Library

The bus rolled to a stop and started again. On the horizon, amid the towering buildings, a cluster of dark green shadows gradually grew larger.

As they drew closer, a faint coolness brushed against him, like morning dew falling upon his brow, jolting his spirits awake.

Looking up, he saw a colossal verdant tree, so wide that ten people could barely encircle it and several hundred meters tall, standing amid the city of steel and concrete.

Its branches and leaves were luxuriant beyond measure, covering several kilometers around it. Fist-sized kingfishers hopped through the foliage, trains threaded through its branches, and humanity and nature blended in perfect harmony.

One of the Immortal Sect's great instruments, a carrier of the Central Array Spirit Computer—the third-rank Banyan City offshoot of the Sacred Tree Covering the Sky Banyan.

"This is the closest place to a spirit vein. I'm so jealous."

"If only my family owned an apartment here."

"In your dreams. Only immortal cultivators or those who have rendered great service can settle here, and it can only be passed down for three generations at most."

The people on the bus chatted, their envy plain to see.

Jiang Ding felt the same. If his mother and Jiang Yuan could live here, their health would surely improve greatly. The same went for their martial arts progress; over the years, their lifespans might even be extended by seven or eight years.

"Rongcheng Library has arrived. Please exit through the rear door..."

Jiang Ding followed the crowd off the bus, queued up, swiped his ID card, and entered the library.

The first thing he saw was row upon row of towering bookshelves. All kinds of books were arranged neatly, their materials varied: beast hide, jade slips, Stone Tablets, and all manner of other carriers. Most had been seized during wars beyond the realm, and some cultivation techniques and secret arts had special requirements for their recording mediums.

The scent of books permeated the air. It was as though he had stepped into a world of knowledge.

Jiang Ding did not linger over the sight. He walked straight to the computer reading room, swiped his ID card, and took a seat.

Ding!

"Your Library Points: 325."

This was the result of two weeks' worth of specimens from the otherworld general store.

Huang Deyou truly was an old hand. In only two short weeks, he had purchased more than four thousand specimens: roadside flowers and grasses, worthless medicinal herbs, wheat seedlings from the fields.

Unfortunately, even in another world, not every specimen was a new species unrecorded by the Immortal Sect Library. Only a little over three hundred had been useful.

From here on, things would become harder. It was no longer a matter of finding useful plants growing casually by the roadside; they would have to search deliberately in the countryside and mountains.

After discussing it with Huang Deyou, they had raised the purchase price for each specimen to ten copper coins. Their silver reserves were plummeting at Extreme Speed, and they could now only barely keep things afloat.

His fingers clacked across the keyboard.

"Hundred Pace Flying Sword."

Thud!

As usual, a dialog box with a red cross popped up: dangerous knowledge, minors prohibited from access.

Jiang Ding took out his phone, lowered his voice, and called Lin Wanqiu.

"Mom! I have an application here that needs your approval."

"Dangerous? It's not dangerous. I'm just curious, broadening my horizons. It'll help with martial arts..."

Thanks to the good impression Jiang Ding had built up over the years, Lin Wanqiu hesitated for a moment before finally tapping approve on the Immortal Sect Library app for her ward to access "Hundred Pace Flying Sword-related" materials.

After hanging up, he refreshed the page. A huge list of cultivation techniques and secret arts related to the Hundred Pace Flying Sword appeared. Even on page ninety-nine, there was still no end in sight.

Song Family Hundred Pace Flying Sword, Blood Refinement Hundred Pace Flying Sword, Thunderbolt Hundred Pace Flying Sword...

Jiang Ding opened the abstract of Blood Refinement Hundred Pace Flying Sword, by Hu Yuan and Zhang Bing, Spirit Veil University, Cultivator's Gazette, September 6, 11115.

"Hundred Pace Flying Sword: a palm-sized sword-shaped Semi-magical Artifact used by mortal martial artists. Using Spiritual Metal as the sword embryo, nourishing it with one's own blood essence and a large quantity of medicinal herbs aged several decades for around ten years allows it to gain spirituality and be wielded with flexibility. It is quite an ingenious concept... often at the price of severing one's future path... today, we improved it... the innovation lies in..."

Severing one's future path!

Jiang Ding's heart shook. He hurriedly opened the full paper, more than a hundred pages and over a hundred thousand words long, and began reading closely.

Several hours later, he rubbed his brow.

He had roughly read through the paper. There were many parts he could not understand, but he now knew the general idea.

Hundred Pace Flying Sword!

It was an unorthodox secret method created by wise mortal martial artists who envied immortal cultivators' ability to command magical artifacts. They used Spiritual Metal as an embryo and, over long years, watered the sword embryo with great medicines and blood essence, thereby allowing themselves to wield flying swords while still mortal.

This was a foolish act of chasing quick gains and severing one's future path.

Blood essence was the foundation of a person.

Even the blood essence of the strongest martial artist was limited. Excessive consumption of it was no different from suicide. Even cautious use would inevitably damage the body's foundation, making further progress in martial arts nearly impossible.

This was especially true for young martial artists. Losing a single drop of blood essence might take years to recover from.

Its value was not necessarily that great.

But the students in the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs of the Cultivation Departments at various universities had to publish papers. Even if they only worked on scraps and corners, nearly ten thousand years of accumulated work had formed an enormous database of cultivation techniques.

"Could Blood Refinement be the problem with this particular technique?" Jiang Ding opened Thunderbolt Hundred Pace Flying Sword.

It had been written by a doctoral student from Colorful Cloud University. It was originally an inherited secret art of a martial sect from the Vast Blue Sea Minor Realm, seized during an interrealm war. That doctoral student had compiled it, corrected a few errors, and uploaded it to earn Library Points.

He skimmed through it, paying particular attention to the sword-refining section in its general outline.

"The principles are not much different. Both require blood essence to nourish the sword."

"The difference is the addition of a local mineral called thunderstone, which can absorb the bioelectricity of spirit beasts to strengthen the flying sword and grant it a thunder attribute, making it faster and sharper."

Unwilling to give up, Jiang Ding opened another book.

"Song Family Hundred Pace Flying Sword, seized during the Yellow Sand Minor Realm war. During sword refinement, it adds the attribute of a 'clan artifact,' allowing it to be inherited and refined by descendants. Outsiders cannot use it... Useless."

The next one, and the next, and the one after that...

Jiang Ding read through an entire page, then randomly sampled dozens more from later pages. There were all kinds, with all kinds of attributes and unorthodox techniques, but none could escape the most fundamental core—blood essence, blood essence continuously nourishing the sword for at least ten years.

Other people's methods were completely useless.

"It seems that nourishing it with one's own blood essence is the most basic foundation of the Hundred Pace Flying Sword. All its flourishing branches are built upon this point."

Jiang Ding pondered inwardly, yet he did not lose hope. His thoughts gradually spread outward.

"Is there anything that challenges the underlying principle, that turns the impossible into possible?"

"There is!"

An answer almost immediately surfaced in his mind.

"A sufficiently powerful cultivation technique, such as the Sixty-eighth Set of Eagle's Takeoff Sword Art in relation to a Dao Body Prototype."

With his train of thought settled, Jiang Ding's spirits rose. He moved the mouse to the filter menu and selected the highest grade.

"<Great Sun Sword Scripture—Seed Sword Refining Technique>, Zhang Junsheng, Hu Lin, Pure Breeze University, Cultivator's Gazette, July 1, 10823."

The Immortal Sect broadly divided cultivation techniques into four categories: scriptures, classics, methods, and arts. Due to the Immortal Sect's First Law, anyone could cultivate the Immortal Sect's strongest techniques.

But the overwhelming majority of people would not do so.

For matched against their grade was terrifying difficulty. Without the support of peerless heavenly talent and top-tier resources and treasures, they could not be cultivated.

Those who forced themselves to cultivate them were lucky if they made no progress for their entire lives. Dying from Qi Deviation was the norm.

Jiang Ding rested his mouse over it, hesitating for a moment.

Great Sun Sword Scripture!

It was famous even in history textbooks, the sect-defending cultivation technique of the Great Sun Sword Pavilion, a great sect beyond the realm.

The Great Sun Sword Pavilion had once ranked among the Nine Outer Immortal Sects. During the Immortal Sect's Third Interrealm War more than three thousand years ago, it had been the primary enemy. At the height of its strength, a million Great Sun Sword Cultivators had invaded Blue Star, occupying more than ninety-five percent of the planet's land area. All the Law-Breaking Immortal Gold produced on the entire planet had been theirs to take as they pleased.

During that period, the vast majority of Blue Star's cultivators and mortals had become mining slaves extracting Law-Breaking Immortal Gold. The population had plummeted by more than fifty percent. More than ten billion people had worked themselves to death in endless mining, their white bones filling the mine shafts.

Later, the Forbidden Nuclear Weapon—Immortal-Slaying—burst into existence. In a single battle, it killed the Great Sun Sword Pavilion's Void Refinement patriarch. The Immortal Sect entered its counteroffensive phase, using massive quantities of nuclear weapons to raze the Great Sun Sword Pavilion's mountain gate to the ground. Even now, its former location remained a death zone, and its sect's minor realm was nearly biologically extinct.

The Great Sun Sword Pavilion's sect-defending ultimate art, the Great Sun Sword Scripture, had been partially seized in that war. Over the past three thousand years, experts and scholars had conducted countless studies on it, with fruitful results. A great many civilian and military technologies had been born from them.

<Great Sun Sword Scripture—Seed Sword Refining Technique> was one such result, and one inclined toward analyzing the original work.

It was a typical result that was "valuable but useless," because the Immortal Sect fought through combined land, sea, air, and space operations with tanks, warships, Aerospace Aircraft Carriers, drones, fighter jets, and the like. To most people, combat based on clashing with cold weapons was simply too primitive.

Looking farther down, however, the entries were all cultivation techniques and secret arts with Hundred Pace Flying Sword suffixes. They resembled the earlier Song Family Hundred Pace Flying Sword and the like, with no breakthrough research among them. They were the lowest rank among "scriptures, classics, methods, and arts," barely qualifying as arts.

He opened the abstract.

What met his eyes was no longer Chinese characters, but a special script that somewhat resembled Chinese characters while being more twisted and unrestrained, seemingly changing at any moment.

Spiritual Script. Compared to Chinese characters, it could convey more information in a single character and was more precise. It was foundational material in Immortal Sect language classes.

"...use Supreme Clarity Divine Iron as the embryo, Law-Breaking Immortal Gold as the bones, take a drop of blood essence as the spirit, melt and gather the Essence of the Great Sun, temper it with heartfire for a hundred days, turn mortal into immortal, and forge a supreme immortal foundation..."

Just as expected.

Jiang Ding drew in a light breath.

A Scripture-grade Cultivation Technique truly possessed the power to turn decay into magic, even if this was only a method-grade subchapter.

Then he saw the words "Law-Breaking Immortal Gold," and his heart clenched.

Blue Star was indeed home to rich deposits of Law-Breaking Immortal Gold, but that did not mean it was common!

In truth, only a small number of Nascent Soul Cultivators who had rendered great service could apply for barely enough material to forge a single magical treasure, and even then, it was merely a tiny amount used as the finishing touch.

Nor was that all. When receiving Law-Breaking Immortal Gold, they also had to swear a Great Dao oath that they would not sell it to Outer Realm Cultivators. If they fell or died of old age, the magical treasure would be reclaimed by the Immortal Sect, while compensation would be given to their descendants.

Yet even under such harsh conditions, the Nascent Soul Cultivators applying each year still filled every available slot, without the slightest hesitation.

Because this immortal gold was simply too powerful!

It inherently possessed the Law-Breaking Attribute. Shields, spells, formations—before a law-breaking treasure, they were like paper mache.

How could a mere mortal, not even in the Qi Refining Realm, dare covet it!