The "curse scare" in the cell next door, E-98, had left Xu Qian on edge for days. He had even wondered whether he should find a way to switch blocks and get farther away from that ticking time bomb.
But then he reconsidered. Zhou Kang had only just started to think well of him, and if he immediately asked to switch blocks, he'd look like a coward—and might arouse suspicion. Besides, he'd spent so long working in Block E that he'd finally gotten a good read on most of the prisoners and was delivering meals without a hitch. If he moved to an unfamiliar block, he'd have to start all over again. It wasn't worth it.
"Forget it. I'll just bring a few extra quilts on night shift from now on, wrap myself up tight, and pretend I can't hear or see anything." Xu Qian could only console himself this way, engraving "Stay away from E-98" in his mind as his highest rule of conduct.
Life still had to go on. He put most of his energy back into his "core business"—diligently playing the "meal-delivery expert" by day, then returning to his dorm without fail at night to wrestle with those few ghostly oilcloth patterns in his mind.
Progress with the Mad Old Man in Ding Seventeen remained slow. Xu Qian had nearly seen right through the old man with his Qi Gazing Technique while delivering meals and water, but he hadn't found any new clues. The sharp Azure Qi inside the old man remained deeply hidden, and his behavior was still erratic and unpredictable. The oilcloth he used as a bowl mat was unchanged, too; its patterns hadn't shifted at all.
Xu Qian had even begun to wonder if he'd been mistaken in the first place. Was the oilcloth really just the random scribbling of a madman? Maybe that Azure Qi was merely an afterimage left over from a few days of martial arts practice in the old man's youth.
But every so often, as the Longevity Dao Fruit analyzed the patterns, it sent him an extremely faint impression of "Sharpness," making him feel that perhaps this wasn't the case.
"Maybe... I'm going about it the wrong way? Or maybe this sword technique is so profound that I can't even get my foot in the door with my meager cultivation?" Xu Qian could only speculate.
He didn't give up. He had nothing else to do at night, and cultivating with the Dao Fruit and absorbing Yin Sha Qi happened automatically, without requiring his full attention. So he spent the remaining time tracing and rehearsing those patterns in his mind over and over, guiding the Dao Fruit as it analyzed them.
The process was painfully dull. It was like playing a puzzle game with no hints, no progress bar, and no way to tell whether you were even doing it right. Most of the time, he felt he was getting nowhere. His movements remained clumsy, and the Dao Fruit's response was so faint it was almost nonexistent.
A month slipped by in this seemingly fruitless repetition.
That night, as usual, Xu Qian sat cross-legged on his hard bed. His body automatically absorbed wisps of Yin Sha Qi while his consciousness sank into his mind. He focused on the pattern that had left the deepest impression on him, the one resembling the basics of First Stab, and began his N+1st attempt to imitate it and guide it with his thoughts.
He imagined himself holding an invisible sword and thrusting it forward along the path of those hurried lines. His spirit, his intent, even the faint feeling of qi within him—all of it tried to align with the pattern.
Once, twice, three times...
He kept repeating it mechanically, until he'd lost count. His mind began to wander, and he was just about to give up and go straight to sleep—
Suddenly, a change struck!
In his Sea of Consciousness, the Longevity Dao Fruit—which had always spun with the steady brilliance of a star, radiating a gentle, clear light—trembled ever so slightly, without warning!
It wasn't the kind of tiny adjustment it made when analyzing the details of a movement. This was a more fundamental vibration, as if some gear deep inside it had shifted.
Then Xu Qian clearly "felt" that the Dao Fruit's progress, which had been steadily and automatically circulating through his meridians like a slow trickle to increase his cultivation, had suddenly sped up by a tiny bit!
It really was only a tiny bit!
If his automatic cultivation speed had been "1" before, it was now perhaps "1.01" or "1.02." The improvement was negligible. Had Xu Qian not been so closely connected to the Dao Fruit, with such keen senses, he might not have noticed it at all!
But it had undeniably accelerated!
At the same time, a sudden understanding surfaced in Xu Qian's heart. He hadn't directly acquired the Mad Old Man's sword technique. Rather, for the past month, he had kept studying and tracing patterns that contained a certain "Sword Dao True Meaning," continually guiding the Dao Fruit as it analyzed them. That process itself was like "feeding" the Dao Fruit a kind of high-level "nourishment of knowledge."
A quantitative change had brought about a qualitative one.
Once enough of this "nourishment" had accumulated, it had passively optimized a small part of the Dao Fruit's underlying logic. As a result, the Dao Fruit's automatic cultivation cycle had become ever so slightly more efficient!
Holy crap! It can do that?! Xu Qian's eyes flew open, his face alight with incredulous delight!
He'd assumed that "automatically gaining one year of cultivation every year" was a fixed rate, one that could only be sped up a little by absorbing Killing Intent. He'd never imagined that studying and analyzing profound knowledge from the outside world could fundamentally improve the Dao Fruit's "work efficiency"][.
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