Upon reaching perfection in the Circulation Realm, with fifty-four meridians, he would gain the strength of another 4,320 circuits-over eight hundred thousand jin of tremendous force!
However, the royal family possessed the Eastern Wasteland Scripture, the Great Yu First Meridian-Opening Art, which could open sixty-two meridians. The Heavenly Circuit power from those eight additional meridians amounted to only around six hundred thousand jin of extra strength.
But this was not Li Hao's limit.
The Yin Meridian alone equaled ten meridians, corresponding to 2,480 circuits-nearly five hundred thousand jin!
Moreover, the Dragon River Divine Meridian was not the only Meridian Opening art Li Hao cultivated. The Nine Revolutions Star Art was also a Meridian Opening art, and he had three other mid-to-high-grade Meridian Opening arts, along with several low-grade ones.
It was just that the low-grade Meridian Opening arts opened only the easiest major meridians, all of which were covered by the mid-to-high-grade Meridian Opening arts, rendering them useless.
But the Nine Revolutions Star Art and the three mid-to-high-grade Meridian Opening arts allowed Li Hao to open major meridians untouched by the Dragon River Divine Meridian. Thus, he now had sixty-nine meridians open!
He had already surpassed the number opened by the Imperial Clan's Eastern Wasteland Scripture!
Li Hao was not satisfied with stopping there. Now, he intended to rely on his insights into the physical body to derive the fourth level of the Primordial Beginning Art and break past the Profound Passage Body!
The opening section gathers the yin and yang forces of heaven and earth. The second level draws on the stars of the heavens, and the third on the hidden meridian that is difficult to detect within the human body. For the fourth level, I hope to open the Yang Meridian and unite the yin and yang meridians!
Li Hao's idea was no flight of fancy. With his fifth-stage insights into the Path of the Physical Body, he already counted as half a grandmaster in Body Refining.
What was a grandmaster? Someone capable of creating martial arts and founding a school!
Li Hao did not know how the original fourth level of the Primordial Beginning Art was cultivated, nor did he need to know. The Li Family had failed to collect the complete text after so many years; it had most likely been destroyed long ago, becoming dust in history.
Since that was the case, he would write a new chapter for this top-tier Body-Tempering Art!
He would let this radiant pearl gather dust no longer!
Several days later.
Beside Blackwater Demon Lake.
Li Hao sat outside the fishing platform when inspiration suddenly struck. His blood surged, and his bones began vibrating beneath his skin. Energy raced back and forth through the sixty-nine major meridians in his body. Finally, a vast surge of power rushed to the crown of his head, as though it would crush his brain apart!
This was an extremely dangerous undertaking, but Li Hao's control over his body had long since reached a microscopic level. He could even fold his ears shut at will. Every inch of his bones was as flexible as a finger, and he could control each one to exert force!
A boom rang out. His brain seemed to quake, and waves of swelling pain washed over him.
Li Hao gritted his teeth and endured until that surge of power suddenly found an outlet, as though discovering a breach. At last, it rushed out, then returned to his body through the other end of the opening, forming a circuit!
Brilliant light shone in Li Hao's eyes. He was thrilled and excited.
At last, he had done it!
The Yin Meridian was a wandering meridian. At different times, it could appear anywhere in the body, making it extremely difficult to find and master. That was why it was called the Profound Meridian: elusive as the shadowy netherworld.
The Yang Meridian, however, was fixed in place, inside the skull.
Yet compared with the Yin Meridian, the Yang Meridian was actually far more dangerous. No one dared attempt it. If opening it failed, the mildest outcome was mental impairment and disability; at worst, the skull would burst, resulting in death!
Although one meridian equaled ten, ninety-nine percent of people would never choose to take such an enormous risk merely to gain another ten meridians' worth of power.
Because practically everyone who attempted it had failed.
Only certain Martial Dao madmen or Peerless Prodigies would persist in such insanity!
Now that the Yang Meridian had been opened, Li Hao immediately sensed that the Profound Meridian seemed to have found an anchor. It no longer drifted about, but gradually approached the Yang Meridian, twining around it.
Yin and yang unite. I shall call the fourth level Yin Yang... pfft, Flawless Body!
Li Hao summoned his panel. As his thoughts shifted, the level beside the Primordial Beginning Art actually jumped to the fourth level, and its name was indeed Flawless Body, minor mastery!
Li Hao immediately mobilized the yin and yang meridians, repeatedly circulating and channeling the power within his body, familiarizing himself with them over and over.
Soon, as yin and yang entwined, a peculiar vortex force faintly emerged.
Through that vortex, Li Hao seemed to glimpse a ray of golden light inside his skull.
He tried to reach it with his power, only to find it impossibly distant, beyond his reach.
They say the human body has a total of 108 major meridians. If I opened all of them, perhaps... I could reach that golden light. A sense of understanding arose in Li Hao's heart.
This was an insight brought by the Path of the Physical Body. His wealth of cultivation memories gave him an understanding of flesh and blood far beyond that of ordinary people.
Body Refining was by no means simple, nor was it as devoid of prospects as the old man and the others claimed. On the contrary, Li Hao felt that the Body Refining arts in the Listening Rain Pavilion were not high-level enough. Even a Body-Tempering Art like the Thousand Dragons Sacred Body, housed on the Sixth Floor, could only take someone to the Soul Succession Realm at its fourth level!
Yet those other cultivation arts led straight to the pinnacle.
Body Refining practitioners were undervalued for many reasons. Aside from the difficulty of cultivation, Li Hao believed the lack of suitable arts was another reason.
If even the Li Family's collection of Body-Tempering Arts was so sparse, what could other places offer?
Li Hao looked at the panel. Flawless Body, previously at minor mastery, had now reached major mastery!
The convergence of the Yin Yang Dual Meridians seemed to link all the major meridians throughout his body, allowing him to instantly gather and coordinate the power within every one of them, as though erecting a dragon's spine inside him!
Li Hao gave it a try, abruptly throwing a punch.
With a whoosh, the wind from his fist roared like a tiger, pressing a slight depression into the water several zhang ahead while stirring up waves and ripples seven or eight meters across!
Had that punch landed solidly, it would have been no less than a cannonball striking the water, blasting up a tremendous splash!
Li Hao froze briefly, shock appearing in his eyes.
Through his finely honed bodily senses, he knew exactly how terrifying that punch had been.
By consolidating the power of every major meridian in his body, his strength had doubled outright!
After all, with his Yin Yang Dual Meridians joined and the sixty-nine major meridians he had already opened, he now possessed the equivalent of eighty-nine major meridians.
At 248 circuits per major meridian, his total strength had already reached four and a half million jin!
With that doubled burst, it approached nine million jin!!
This was already nearing ten million jin of divine strength. Even a true dragon in the Circulation Realm could not possess such ferocious power.
Even a royal genius who mastered top-tier energy-circulation and Meridian Opening arts would have only two million jin of strength, unless they too activated both meridians. With just one, they would lack the ability to instantly consolidate the power of all their major meridians and unleash twice their strength!
No wonder Ninth Uncle was so terrifying. Joining both meridians can instantly double one's strength. That's frightening.
An extraordinary light bloomed in Li Hao's eyes. He dared not imagine how powerful he would become if he opened all 108 meridians in his body!
After all, an ordinary Circulation Realm cultivator had only twenty thousand jin of strength.
Though that was the absolute lowest limit, and ninety percent of Circulation Realm Tenth Layer cultivators had at least a hundred-odd thousand jin of strength, they were still far behind Li Hao.
With my current strength, I could easily crush even those elite Circulation Realm Tenth Layer soldiers of the Yuan Character Camp!
Li Hao thought to himself.
Even the Yuan Character Camp's elites had only five hundred thousand jin of tremendous strength at the Tenth Layer. Before him, they were no different from small children.
An Imperial Clan genius was four times as strong as a Yuan Character Camp soldier, and he was four times as strong as an Imperial Clan genius!
Li Hao withdrew his fist and regulated his breathing.
Having just unleashed the doubled power of yin and yang, he felt that it had consumed considerable stamina. He could not use it often, but in a decisive clash, it would be enough to kill with a single blow!
Once his body relaxed again, Li Hao looked toward Demon Lake, but saw no sign of Second Master. He had said he was going to search for traces of the Old Dragon in Demon Lake. Who knew where his search had taken him?
This Demon Lake stretched thousands of li across, its waters deep and dark. A demon dragon hiding within it truly would be difficult to detect.
Just then, a faint sound suddenly reached him.
Li Hao's ears twitched, and he whipped his head around. Amid the withered yellow leaves, a snow-white figure was moving, seemingly trying to hide.
In a flash, he darted over to it. It turned out to be a little snow-white fox, about the size of a newborn puppy.
He examined it carefully. There was no demonic aura on the little fox; apparently, it was an ordinary wild fox.
"Little thing, how did you get here? Where are your parents?"
Li Hao bent down and picked the little fox up from the fallen leaves.
The little fox's ears bore a tinge of reddish orange, as though it were a cross between a white fox and a red fox. When Li Hao picked it up, it immediately pushed at him with its tiny paws, struggling to resist.
Li Hao held it in his hands and looked around, but saw no adult fox. Had this little thing sneaked out of its den on its own?
Seeing this, Li Hao set it back on the ground to wait for its parents to find it.
The little fox crawled laboriously through the fallen leaves. It was too small; even its movements were sluggish, without the slightest agility.
Li Hao smiled and left it alone, returning to the lakeside to continue fishing.
Before long, a figure came flying back. It was Li Muxiu.
One look at his empty hands told Li Hao that his search for the dragon demon had failed. Over the past six months, the old man had searched countless times. Clearly, that dragon demon was exceedingly cautious and cunning. After all, to cultivate to a level that caught Li Muxiu's interest, it had to have lived for at least several thousand years.
"Hmph."
Seeing Li Hao's grinning face, Li Muxiu snorted irritably and flicked his sleeve. "What about you? Caught nothing?"
"I caught a little one, in the Power Through Realm," Li Hao said with a chuckle.
Li Muxiu rolled his eyes, growing even more annoyed.
As the sun sank toward the western hills, Li Muxiu could only hastily reel in a Power Through Realm Fish Demon to avoid going home empty-handed before taking Li Hao back to Qingzhou City.
Before leaving, Li Hao saw that the little fox had crawled farther away, yet no adult fox had come to find it. He asked the old man to help take a look. After searching the area, the old man found only a pool of blood and some snow-white fox fur. Judging by the scene, the adult fox had already been eaten by some demonic beast.
Such things were common in the wild. Li Hao sighed, found the bewildered little fox crawling aimlessly about, and carried it back to Qingzhou City with them.
From then on, amid the withered yellow leaves of the Mountains and Rivers Courtyard, there was a splash of snow-white.
(End of chapter)
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