Chapter 492: – Life 120, Age 315, Martial Spirit 1 |
After advancing to Martial Spirit, I knew it wouldn’t be long before Li TianYu came to collect on my promise of a Rank 8 body cultivation technique. I had no intention of giving him an excuse to make trouble for my sect, so I began working on it immediately. Unfortunately, the task proved far more difficult than I had anticipated.
Over the past two centuries, the Isle of Beasts had allowed me to observe four different beasts as they advanced from Rank 7 to Rank 8. This was an extraordinary opportunity, allowing me to witness something few humans had ever seen. However, since none of the beasts cultivated wind wu, my observations were of limited use in developing the technique requested by the Li Clan.
This was simply the reality I had to deal with. High-level beasts were rare, and those that cultivated elemental energies were even rarer. Most demon beasts that advanced beyond Rank 3 or Rank 4 cultivated some form of weapon wu, such as claw wu or fang wu. Their bodies were their weapons, and their cultivation reflected that.
I understood why this was the case, but that understanding did nothing to make my job easier. Somehow, I had to create a body cultivation technique for an entirely new Rank, then restructure it around wind wu despite lacking even a single proper example.
Thankfully, observing those Beast Sovereigns hadn’t been without merit.
The cultivation system we had designed focused on enhancing a different part of the body at each stage. At Rank 1, cultivators tempered their skin. At Rank 2, they focused on their tendons and ligaments. From there, they cultivated their bones, muscles, internal organs, nervous system, and blood—in that order.
Before I could design a technique for Rank 8, I had to determine what part of the body to cultivate.
The first Rank 7 beast I observed seemed to enhance its entire body all at once. Energy surged through its flesh, bones, organs, and blood without concentrating in any single place. This made me think Rank 8 might be a stage of comprehensive refinement, one that consolidated the gains of the seven previous Ranks into a unified whole.
The second time I witnessed this process, I realized my mistake.
At first, I thought this was just a method for further enhancing one’s skeletal structure. However, when I strained my energy vision to the limit, I realized the beast wasn’t enhancing its bones. It was enhancing its marrow.
This discovery gave me a place to begin my research, but it also created a significant complication: I needed to study how Rank 7 beasts enhanced their marrow, but this process occurred deep within bones that were already saturated with the dense wu of a Beast Sovereign.
Upon beginning their ascension to Rank 8, beasts flooded their bones with wu and karmic energy. My energy vision was powerful, but it wasn’t omnipotent. The dense layers of wu scattered my perception, and the movement within the marrow was too complex to fully analyze.
The third and fourth ascensions I witnessed gave me a slightly better understanding of what was happening, but it wasn’t enough. I had to observe the process from too far away, the bones were too dense, and the energy patterns within the marrow were just too complex.
What I truly needed was to dissect a couple of these beasts. Ideally, I wanted one specimen before ascension and one after its ascension. Sadly, the Isle of Beasts would never allow such a thing. Rank 8 beasts were far too important to be sacrificed in that way.
Fortunately, I had a way around this restriction.
“System, I want to purchase the pelvises of three beasts. One should be from a Rank 7 beast, one should be from a Rank 8 beast, and one should be from a beast at the height of its ascension from Rank 7 to Rank 8. They should all be from beasts that cultivated wind wu. If possible, I want the energies inside these bones to be locked in place, fixed in the patterns that existed while they were part of a living beast.”
Calculating… Cost 26,300 credits.
These were just a few bones from newly raised Beast Spirits, so charging me an amount of credits roughly equivalent to the value of a Martial Spirit 3 seemed somewhat excessive. However, since these bones would allow me to develop a revolutionary Rank 8 body cultivation technique, I couldn’t help but consider them cheap. Likely, the only reason I could afford them at all was that, even without them, I would be able to develop a similar technique in the near future.
“Purchase them.”
Purchase confirmed. 17,145 credits remaining.
Three massive pelvises suddenly appeared in the middle of my inner world’s treasury. They were so large that I could only assume they had come from some kind of oversized elephant. When I examined them with energy vision, they shone like brilliant stars, each one brighter than the next. However, this energy had been locked in place, so it had no effect on the surrounding environment.
Impressive as they were, I wasn’t willing to waste time admiring them.
Without the interference caused by active cultivation, I could easily see deep into the bones and study the patterns that had been engraved into their marrow. Within seconds, I had a complete sketch of the energy patterns the beasts had used to ascend. From there, I only needed to extrapolate the patterns and adapt them to the rest of the skeleton.
This took another couple of months but wasn’t overly difficult. Before long, I had my first Rank 8 body cultivation technique.
Drill of Incessant Perturbations, Low-Yellow Rank 8 Body Cultivation Technique (Broken), Wind Wu, Effects: Makes one more obsessed with body cultivation. Makes one feel extremely uneasy if forced to remain motionless.
This drill was enough to fulfill my agreement with the Li Clan, but giving them such a shoddily crafted technique would almost certainly lower my value in the eyes of the various Saints. I needed to improve it, but I had cultivated metal wu, so I couldn’t test it to uncover its flaws.
Once again, I had no choice but to turn to the System.
“System, I want to spend 5,000 credits to improve the Drill of Incessant Perturbations as much as possible.”
Purchase confirmed. 12,145 credits remaining.
Drill of Cycling Turbulence, Mid-Yellow Rank 8 Body Cultivation Technique (Broken), Wind Wu, Effects: Makes one more obsessed with body cultivation. Makes one feel compelled to keep one’s internal energy cycling in constant motion.
This still wasn’t great, but I doubted anyone else on the continent could do better.
After I handed over the Drill of Cycling Turbulence, Li TianYu delivered the promised Earth-Rank fire seeds and Heaven-Rank cultivation techniques with remarkable efficiency, allowing me to immediately begin working on upgrading my inner world to Rank 6.
While waiting for the Su Clan to produce its five new Sovereigns, I had spent countless hours using the Expanding Realms Fire to grow my inner world. Every spirit stone in my treasury had been poured into this effort, and even then, the world had still fallen short of the limit for a Rank 5 Small World. Thankfully, though, by the time I reached Martial Spirit, the Amorphous Blade Sect had gathered enough resources to make up the difference.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
My inner world now consisted of six single-element planes, nine dual-element planes, and four three-element planes. Each plane was a cylinder one kilometer tall and over eighty kilometers in diameter. Compared to the vastness of even the Nine Rivers Continent, this was still small, but compared to the storage space that my inner world had once been, it was enormous.
The new wind and light planes still needed suitable demon beasts to populate them, and every plane needed more rock and soil to fill in the space that had been added along the edges.
These issues would all need to be dealt with, but my immediate concern was infusing the world with Laws from wind-based fire seeds to push it to the next level.
I started with the seeds I had borrowed from the Li Clan, since I was worried they might find some excuse to reclaim them.
One by one, I infused my inner world with energy from the three Earth-Rank seeds and incorporated the Laws contained within them. Without spirit stones to accelerate the process, this took several years.
When it was finally over, I waited, expecting to feel the faint anticipation that always preceded a tribulation.
It never came.
I frowned, then continued the process, adding the Laws from the Earth-Rank seed I had acquired back on the Nine Rivers Continent. After that, I infused the Laws from every Profound- and Yellow-Rank seed in my collection, whether single-element, dual-element, or multi-element.
Once this was done, my karmic energy affinity stirred with faint anticipation, but the feeling was still too weak. I needed more, but I had already exhausted every wind-based seed in my possession.
The Amorphous Blade Sect was still officially recognized as a First-Class Sect under the auspices of the Heroes Domain, so I could theoretically apply to borrow fire seeds from the Sect Affairs Bureau. However, the Heroes Domain was almost entirely focused on Laws and techniques related to weapons. The Bureau had a vast collection of bow, spear, and saber fires, but wind-based seeds were another matter.
The Li Clan, in contrast, had no shortage of wind-based seeds, but approaching them came with far too many complications. They would almost certainly use the opportunity to extract a heavy price.
As I expanded my search, I found that wind techniques were also prevalent in the Devil Domain, but my alliance with the Liberation Domain left me with little to offer them in trade.
Still, this didn’t mean I was out of options. If nothing else, I could purchase the seeds I needed from the System. Rare and unique Earth-Rank seeds were expensive, but I could at least buy enough Yellow- and Profound-Rank seeds to push my world to its next advancement.
However, before going down that path, there was another idea I wanted to test.
Having cultivated the Scripture of the Turning Wheel for several decades, I had developed a somewhat clearer understanding of how Heaven-Rank techniques actually worked. They weren’t merely a more complex version of ordinary cultivation techniques. They acted more like formations built inside a person’s body, formations that connected a cultivator to some deeper layer of reality.
Yellow-, Profound-, and Earth-Rank techniques relied on the Laws that already existed in the world. They drew upon established principles, condensed them, and allowed cultivators to process energy through simplified structures.
Heaven-Rank techniques were different. They formed a direct connection to the underlying Laws that made cultivation possible. This suggested that a Heaven-Rank technique could act as a bridge, allowing a world to gain access to Laws it did not yet possess.
Unfortunately, due to their four-dimensional nature, Heaven-Rank techniques could only be cultivated by Martial Sovereigns.
Our sect now had several Martial Sovereigns, but none of them were wind cultivators, and I was the only person in our sect who had high enough affinities with wind and space to cultivate Heaven-Rank techniques properly. Creating another suitable candidate would have cost far too many resources.
This didn’t stop me, though.
Heaven-Rank techniques were, in essence, formations inscribed into the cultivator’s body, but was a body truly necessary? Could I build a similar formation without one?
With this idea in mind, I turned my attention to the newly created Plane of Wind and began carving inscriptions into enormous slabs of Skyvein Ore, which had a natural connection to both wind and space.
Even as I began carving, I knew the basic inscriptions I was making wouldn’t be enough.
The filters and meridians involved in a Heaven-Rank cultivation technique were inherently four-dimensional. Any formation I created to replicate such a technique had to possess a similar four-dimensional structure. I could temporarily achieve this through the use of portals, but portals would require constant maintenance. After I reset and lost my status as a Bloodline cultivator, the formation would inevitably collapse.
Thankfully, I had a way around this.
Years earlier, I had acquired a flame of the Hidden Vault Fire, which could expand space in four dimensions. At the time, I had been interested in using it to create a new type of storage bag, but I had never gotten around to that project. Now, it gave me exactly what I needed.
The only problem was that my inner world couldn’t be expanded any further. It had already reached the limit of a Rank 5 Small World. To use the Hidden Vault Fire, I first had to remove some of the excess space.
“System, remove ten cubic meters of space from the outer edge of the Plane of Wind.”
Purchase confirmed. Cost 1 credit. 12,144 credits remaining.
With that space freed up, I used the Hidden Vault Fire to construct a series of thread-like channels through four-dimensional space, each one modeled after the meridians described in the Scripture of the Boundless Gale, one of the Low-Heaven techniques I had received from the Li Clan.
Because this formation no longer existed inside a living body, I next had to add several additional features. It needed an autonomous qi-gathering structure, a stabilization layer to mimic the shifting of meridians, and a central core to act as a dantian. It also needed failsafes that would shut the formation down if the expanded space began to collapse.
The final design was crude and inefficient, but it worked.
When I activated the formation, my inner world trembled as a connection formed between the Plane of Wind and… something.
At the center of the formation, a small cyclone slowly took shape, and as the energy fluctuations stabilized, it expanded outward until it encompassed the entire slab of Skyvein Ore.
This was no ordinary cyclone. It didn’t disturb the surrounding air at all. Someone standing directly beside it wouldn’t feel the slightest breeze. It almost seemed like an illusion, a silent vortex suspended in space. However, when I placed a chunk of stone into the vortex, it was instantly reduced to fine powder.
As the cyclone gained strength, I felt my anticipation for the upcoming Tribulation of Wind increase, but the effect was muted.
This formation was based on a Heaven-Rank technique I had received from the Li Clan, and my inner world had already absorbed Laws from the Li Clan’s fire seeds. The specific Laws used by this technique were undoubtedly present within those seeds. This formation wasn’t adding anything new. It was merely strengthening Laws that my world had already absorbed.
This was disappointing, but it at least showed me the path forward.
Using the two Heaven-Rank techniques I had received from the Li Clan as templates, I began modifying them to focus on other aspects of wind. I compared them against the Profound-Rank and Earth-Rank wind techniques in my collection, looking for Laws that didn’t overlap with those present in the Li Clan’s seeds.
This took a great deal of trial and error, but my technique analysis ability allowed me to identify each mistake the moment it appeared. After creating four new Heaven-Rank techniques, I began the far more delicate process of converting them into formations.
With each formation I constructed, my anticipation for the upcoming Tribulation of Wind grew. Once the third formation was in place, I finished work on the final two, but I didn’t activate them. Instead, I sent a message to Kan, instructing him to gather our sect once more.
A week later, I pulled our sect into my inner world, then forced a thread of wind qi into both formations simultaneously. Around one formation, the air fell into absolute silence. Around the other, it darkened into a poisonous miasma.
A moment later, my view of my inner world disappeared, blocked by gathering tribulation clouds. The Tribulation of Wind had begun.
It lasted for fifty days. When it was finally over, I looked inside and found every plane except Chang’an swarming with flying snakes and a variety of large insects. Knowing the danger these tribulation creatures represented, I immediately dispatched teams of cultivators to exterminate them.
During the sweep of the Plane of Earth, where I had once met with Mei, one of these teams sent me a report. A portal had appeared atop one of the mountains, but no one emerged from it. Instead, a large wooden crate was pushed through, and the portal closed.
When I inspected this crate, I found it filled with memory orbs. Most of them were those from Emperor Li’s previous lives, but there were also new orbs for Mei, Yan, and everyone else from the Nine Rivers Continent.
On top of these orbs was a short note.
The Li Clan intends to seize your Small World. According to what I have been told, the forces under the direct control of the Saints do not wish for you to be eliminated. However, they intend to limit your potential influence.
They will not permit the emergence of an independent Ancestor-level force. They will not risk the possibility that one of the Saints might lose their Authority.
-Pei LiMei