The third-rank strange fish yielded three troughs of beast blood. Shen Can kept one trough, and this time, the only clansmen soaking in it were Uncles Huo Kui and Huo Qi.
During the previous intensive training, Huo Shan had made the greatest progress, Huo Kui came second, and Huo Qi had improved the least.
The tribe's original improved third-rank witch formula had only three ingredients.
After Shen Can's deduction, seven more ingredients had been added.
However, because the fish blood contained the medicinal potency of Mafeisan, Shen Can had added another witch medicine to neutralize it in order to reduce the Mafeisan residue.
In other words, the fish blood actually contained as many as twenty witch-medicine ingredients.
Though the hodgepodge-like witch medicine had reached a state of balance, it was still meant for people to use.
During the deduction process, Shen Can had also obtained a byproduct of the result: the hodgepodge formula seemed capable of stimulating the body's potential.
Of the three, Uncle Huo Qi had already reached the bottleneck where his qi force could no longer increase after the intensive training.
It was the perfect time to test the side effects of the medicine's potency from the deduction results.
For a martial artist to advance from Mountain Opening to Heaven Vein, it was no longer a matter of pure strength. They needed to generate blood qi within their bodies.
Once a thread of blood qi had formed, it meant they had become a Celestial Meridian Realm martial artist.
Cultivation in the Celestial Meridian Realm involved opening the celestial meridians within the body, and that required a genuine Martial Arts cultivation method.
For many years, Huo Tang had only lingered around the first celestial meridian, unable to advance even an inch.
Huo Kui and Huo Qi entered the beast blood, and both immediately let out hissing breaths.
Yet neither of them jumped out. They forcibly endured the agonizing pain of the beast blood scouring their bodies, pressing themselves firmly down into the blood trough.
Huo Tang and Huo Shan were also inside the cave.
The Celestial Meridian Realm was the foundation upon which the tribe stood. A clansman advancing into Heaven Vein was naturally a matter of utmost importance.
Huo Tang had come hoping he could help somehow, but after turning it over and over in his mind, he realized he had no relevant cultivation experience to offer.
The tribe was the same. Things related to Heaven Vein were pitifully scarce.
Everyone had relied entirely on gritting their teeth and enduring.
There was little experience, and cultivation lacked any coherent system. In the past, after hunting and suffering a few injuries, they often failed to recover properly.
Celestial Meridian Realm martial artists sometimes did not even live as long as ordinary clansmen, completely failing to display the life transformation that Martial Dao cultivation was supposed to bring.
Inside the blood trough, the two men had only their heads exposed. Veins bulged across their foreheads, their teeth clenched tight, and hissing never ceased.
Shen Can carefully observed the two clansmen, wary of any unexpected changes.
"Splash!"
Huo Qi was the first to leap from the blood trough. Since he had yet to advance to Heaven Vein, the Kui Ox Fist was still effective.
Everyone made room for Huo Qi to practice his fist technique.
Steaming currents of air rolled off his body, forming a wave of heat above his head.
As he practiced, Huo Qi's fist momentum suddenly weakened, but it soon recovered. He returned to the blood trough once more.
About half an hour later, Huo Kui also leaped out of the blood trough, rolling heat pouring from his entire body.
"Boom!"
When Huo Kui had performed the Kui Ox Fist more than ten times, his steaming body suddenly shuddered, and a surge of dark-red blood qi burst from every pore.
"Success!"
At the sight, Huo Tang clapped his hands and murmured.
"For three hundred years, my Blazing Flame Tribe has finally had a time when two Heaven Vein Warriors stood side by side."
Beside him, Huo Shan shot Shen Can a somewhat resentful glance. He felt that he could have broken through as well, but he quickly came back to himself.
His current accumulation was for the sake of becoming stronger afterward.
After more than a month of intensive martial training, the increase in his qi force had far surpassed that of Huo Kui and Huo Qi. This showed that his talent was somewhat better as well.
In the past, the tribe's simplest wish had been to gain one more Heaven Vein Warrior. Now, Blazing Flame was different. As they pursued Heaven Vein Warriors, they looked further ahead.
After Huo Kui broke through, Huo Tang immediately called him to another cave, leaving Huo Qi enough space.
However, good fortune did not favor Blazing Flame again.
Huo Qi soaked in beast blood four times in succession, yet failed to generate blood qi with the blood's savagery. Instead, he became so weak that he nearly sank beneath the blood trough.
Huo Shan reacted swiftly and dragged him out of the trough.
"Ah!"
Huo Qi let out a miserable scream. His whole body convulsed, blood spots surfaced over his skin, and his hands began clawing wildly.
Huo Qi struggled fiercely, flinging and kicking his limbs without order. In one stroke, he kicked Huo Shan away.
His entire body was scarlet, only lacking the curled-up posture to resemble a cooked shrimp.
Huo Shan pressed down on him again.
"Hold him down!"
Shen Can pulled a rough, pockmarked pill from his clothes and stuffed it into Huo Qi's mouth.
Huo Shan held him down for nearly half an hour before Huo Qi's thrashing body gradually relaxed, the flushed red fading little by little.
He looked utterly drained, sweat pooling beneath him into a small puddle.
Shen Can examined Huo Qi. "Is your body numb?"
Huo Qi nodded and answered hoarsely, "I feel stabbing pain all over, numbness in both arms, and weakness in my legs."
"Uncle, stay in the cave beside the ancestral temple for the next few days. I need to gain a comprehensive understanding of your condition."
Huo Qi glanced at Shen Can and suddenly felt a chill run down his back.
"Rest easy, Uncle. You're contributing to Blazing Flame. It's not as if I would harm you."
Huo Qi licked the blood from the corner of his mouth. He believed A-Can would not harm him, but he was still a little afraid.
Shen Can swiftly took a Beast Hide Scroll from his ear hole and began recording.
"After resting for a few days, Uncle, you must continue practicing martial arts. Uncle Huo Shan, the same goes for you. Keep going until you feel your qi force no longer increasing."
Huo Tang, who had hurried over, was relieved to see that Huo Qi was all right.
On the contrary, he did not think much of Huo Qi being injured while attempting a breakthrough.
With such a weak Martial Arts Legacy, every step was essentially an experiment.
And how could experiments not come at a price?
"A-Can, how should this beast blood be used?"
After all, Shen Can had still kept one trough of beast blood unused.
"The two used troughs can be left for the younger generation. As for the unused trough, naturally it will be left for the chieftain and Uncle Huo Kui to mix into their meals."
Shen Can answered without even thinking.
Martial Dao cultivation rose from the bottom up. There was no castle in the air that could leap straight to the third rank without passing through the first and second ranks.
The Blazing Flame Tribe's foundation was actually extremely poor, so poor that ordinary clansmen and first-, second-, and third-rank martial artists had all advanced through sheer luck.
This was practically a shared failing among tribes with weak foundations.
But ever since they had accepted resources from the outside tribes and paired them with the Superior Kui Ox Fist, the tribe's Martial Dao had broken free of the path of lucky advancement and achieved meat-fueled advancement.
They had taken out several times more meat than usual for martial training, increasing the tribe's number of martial artists in a short time. But this kind of Martial Dao development was severely deformed; even eating tomorrow's grain today was not enough to describe it.
A true Martial Dao system should be built upon a vast population of clansmen, producing sufficient numbers of Stone Splitter Martial Artists.
From the Stone Splitter Realm, Mountain Opening martial artists would emerge; from Mountain Opening, Heaven Vein Warriors would emerge, forming a pyramid.
Yet a vast clansman population could not be achieved in a short time. It just so happened that the tribe had hunted a third-rank desolate beast and had this beast blood left over.
Shen Can intended to use the beast blood remaining from the breakthroughs to make up for the weakness in the clansmen's Martial Dao, nourishing everyone from the roots and properly laying the foundation for Martial Dao cultivation.
Once the clansmen's physiques grew stronger, they would have more children, and those children would possess better constitutions as well.
On one side, they would use external aid to raise the tribe's Martial Dao cultivation ceiling; on the other, they would use part of their resources to make up for the clansmen's lack of foundation. They would pursue both approaches at once.
A few days later, inside the ancestral temple.
Several figures gathered around the fire pit.
"Chieftain, we can't keep sitting here and eating through everything," Elder Huo Yu said.
Another elder, Huo Yun, continued, "I've already arranged for clansmen to open farmland in good locations outside the city, but the millet seedlings will still need several months to mature."
"Didn't we settle our strategy long ago? The tribe only needs to proceed step by step. The tribe's true path to survival lies outside the tribe."
With another Heaven Vein Warrior in the tribe, and the number of other martial artists visibly increasing as well,
Huo Tang felt increasingly confident.
"There are still too few clansmen. According to what we discussed before, we can take in a small number of displaced outsiders."
Everyone nodded. To the elders, more clansmen meant a stronger tribe.
But there had to be limits to taking in displaced outsiders. They could accept young and able-bodied people, but not too many, or it would be difficult for them to integrate into the tribe.
"In the short term, our tribe's living supplies must still come from outside."
The tribes nearby had been stripped clean, but plague ran rampant through the mountains and forests, and they had yet to explore farther places.
"With Huo Kui guarding the tribe, I can lead a team out next."
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