Yun Xia then began discussing dispelling, another topic they had covered exhaustively during the previous year, and also one of the key areas they had to be proficient in to complete the breakthrough process. To be fair, it was a complex and vital topic. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to effectively dispelling a structured technique, and without knowing how to dispel your own techniques, experimenting with cultivation arts could be disastrous. Still, one would think the sect would assume they knew it by now and move on.
Somewhere along the line Yun Xia decided to spice up her explanation with examples and performed some kind of summoning technique that resulted in several stacks of ceramic bowls appearing on her table. She told Ao Jiao to distribute the bowls to everyone, and then had them use the 'floating object' technique to make the bowls hover over their tables. Compared to levitating that little girl's spinning top out of the creek, this was insultingly easy.
"I see you've all managed to levitate your bowls," Yun Xia said. "Very good. Now I want you to cast the 'light dispersal' technique on it."
Wei Zian raised his eyebrows at this. What would that achieve?
"Go on," Yun Xia urged. "Don't tell me you have already forgotten how to perform it?"
Wei Zian quickly formed a few hand seals and whispered a short incantation while concentrating on the bowl. The object in question wobbled for a second before finally dropping out of the air like any normal heavier-than-air item. A chorus of clattering sounds informed him that this wasn't an isolated occurrence. He glanced toward Yun Xia for an explanation.
"As you can see, the 'floating object' technique can be dispelled by the 'light dispersal' technique. An interesting development, don't you agree? What does a technique designed to extinguish sources of magical light have to do with hovering objects? The truth, my young disciples, is that 'light dispersal' is simply a specialized form of a general-purpose disruptor technique, which breaks down the structure of a technique in order to make it disappear. While not designed with 'floating object' in mind, it is still capable of affecting it if you channel enough qi into it."
"Why didn't you tell us to just dispel it normally, then?" one of the girls asked.
"A topic for another time," Yun Xia said without missing a beat. "For now, I want you to take notice of what happened when you dispelled the technique on the bowl, it dropped like a rock, and if it had not been magically reinforced, it would have probably shattered upon impacting the table. This is the main problem inherent in all disruptor techniques. Disruptor techniques are the simplest form of dispelling, and virtually every technique can be disrupted if you put enough power into the disruptor, but sometimes disrupting the technique can have worse consequences than letting it run its course. This is especially true for higher-order techniques, which almost always react explosively to disruption because of the vast amount of qi that goes into their formation. Not to mention that 'enough power' can be far more than any cultivator can provide. Place your bowls on the table and put a few torn pages from your notebook into it."
Wei Zian was somewhat surprised by Yun Xia's sudden request, but did as she said. He always found tearing paper to be somewhat cathartic, so he filled the bowl with a bit more paper than necessary, and then waited for further instructions.
"I want you all to cast the 'ignite' technique on the paper, followed immediately by the 'light dispersal' on the resulting fire to dispel it," Yun Xia said.
Wei Zian sighed. This time he had caught on to what she was doing, and knew the flames would not be dispelled by the light dispersal technique, but he did as she said anyway. The flames didn't even flicker, and the fire died out on its own when it ran out of fuel.
"I see all of you can perform the ignite technique perfectly," Yun Xia said. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, heating things is something that is very easy to do with qi manipulation. That and explosions. None of you managed to dispel the flames, though. Why do you suppose that is?"
Wei Zian snorted, listening to several other disciples trying to guess the answer. 'Guess' being the operative word, because they seemed to be throwing random answers around in hopes of making something stick. Normally he never volunteered for anything in training sessions, he disliked the attention, but he was getting tired of the guessing game and Yun Xia didn't seem willing to supply the answer herself until someone figured it out.
"Because there's nothing to dispel," he called out. "It's just a regular fire, started by qi manipulation but not fueled by it."
"Correct," Yun Xia said. "This is another weakness of disruptor techniques. They break down qi constructs, but any fundamentally non-spiritual effects caused by the technique are unaffected. With that in mind, let us return to our immediate problem..."
Two hours later, Wei Zian filed out of the training hall with his fellow disciples, actually a bit disappointed. He learned precious little during the lecture, and Yun Xia said she would spend an entire month covering their basics before moving on to more advanced material. Then she gave them an essay on the topic of dispelling. It was shaping up to be a relatively boring class, since Wei Zian had a pretty good grasp of the basics, and they had Essential Arts five times a week, that is to say, every day. Joy.
The rest of the day was uneventful, since the remaining four sessions were purely introductory, outlining what material would be covered for each class and other such details. Essential alchemy and artifact refinement looked promising, but the other two classes were just more of the same thing they'd had for the past two years. Wei Zian wasn't sure why the sect felt that they needed to continue learning about the history of cultivation and cultivation laws into the third year of their education, unless they were deliberately trying to annoy everyone. This was especially true because their history instructor, an old man by the name of Elder Zhu, was very enthusiastic about his subject and gave them an assignment to read a 200-page history scroll by the end of the week.
It was a poor way to start the week in Wei Zian's opinion.