Practicing the Bauhinia Breathing Technique

After dinner, night had already fallen completely.

Moonlight poured down from the two full moons like liquid silver, draping the land in a gauzy veil. The sight was breathtaking.

The manor's back courtyard had simple buildings where the barbarians and kobolds could live. And since it was mid-April, the weather wasn't cold, so there was no need to worry.

After eating, Loren didn't linger in the hall. He got up and returned to his room on the third floor.

The maids had already prepared a hot bath for him.

When the two maids saw the handsome, elegant Loren enter, delight showed in their eyes.

They tugged at their black-and-white maid dresses and curtsied.

"Good evening, Master Loren. We've prepared hot water for you. Would you like to bathe now?"

The plumper maid on the left looked hopeful. "It's our duty to attend to you while you bathe, Master."

Loren's mouth twitched at that.

"You can both leave. I'll bathe by myself."

The two hopeful maids immediately looked crestfallen. They felt that yet another perfect opportunity had slipped through their fingers.

After briskly sending the maids away, Loren soaked alone in the large tub.

It wasn't that he was being fussy. In this world, it was perfectly normal for a lord—especially a descendant of a High Noble—to have a few maids attending him.

It was just that, although the manor's maids were above average in looks, they still fell short of his taste. He wasn't interested.

In the hot water, Loren felt the strength in his body gradually returning and breathed a small sigh of relief.

It had been five days since he'd taken down the Barbarian Chieftain, Yas. The period of weakness after forcibly overexerting himself hadn't been easy.

He opened his status panel.

His gaze went to the Breathing Techniques at the top.

Bauhinia Breathing Technique (S-rank) Advantages: Focuses on training the mind. Greatly strengthens the mind and increases mental resilience. At higher levels, it can grant immunity to Spellcasters' mental attacks. Used with the corresponding skills, it can unleash tremendous power.

Disadvantages: The Bauhinia Breathing Technique does not sufficiently train the body. Going all out can easily cause serious physical damage.

Demon Breathing Technique (S+-rank) Advantages: The highest-level cultivation technique of demons. It can greatly enhance and strengthen the body. At the highest level, it allows the practitioner to regenerate severed limbs, greatly increases resistance to magic, and makes their strength inexhaustible.

Disadvantages: After practicing it, the practitioner can no longer learn spells and is prone to entering a berserk, bloodthirsty state. It requires exceptionally high mental strength to control.

Training in a Breathing Technique had no special tricks. It took time and steady effort, building up bit by bit.

However, the two techniques were practiced in different ways.

The Bauhinia Breathing Technique required him to visualize a powerful living being in his mental sea, then use a specific breathing rhythm to direct his Bloodline Power and train his mental strength, allowing it to grow.

It focused on the mind.

The Demon Breathing Technique, on the other hand, required large, high-intensity movements to temper the body, along with plenty of energy-rich food to replenish it.

It focused on the body.

Perhaps thanks to the system's power, each technique excelled at one extreme, yet they could be perfectly integrated.

It was nothing short of a miracle.

The higher the rank of a Breathing Technique, the more demanding it was of the practitioner.

The clearest example was the Bauhinia Breathing Technique, which could only be practiced by those with the Orchid Family bloodline.

The first duke of the Orchid Family had found the technique in the ruins of a divine being. After countless improvements, it had become the family's exclusive technique.

The Demon Breathing Technique was much the same. It was engraved in the Archdemon's bloodline. Like the bloodline spells the kobold Spellcasters acquired, it was an inheritance.

Without the Archdemon Bloodline, it was impossible to learn. Even if someone obtained the technique, it would be no more useful than wastepaper.

More importantly, Loren had never heard of anyone practicing two high-ranking Breathing Techniques at the same time.

The higher a Breathing Technique's rank, the more it could help a person. The amount of energy absorbed and the training efficiency were on a completely different level from those of lower-ranked techniques.

That was also why Breathing Techniques could profoundly alter the body, reshaping a person's bloodline, bones, flesh, and more to better suit the technique.

Practicing two Breathing Techniques at once would not only waste a great deal of effort, but also make cultivation more difficult.

And the higher their ranks, the more likely the techniques were to clash and turn against each other.

For example, one technique might require a blood vessel to soften, while the second required that same vessel to harden. Such direct conflicts were almost inevitable, and when they arose, the resulting clash would be severe.

Someone might replace a low-ranked technique with a higher-ranked one, but no one would practice two techniques at the same time.

Yet with the system's power, Loren not only felt no rejection between the two techniques, but could even feel the Demon Breathing Technique turning in tandem as he practiced the Bauhinia Breathing Technique.

Its effectiveness was only a third of what it would be when practiced on its own, but even so, it was remarkable.

Practicing the Demon Breathing Technique had the same effect on the Bauhinia Breathing Technique.

The feeling of the two techniques working together in perfect harmony was especially soothing to Loren.

After five days of feasting to replenish himself, the weakness left by his fight with Yas had mostly faded.

In another two days, he would be back at full strength. Then he might be able to try breaking through to mid-level Silver.

It was only a one-tier breakthrough, but the increase in combat power would be considerable.

With two bloodlines awakened, every step he took gave him far more power than an ordinary awakened person gained.

And the gap was even greater compared to those who had not awakened their Bloodline Power.

A Silver body that could stand against Gold.

That was proof enough.

Loren took a deep breath, drew his attention back, and slowly closed his eyes in the hot water.

He began practicing the Bauhinia Breathing Technique.

He began breathing slowly at the prescribed rhythm, while his Bloodline Power circulated through his body in a special pattern.

His predecessor had practiced the Bauhinia Breathing Technique for over ten years, and it had long since become ingrained in his muscle memory. After a few breaths, Loren had found his rhythm.

Hoo~

Hoo~

As he breathed, his mouth drew in magic power. With his eyes closed, Loren could clearly sense the surrounding energy being rapidly absorbed through his pores.

He hadn't trained at high intensity over the past few days because his body had been too weak. This was his first truly immersive cultivation session.

Once his body was quickly replenished with energy, the image of a bauhinia flower slowly appeared in Loren's mental sea.

Visualization trained mental strength.

The Bauhinia Breathing Technique required him to repeatedly use his mental strength to construct powerful living beings he had seen before, thereby training his mind.

According to family legend, if one visualized a transcendent being such as a dragon, then at a high enough level, there was a chance of truly acquiring some of its traits—for example, Dragon Might.

However, that legend appeared only in the family records. The Orchid Family's descendants currently visualized only bauhinia flowers.

This was not only because the bauhinia was the Orchid Family's crest, but, more importantly, because it was perfectly suited to the Bauhinia Breathing Technique.

It allowed those who visualized it to maintain a faster rate of cultivation.

There was also another key reason: it was easy.

To visualize another living being, the first problem was that one had to recreate its appearance in one's mind.

That was far too difficult for beginners.

Take dragons, for example. Who wouldn't want to gain some of their traits?

But who could capture such transcendent beings and study them?

Without enough observation, mere imagination was ineffective.

And the training effect from observing low-level Magic Beasts was far inferior to that of constructing a bauhinia flower.

After many attempts, the great figures of the Orchid Family had concluded that visualizing a bauhinia flower offered the best results for the least effort.

Over time, no one bothered to visualize anything else.

In Loren's mental sea, a bauhinia flower formed from mental energy bloomed brilliantly, but collapsed after only a few breaths.

After it collapsed, his mental energy reconstructed it. After repeating the process more than a dozen times, his unfamiliarity with the visualization method and its construction had completely disappeared.

After two or three hundred repetitions, he was practically constructing it by instinct, to the point of numbness.

When yet another constructed bauhinia flower collapsed, Loren suddenly thought of something and focused his mind.

Although visualizing a bauhinia flower allowed him to maintain a high cultivation speed, it still wasn't enough for him.

If he could visualize other living beings, why not try visualizing a demon?

High-ranking demons were no less powerful than transcendent beings like dragons.

The other members of the Orchid Family couldn't visualize one because they couldn't find such a powerful being.

But he was different.

After awakening the Archdemon Bloodline, the image of the Archdemon had seeped into his bloodline. He could study it as much as he wanted.

Besides, he was the Archdemon himself. Why couldn't he use himself as the subject of his visualization?

Might that produce some remarkable effect?

Loren was immediately intrigued.