Secret Medicine and Black Qi (Please Follow Up)

[Secret Medicine] and [Black Qi] (Please Follow Up)

"Knight Madman."

Levi had long heard of this term. It referred to Knights who had suffered Cultivation Deviation during training.

Now that he had experienced firsthand that primal urge to transform into a terrifying beast, tear into raw flesh, drink blood, and gorge himself, he was deeply shaken. He even began to doubt whether the path of Knighthood was truly right. By the standards of martial arts novels from his previous life, these Knight's Breathing Techniques were unquestionably demonic arts. Should he continue training?

But when he thought of those terrifying Evil Spirits, those greedy and sinister noble peers, and the endless wars brought about by conflicts between Kingdoms, he immediately reaffirmed his path as a Knight.

Of all things in this world, life and death mattered most.

As long as he lived, anything was possible! Knighthood was the only means of protecting himself that he could currently access. "I'll be careful. Thank you for the reminder, Lord Fred," Levi said gratefully.

He might have to find a way to make money. At this rate, impoverished Blackwater Valley would not be able to support two Knights. He could not let them both become Knight Madmen and get purged by The Church's "Radiant Knights."

Fred nodded and continued, "Next, you need to train every day while wearing armor and carrying a shield. Increase the burden. Only then will you be able to unleash the power of the Breathing Technique in actual combat, rather than being dragged down by your armor or being unaccustomed to fighting in it."

"Also, the Inheritance Scroll contains a formula for the Black Snake Secret Medicine. Young Master, you memorized it too, didn't you?" Knight Fred reminded him.

Levi nodded. Generally, when cultivating an excellent-quality Breathing Technique, one needed to pair it with the corresponding Secret Medicine in order to speed up progress.

The Black Snake Secret Medicine's formula was not complicated: fifty grams of snake blood, one snake gallbladder, ten grams of Greenwater Turtle shell powder, ten grams of plant ash, three Mandrake petals, one drop of Ambergris, one drop of liquid Amber, and one hundred milliliters of pure water.

Aside from Ambergris, none of these ingredients were difficult to find, nor were they expensive.

The snake blood and snake gallbladder could even come from any kind of snake, though the effects differed depending on the species.

Ambergris, however, was somewhat troublesome.

The Ambergris of this world was not something produced inside the belly of a sperm whale like in his previous life.

Instead, it came from a glandular organ in the mouth of a land-dwelling giant beast known as an Earth Dragon Beast.

In the songs of the Kingdom's Bards, Earth Dragon Beasts were called one of the most dangerous animals in the wilderness.

They possessed boundless strength and were impervious to blades and spears. They were common figures in Knights' travelogues and Bard tales, much like the evil dragons in stories of heroes slaying dragons.

Earth Dragon Beasts also had another trait: they loved devouring shiny things, such as Gold Coins and gemstones.

Under normal circumstances, to deal with an adult Earth Dragon Beast, one either had to send in a human-shaped tyrannosaur—a Great Knight—equipped with the finest weapons, or use at least five Formal Knights to trap it with traps and poison before arranging a hunt with powerful weapons such as Armor-Piercing Crossbows.

One of the legendary deeds of the Legendary Knight Lionheart Knight Ryan before he became a legend was that he had single-handedly hunted an adult male Earth Dragon Beast that had ravaged the north of the Kingdom.

Before that, three Great Knights had gone after the Earth Dragon Beast in succession, yet all had failed. One young Great Knight had even perished because of it.

In the end, Lionheart Knight succeeded. He even found a full eight thousand Gold Coins and priceless jewels inside the Earth Dragon Beast's belly.

In this age of cold weapons, hunting an Earth Dragon Beast was truly no easy task. As a result, the price of Ambergris had always remained high.

A small bottle of Ambergris was worth one hundred Gold Coins. It could be exchanged for five sets of finely crafted Knight Armor, twenty healthy young adult Serfs, or one hundred cattle...

With the wealth of a down-and-out lord like Levi, he could not afford it even if he sold everything he owned and exploited the Serfs under him to death.

"I've only just started. I don't need Secret Medicine yet. I'll take it slowly."

Over the following days, Levi steadily grinded experience without finding it tedious in the slightest.

While he grinded experience, Knight Fred also taught Levi some foundational theoretical knowledge about Knights, which benefited Levi greatly.

A Knight's Breathing Technique was a training method that adjusted one's breathing rhythm and adopted different movements and postures to stimulate the potential of the Knight's bloodline, thereby strengthening the body and improving all aspects of physical ability, including constitution, strength, endurance, and speed.

This improvement far exceeded ordinary physical exercise, which was why one had to consume a great deal of food after every training session to replenish calories. After all, this world had no such thing as spiritual energy.

Although it enhanced every aspect of one's physical abilities, different Breathing Techniques had different focuses.

The Black Snake Breathing Technique focused on defense.

After cultivating this Breathing Technique to minor mastery, one could begin attempting to condense a Seed of Life and advance to become a Formal Knight. After that, one's overall physical abilities would increase dramatically, and one would gain several times the average person's resistance to blows.

Furthermore, a faint black, fluid-like film would appear over the surface of a Knight's arms, making the flesh of their arms as tough and durable as rubber.

It was not yet enough to make one invulnerable to blades and spears or indestructible like Vajra, but it could negate most of the force from ordinary blunt attacks.

Knights commonly referred to this film as "Black Qi," while the Holy Radiance Church officially called it "Holy Remnant Power," claiming that the source of a Knight's strength was the sacred Heavenly Father.

In this era where monarchs ruled by divine right, the forces truly controlling the major Kingdoms were often The Church. Levi felt that The Church's claim was simply self-glorification, a way to better brainwash Knights. Religion was best at that sort of thing. If your Church's god was so powerful, then why was it not priests who knew divine arts protecting the Church, but the Radiant Knight Order made up of Knights like us?

In any case, Black Qi was not something that only the Black Snake Breathing Technique could produce. Other Breathing Techniques could produce it as well; only its quality, quantity, and effects differed.

If it were a speed-focused Breathing Technique, Black Qi might appear on the legs instead, granting the Knight tremendous explosive speed and agile mobility far beyond the athletes of his previous life.

That was the power of Breathing Techniques. They were not merely methods for strengthening the body. Once one advanced to a Formal Knight and produced Black Qi, a Knight had, in a sense, already stepped onto the path of the extraordinary.

After reaching the level of a Great Knight, the Black Qi produced by the Black Snake Breathing Technique would cover the entire body and become even harder.

Other than a very few areas such as the eyes, a Great Knight could become temporarily invulnerable to blades and spears across their entire body, with resistance to blows comparable to an Earth Dragon Beast.

In this age of cold weapons, that made them superhuman. With such strength, coupled with armor, weapons, and warhorses, as well as a Great Knight's formidable combat skills and battle awareness, one could easily fight a thousand enemies alone on the battlefield and alter the course of a small battle.

That was why Levi had never believed the story that his father had died on the battlefield.

His father had already stood near the peak of human combat power. How could he have died on a battlefield? Even if he could not defeat an army of thousands, escaping would have been effortless. Even Great Knights of the same rank would have found it difficult to stop him.

It was possible that a Legendary Knight had intervened, but unlikely. Legendary Knights were elusive and almost detached from worldly affairs. Even the Kingdoms and The Church found it difficult to command them.

The tree that rose above the forest would be destroyed by the wind.

Levi could conclude that his father's death had been a conspiracy by The Church and the Kingdom.

Therefore, he had to learn from the lesson.

Before he possessed absolutely overwhelming power, he would simply lie low within this small patch of Blackwater Valley.

"Stockpile grain, build high walls, and claim the throne slowly."

The nine-word principle used by the founding emperor to pacify the realm still applied to Levi.

It was just that he had no desire to become king. He only wanted to be a wealthy little lord.

The game of power was not something ordinary people were qualified to take part in.

Levi knew full well just how poor his political instincts were.

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