Shen Can narrowed his eyes as he looked at the cave ceiling.
He had already provided the improved prescription. With a matching improved body-tempering fist technique, the chances of advancement would be higher.
"I'm not stealing your sacrifices for nothing. It's about time you showed some divine spirit."
He first glanced toward the eastern ear cave. Huo Xian was still resting, so he quietly slipped out.
When he returned, he held several thin stone slabs and the Luan Knife used for sacrifices.
"...Middle-grade or lower-grade?"
Shen Can fell into a dilemma.
Three thousand li from the Blazing Flame Tribe stood a tribe called the Shanghuang Tribe, which had several Celestial Meridian Realm martial artists.
The Shanghuang Tribe possessed an incomplete Martial Arts cultivation method. It was said to allow Celestial Meridian Realm cultivation up to the Nine Meridians stage. Their tribe had three body-tempering methods, and the Kui Ox Fist was one of them.
Shanghuang's Kui Ox Fist was far more effective than Blazing Flame's. As for whether it was lower-grade or middle-grade, Shen Can did not know.
He estimated it was most likely lower-grade.
Shen Can was somewhat unwilling to settle for lower-grade. As for upper-grade, he had not gone stupid yet.
The tribespeople might not be able to distinguish between grades, but the results would not lie. If word got out...
Things beyond one's grasp could easily bring a tribe a catastrophe that wiped it out.
After hesitating for a while, Shen Can gripped the knife in his left hand and began carving the stone slabs.
The real reason the inferior-grade Kui Ox Fist had been inferior lay in its missing details.
The palm-sized slabs were very thin. There were only three forms in total, and he used merely five slabs.
Though he used his left hand, after practicing martial arts, he had ample strength. His hand did not shake as he carved.
Once he finished carving, Shen Can headed deeper into the Tribal Ancestral Temple cave.
The Blazing Flame Tribe's ancestral temple contained many god seats. At the center, surrounded by shrines, stood a three-foot-tall wordless shrine.
That shrine did not belong to the founding ancestor of the Blazing Flame Tribe. It represented the human sages who had created the Martial Dao.
Every Tribal Ancestral Temple throughout the Great Wilderness had one.
Why was it wordless? Shen Can figured it was because there had been too many predecessors who created Martial Dao cultivation, and all their names had been lost to time.
"Ancestors, ancient sages, bless me. Bless me, give me some time to grow."
"Please don't mess this up."
Standing outside the god seats, Shen Can bowed, then leaped straight onto the altar.
Using the Luan Knife, he pried open a crack in the wordless shrine.
He had no choice. Looking over the altar, the wordless shrine of the ancient sages was the largest god seat.
Master Huo Xian had said it before: how could ancestors blame their juniors?
It was all for the sake of survival.
Then Shen Can stuffed the fist-technique stone slabs into the crack in the god seat.
"Only if the tribe continues can it offer sacrifices year after year, and you ancestors can keep eating offerings forever. Please don't blame me."
After stepping down from the altar, Shen Can first absolved himself of a little karmic sin unilaterally, then saw that the time was about right.
"Master, something terrible happened!"
"The ancestors cracked!"
The consequences of the ancestors cracking were severe.
In the tribe's three hundred years since its founding, this was the first time the ancestors had cracked.
Even the tribe chief came.
Huo Tang stared at the cracked wordless god seat, his brows tightly furrowed.
The rain had poured without end, and now the ancestors had cracked. It was somewhat inauspicious.
From up close, Shen Can watched the tribe chief. Deep wrinkles were knotted between his brows, while his dark, coarse face bore the marks of long hardship.
"Uncle Huo Xian."
Huo Xian's figure was somewhat stooped. He had guarded the ancestral temple for decades without a single mishap.
Today, though, this was quite the pill to swallow.
Shen Can could see that Huo Xian had been somewhat frightened, and he regretted acting so rashly.
Hearing the words of Huo Tang, the tribe chief, Huo Xian also came back to his senses.
Earlier, the flood had washed up the corpses of people from another tribe, already leaving the tribe unsettled. Now that the Ancestor God Seat had cracked, the unease in everyone's hearts would only intensify.
Coming to his senses, Huo Xian immediately straightened up.
"I discovered last year that the wordless god seat of the ancient sages had begun to crack. I simply never had time to remake it. A-Can only arrived recently and did not know about this."
"I was muddleheaded. I should have remade the god seat for the predecessors long ago."
Seeing Huo Xian about to take all the blame again, Shen Can hurriedly said, "Master, it seems there's... there's something inside."
At his words, everyone's gazes turned once more toward the wordless god seat.
Very soon, the god seat was removed, and several stone slabs emerged from the crack.
Stone hidden inside wood?
What was this?
"This looks like the Kui Ox Fist technique."
"The moves in this fist technique seem a little different from the one we practice."
The stone slabs passed through the hands of Huo Tang, Huo Xian, and several other Mountain Opener realm martial artists. They recognized them at a glance.
Huo Xian stared blankly at the cracked wordless god seat, unsure what he was thinking.
Huo Tang's rough, large hand rubbed over the stone slabs, his gaze impossible to read.
"Practice it."
The other tribespeople were not nearly so reserved. They immediately began practicing.
"It really is different. This opening fist differs slightly from what we practice."
"Hey, hey, I can feel it!"
Every tribesperson present had practiced the Kui Ox Fist for decades. The moment they followed the moves on the stone slabs, they immediately sensed the changes.
Shen Can was actually still worried that he would be exposed. The ancient appearance of those stone slabs was not something that could be forged in a short time.
But then he looked at his own small frame. At one meter eighty-three, he was a short little fellow and the weakest among tribespeople who averaged over two meters tall.
Stone slabs could be made on the spot, but could a fist technique be altered on the spot too?
In Blazing Flame's three hundred years, no one with such talent had ever been born.
Even if he said he had done it now, someone would have to believe him.
After the tribespeople began practicing, Huo Tang's desire to inspect the stone slabs faded.
Could the ancestors really have deliberately hidden them in the god seat all those years ago?
It was not only Huo Tang who had such thoughts. Huo Xian did too. The Beast Hide Scroll passed down by their ancestors contained no record of this.
The wordless god seat had been completed when the tribe was founded. If it had not broken, were the stone tablets containing the martial art meant to remain hidden forever?
"Chief, this fist technique really works. I can feel more of my flesh, bones, and sinews being mobilized. I'm even getting hungry."
"Me too."
"The ancestors have manifested their spirit and bestowed a fist technique."
Inside the eastern ear cave.
Outside the cave, the tribespeople were still practicing the improved fist technique and had not rushed to soak in beast blood.
Inside the cave, Huo Xian repaired the god seat while Shen Can helped hold it up.
"The tribe's predecessors hid the fist technique inside the god seat. Didn't they hide it a little too securely?"
At this point, Huo Tang instead felt that the stone slabs being hidden within the god seat and isolated from the outside world made their somewhat fresh-looking traces seem explainable.
For years, the tribe had been trying to improve the Kui Ox Fist. Any tribesperson with an idea could bring it to the temple keeper.
But there had not been much improvement at all.
Among the tribe's current people, who had the ability to improve it?
Even if they had ideas, they would not dare speak up and alter it, afraid that something might go wrong.
Other than it having been left behind by their forebears, there was no other explanation.
Huo Xian stroked the god seat and said thoughtfully, "I wonder whether this Kui Ox Fist left by the predecessors is better than the Shanghuang Tribe's."
This time, Huo Tang said nothing.
The Shanghuang Tribe was powerful and had a vast hunting range. Sometimes, they came to hunt near the Blazing Flame Tribe.
Both were human tribes. By reason, they ought to support one another. But if reason truly worked, no one would practice martial arts, nor would there be so many tribes great and small.
When Blazing Flame was founded, Shanghuang had already existed for over two hundred years. Perhaps the tribe's founding ancestors had considered this point.
Very soon, Huo Tang walked out of the ear cave and said, "Huo Ning, Huo Yu, Huo Yan, you three stay. Everyone else, disperse."
"This manifestation by the ancestors has protected our tribe. We will surely weather the flood disaster safely."
Huo Ning and the other two were the tribespeople selected this time to soak in beast blood and prepare to advance into the Mountain Opening Realm.
They were all martial artists who had practiced fist techniques for decades. After Huo Ning and the other two practiced for three days, they began soaking in beast blood.
There was no helping it. If delayed further, the beast blood's energy would weaken.
To charge into the Mountain Opening Realm, they needed to borrow the power of beast blood for a final sprint, advancing in one burst of momentum.
The three advanced within the ancestral temple. Shen Can noticed that Huo Yu chose the portion of beast blood without the improved prescription.
The prescription had been improved, and the fist technique had been given. Next, it depended on their luck.
Breaking through was not actually as wonderful as imagined. The three who leaped into the beast blood were like people dropped into boiling stew, their entire bodies scoured scarlet by the beast blood like giant prawns.
According to their individual conditions, each of them would leap from the great cauldron at intervals, perform the Kui Ox Fist, and mobilize the flesh and bones throughout their bodies to absorb the beast blood's energy.
Then they repeated the process.
After watching for half a day, Shen Can lost interest.
Three burly men dangling about naked had nothing worth looking at.
Whenever they practiced the fist technique, their bodies seemed to steam open. Gurgling crimson sweat vapor spilled from within them, filling the entire ancestral temple.
All of that was beast blood energy that could not be absorbed. Before the improvements, even more red sweat vapor would escape.
The three tribespeople undergoing advancement continued on and off for three days. Within the ancestral temple, Shen Can felt several rumbles coming from the mountain.
The Mountain Opening Realm was naturally measured against mountains.
The nearby mountains suffered terribly. Winding cracks split across their slopes, signifying the birth of new Mountain Opening Realm martial artists.
This time, all three tribespeople advanced into the Mountain Opening Realm. The joy of success dispelled the tribe's previously oppressive atmosphere.
The tribe had only thirteen Mountain Opening Realm martial artists, and four of them were elderly. Gaining three prime-aged Mountain Openers at once meant their overall strength had risen by a great deal.
The tribespeople were delighted, and so was Shen Can.
After advancing, the tribespeople howled about going back to the flood banks to fish around some more. Since the ancestors had manifested their spirit, they had to offer ancestral sacrifices.
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