In the courtyard.
Zhao An took an Earth Origin Pill and drank a bowl of ten-year Red Blood Root decoction. The hollow, depleted feeling in his body eased.
"That's all it took..." Zhao An was a little surprised.
He'd thought that accepting the fruits of twenty years of cultivation all at once would require a huge amount of energy and nourishment.
Worried that he wouldn't have enough Earth Origin Pills and Red Blood Root, he'd sent Li Gou'er to the clinic to find Meng Wanyi. He'd also bought a bottle containing seven premium Earth Origin Pills, along with several catties of ten-year Red Blood Root.
But to his surprise, accepting these results required less energy than usual.
That was mainly because these cultivation results hadn't changed or improved his body very much.
For most of those twenty years, Soul Slave He Song had focused on grasping the art's subtleties. He was like a middle schooler trying to teach himself university-level material and put it into practice, so progress had naturally been slow.
There had been little improvement in his body's tempering or his Internal Breath.
For twenty years, he'd labored at it day after day. Only at the very end had he grasped some of its subtleties and figured out a few of its secrets.
Zhao An looked at his hands. The most obvious change was in his ten fingers. The skin had clearly grown much tougher.
His fingers had already been long and slender, but now their bones were like iron rods, impossible to bend or break.
If he used them to jab someone, brute force alone would probably be enough to hurt them.
Even the unseen tendons in his fingers had grown more resilient, allowing them to channel and release more Internal Breath.
All these changes had prepared him to practice this finger technique!
He told Li Gou'er not to boil any more Red Blood Root, then had him and Zhao Chunzi attack him.
At that, Li Gou'er immediately put on a long face and clasped his hands, begging to be excused.
Whenever Zhao An made progress in martial arts but couldn't find a suitable practice partner, the two unfortunate lackeys at his side paid the price.
"Get on with it," Zhao An said.
With no choice, Li Gou'er steeled himself and swung a punch at Zhao An.
Zhao An raised a hand and lightly tapped the side of Li Gou'er's arm. Li Gou'er cried out in pain as half his body went numb. He fell face-first to the ground, stiff as if struck by lightning.
On the other side, Zhao Chunzi threw a punch too, and Zhao An tapped him as well.
His movements looked effortless, nothing out of the ordinary. But a wisp of Internal Breath traveled along his meridians to his fingertip, then pierced into the opponent's acupoint, causing a series of injuries and all kinds of different effects.
Though this art was called the Pulse-Severing Finger, that was only one of its forms.
The complete finger technique had six forms.
Pulse-Severing Finger, Acupoint-Sealing Finger, Bone-Piercing Finger, Sword Finger, Qi-Bursting Finger, and Spring-Returning Finger.
So far, he'd gained a basic grasp of the Pulse-Severing Finger and the Acupoint-Sealing Finger.
The Acupoint-Sealing Finger worked much like the immobilizing pressure-point technique Zhao An knew of.
The move he'd just used was the Acupoint-Sealing Finger. By tapping Li Gou'er and Zhao Chunzi, he'd instantly numbed them and left them unable to move.
At its highest level, one finger could leave even a Martial Master unable to move.
The Pulse-Severing Finger, meanwhile, targeted an opponent's meridians, disrupting the flow of their Internal Breath. With mastery, it could even reverse the flow of Internal Breath or control it from a distance, making it circulate as he wished.
For martial artists, Internal Breath was the foundation of cultivation. Its importance was beyond question.
Once Internal Breath fell into disarray, the consequences were unimaginable.
This technique struck directly at an opponent's vital points. It was especially effective against fellow martial artists and was far beyond ordinary martial arts.
If he was honest with himself, Zhao An wasn't confident he could counter this finger technique if an opponent knew it.
Unless I crush them with a vastly superior level of Internal Breath, or use hardening arts to train my body until their Internal Breath can't penetrate... Zhao An considered the possible ways to deal with it.
Of course, this finger technique had long since been lost. He was the only one in the world who knew it now. The only people likely to find it troublesome in the future were his opponents.
Since his body hadn't been burdened too heavily, Zhao An planned to take in more of his Soul Slaves' cultivation results.
After all, plenty of Soul Slaves had reached the end of their service period today.
The eighth-grade Hard Bone Skill, Mountain Crushing Fist, and Gale Palm had all completed their first round of cultivation.
"I'll start with the body-hardening art." Zhao An made up his mind, selected three Soul Slaves whose service periods had ended, and refined them in an instant.
Each Soul Slave had served for five years, which he'd used to practice the hardening art.
There were no shortcuts to hardening arts. One had to spend time, little by little, tempering the skin, flesh, sinews, bones, and internal organs from the outside in.
So when Zhao An took in the results of the three Soul Slaves' Hard Bone Skill, an unprecedented "hunger" surged through him.
His body craved food, nourishment, and energy.
Zhao An had been prepared. Without rushing, he first swallowed a premium Earth Origin Pill, then drank a bowl of Red Blood Root decoction, and finally kept eating large amounts of meat.
Then he took another Earth Origin Pill and drank more Red Blood Root decoction, repeating the process until the "hunger" in his body disappeared.
He'd used up three Earth Origin Pills and three catties of ten-year Red Blood Root!
Both an Earth Origin Pill and a catty of ten-year Red Blood Root cost ten taels of silver.
In other words, this single bout of nourishment had cost him a full sixty taels of silver!
That was no small sum. Zhao An's money had been dwindling fast since he'd looted two gangs, and he now had only around fifty taels of silver left.
Not long ago, he'd had more than two hundred taels!
There was no denying that martial arts burned through money. With Soul Slaves training on his behalf, it burned through money like a furnace.
Fortunately, the rewards made every tael feel well spent.
The eighth-grade Hard Bone Skill had six realms: skin, flesh, sinews, bones, and viscera. After completing those five stages, one would forge a Vajra Body!
This initial round of cultivation, with the results from all three Soul Slaves combined, had successfully brought him through the first realm.
The skin all over his body had grown denser and firmer, naturally taking on extraordinary toughness. It could withstand punches and kicks, blows from clubs, and even light cuts from a small knife without leaving a mark!
And if he circulated his Internal Breath according to the Hard Bone Skill, the skin would absorb the Qi and produce the same kind of rebounding force Tang Niu had shown before!
On top of that, this external cultivation art taught numerous unique techniques for deflecting force. They complemented the art's power, ensuring that his body remained unbroken even in a fight to the death!
Zhao An had Li Gou'er and Zhao Chunzi test his body-tempering results again, but this time he told them to beat him repeatedly with short clubs.
They kept at it until Li Gou'er was drenched in sweat and his arms ached so badly he could barely stand it. Only then did they stop.
Zhao An stood right where he was, completely unharmed!
Li Gou'er rubbed his hand, numb and sore from the force rebounding off Zhao An. Looking at Zhao An's skin, not even bruised, he wanted to say, "You're no human," but in the end he held his tongue, not daring to be insolent.
"Brother Zhao, your skin's like stone. When the clubs hit you, it's my hand and Chunzi's that end up hurting. What kind of nonsense is that..."
Zhao An shook his head. "Not enough."
"Not enough?" Li Gou'er stared at him, stunned.
"Clubs can't hurt me, but I'm still vulnerable to blades and swords. It's not powerful enough," Zhao An said, assessing his "new skin."
"..."
"Even cowhide, bear hide, and elephant hide can't stop a knife or sword. Brother Zhao, what you're talking about... can a person really do that?" Li Gou'er was dumbfounded.
"It can be done." Zhao An said no more. As long as he kept practicing the Hard Bone Skill, he'd be able to become impervious to blades and spears!
His Internal Breath had also improved through the practice, and now amounted to nearly four hundred and fifty wisps.
Once he took in the results of his other martial arts, his Internal Breath would surely surge again.
Of course, he couldn't do that today. He'd have to wait a couple of days, or the results of the martial arts he took in would be severely diminished.
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