Before you knew it, another six months had passed.
Over the past six months, you had no idea how many people you had fought or how many different martial arts techniques you had witnessed.
Yet your Dugu Nine Swords had progressed at an astonishing pace. After observing a vast number of internal cultivation manuals, you had not only finally grasped the Qi Breaking Form, which had always eluded you,
but had also brought all seven forms besides the General Principle Form and the Qi Breaking Form to the minor mastery level.
In particular, you felt that the Sword Breaking Form was only one step away from major mastery.
However, that single step was like a natural chasm firmly barring you from the outside. No matter how many sword techniques you learned, you still could not break through.
You knew this was because postnatal martial arts were no longer useful to you. If you wanted to raise the Sword Breaking Form to major mastery, you had to find more innate-level sword techniques.
For that reason, you challenged every member of the Five Great Sword Sects, as well as Wudang, one of the pillars of the martial world.
Unfortunately, those sects lacked sufficient foundations. Even combined, they possessed only a few innate-level sword techniques, which offered limited help in improving your Sword Breaking Form.
As for the sect with the deepest foundation in the entire martial world, if Shaolin Temple claimed second place, no one would dare claim first.
Even the Sun Moon Holy Cult, the strongest force in the martial world, could not compare.
In the fifth month of the twenty-third year, after challenging nearly every famous force in the martial world, you officially embarked on the journey to Shaolin Temple.
Three days later, you arrived at Shaolin Temple and challenged every expert there.
By then, you were no longer the same person you had been before. After defeating countless experts and killing numerous powerful fighters, your reputation in the martial world was second only to that of the demon cult leader, Dongfang Bubai, and countless people had been watching your movements.
Therefore, you had not come to Shaolin alone. More than a hundred martial artists had followed behind you.
Some were your defeated opponents, some were relatives and friends of those you had killed or crippled, and others had simply come to watch the excitement.
Aside from the few who wanted to take revenge against you, most of these people followed you to see the limits of your strength.
They also wanted to know who was stronger between you and Dongfang Bubai, the demon cult leader who had dominated the martial world for more than a decade.
You did not drive these people away. You merely forbade them from approaching within a hundred meters of you without cause. Otherwise, they would be killed without mercy.
You did this to use them to pressure the martial sects you challenged.
After all, what a sect valued most was its reputation. Once its reputation was ruined, dissolution would not be far behind.
Therefore, if the sects you challenged did not want to be branded cowards and gutless weaklings, they could only accept your challenges. Otherwise, they would become the laughingstock of the entire martial world.
That was precisely the situation Shaolin Temple now faced. No matter how unwilling they were, they could only accept your challenge.
Your challenges to these sects naturally came with conditions.
Every sect you challenged had to wager its own martial arts manuals against you. If they defeated you, they could obtain the Star Absorbing Great Method and the various sword techniques you knew. If they lost, they naturally had to hand over their own martial arts manuals.
What if they lost and refused to honor the wager?
It was not as if no one had tried, but those people had ultimately ended up either dead or crippled. No one had been an exception.
The strongest person in Shaolin Temple was Master Fangzheng, its abbot.
His strength had already reached the peak of the mid-stage Innate Realm, and he had mastered many Shaolin arts, including the Yi Jin Jing, the Thousand-Hand Tathagata Palm, and the Vajra Zen Lion's Roar.
His combat experience was incomparably rich. He was even slightly stronger than Ren Woxing, making him unquestionably the foremost expert of the orthodox path.
Of course, that did not include Feng Qingyang, who paid no heed to worldly affairs, or Linghu Chong, who had mastered the Dugu Nine Swords and the Star Absorbing Great Method.
However, your current strength was far greater than it had been when you killed Ren Woxing.
Therefore, without any surprises, Master Fangzheng lost.
The price of his defeat was that you could freely read every martial arts manual and Buddhist scripture in Shaolin Temple.
Given Shaolin's foundation, they normally would never have agreed so readily. After all, that foundation had taken hundreds or even thousands of years to accumulate. If you spread it indiscriminately after reading it, Shaolin would be ruined.
Yet Master Fangzheng readily agreed to your request.
Anyone with discernment could tell that something was wrong. The martial artists watching the battle even discussed it for a long time, but they could not figure out why.
Naturally, you heard their discussions as well, but you remained unmoved.
Because you had already guessed Master Fangzheng's purpose!
You had a long-standing connection with Shaolin Temple. In the Huang Feihong World, you had even learned more than sixty of the Shaolin Seventy-Two Ultimate Skills, so your understanding of Shaolin martial arts was far beyond that of those outsiders.
Shaolin martial arts were indeed powerful, but they had one fatal flaw: Buddhism!
Most Shaolin martial arts required the corresponding Buddhist scriptures to regulate one's state of mind before they could be cultivated.
If someone forcefully cultivated them recklessly, the consequences could range from damaged meridians and diminished cultivation to cultivation deviation and death.
Moreover, if a person read enough Buddhist scriptures and deeply understood their principles, the consequences were self-evident. Even if they did not become a monk, their temperament would at the very least change drastically, and they would devote themselves to doing good.
That was Master Fangzheng's purpose.
Since he could not defeat you head-on, he intended to use Buddhism to convert you.
Unfortunately, he did not know that you were observing Shaolin's martial arts manuals not to cultivate them, but to use them as nourishment for your Dugu Nine Swords. You had no intention of cultivating them at all.
Three months later, when the time reached the eighth month of the twenty-third year, you finally left Shaolin Temple after staying there for a full three months.
This time, you did not challenge anyone else. Instead, you rented a residence and settled down in a small city called Yong City.
During those three months, you had only examined thirty-six martial arts manuals at Shaolin Temple, but every one of them was at the innate level.
Although most were only low-grade innate techniques, they were still enough to greatly improve your Dugu Nine Swords.
Now, all nine forms of your Dugu Nine Swords had reached minor mastery, while the Sword Breaking Form had even just entered major mastery. Your strength had advanced tremendously.
Moreover, after studying the high-grade innate cultivation art Yi Jin Jing, you had finally learned how to locate and open the last two meridians among your Eight Extraordinary Meridians—the Yin and Yang meridians!
The reason you were staying in this obscure Yong City was to break through to the peak of the Innate Realm.
With the help of the Star Absorbing Great Method, your Innate True Qi had long since reached the limit of the late stage of the Innate Realm. You had also possessed the qualifications to break through to the peak of the Innate Realm for some time. The only thing you lacked was the method.
Now that you had found the method, you naturally began breaking through without hesitation.
The day you emerged from seclusion would be the day you climbed Black Wood Cliff to challenge Dongfang Bubai!