In the fifth month of the twenty-eighth year, after a full month of secluded cultivation, you successfully opened the eighth of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians—the Yang Wei Meridian.
At this point, all your Eight Extraordinary Meridians had been completely opened, and your realm officially reached the absolute peak of the Innate Realm.
This was also the highest realm this world could reach. More importantly, it meant that your path forward had been cut off.
In the eleventh month of the twenty-eighth year, after more than half a year of painstaking research, you had only managed to purify the True Qi in your body by another thirty percent. In every other respect, you remained stuck where you were, without the slightest progress.
The feeling of your cultivation stagnating drove you nearly mad, but there was nothing you could do about it.
Over the years, using Zhang Wei's false identity, you had gone through nearly every famous cultivation technique and martial art in the entire martial world.
There were at least eight hundred of them, if not a thousand.
That was only because you had looked at techniques and martial arts of the mid-Houtian grade and above. If you had not limited yourself by grade, the number would have been at least three times greater.
Yet among so many techniques and martial arts, only a dozen or so had reached the Xiantian grade. Not one of them mentioned what realm lay beyond the Innate Realm.
Now, the only techniques in the entire world that might still be useful to you were perhaps the Sunflower Manual worn by Dongfang Bubai, along with some of the supreme techniques and secret arts that the Sun Moon Holy Cult had seized over the years.
For example, the Tai Chi Fist Manual personally handwritten by Zhang San Feng...
Three days later, after several years had passed, you once again appeared on Black Wood Cliff in the guise of Zhang Wei.
Over the past few years, perhaps because you had frightened him, that pretty-faced Yang Lianting had been exceptionally obedient, practically making the entire Sun Moon Holy Cult lie low.
Without the demonic Sun Moon Holy Cult stirring things up, the martial world had become frighteningly peaceful. It gave the entire orthodox path the feeling that a storm was about to break.
Naturally, this included your master, Yue Buqun. As the leader of the Five Great Sword Sects, he had more than once muttered in your ear that he could not figure out what the demonic cult was plotting.
You had guessed the reason, of course, but could not say it outright. You could only comfort your master and tell him not to worry: when soldiers came, you would block them; when water came, you would hold it back. You would handle everything.
After arriving at Black Wood Cliff, you easily found Dongfang Bubai's secluded residence and directly explained your purpose.
The Sunflower Manual was Dongfang Bubai's lifeblood. To be able to study it at any time, she had even sewn it directly into her clothes.
Therefore, when you asked to take a look at the Sunflower Manual, Dongfang Bubai rejected you outright without even thinking about it.
Things were different now. Since Dongfang Bubai refused a toast only to be forced to drink, you naturally had to satisfy her.
Half an hour later, after exchanging roughly fifty moves, you successfully subdued Dongfang Bubai and obtained the Sunflower Manual she carried with her.
Afterward, you threatened Yang Lianting with Dongfang Bubai's life and made him hand over every Innate-grade cultivation technique and martial art in the Sun Moon Holy Cult.
You had to admit, being part of the demonic cult was great. Whatever caught your eye could be seized directly by any means necessary.
Just like now, you had obtained four Innate-grade cultivation techniques and three Innate-grade martial arts from Yang Lianting. Together with the Sunflower Manual, you had acquired eight Innate-grade martial arts on this trip.
Of course, aside from the Sunflower Manual and the Tai Chi Fist Manual, which were high-grade Innate techniques, the rest were only low-grade Innate techniques.
Even so, any one of them would have been enough to make countless people in the martial world fight desperately for it.
After obtaining the manuals, you did not kill Dongfang Bubai. Instead, you released her.
The reason was not that you were softhearted. You were doing it to raise your final score after the simulation ended.
After so many simulations, you had already summarized two requirements for raising your score.
The first was naturally your own strength. The more your strength improved, the higher your score would be.
The second was the degree to which you interfered with the world's trajectory—especially your interference with the protagonist, important supporting characters, and antagonists. The deeper the interference, the higher the score would be.
According to the world's original trajectory, Dongfang Bubai and Yang Lianting should have died at the hands of Ren Woxing and the other three several years ago.
The fact that they were still alive and well now naturally had an enormous influence on the world's trajectory.
Aside from Dongfang Bubai, you had also interfered with the life of the protagonist, Linghu Chong. For example, you had prevented him from learning the Star Absorbing Great Method and instead had him cultivate the Purple Cloud Divine Skill; you had not let him be expelled from the Mount Hua Sect; you had exposed the cave on Siguo Cliff ahead of time and killed Tian Boguang, preventing him from continuing down the wrong path... and so on.
Besides that, you had also changed the lives of Ren Woxing, Yue Buqun, Ning Zhongze, Lin Pingzhi, Zuo Lengchan... and many others.
It could be said that you had turned the entire The Smiling, Proud Wanderer world upside down.
Even if you died in the simulation right now, you could still obtain the highest perfect evaluation.
After obtaining what you wanted, you returned to Mount Hua and began studying everything carefully.
But only one day later, you shifted the focus of your research to the Sunflower Manual and the Tai Chi Fist Manual.
There was nothing you could do. The other low-grade Innate techniques and martial arts had only allowed your Dugu Nine Swords to improve slightly. They were completely useless for raising your realm.
The Sunflower Manual truly deserved its reputation as the strongest cultivation technique in the world of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer. It was far superior to the incomplete Evil Warding Sword Manual.
Dongfang Bubai also deserved her later reputation as a Martial Arts Prodigy. Her understanding of the Sunflower Manual had even surpassed that of its creator.
You knew this because she had written down all her insights into the Sunflower Manual as annotations in the manual itself.
Among those annotations were conjectures and various experiments regarding the realm beyond the Innate Realm.
For some unknown reason, however, all her experiments had ultimately ended in failure.
Even so, this was already an enormous gain for you.
It was not only Dongfang Bubai's annotations on the Sunflower Manual. The Tai Chi Fist Manual, personally handwritten by Zhang San Feng, likewise contained conjectures and experiments regarding the realm beyond the Innate Realm.
You guessed that Dongfang Bubai's conjectures and experiments regarding the realm beyond the Innate Realm had been based on the Tai Chi Fist Manual.
Regardless of whether it was the Sunflower Manual or the Tai Chi Fist Manual, their ultimate conclusions regarding the realm beyond the Innate Realm pointed toward two things.
The first was refining Innate True Qi, compressing it into another, even more concentrated form of power, just as internal energy was compressed into Innate True Qi.
The second was acupoints.
Peak Xiantian experts had already opened all Twelve Meridian Channels and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians in their bodies. These were all the body's major meridians.
Therefore, to continue becoming stronger, you had to find new places to absorb and store power.
Aside from the Twelve Meridian Channels and the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, the remaining structures within the human body were the various acupoints.