The Scripture Repository in the Class A Room was a world apart from the one in the Class C Room, where a broken bookshelf sat in a corner.
It was a freestanding, two-story building with sweeping eaves and bracketed rafters. A Grey Clothed Old Servant stood guard at the entrance, his eyelids drooping as if he'd never wake up. Li Yuan handed over his Class A Room token. The old servant raised his eyelids, his cloudy gaze lingering on him for a moment. He said nothing, only waved him through.
As soon as Li Yuan pushed open the heavy wooden door, the scent of aged paper and ink washed over him. The first floor was spacious, with rows of tall bookshelves lined with books and scrolls sorted by category. There were even quite a few animal skins and jade slips. A handful of Class A Disciples were scattered throughout, absorbed in their reading or speaking in low voices. The atmosphere was solemn.
Unlike the others, Li Yuan didn't head straight for the sections marked "Core" and "Secret Teachings." Instead, his gaze fell on the shelves tucked into the corners, their spines dusted with a thin layer of gray. Their labels read "Basic Body Tempering," "Miscellaneous External Arts," and "Fragments and Supplements."
Copper Skin Technique was good, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. The scorching Crimson Sun Qi and Blood could rampage freely through Iron Body Technique, but in the more refined Copper Skin Technique, it was like a fiery steed saddled with an elegant harness. It could still run, but it felt constrained.
He pulled out a copy of Iron Cloth Shirt. Its pages had yellowed, and its corners were badly worn. Clearly, it had been leafed through countless times, then cast aside. It didn't teach any profound methods for circulating qi and blood. Instead, it focused on clumsy ways to withstand blows, paired with a few rudimentary breathing techniques. Its watchword was "resilience."
Then he picked up a copy of Stone Armor Technique. This method was even more outrageous. It practically taught people to hold their breath and stiffen their muscles like stone, pursuing the utmost "hardness" until they moved as slowly as turtles.
Nearby was Savage Ox Strength, which focused on stirring up qi and blood to unleash brute force in an instant; there was also a fragment of Golden Bell Shield, which taught practitioners to spread qi and blood across the body's surface to create a counterforce...
Taken individually, these techniques were probably all trash in the eyes of Class A Disciples. Practicing them would be a waste of time, and their skewed paths might even leave hidden dangers.
But as Li Yuan looked at them, his eyes gradually brightened.
He raised his right hand and spread his fingers, stirring his thoughts. A thread of Crimson Sun Qi and Blood seeped out and circled his fingertips, warm and lively.
"Iron Body Technique tightens the skin, Iron Cloth Shirt pursues resilience, and Stone Armor Technique seeks hardness..." he murmured. The thread of qi and blood at his fingertips shifted with his thoughts, sometimes pliant and stretching long, sometimes condensing into something needle-sharp. "What if... I took all their strengths for myself?"
The moment the thought took root, it was like a fire being lit in his heart.
Without hesitation, he began rapidly yet carefully reading through these techniques dismissed as dregs. His memory was excellent; he could almost remember anything at a glance. His comprehension was far beyond ordinary, and with Crimson Sun within him, his perception of qi and blood and the body was frighteningly keen. Before long, he had memorized the core principles and subtle distinctions in how each technique circulated qi and blood, then taken them apart and analyzed them in his mind.
He discovered that although these low-level techniques were crude, they often pushed one particular aspect to an extreme. They were like lumps of stubborn iron in all sorts of shapes: useless on their own, but if there were a furnace hot enough and a hammer hard enough...
Wasn't the Crimson Sun within him the perfect furnace and hammer?
Over the course of an afternoon, he had nearly combed through every low-level hard-body and external technique in that section. His mind was packed with methods for using qi and blood, some clumsy, some bizarre, and some that took things to extremes.
By the time he left the Scripture Repository, the sky outside was nearing dusk. The old servant at the entrance still had his eyelids drooping, as if Li Yuan had never gone inside.
Li Yuan walked back toward Class A Courtyard Number One at an unhurried pace, but his mind was racing, the paths of qi and blood and techniques for exerting muscle power colliding and intertwining.
He raised his hand and looked at his fingers. They were no different from anyone else's, though recent cultivation had made them seem more even and slender.
Copper Skin Technique? He would keep practicing it, but it wouldn't be his main focus. What he would do was devour it, along with Iron Cloth Shirt, Stone Armor Technique, Savage Ox Strength... He would take apart every useful part, then use Crimson Sun's fire to melt them all into one furnace and forge a technique of his own!
The instant he returned to the small courtyard and shut the door, a blazing light flashed in his eyes, as if he'd discovered a treasure.
Perhaps no one before him had ever taken this path.
But he, Li Yuan, was determined to give it a try.
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