World-Shaking Shock

Between their words, the two saw another mountain ahead.

This mountain was much taller and larger than the tea mountain. Its ridges coiled far into the distance, lush and verdant, with great flocks of birds wheeling and wheeling as they rose and fell.

"This place is Flag Mountain, and there are sweet springs on the summit! What is more, there are quite a few of them—it is the exact right place for me to tend my injuries."

"Yan Nu, we will maneuver against the Zhang Family members right on this mountain, and there will likely be a battle tonight!"

Shen Leling possessed the Water Spirit Physique, and she could smell the scent of spring eyes from several miles away.

Once her true body suffered injury and her source became tainted, she had to devour spring eyes to replenish her own primordial living water.

Calculating the time, she reckoned she had enough to spare. Her first wave of encirclement by the Zhang Family had been virtually wiped out by her, and reorganizing manpower before chasing after her again would not happen too quickly... Besides, that ghost cultivator would certainly avoid fighting at high noon.

Yan Nu looked slightly puzzled. "There's bound to be a battle tonight? How can they find our whereabouts so fast?"

Shen Leling curled her lip and said, "Do they need to ask around to track us?"

"Ghostly entities are most skilled at sensing qi, not to mention that I am injured and left demonic aura all the way; it's very hard to shake them off."

"If we flee to other territories, I fear the Zhang Family will still join forces with other powerful clans, which is why I must find a good place for healing and recover my strength as fast as possible."

"This calamity cannot be avoided! Anyway, my cultivation is gone, and once I deal with that ghost..."

"As for this Zhang Family... I am going to turn their world completely upside down! I'll teach them the true meaning of raising a ruckus!"

The two arrived at the foot of Flag Mountain and spotted a stream, following which they could locate the spring eye.

Yet Shen Leling suddenly stopped, her brows tightly furrowed.

"What? There are monsters here!"

She raised her gaze to scan her surroundings, sensing a dense demonic aura upon the mountain that made no effort to conceal itself; furthermore, this distribution of demonic aura looked more like marked territory.

"This mountain has a monster's cave dwelling, and it keeps many beasts."

Yan Nu felt a bit perplexed. "Eh? How long have we been walking, and we're already running into a monster?"

Shen Leling rubbed her nose. "It is a dog demon, and one that has occupied this place for a long time."

"This is my first time coming to Langya... Since you are a local, have you never heard of any legends about Flag Mountain?"

Yan Nu recalled, "Speaking of the dog demon, I do know one! Grandpa said that sixteen years ago, which was the year before I was born, a dog demon occupied a mountain and settled down there, and many wandering knights went on a campaign against it and all died on the mountain."

"Mhm, it's quieted down in recent years; I've only heard of fierce wolves and wild dogs roaming about, but no one has ever seen that dog demon again."

"So that dog demon was occupying this mountain all along..."

Shen Leling caught the crucial point and could not help pressing further: "Does it not trick people? Does it just eat them outright?"

"That's how it was a few years ago. Passing merchants and folks from various villages were seized and eaten on the spot whenever it caught them," said Yan Nu.

"Tch... Just a wild monster that hasn't refined its Dao! Those are the most annoying. Even though it's only at the Mystical Stage, it has an ungodly amount of dharma power!" Shen Leling knew very well that this sort of monster was quite tricky; high realms could suppress them, but with her current dropped realm, it was going to be very difficult to handle.

She thought for a moment, then suddenly drew a cluster of primordial living water from inside her body, enduring her dizziness and pain to swiftly craft a water talisman and strike it aerially into Yan Nu's body.

Yan Nu looked at her blankly, feeling a pulling force within this stream of water inside him that wanted to fly toward Shen Leling, which then subsided.

"You stay here, and I will go up the mountain alone. If the situation looks bad, I will come back to find you... But if you sense the pulling force from just now, go up and find me yourself," Shen Leling said, feeling dizzy.

Seeing this, Yan Nu showed deep concern. "Let's go up the mountain together instead."

Shen Leling shook her head. "No, a vicious monster like this kills you as easily as drinking water. You stay right here and cultivate properly!"

"The water talisman I planted inside your body is located at your Shencang Acupoint. It can block spells for you and can also absorb True Qi to grow stronger... Although the efficiency of growing stronger through True Qi is very low, it can at least drain your True Qi as fast as possible."

"You channel your True Qi into it, then graze to regroup, and let it suck it dry again... Then graze again..."

"Mn... I don't even know if this will work. I've never heard of anyone cultivating like this; it's too bizarre... Just give it a try!"

When he heard this, Yan Nu declared loudly that it was simple: "Having this water talisman makes things so convenient! Wouldn't I just be able to continuously boost my True Qi simply by eating and drinking?"

Shen Leling said solemnly, "Did you forget what I said? Without Body Tempering, at most you can only unleash twenty years' worth of True Qi in a single strike."

"Blindly boosting your True Qi will only enhance your stamina... If you run into that ghost, you'll just be a nutritional supplement!"

"Fortunately, if your True Qi is incomparably vast, you at least won't have to fear the beast hordes on this mountain. A monster that occupies a place like this is bound to have raised many beasts to wear down martial artists, and you are the one who fears exhaustion the least!"

Yan Nu pursed his lips and said with a wronged expression, "Big Sister, I really don't understand how to temper the body. You've said many terms I don't even know the meaning of..."

Seeing this, Shen Leling gently comforted him, "This isn't because you're slow; it's truly because your foundation is too poor. There are many things I haven't explained clearly to you, so naturally you don't understand."

"It doesn't matter. Once I clear up some time, I will teach you slowly."

"You go on and refine your True Qi properly. I am also quite curious whether a person's True Qi can truly undergo infinite birth, destruction, cycling, and growth."

With that, Shen Leling rode off up the mountain alone, following a stream and penetrating deeper and deeper.

When she encountered rugged terrain, her horse leaped into the air, galloping across the ripples of the waves until it vanished from sight in the blink of an eye.

Seeing Shen Leling depart, Yan Nu first crouched by the stream and drank two mouthfuls of water.

Then he searched all around the riverbanks, digging everywhere, until he finally gathered a massive pile of sheep's grass, stacking it into a mound.

Yan Nu sat squarely on a blue stone, crossed his legs, and began 'cultivating'.

Normally, using the body-tempering method to exhaust his True Qi would take at least an hour.

It would be much faster in combat, but no matter how fast, it couldn't compare to directly channeling his True Qi into the water talisman—that only took three breaths!

That water talisman was located behind his heart. After absorbing the True Qi, it only grew the tiniest fraction stronger, yet Yan Nu's True Qi—comparable to that of a second-rate expert—was instantly wiped out.

It didn't matter. He ate grass to recover, and his Hammer True Qi snapped back to fullness with a start.

Then he silently operated the Great Emperor White Jade Scripture, regrouping the qi vortex. Gradually, all the Hammer True Qi transformed into Yin-Yang Qi Vortexes, even expanding by ten percent.

Calculating the time, the whole process took only a quarter of an hour!

He ate grass again and regrouped again. Repeating this over and over, he grew more and more proficient in the Great Emperor White Jade Scripture, and his True Qi grew ever more formidable.

When Yan Nu set his mind to doing something, he was truly focused and single-minded.

Thus, over the course of an hour, the True Qi inside his body broke and then established, being born and extinguished a full sixteen times!

Every single time, his volume of True Qi would increase by ten percent!

Consequently, in just one short hour, Yan Nu's True Qi multiplied four and a half times.

What concept was that? He had already reached a True Qi volume equivalent to thirty years of ordinary people cultivating exquisite cultivation techniques; now, it was equivalent to a hundred and thirty-five years!

The True Qi inside his body was like a great river or ocean, vast and mighty.

The two qi vortexes in Xuanji and Huagai circulated ceaselessly, resembling the eye of a storm on a rainy, lightning-filled day.

Why was it that in the categorization of a martial artist's realms, second and third-rate levels had True Qi requirements, whereas subsequent stages only cared about the progress of body tempering and no longer demanded a large quantity of True Qi?

Because human lifespan is limited! Without world-shaking fortuitous encounters, who could rely on themselves alone to train up a hundred years of True Qi?

Even with divine techniques capable of shortening this timeframe, being able to train up sixty years of True Qi in a lifetime was already considered an extraordinary internal-school grandmaster.

Many top experts undergoing Three Essences Body Tempering actually only possessed twenty years of cultivation, yet this did not prevent them from becoming top-tier martial artists whose sword qi crossed the horizon and blade qi surged boundlessly.

Normally, for most people, having forty years of cultivation meant they had reached the end of their cultivation path, given that average life expectancy was right there.

Yet at this moment, Yan Nu effortlessly possessed an incomparably profound amount of True Qi—it was absolute world-shaking shock.

And this was not even the end of it!

This process of breaking and establishing, of birth, destruction, and growth, became all the more terrifying the further along one went.

Two hours passed, and Yan Nu's True Qi was already twenty-one times its original amount.

Three hours passed—ninety-seven times!

This was equivalent to two thousand nine hundred and ten years of an ordinary person's True Qi! It was as if he had started practicing back in the era of Shen Nong!

Under the nourishment of Yan Nu's continuous True Qi infusion, the water talisman grew larger and larger.

Of course, this talisman was incompatible in affinity with True Qi; it processed it much like refining and absorbing essence energy, making its efficiency at growing through this method extremely low.

However, it couldn't withstand the fact that Yan Nu's volume was simply too colossal!

For three hours, who knew how much True Qi had been poured into it? It forcibly nurtured and expanded the water talisman over a dozen times, causing it to transform from its original transparent hue into a cyan water talisman.

Yan Nu could not perceive its color, but all of a sudden, he felt it begin to pulse, as if it wanted to break free and detach itself from within his body.

A pulling force tugged toward the direction of the mountain summit.

"Mn? Big Sister is calling me." Yan Nu immediately halted his 'cultivation'.

By now, night had fallen. Yan Nu opened his eyes, a brilliant, piercing light flashing in his gaze.

He sprang up, landing on the ground with a heavy thud, and the blue stone behind him shattered into pieces as a shockwave kicked up billows of dust and smoke.

This was what happened when he inadvertently released True Qi and stomped things to pieces...

He glanced back once, then followed the stream upward toward the upper reaches.

"Bang, bang, bang!"

He ran like flying, moving at extreme speed. The soles of his feet vibrated out ripples of air, stamping out massive craters in the ground as dirt flew and gravel scattered everywhere.

Yan Nu understood movement techniques not at all; he was simply bounding with brute force, leaping ten yards with every single step and tracing out consecutive parabolic arcs.

"With so much True Qi, even if I only use one percent each time, I can keep going for a long time."

Yan Nu kept Shen Leling's repeated instructions firmly in mind: without undergoing Primordial Body Tempering, he must never unleash more than twenty years of True Qi in a single burst, for that would be tantamount to self-detonation.

Therefore, with every step, he only consumed that exact amount, not daring to mobilize any more for fear of killing himself out of ignorance of martial arts.

Yet even so, the consumption of every single step was as terrifying as the explosion of a lifetime's cultivation from ordinary people!

p.s.: Apologies.