My Dao is Complete

Chen Ye waited quietly until dawn, but not another meteor streaked across the sky.

The lame lone wolf was finally exhausted, collapsing to the ground and panting heavily, yet its blood and energy remained abundant; even its crippled leg seemed to have largely healed.

Chen Ye smiled at the wild wolf and said, "If I succeed in my cultivation one day, you shall have played a major part in it."

Regrettably, the wolf was too tired to even lift its head, only baring its teeth at him to vent its dissatisfaction.

Chen Ye smiled and tossed down the remaining Wolf Blood Pill as a token of his appreciation, then strode toward the ruined temple against the rising morning sun.

The crux of the madness caused by the Beast Blood Pills had been found; as long as the residual beast souls within the heart-blood were removed, there would be no further trouble when consuming the pills in the future.

It sounded simple, and in practice, it was not difficult—at least, Chen Ye was seventy or eighty percent confident.

This concept of "fate" was truly profound.

In order to protect Mo Ci's soul, Chen Ye had previously racked his brains studying the Ten Thousand Soul Banner. After months of painstaking study, his understanding of souls was actually a few shades deeper than Mo Ci's, and he had indeed thought of many ways to solve the trouble of these residual beast souls. This was the benefit of delving into the root cause; if you truly understand the principles, you can naturally deduce a thousand variations of application.

Chen Ye was full of pride as he crested a hill, only to bump into Zhao Hezhou, who was disheveled and bore several scratches on his face.

Seeing this, Chen Ye looked puzzled: "Mr. Zhao, what happened to you?"

"Brave sir... I..." Zhao Hezhou's face flushed red. He had been worried about Chen Ye encountering danger during the night, so he had groped his way out in the dark to search for him. As a result, he had spent the entire night searching without catching a glimpse of Chen Ye, and had even tripped several times in the dark himself.

Now seeing Chen Ye appear unscathed, Zhao Hezhou was incredibly embarrassed and stammered, "I was afraid you might have trouble traveling at night, so I... I came to bring you a torch."

Seeing the bloodstains on his hands and knowing he had suffered quite a bit during the night, Chen Ye thanked him with a smile and brought the bedraggled Zhao Hezhou back to the ruined temple.

In the following days, Chen Ye remained devoted to his cultivation.

The Zhao Hezhou couple truly acted as if they were servants, taking on all the miscellaneous chores. Chen Ye did not expose them; hunting a bit more game each day to feed this family of three was merely a trivial effort for him.

In his remaining spare time, Chen Ye buried himself in piles of books, occasionally drawing runes on the ground repeatedly. Zhao Hezhou prided himself on having read ten thousand volumes, but the symbols Chen Ye drew looked just like the talismans of a Taoist priest; he was completely baffled and could not understand them at all.

Chen Ye would sometimes furrow his brows as if trapped in a desperate situation, and at other times laugh heartily as if he had found a treasure of the world. Day and night, he neither ate nor slept, completely lost in his work.

Zhao Hezhou had seen this state before. His mentor, that highly respected old gentleman, had been in this same crazed state when obsessed with his studies. Completely immersed, intoxicated, and appearing no different from a madman to outsiders. But it was precisely such people who could make progress and achievements on the path of learning.

This frenzied state of Chen Ye's did not last long. On the fifth day after the shooting star vanished, he suddenly burst into loud laughter: "Finally, it is done! My path is complete!"

With that, Chen Ye ignored the fact that the Zhao Hezhou family was nearby and walked straight to the stove to light a fire and heat oil. Over these days, he had saved up quite a bit of beast blood, and he poured it all into the pot to begin refining the pills.

The Zhao Hezhou family had never seen such a spectacle; as the thick, fishy stench permeated the air, they nearly vomited up their previous night's meal.

Seeing this, Chen Ye hurriedly reminded them: "You all should go outside the temple to take shelter for a while. My pills have a strong odor and are somewhat toxic."

Zhao Hezhou hurriedly led his wife and child out of the ruined temple, leaving Chen Ye alone to work inside.

Following his previous method, Chen Ye refined a gourd of Beast Blood Pills, the process no different from before. But this time, he did not put the pills directly into the gourd; instead, he took out the Ten Thousand Soul Banner and laid it flat on the ground.

Immediately after, Chen Ye's hands danced rapidly, drawing runes incessantly while activating his spiritual eyes. In an instant, his pupils turned golden, and everything in his vision was dyed with the colors of the five elements.

But this was not enough. Chen Ye gritted his teeth, bit his fingertip, and used his blood as ink to draw numerous runes on the Ten Thousand Soul Banner. As his internal spiritual energy drained rapidly along with his blood, his face turned as pale as paper. A sharp pain of being hollowed out struck him, but Chen Ye clenched his teeth and held on.

Over the past five days, he had practiced this countless times, and hundreds of runes were outlined with pinpoint accuracy.

When the final rune was perfectly completed, Chen Ye braced his weak body and poured the gourd of Beast Blood Pills onto the Ten Thousand Soul Banner.

At this moment, his body felt as soft as a noodle, yet he kept his eyes fixed on the Beast Blood Pills. He watched as specks of light escaped from the pills and were all absorbed by the Ten Thousand Soul Banner.

Chen Ye clenched his fists in excitement.

It worked! These were the residual beast souls from the Beast Blood Pills!

But before he could rejoice for long, Mo Ci's roar came from within the Ten Thousand Soul Banner: "You wicked disciple, you used your master as bait?!"

Chen Ye replied weakly: "Master, I really had no choice. I couldn't gather the materials for a second Ten Thousand Soul Banner."

These residual beast souls were fused with spiritual energy and sealed within the blood pills; it was no easy task to extract them. Chen Ye's cultivation was still shallow, and he lacked the ability to reach out and instantly refine the residual souls, so he had no choice but to find a way to make them detach themselves.

The Ten Thousand Soul Banner naturally had the effect of capturing souls, and although this crude version had mediocre results, Chen Ye had no choice but to improve it again and use Mo Ci's soul as "bait" to fish these beast souls out.

Residual souls had no reason; they only possessed the instinct of resentment and poison, so they would naturally go to erode Mo Ci's soul.

Mo Ci never imagined that just days after calling his disciple soft-hearted, he would be sold out by this brat.

"Master, don't be angry. These few residual souls are nothing more than a gentle breeze to you..."

"I'll die if a breeze blows on me right now!"

In Mo Ci's current soul state, if a breeze really blew on him, his soul would immediately scatter.

In truth, Mo Ci wasn't really afraid of these residual souls; he was just furious at Chen Ye's "act first, report later" style of doing things.

With anger rising in his heart, Mo Ci treated these beast souls as if they were his wicked disciple, and with a wave of his hand, he slapped them into oblivion.

Chen Ye kept his eyes fixed on the Ten Thousand Soul Banner, his hands constantly forming seals, repeatedly confirming that the beast souls in the blood pills had been released completely, leaving not a single trace behind, before he carefully collected the pills into the gourd.

Now, everything was ready; he only needed to wait three days to take these blood pills out for testing. He pondered to himself that as long as the animals that consumed the pills remained safe and sound without side effects, it would mean that from now on, he could focus on his cultivation with the help of Beast Blood Pills, and the path to advancing his cultivation would be wide open.

Perhaps there was truly some heavenly favor, for three days later, Chen Ye went deep into the mountains as usual and caught more wild beasts. With a mix of anxiety and anticipation, he fed them the pills. Whether it was wild boars or birds, green snakes or spiders, all the beasts and insects that consumed the pills survived successfully without showing any abnormalities. The terrifying side effects of violence and madness that had appeared in the past were nowhere to be seen.

Witnessing this scene, even Mo Ci couldn't help but be slightly moved, sighing with emotion: "You brat, you actually solved the problem of the Blood Refining Method."

Many secret techniques in the demonic path were incredibly powerful, but they suffered from the need for large amounts of human blood during cultivation. Once they could be replaced by animal blood, they could be unleashed to one's heart's content, without ever needing to worry about killing too many people and drawing the endless pursuit of the righteous path.

Who could have expected that this Blood Refining Method, which was always the easiest to invite trouble and caused countless demonic predecessors headaches, would be cracked by a Qiling Realm cultivator who had only been practicing for a few months?

But Mo Ci couldn't help but wonder: if it's like this, is it still the demonic path?