What should I do? What on earth should I do? There was no way I could let anyone learn my cultivation technique, the Endless Sacred Dao Scripture. It was the hope of the entire race. Even if others lacked the Primordial Chaos Bloodline and couldn't successfully cultivate it, I still couldn't let it spread.
So Ye Wen was utterly resolute: he would never reveal his cultivation technique! He had no choice but to grit his teeth and say,
"I still can't remember it. My head doesn't hurt as much anymore, but now it feels like I've forgotten the technique!"
Facing Mo Chengkong's aggressive demands, Ye Wen truly had no idea what to do. He hadn't learned any other cultivation techniques, so he couldn't bluff his way through—and he doubted he could fool him anyway. Ye Wen had noticed that the battered bookshelf was filled with cultivation manuals. With the old geezer's experience, trying to deceive him would be harder than climbing to heaven.
"Kid, do you really think I have that much patience? I'm giving you tonight. If I don't see the technique tomorrow morning, I'll make you understand what it means to wish you were dead!"
After saying that, Mo Chengkong left again. Ye Wen could hear the impatience in his voice. The old geezer really had no patience at all! It hadn't even been a full day.
There was nothing he could do. Ye Wen understood his predicament.
"I figure the old geezer won't let me die easily. He wants to torture me until I willingly hand over the technique? But with my endlessly strengthened body and terrifying recovery, should I be afraid of your torture?
He even used a forbidden spell to seal my meridians. Hahaha, old geezer, you never saw this coming, did you? There isn't a shred of Origin Power in my meridians!"
Ye Wen muttered to himself for a long while. He was scared, so he tried to bolster his courage, because he'd made up his mind: he wasn't writing a thing for the old geezer.
Bored out of his mind, Ye Wen went over to the old geezer's long row of bookcases. He pulled out a random book and opened it to pass the time.
Fortunately, Ye Wen and Zhang Jingyi had read a great many books over this period. Judging from his experience, Ye Wen figured this one was an ancient text from more than three thousand years ago. It was indeed a cultivation technique for practicing Origin Power.
But since Ye Wen had never cultivated Origin Power, he couldn't judge whether the technique was any good. After reading it, he still felt completely muddled and couldn't make heads or tails of it!
Ye Wen put the book back, then pulled out another. This one was also several thousand years old, and its cultivation method was written in utterly abstruse terms. Ye Wen couldn't understand it at all.
After reading more than ten books, Ye Wen realized they were all much the same: ancient texts, some of them incomplete, with less than half their contents remaining.
Had the old geezer dug all these techniques out of ancient tombs? Looking at this entire row of spoils, he had to be way more impressive than the Tomb-Robbing Iron Triangle—Zhang Qiling and the other two!
Ye Wen spent over two hours giving the books a rough read. Every single one was a cultivation technique. Was this man so obsessed with breaking through that he'd gone mad? There had to be hundreds of techniques on the bookshelf. If he'd dug them all out of tombs, how many tombs had he raided?
"If I refuse to write him a cultivation technique, can I really endure the torture of someone this deranged and twisted—the so-called 'wish you were dead' kind?"
At the thought, a chill ran down Ye Wen's back, and he shuddered.
After thinking it over for a long while, Ye Wen suddenly realized that these cultivation techniques gave him much the same feeling as the Dao De Jing from Earth. Could the Dao De Jing also be a cultivation technique?
It probably was. Since the people of Earth came from the Hongmeng Human Race, and their ancestors had all cultivated, it made perfect sense that someone had brought a cultivation technique to Earth.
And those capable of cultivating the Endless Sacred Dao Scripture were definitely a rare few within the race. Old Uncle Zong had once said he'd never had the chance to cultivate it. That meant the number of people capable of practicing this scripture was vanishingly small.
Otherwise, if the entire race could cultivate it, the Hongmeng Human Race would have long since become the one and only supreme race. So the Dao De Jing might well be a cultivation technique. It was just that Earth no longer had spiritual energy, which was why nobody had managed to achieve anything by cultivating it.
At that thought, Ye Wen unconsciously walked over to the paper and brush Mo Chengkong had prepared for him. He picked up the brush and began recalling the contents of the Dao De Jing.
"The Dao that can be spoken is not the eternal Dao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name..."
Ye Wen wrote the entire text from memory in one go. He had his high school Chinese teacher to thank for it. The teacher had been so strict that he'd made Ye Wen read and memorize the complete Dao De Jing. Sure enough, knowledge was power, and knowledge was wealth!
Perhaps the version of the Dao De Jing commonly circulated now wasn't the original. Maybe it had been altered over the ages. But it didn't matter. He didn't need to cultivate it anyway.
Ye Wen thought he'd try cultivating it himself, but with his meridians sealed, he couldn't get it circulating at all. Still, the sealed meridians reacted faintly. That was proof enough that this really was a cultivation technique!
After finishing, Ye Wen found the oldest books on the shelf again. They seemed to be from seven or eight thousand years ago. He took them out and carefully compared them with the Dao De Jing.
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