In the blink of an eye, three years passed.
The locust trees in Qianchuan Hall withered and flourished, flourished and withered, through three cycles.
The weeds on the courtyard walls had grown waist-high.
Two old eunuchs who delivered meals had been replaced.
The commander of the patrolling personal guards had changed from Zhou Tiejun to an unfamiliar man surnamed Sun.
At court, the struggle for the throne grew ever fiercer. The followers of Prince Qi and Prince Yan fought openly and in secret, while the eldest prince sat firmly on the fishing platform, and the other princes each chose a side. It was quite a lively scene.
But none of it had anything to do with Qianchuan Hall.
For three years, Chen Du had scarcely set foot outside. He had devoured Qianchuan Hall's tens of thousands of books from beginning to end.
From Buddhist internal skills to Daoist cultivation methods, from sword techniques and saber manuals to fist classics and palm arts, from third-rate martial tricks of the jianghu to supreme martial arts hidden in the imperial palace, he had thumbed through everything Qianchuan Hall possessed until the pages were worn.
His reading speed had reached an astonishing level. An ordinary person would need months to study a thousand-character martial arts manual word by word and sentence by sentence, but he could read it from cover to cover in a quarter of an hour.
More frightening still, he not only read quickly, but also understood everything thoroughly.
In his eyes, every martial art was like a puzzle. He did not need to put it together piece by piece; a single glance showed him the complete picture, and even how it could be improved.
Three years of arduous study finally brought a qualitative transformation today.
Deep in his consciousness, the light that had lain dormant for so long suddenly trembled violently, and a string of notifications poured out like a flood:
[Divine Revelation Reading · Martial Arts Creation experience +1]
[Divine Revelation Reading · Martial Arts Creation experience +1]
[Divine Revelation Reading · Martial Arts Creation experience +1]
[Divine Revelation Reading · Martial Arts Creation experience +1]
[Divine Revelation Reading · Martial Arts Creation experience +1]
[Current progress: Martial Arts Creation Lv6 (61/64) → Martial Arts Creation Lv7 (1/124)]
[Martial Arts Creation upgraded to Lv7. Your comprehension when reading martial arts books has greatly increased. Your ability to create martial arts based on martial arts manuals has greatly increased.]
Chen Du slowly opened his eyes. If his reading comprehension at Martial Arts Creation Lv5 had been a rushing river,
then his comprehension at Lv7 was a boundless ocean.
He no longer needed to open a manual to understand it. With his eyes closed, countless meridian diagrams, true qi pathways, and variations of moves from martial arts would automatically appear in his mind.
This knowledge intertwined and collided in his mind, constantly throwing off new sparks.
Chen Du took a manual from inside his robes. Its pages had yellowed and turned brittle. Rather than putting it on a bookshelf, he had kept it close to his body.
Over the three years, he had opened and closed it countless times. Each time he finished reading it, he would fall silent for a long while before returning it to his robes and waiting for the next opportunity.
In those three years, he had read every top-tier martial arts manual he could find in Qianchuan Hall. This one alone he had left untouched.
He knew his previous level of comprehension was not enough.
The manual's cover bore only two characters: "Vajra Skill."
The name was even plainer than "Iron Cloth Shirt," but Chen Du had long since learned from Qianchuan Hall's book catalog that Vajra Skill was the highest-ranked Houtian martial art in the hall. It could even be called Qianchuan Hall's most treasured possession.
When the third emperor of the Great Sheng Dynasty had personally led a military campaign, he had obtained this guardian art from a thousand-year-old temple in the Western Regions. The temple's abbot was said to have been a genuine Xiantian expert, and this Vajra Skill was the essence of his life's cultivation.
Vajra Skill was ranked at the peak of Houtian, but that was only its rating on paper.
Chen Du had studied the manual countless times and discovered that, in theory, its upper limit was far beyond Houtian.
It had been classified as a Houtian martial art because the eminent monk from the Western Regions who created it had passed away after developing it only as far as the Houtian peak, before he could finish the road ahead.
If the skill could be completed, its upper limit would reach Xiantian, or even higher.
But completing a top-tier Houtian martial art was easier said than done.
Even grandmasters who commanded the winds and clouds of the jianghu might spend their entire lives without managing to alter so much as half a move in a superior martial art.
Creating martial arts was a harder road than cultivation. Cultivation meant following a road paved by those who came before; creation meant opening a road where none existed.
The slightest mistake could cause one's meridians to flow in reverse and ruin all one's martial skills. At worst, one could suffer qi deviation and die on the spot.
But none of this was a problem for Chen Du now.
[Martial Arts Creation Lv7]: comprehension at this level could no longer be described as genius.
Martial arts problems that had troubled countless grandmasters for decades were, in his eyes, merely exercises that required a few extra hours to work through.
Chen Du sat down cross-legged and opened Vajra Skill once more.
Sunlight fell upon him, enveloping his entire body in a faint halo.
The hall was utterly quiet, save for the rustling of pages and his long, steady breathing.
At this moment, Qianchuan Hall looked less like a cold palace where a prince was held under house arrest and more like a quiet room in an ancient temple.
And Chen Du was the ascetic monk who had sat there in austere meditation for years.
From the first page to the last, he read slowly.
It was not because the text was difficult to understand. Quite the opposite: he was working through the martial art at an astonishing speed.
Every character that entered his eyes stirred a thousand ripples in his mind.
Vajra Skill's qi circulation routes unfolded in three dimensions in his mind. With his heaven-defying comprehension, he reordered the vital points that normally needed to be slowly nourished with true qi and found a more efficient sequence for opening them.
Chen Du's eyes grew brighter and brighter. The core of Vajra Skill lay in the word vajra... indestructible and capable of shattering anything.
When the skill was used, true qi filled the limbs and every bone. Skin, flesh, sinew, and bone became as hard as metal and stone, able to block sabers, spears, swords, and halberds from without and resist cold, heat, poison, and malign influences from within.
It was purer and fiercer than Dragon's Roar Iron Cloth Shirt.
When someone who had cultivated Vajra Skill to major completion used it, a pale golden sheen would appear over their entire skin.
They were like a Buddhist guardian vajra descended to earth. Ordinary weapons could not harm them in the slightest; instead, the rebounding force would knock the weapons from their wielders' hands.
But Vajra Skill had a fatal flaw: it had ferocity to spare but lacked flexibility, leaving it vulnerable to martial arts that used softness to overcome hardness.
Moreover, the skill consumed an enormous amount of true qi, so only those with profound internal cultivation could fight for long.
Most importantly, when using Vajra Skill to break through to the Houtian realm, one needed an exceptionally strong will to control the rampaging true qi.
A single mistake would cause the true qi to backlash, severing one's meridians at best and killing one on the spot at worst.
This was probably why the eminent monk from the Western Regions had failed to develop the skill to Xiantian. The ferocity of vajra alone could not take it that far.
Chen Du closed his eyes and went through the entire manual in his mind from beginning to end. Then he began to work it out.
At that moment, the heaven-defying comprehension of Martial Arts Creation Lv7 erupted in full. In his mind, countless pieces of martial arts knowledge shone like stars, and the true qi circulation route of each martial art was a line.