Blood Spirit Art

A night had passed, and the nightmare had ended.

Ye Chen stared blankly at the rising sun for a long while. After washing up, he headed straight for the church hall. His teacher, Lyle, was still seated in the wooden chair at the very front, as though he had not left it all night.

"Teacher, I had the nightmare."

Standing beside Lyle, Ye Chen began recounting the strange scenes he had witnessed in his dream the previous night. In contrast to Ye Chen's anxious expression, Lyle remained as calm as ever.

"A Blood Pool, dense fog, weapons, and voices. Those were the elements of your nightmare?" After hearing Ye Chen's slightly trembling account, Lyle succinctly extracted its key points.

"Uh, yes." Ye Chen nodded, then suddenly remembered something and voiced his doubt. "Teacher, you said before that once I had a nightmare, I would become noticeably stronger. But when I woke up this morning, I found that the concentration of Auling Power flowing through my body was about the same as yesterday. There was no obvious increase. Why is that?"

After hearing Ye Chen's question, Lyle fell silent for a second. Then he suddenly held out his hand and changed the subject. "Load one bullet into your revolver, then hand it to me."

Although Ye Chen was extremely puzzled, he still obeyed his teacher's command. With practiced movements, he loaded a bullet into the revolver's cylinder before carefully handing it to Lyle.

To his surprise, the moment Lyle took the revolver, he cocked the hammer, raised the muzzle at Ye Chen's chest, and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

Completely unprepared for Lyle's action, Ye Chen had never imagined such an outcome. He flipped backward and ultimately crashed onto the church's cold marble floor.

Thud.

Lying on the ground, Ye Chen stared in disbelief at the blurred patterns on the floor, then raised a hand to cover his aching chest.

Yet after several seconds passed, he felt none of the wetness that would accompany flowing blood. Feeling around with his fingertips, Ye Chen eventually discovered that only his shirt had been pierced. The flesh beneath had not been penetrated by the revolver bullet at all.

"I was shot from so close, yet nothing happened to me. How is that possible?"

Ye Chen sat up stiffly, touching his merely swollen chest before picking up the deformed bullet from the nearby floor. His face was filled with disbelief.

Lyle, seated before him, spoke again.

"The first nightmare differs from future nightmares. It does not noticeably strengthen your Auling Power, but it directly strengthens your body and awakens the essence of your ability. Those are the two most crucial things."

"So now, ordinary ammunition can no longer inflict fatal damage on your body. You have officially taken your first step."

"Although I could have told you all this verbally, experiencing it yourself leaves a deeper impression."

After saying that, Lyle revealed a rare smile, with not the slightest remorse for his excessive prank.

After listening to his teacher's explanation, Ye Chen was speechless. Then, curious, he drew the long knife at his waist and lightly cut across the skin of his arm.

He then discovered that although his skin was still soft, not as hard as bark or stone, the long knife found it difficult to leave even a bloody mark on its surface.

Only when Ye Chen infused Auling Power into the blade could he barely slice through the outermost layer of skin on his arm. At the same time, blood beneath the skin surfaced on its own, yet Ye Chen felt no obvious pain.

Ye Chen truly could not understand by what principle his body had been strengthened, or rather, what kind of mutation his body had undergone after that nightmare.

"I do not know the detailed principles, and neither does anyone else. You only need to understand that this is the law of the Auling Labyrinth. Once creatures like us, who have sensed the Labyrinth's summons, come into contact with its aura, our bodies naturally become what the law guides them to become."

Lyle turned to look at the broken statue ahead and replied in an even tone.

"The Auling Labyrinth... and its laws."

Repeating Lyle's words, Ye Chen's thoughts immediately drifted away.

Ever since he was young, Lyle had told Ye Chen that the Auling Labyrinth was a ring-shaped region encompassing all things beneath heaven and earth, the sun, moon, and stars. It divided the world into an inner and outer side. The outer side was Abyssal Purgatory, while the inner side was the Holy Light Pure Land.

The small world in which he now lived was called the Eternal Winter Hidden Domain. It was a hidden space within the Auling Labyrinth, like a narrow and concealed puddle. Ye Chen, Lyle, and the residents of Frost White City beyond the mountains were all inhabitants of that puddle.

In short, the Eternal Winter Hidden Domain was narrow and unstable. One day, it would meet its end by being eroded into oblivion by the Abyss.

When that time came, Ye Chen would leave this place, walk out of the Labyrinth, head for the Holy Light Pure Land, and officially enter human territory.

The time his teacher had spoken of should be arriving soon.

Remembering the sight of the Abyss drawing near that he had witnessed from the Boundary Mountain cliff yesterday, Ye Chen could not help thinking so to himself.

"Ye Chen, give me a few drops of your blood." As the youth pondered, his teacher issued another instruction.

Ye Chen nodded, used the flat of his knife to collect the beads of blood from the cut on his arm, and steadily handed it to Lyle.

Lyle took the long knife and fixed his gaze on the drop of blood on its surface. Ye Chen watched quietly from the side, only to notice light constantly flickering deep within his teacher's pupils, as though he wanted to see through the blood and thoroughly analyze its composition.

After examining it carefully for more than ten minutes, Lyle finally withdrew his gaze and returned the long knife to Ye Chen.

"Mm. The core of your Spirit Art is blood. Judging from the fragmented weapons in your nightmare, you may need to combine the two before you can properly use it."

Lyle rubbed the space between his brows, looking slightly weary. Who knew how many microscopic things he had examined within that tiny drop of blood?

"What is a Spirit Art?"

Ye Chen tilted his head. In the past, he had only known that Auling Power could temporarily enhance his physical abilities, but Lyle had never told him about the concept of Spirit Arts.

"It is similar to the magic in fairy tales, an advanced application of Auling Power. Different people have different nightmares, and different nightmares give rise to different paths for using Auling Power. The essence of every soul differs, so the medium and effect of the Spirit Art one develops will also differ. Some use hair as their medium, some use skin, while your medium is blood. As for its effect, that still needs to be determined through experimentation."

After listening to Lyle's explanation, Ye Chen thoughtfully stared at the bloodstain on the blade. At that moment, a strange intuition entered his mind, causing his fingers to unconsciously smear the blood toward the blade's edge.

After Ye Chen did so, the tiny beads of blood suddenly swelled and changed shape. In an instant, they transformed into extremely thin ribbon-like strands and tightly adhered to the edge of the long knife.

"..."

Lyle watched everything from the side without saying a word. After inspecting the reddened blade several times, Ye Chen tightened his grip on the hilt, aimed the "Blood Blade" at an abandoned bench before him, and swung down with all his strength.

Crack!

The old wooden bench was instantly split in two by the youth's direct slash.

From the sensation in his hand—the way it cut through wood like paper, without encountering any noticeable resistance—Ye Chen could almost immediately conclude that his blood had the effect of enhancing a weapon's power.

To be precise, it could at least enhance the cutting power of cold weapons such as knives and swords. Ye Chen had chopped through plenty of wood in the past, yet none of those swings had ever been as smooth, clean, and effortless as this one.