

"When I cast [star grasping hand] it feels like I never lost my left arm in the first place. I can control it with mental inputs just like a real arm!

The only thing it lacks compared to a real hand is my sense of touch, but besides that it can even be considered better than a real hand in some ways!

This needs some food to celebrate!!"

After some testing on the fourth day, he discovered that the hand could lift anything that wasn't stuck to the ground no matter the weight. Though is qi consumption increased if he tried to make the arm do more intensive things.

He even managed to lift a boulder the size of Fatty Zhang when testing things in the forest just outside the city! But he only lasted for a couple of seconds before discovering all his qi was drained.

"It seems the more things weigh the more qi it consumes, which is normal considering the hand is made up of qi and doesn't use nutrients or muscles to function."

Looking at his white-golden arm he noticed tiny golden glowing lines constantly moving and intertwining on the hand which was the starlight qi that made up the hand.