Continuing Cultivation

When looking at the weapon and martial arts level of the Five Greats, apart from Wang Chongyang, they were all average. It was not that they were bad, but rather that they were not astonishing enough.

Hong Qi's Dog Beating Staff Technique was praised to the heavens, but whether it was Xiao Feng or Hong Qi himself, they both relied on the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms to conquer the world.

More often than not, the Dog Beating Staff Technique was merely a symbol of the beggar clan leader.

Although Huang Yaoshi created the Falling Blossom Sword himself, what he used to gallop across the pugilistic world was the Finger Flicking Divine Skill.

Ouyang Feng's Spirit Snake Staff Technique was no less inferior to the Dog Beating Staff, and there were also two venomous snakes hidden inside the iron staff, but compared to the Toad Skill, it was not worth mentioning.

As for Duan Zhixing's weapon, Wang Ming did not know it.

Combining this information, Wang Ming felt that compared to them in terms of weaponry, he had absolutely nothing to fear.

Whether it was the Illusion Sword, the Heavy Swordplay, or the Nine Swords of Dugu, they could all give him the confidence to fear no one.

However, when it came to unarmed martial arts, Wang Ming felt somewhat at a loss.

Wang Ming recalled all of his martial arts and discovered that he had never practiced any unarmed martial arts at all. Whenever he fought others bare-handed, he had always relied on having superior internal energy to forcibly shock and injure his opponents.

If he was bullying weaklings, it did not matter, but when fighting a master, if he lacked a sword in his hand, his basic combat effectiveness would drop by half.

Therefore, Wang Ming decided to practice an unarmed martial art. After searching around, only the Nine Yin Divine Claw and the Heart-Shattering Palm from the Nine Yin Manual caught his eye.

Although he had previously exchanged the Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palms with Hong Qi in a tacit understanding, it was not complete.

It was fine to fight ordinary pugilists, but using it to contend with masters at the level of the Five Greats still fell short.

Incomplete martial arts had flaws and could easily be exploited by masters at the vulnerable points of the incomplete moves.

Although these two martial arts were recorded in the lower volume of the Nine Yin Manual, they were actually not martial arts created by Huang Shang himself.

These were the martial arts of Huang Shang's enemies from his early years. His family members had perished at the hands of these two martial arts, leaving a deep impression on Huang Shang.

Back then, Huang Shang read through all five thousand four hundred and eighty-one volumes of the Daoist Canon of Longevity, and after pondering for over forty years, he finally figured out martial arts capable of cracking the moves of various schools and sects. The marvelous techniques contained within were naturally extraordinary, yet they were a bit too orthodox and moderate.

That meant their lethality would be slightly restrained, since the core ideology of Daoism was detachment and longevity.

The ones with the most lethal force in the Nine Yin Manual were the White Python Whip Technique, the Nine Yin White Bone Claw, and the Heart-Shattering Palm. These were originally the martial arts of Demon Cult elders, and the pursuit of these martial arts was not detachment and longevity, but the fastest and simplest way to kill people.

The fact that Huang Shang, a grandmaster of martial arts, kept these three martial arts in the scrolls was enough to show their value.

There were two versions of this Nine Yin Claw technique. One was the original Nine Yin White Bone Claw used by Huang Shang's enemies, and the other was the Nine Yin Divine Claw, also known as the Bone-Shattering Divine Claw, which was a demon-modified cultivation method synthesized with Huang Shang's own martial arts insights.

In the original plot, Yang Guo's descendant, the Yellow Shirt Girl, had used the Bone-Shattering Divine Claw and resolved Zhou Zhiruo as if she were bullying an elementary school student.

Did that mean the Nine Yin Divine Claw was even more formidable?

Actually, that was not the case.

If the gap between the Nine Yin White Bone Claw and the Nine Yin Divine Claw was truly that huge, then Huang Shang would have to be out of his mind to still leave the Nine Yin White Bone Claw in the scriptures.

Zhou Zhiruo was defeated so quickly inherently because she took the shortcut version, and naturally her foundation was not solid.

Furthermore,

the Yellow Shirt Girl had practiced the supreme martial arts manual since childhood in the Ancient Tomb, coupled with having an official cheating external aid—the Cold Jade Bed.

This battle record was completely normal.

After carefully studying these two kinds of kung fu, Wang Ming's feeling was this:

Regarding the efficiency of killing enemies, the Nine Yin White Bone Claw was still more powerful. Its moves were extremely sinister, vicious, and carried venom. To use Huang Shang's original words from the scriptures—killing people like grass without hearing a sound.

The Nine Yin Divine Claw, on the other hand, had the shadow and charm of Daoism in every single move. Each retraction and release, each opening and closing, conformed to the principles of the Great Dao of martial arts.

Simply put, the Nine Yin White Bone Claw indeed had high damage, but it would damage the practitioner's body.

The original text in the book recorded: The White Bone Claw Practice Formula says: Suspended above the white bone, transforming into two bones. Suspended in nine acupoints, captured in the left and right hands. Combining into a yin pearl, absorbing yin and absorbing the essence ghosts...

One could figure it out just by giving it a thought: practicing kung fu in this manner would naturally cause the fingertips to become tainted with corpse poison. Although the damage was increased, a large amount of toxins would be ingested into the human body. Ordinary people would undoubtedly die. Although this world possessed internal energy capable of suppressing toxins, as the intake increased, it would sooner or later spiral out of control.

Practicing to the end, he feared that instead of dominating the pugilistic world, he would be meeting his maker early.

Mei Chaofeng did not understand Daoist terminology and also lacked the internal energy of the upper volume of the Nine Yin Manual, so she could only choose hard external training, working from the outside in.

As for Zhou Zhiruo, her internal energy was weak, and she was eager for quick success.

It was also a move of last resort.

Then how would Wang Ming choose?

An adult would naturally want both! Only children make choices.

Since his internal energy was already not low, why bother playing with the shortcut cultivation method of the Nine Yin White Bone Claw?

Going straight for the Nine Yin Divine Claw was actually faster than the Nine Yin White Bone Claw.

This was the benefit of having ample internal energy.

Once he learned the Nine Yin Divine Claw, it was not as if he could not use the ruthless moves of the Nine Yin White Bone.

It was just that his fingernails would not be tainted with venom, which would cause the lethality to decrease somewhat.

But these things did not matter; good health was better than anything else.

Besides, asking Wang Ming to go to a graveyard to find corpses to practice kung fu was something he resisted.

His thoughts had drifted far; the most important thing right now was to learn this martial art.

The Nine Yin White Bone Claw was a quick-success martial art, so the procedures were quite complicated, involving graveyards, coffin lids, bat blood, and arsenic.

The procedure for the Nine Yin Divine Claw was quite simple. He just needed to clear a fixed set of meridians and acupoints, and it would be done. However, the prerequisite was that he had to possess acquired-level internal energy.

In half a month's time, Wang Ming unblocked these meridians.

The claws of the Nine Yin Divine Claw could pierce a skull without shattering it. The center of the claw possessed a powerful suction force to retrieve objects from afar or absorb the cultivation of others, and the claw fingers possessed a powerful piercing force to injure people from a distance. Each retraction and release, each opening and closing, conformed to the principles of the Great Dao of martial arts.

As for this absorbing of others' cultivation!

It was not like the North Darkness Divine Skill which could increase the user's cultivation base, but rather it increased the user's attacking power.

Simply speaking, the North Darkness Divine Skill permanently stored the absorbed cultivation within the dantian to achieve the purpose of boosting one's cultivation.

The Nine Yin Divine Claw temporarily concentrated the absorbed cultivation onto the palms, making one's own damage much stronger.

This was a rather rogue attribute. Against those who cultivated protective divine skills, it would directly convert their protective true qi into his own.

Fighting people was also quite rogue; the longer the fight dragged on, the more ferocious the damage became. It was simply an unmatched cultivation method for protracted warfare.

He originally wanted to continue cultivating the Heart-Shattering Palm.

However, after careful study, he discovered that this martial art was completely redundant.

Although this palm was named "Heart-Shattering," anyone struck by it would have their internal organs thoroughly shattered while their bones remained unbroken.

Aside from making people die a miserable death, it had no practical benefits, and moreover, it consumed a great deal of internal energy.

Without using any palm techniques, Wang Ming could use an amount of internal energy similar to the Heart-Shattering Palm to directly cave a person's chest inward.

After practicing it, apart from not breaking bones, it was only good for putting on airs to scare people, and the moves had a little bit of use.

Therefore, Wang Ming gave up on it. Furthermore, this was also a heterodox cultivation method that caused a certain degree of damage to bodily functions.

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