Advancing to Houtian, First Among the Princes!

He recalled a line from a Buddhist scripture: "The vajra glares in anger to subdue the four demons; the bodhisattva lowers his eyes in compassion for the six realms."

The vajra was a wrathful aspect of the Buddha, while the Wisdom King was a wrathful incarnation of the Buddha.

The vajra was merely a guardian of the Dharma, but the Wisdom King was a Tathagata.

The Wisdom King's wrath left the foundation unmoved and the origin undamaged. It practiced great compassion through great wrath, combining hardness and softness while cultivating both the inner and outer self.

The problem with the Vajra Skill was that it cultivated only the body, not the mind.

But true Buddhist supreme arts had always cultivated body and mind together.

If he could incorporate the flexible transformations of the Dragon's Roar Iron Cloth Shirt and then use an internal cultivation method to counter the danger of true qi backlash, this art could be elevated from vajra to Wisdom King!

It would possess both the vajra's indestructible true body and the Wisdom King's wisdom and compassion.

The eminent monk from the Western Regions had not completed this path.

But Chen Du had both the comprehension and the accumulated knowledge to finish it for him.

Time trickled by. The sun moved from the eastern window to the western one, then sank below the palace walls.

Chen Du sat cross-legged and motionless, his eyes shut and his face calm, but the changes taking place in his mind were enough to overturn rivers and seas.

Thirty-six true qi circulation routes were mapped out anew,

The timing of seventeen points in the circulation was refined to the finest degree,

And for thirteen critical points that had originally needed to be forced open, he found ingenious ways around them.

Under his calculations, the once fierce and overbearing Vajra Skill gradually became balanced and serene, hard and soft complementing each other.

He simulated the circulation through the new meridian routes in his mind again and again. Each simulation eliminated flawed approaches and retained the optimal solution before moving on to the next round of refinement!

When he finally opened his eyes, the starlight filling the sky spilled through the broken window and fell on his shoulders.

Deep in his consciousness, a new notification shone with dazzling brilliance:

[You read the Houtian pinnacle martial arts manual "Vajra Skill." After 739 rounds of deduction and reconstruction, you comprehended the Wisdom King Vajra Art!]

[Wisdom King Vajra Art: Derived through heaven-defying comprehension and deduction from the Houtian pinnacle martial art "Vajra Skill." The Immovable Wisdom King is the Buddha's wrathful incarnation, severing afflictions with great wrath and protecting all living beings with great steadfastness.

Those who cultivate this art attain vajra indestructibility in both body and mind. Upon mastering it, dark-gold Wisdom King markings appear across the body, with three vajra wheel seals on each arm. Blades and spears cannot pierce it, water and fire cannot harm it, and a hundred poisons cannot touch it.

When true qi circulates, a faint phantom of the Immovable Wisdom King appears behind the practitioner, radiating pressure that drives back all evil and strikes terror into the hearts of demons. This art has surpassed the limits of Houtian martial arts and is called Half-Step Xiantian.]

[Creation of a Half-Step Xiantian martial art detected. Realm barrier loosened!]

[Attempt to break through to a new realm?]

Chen Du took a deep breath and silently spoke a single word in his heart.

"Yes."

The moment those two words fell, the true qi he had accumulated over three years exploded like a lit barrel of gunpowder.

Over those three years, he had read tens of thousands of martial arts manuals and created dozens of superior-grade or higher martial arts. But to suppress his cultivation and stabilize his foundation, he had never deliberately tried to break through.

He was like a man steadily filling a reservoir, storing water without releasing it. The water level kept rising and the dam grew increasingly precarious, but he never opened the gates.

Now, the gates opened.

Surging true qi burst from his dantian and circulated wildly along the newly deduced route of the Wisdom King Vajra Art.

With each circuit, the true qi grew denser, transforming from gas to liquid.

This process should have been excruciatingly painful. Liquefying true qi required compressing all the true qi in the body to its utmost limit, subjecting every meridian and acupoint to unimaginable pressure.

Ordinary first-rate experts attempting to reach Houtian often needed days or even months of seclusion, and their chances of success were less than one in ten.

But Chen Du's body had long since been tempered to incredible toughness by three years of arduous reading and countless martial arts deductions.

The true qi inside him liquefied at a speed visible to the naked eye. One drop, two drops, three drops... More and more liquid true essence gathered in his dantian, each drop containing over ten times as much energy as gaseous true qi.

He did not know how long the process lasted. Perhaps it was the time it took an incense stick to burn, or perhaps it was an entire night.

When the last wisp of gaseous true qi was compressed into liquid, Chen Du's eyes snapped open.

Dark-gold lines emerged from beneath his skin, a radiance that naturally manifested when his true essence reached its fullest.

The lines traced a profound and mysterious pattern across his body. Each arm bore three vajra wheel seals, while a vertical line ran down his chest to his dantian. It was the totem of the Immovable Wisdom King's divine form!

He sat there as a faint phantom emerged behind him, with three heads, six arms, and a majestic countenance.

Dark-gold flames burned around it. It vanished into his body in a flash, but the pressure it released in that instant made even the night wind outside the hall falter.

Immediately afterward, a deep boom like the tolling of a great bell rang out from within him.

The window frames of Qianchuan Hall shook and rattled, while the roof tiles clattered for quite some time.

The half-dead locust tree by the courtyard wall was shaken by that sigh, shedding its withered leaves all over the ground.

Then, all fell silent.

Chen Du slowly stood. What flowed through his body was no longer true qi, but true essence... Liquefied true qi, its quality raised by an entire level.

He clenched his fist and could clearly feel an unprecedented power surging through his muscles and bones.

If his previous body had been wood, it was now steel.

The Houtian realm!

In three years, he had gone from a scholar with no martial arts whatsoever to a genuine Houtian expert.

The eldest prince had taken sixteen years. His muscles and bones had been shattered seven times, his meridians had suffered reverse flow three times, and he had come back from the brink of death on several occasions. Only after paying a price ordinary people could scarcely imagine had he crossed that threshold.

Chen Du, on the other hand, had crossed it without a single setback, using only a thousand-odd days and nights of arduous reading and deduction.

This was his path. Of the three thousand paths of martial arts, each person took his own.

The eldest prince walked the path of asceticism, battering against the threshold with his body of flesh and blood, attaining vajra only after being covered in scars.

He, Chen Du, walked the path of wisdom, deducing all arts with heaven-defying comprehension and discovering their true essence among piles of old papers.

Neither path was superior to the other; only the price differed.

Chen Du pushed open the doors of Qianchuan Hall and stepped into the courtyard for the first time in three years.

The spring breeze brushed his face, carrying the faint fragrance of apricot blossoms drifting from beyond the palace walls.

The sky was a clear, washed blue. A few swallows skimmed beneath the palace eaves and flew toward the magnificent cluster of halls in the distance.

He lowered his head and looked at his hand. The dark-gold lines on its back had already faded beneath his skin, leaving only a very faint golden trace, like a tattoo that had mostly been washed away.

But as soon as he circulated his art, those Wisdom King markings would reappear, turning his body into a vajra-indestructible form impervious to blades and spears.

With his Houtian cultivation, the Wisdom King Vajra Art, and the dozens of superior martial arts he had comprehended and accumulated over the past three years, his current strength was already enough to crush his eldest brother, who had cultivated arduously for sixteen years.

Chen Du straightened his long robe, its fabric faded from washing. The front was still speckled with dust and impurities forced from his body when he had circulated his art.

He patted down his sleeves, turned, and went back into the hall, sitting down once more among the piles of books.

Sunlight slanted through the broken window, falling directly on the cover of the Vajra Skill manual he had just opened.

He did not close the manual. Instead, he picked up a brush from beside him and wrote four characters in the blank space on the back cover: "Finished reading."

Then he put the manual back in the deepest part of the bookshelf and casually pulled out the next one.