Stubborn Stone Heavenly Book Seal, Opening Another Meridian

Inside the room.

Li Mo soaked his feet while checking today's investment returns.

[Congratulations, host. Successfully invested one portion of Ice-Fire Wine and one portion of roasted exotic-beast meat.]

[Investment return: one jar of Hundred Flower Dew Ointment.]

[Investment return: one Night-Shining Pearl.]

[Hundred Flower Dew Ointment]: "A superior Healing Medicine, gathered from the first drop of dew on a hundred kinds of wondrous flowers and rare herbs. It contains an excellent vitality for regrowth and works miraculously on external injuries."

[Night-Shining Pearl]: "Produced in the North Sea, it shines forever without going out. An essential fine item for the cave abodes of great experts."

"This reward should belong to Master."

A round bead appeared in Li Mo's palm, about the size of a fist, radiating a soft glow.

He had seen this thing before.

At Hengtong Trading Firm in Purple Sun Prefecture City, a Night-Shining Pearl had hung above the auction stage.

Judging only by its luster and color, that one had been a little inferior to the one in his hand.

In short, it was quite valuable.

As for its use, it was actually not as good as that portion of Hundred Flower Dew Ointment.

Li Mo applied a little to his body. It was cool and silky; the tiny cuts left from tempering his physique in Divine Blade Cave during the day almost immediately began to heal.

[Congratulations, host. Successfully invested one portion of Ice-Fire Wine and one portion of roasted exotic-beast meat.]

[Investment return: twenty years of martial Dao insight.]

[Investment return: one Profound Crystal.]

"Ice Block is still the best."

Li Mo could not help sighing.

Inviting her to drink a little wine got him twenty years of martial Dao insight.

This thing—no matter how many years of it he got, it would never be too much.

Clearly, with the same investment, even when Master obviously preferred wine and meat more, the rewards that came from Ying Bing were still better by far more than just a tiny bit.

One could only say this was the terror of a red heavenly mandate.

Mm, for the sake of rewards, he had to cling tight to Ice Block's jade legs.

Were those legs he was clinging to? No, they were a glittering Money Tree!

[Host still has one return awaiting collection. Collect it?]

Li Mo remembered.

During the day, he had saved Murong Xiao.

That should count as making a major change to his fate, right?

What good thing would it drop...

Little Li was a little expectant, and with a thought, he acted.

"Collect."

[Congratulations, host. You invested one bottle of Clear Heart Pill and successfully saved Murong Xiao, allowing him to avoid falling into demonic corruption.]

[Investment return: one Stubborn Stone Heavenly Book Seal.]

[Stubborn Stone Heavenly Book Seal]: "Stamp it onto any martial art, and it can make that martial art undergo deduction and refinement, thereby raising its grade. At most, it can elevate a martial art to superior grade."

"Refine a martial art?"

Li Mo froze for a moment, and the Night-Shining Pearl nearly rolled onto the floor.

The next instant.

A small seal, about a thumb's width square, surfaced in his left hand.

The small seal carried a bronze color, yet it was unlike either brass or bronze that Li Mo had seen. Tadpole-shaped characters were carved on all four sides, brimming with ancient charm.

"If there's a stone Heavenly Book Seal, then are there also copper, silver, and gold ones?"

Li Mo fell into thought.

Among what he currently practiced, the highest grade should be Extreme Weapon Slaughter Body, which belonged to the ranks of ultimate arts, while Fire Heart Lotus-Birth Technique was a superior martial art.

Above ultimate arts were divine arts.

If he obtained a silver or gold Heavenly Book Seal in the future, it could also upgrade martial arts he had practiced.

Upgrading martial arts he already had would be far more convenient than switching to cultivate some other technique.

"I'll think about it when I have one in the future."

Li Mo took out the Prairie Fire Sword Technique his master had just given him.

Aside from this mid-tier sword art, there were currently no other martial arts he could upgrade.

He gently stamped the Heavenly Book Seal onto the page.

At once, the tadpole script on it glowed faintly, then all of it "burrowed" into the booklet and began swimming between the lines.

Some characters were dragged along by the little tadpoles and rearranged; others were swallowed down, then spat back out as new words.

Li Mo found it rather wondrous to watch.

About five minutes later.

The tadpole script had completely lost its glow and vanished without a trace.

And the sword art recorded in the booklet had also become:

[Fire Crane Thousand Feathers Sword].

"I gained twenty new years of martial arts insight."

"Even if I put it all into the other two techniques, they might not break through from major achievement to perfection."

"I'll learn the sword art first."

Little Li rubbed his hands together, reasoning with himself.

All right, in truth, he simply wanted to learn a sword art.

After all, who wouldn't want to be a handsome, carefree swordsman riding the wind and questioning the moon?

Whether it was strong or not could be discussed later; being cool was a lifelong matter.

With longing in his heart, Li Mo poured all his martial arts insight into the Fire Crane Thousand Feathers Sword.

[Twenty years of martial arts insight successfully infused.]

[In the first year, your interest was intense. You studied the Fire Crane Thousand Feathers Sword earnestly and successfully reached entry level.]

[In the fifth year, you still flocked eagerly toward the study of sword arts. Your practice proceeded very smoothly, and at last you trained it to initial proficiency.]

[In the eighth year, you entered a bottleneck. For a long time, you made not the slightest progress, and you began to doubt yourself.]

[In the twentieth year, through long periods of dry sitting, you finally relied on the slow work of water grinding stone to sum up your sword-art experience and barely brought it to minor achievement.]

Li Mo opened his eyes.

In an instant, twenty years of practice—cultivating day and night, heedless of winter cold or summer heat—became vivid and clear in his memory.

He looked toward a branch outside the window.

No, that was clearly a peerless divine sword!

Snapping off the branch, he waved it about with the delight of a hunter spotting prey. In his hand, the branch faintly carried a clear, melodious wind-hum.

The Prairie Fire Sword Technique had always valued explosive power.

After being deduced and perfected, the Fire Crane Thousand Feathers Sword inherited this advantage and took it to an even higher level.

Every time it struck an enemy, it could leave force inside their body. When the time came, patches of red marks would appear on the enemy, like burning crane feathers.

Once that force accumulated to its limit, it could erupt all at once.

At minor achievement, it could stack the force up to nine layers at most.

"Once I reach the Inner Breath Realm, I can also replace the force with inner breath."

Throwing away the branch, which was covered in cracks, Little Li was very satisfied.

After calming down, he couldn't help thinking again.

Twenty years, and only minor achievement?

Was it because martial techniques were harder to study than mental cultivation methods or external tempering arts, or did he simply have no talent for sword arts?

"If I get other martial techniques in the future, I can add some martial arts insight to them too. I'll know then."

Li Mo withdrew his thoughts.

He sat down on the ground and began practicing his mental cultivation method.

"I need to speed up the opening of my meridians."

"This Profound Gate Immortal Physique of mine seems to have more main meridians, and the path through the Blood-Qi Realm is also longer than other people's."

Buzz—

After a strange resonance with heaven and earth.

Li Mo once again entered the state of Heaven-Man Unity. The purest vital energy between heaven and earth flowed into his body like water.

His consciousness also slowly sank downward, entering his own body.

Inner sight.

This did not require special practice. After Li Mo comprehended the Fire Heart Lotus-Birth Technique to major achievement, he could do it naturally.

Of course, for others, they would probably have to reach the Inner Breath Realm before they could master it proficiently.

An ordinary Blood-Qi Realm cultivator could only rely on food and practice, constantly tempering their own blood and qi, then hurling it all at their meridians in one go.

But with the help of inner sight, Li Mo could not only use essence energy to refine his blood and qi, he could also wrap that blood and qi within it and guide it precisely into his meridians.

To make an analogy.

The former was a bucket of water, splashed out in one sloppy pour.

The latter was a water pipe, precise and efficient.

So Li Mo's process of opening his meridians could only be described as "water flowing into a channel already formed."

There was no so-called bottleneck, much less any chance of injury.

It looked simple, but in truth, reaching this point was the result of many factors.

The Profound Gate Immortal Physique, a mastered ultimate heart technique, and the Extreme Weapon Slaughter Body's enhancement of his meridians' toughness—none could be missing.

"Sigh, it's a little slow."

"I'd guess it'll take until midnight to fully open the 'Yang Linking' meridian."

Li Mo sighed softly in his heart.

These words could only be said in his heart.

Because if he said them out loud and someone else heard, he would get beaten.

Even the outer sect disciples in the sect were elites selected from an entire prefecture, batch after batch, all striving to enter the inner sect.

The condition was to open the twelve main meridians within three years and enter the Inner Breath Realm.

And yet, in the end, only one-tenth of them could successfully enter the inner sect.

And he actually thought this was slow?

Before he knew it.

Night had deepened.

A moon more than ten times larger than Blue Star's hung in the sky, bathing the Clear Abyss Mountain Range in silver radiance.

In the room, the ripples of heaven-and-earth essence energy slowly subsided.

"The Yang Linking meridian is open."

Li Mo looked up and saw the moon had just moved to the very center of the sky.

Roughly... it took three double-hours?

If others knew, they would probably think they had seen a ghost.

But inside Li Mo's body, that newly opened meridian was truly brimming with surging blood and qi.

Of course, this was within Li Mo's expectations.

What truly surprised him was the number of meridians in his body.

"I should have thirty-six main meridians?"

Li Mo was both shocked and delighted.

For a martial artist, the main meridians within the body were equivalent to an engine.

In other words, the blood and qi he could use in the future would be three times that of an ordinary Blood-Qi Realm cultivator?

The gap in combat power would be even greater.

"There are still around ten days until the sect trial."

"I wonder if any accidents will happen."

One had to know that in Ying Bing's evaluation, the words "ill-fated" were written there bright and clear.

So, if nothing unexpected happened, then something unexpected had to happen to her sooner or later.

If something happened to her, then he, living under the same roof as her, probably could not avoid getting dragged in either.

A slight sense of urgency rose in Li Mo's heart.

He longed for power!

"The blood and qi accumulated from essence energy should still be enough to open one more meridian."

Li Mo murmured to himself.

After going to the toilet and drinking a cup of water, he sat back down on the spot.

Heaven-and-earth essence energy began to ripple once more.

Strangely enough.

As long as he cultivated, he seemed not to feel the slightest fatigue or exhaustion at all?

If not for being limited by the conversion speed between essence energy and blood and qi, working himself to the bone for twelve double-hours a day would not be impossible...

Next door.

Many things in Ying Bing's room had already frozen and broken.

She never lit candles.

Because when she was cultivating, candles had no right to burn.

When she was in Cassia Palace, the lighting used throughout the entire palace had been jade crystal lamps made from merfolk oil.

"Two meridians."

"Still not fast enough."

Ying Bing lowered her eyes and made a brief calculation.

The land of inheritance she was going to required at least eight meridians in the Blood-Qi Realm.

In other words, in these dozen-plus days, she still needed to open at least six more meridians.

Suddenly—

Ying Bing seemed to recall that this sect trial was apparently not a peaceful one.

At the time, she had not yet successfully opened her meridians and had not been a participant; she had merely heard a few rumors.

It was said that a small portion of disciples had vanished during this trial.

That was right—not died, but vanished, alive without a person to be seen, dead without a corpse to be found.

What had happened within it was unknown.

"The stronger I am, the more certainty I'll have."

"One of the Nine-Colored Primal Phoenix's life souls—I must obtain it."

Ying Bing's eyes, like blue-green snow, flickered slightly.

In her previous life, by a stroke of fortune, she had entered a secret land that had been born in response to one of the Nine-Colored Primal Phoenix's nine souls, the "Rosy Soul."

It was also because of this that she revealed her talent and changed her fate.

In the life that followed, this inheritance had remained inseparably bound to her.

Later, whether through fortuitous encounters or by relying on all manner of methods, she gathered the Nine-Colored Primal Phoenix's nine souls, and they also became one of the important pillars she relied on upon her invincible path.

It could be said that among the great opportunities of her life, the Nine-Colored Primal Phoenix could rank in the top three.

The divine art Ying Bing created herself—the Nine-Colored Dark Phoenix Scripture—also required possession of the nine souls in order to cultivate.

"Is Li Mo still cultivating?"

"He does have a bit of perseverance."

Strange to say—

Whenever Ying Bing thought of Li Mo being right next door, the lake of her heart, once like solid ice, would ripple with the faintest wave.

She did not dislike this feeling, but she disliked the version of herself that was affected by it.

What displeased her even more was that she did not understand where this emotion had come from.

"Could it be because I still owe him a favor?"

After thinking for a moment, Ying Bing decided.

When she went to the land of inheritance, she would bring Li Mo with her.

Any of the other opportunities inside, even the slightest one obtained at random, would be enough to change an ordinary person's fate.

Perhaps it could let him, within his lifetime, walk out of Purple Sun Prefecture, or even the Eastern Wasteland Domain.

If he could witness the true splendor of the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths, even if only the tiniest fraction of it, then his life would not have been in vain.