After stripping away the original version's devouring and insidious nature, it incorporated the Daoist ideals of supreme virtue being like water, endless renewal, and embracing all things.
It was no longer merely a killing technique. Instead, it combined health cultivation with the pursuit of the Dao.
It converted energy with exceptional efficiency, and was extremely gentle. It was less likely to cause cultivation deviation, and its upper limit was immeasurable.
This was the ultimate, enhanced version, Debugged by countless sages of great wisdom.
This was the one!
A glint flashed in Su Yun's eyes. He barely hesitated.
What was the wisdom of people from Earth?
Standing on the shoulders of giants!
No matter how powerful the original version was, it was still an early draft from hundreds of years ago, full of BUGs.
This iterative version, on the other hand, was a perfect patch package, optimized by countless grandmasters!
It was the stable version tested by thousands of developers in the open-source community!
If he was going to cultivate, he would cultivate version T0!
By now, the chaos in the classroom had gradually subsided.
Beside the podium, Luo Bu, with barely a quarter of his life left, was delivering his final taunt at Su Yun:
"Cough, cough... Su Yun... why are you acting all profound?"
"In the face of real talent and ruthlessness... your laughable effort... isn't worth a thing! Cough, cough..."
In the corner, Tang San watched Su Yun, still sweating buckets as he agonized over whether to teach him the Mysterious Heaven Skill. He had nearly rubbed a hole in the corner of his clothes.
Just then, Su Yun suddenly sat up straight, the corners of his mouth curling into a confident smile.
"Phew..."
Following the meridian diagram for the Dao Canon: Mysterious Heaven Skill in his mind, Su Yun adjusted the rhythm of his breathing.
Su Yun suddenly sat bolt upright, startling everyone. The teacher hurried over to sense his energy.
1.0x.
Seeing this, Luo Bu curled his lips into a bloody sneer. "Hmph, putting on an act... trash..."
But before he could even say the word "trash," it caught in his throat.
Because he could feel the aura around Su Yun changing.
If it had been a stagnant pool before, ripples were now beginning to spread across its surface.
1.05x...
1.10x...
The figure began to climb slowly but steadily.
Luo Bu's sneer froze on his face. His eyes widened like bells. "Th-this... this is impossible... He clearly isn't using a Soul Skill..."
1.15x... 1.20x...
Su Yun remained as calm as ever. He hadn't even broken a sweat.
To reach that speed, Luo Bu had paid the price of bleeding from every orifice.
"No... stop... stop right now!"
A nameless panic welled up in Luo Bu's heart. He frantically prayed that Su Yun would hit a bottleneck.
1.26x.
He had caught up.
Without any assistance or self-mutilation, Su Yun had effortlessly matched the result Luo Bu had nearly given his life to achieve.
Luo Bu's breathing grew ragged...
Then...
1.29x!
"Ptooey—!!!"
Overcome with rage, Luo Bu spat out a mouthful of blood like a fountain.
"Why?!"
Luo Bu let out a heart-rending wail.
"I sacrificed half my life for that speed... How did you surpass me after just a couple of breaths?! This makes no sense! It's not fair!!"
But that was only the beginning.
At the very moment Luo Bu fell to the ground, spitting blood, the iterative version of the Mysterious Heaven Skill in Su Yun's body finally finished warming up and bared its menacing fangs.
The speed, which had been climbing slowly, suddenly surged!
1.5x... 2.0x... 3.0x...
Hummm—!!!
Without warning, the air in the classroom suddenly grew thick.
The Heavenly Energy drifting lazily through the air like dust motes seemed to have received a summons from some high-dimensional sovereign.
It trembled violently, converging...
Then, it formed a visible vortex of white airflow, almost tangible, and rushed toward Su Yun at its center!
"Th-this..."
The tip of Teacher Li's pen snapped as he was taking notes.
He looked up in alarm, but before he could make sense of what he was seeing, a powerful gust erupted from Su Yun.
"Whoosh—"
It was as if someone had suddenly flung open the classroom windows. Books scattered across the floor flipped wildly in the wind. Several girls in the front row cried out as the strange gust made their skirts and hair flutter. They had to press their skirts down with their hands.
In the corner, Tang San shot to his feet.
At that moment, the purple light in his eyes surged almost uncontrollably. His Purple Extreme Demon Eye was pushed to its limit as he stared at Su Yun in the eye of the storm, his gaze full of stunned disbelief.
"This aura... balanced and gentle, yet as vast as the sea..."
Tang San's fingers trembled violently.
As the only orthodox Tang Sect disciple in this world, he knew the aura of the Mysterious Heaven Skill better than anyone.
Yet the energy radiating from Su Yun now followed a route seven-tenths similar to his own Mysterious Heaven Skill, but was fundamentally different!
His Mysterious Heaven Skill was like a sharp dagger: domineering, insidious, and following an unorthodox path.
What Su Yun displayed, however, was like a towering, weighty mountain, like an ocean that embraced all things. It followed the righteous path of kings!
What frightened Tang San even more was that the inner force of his Mysterious Heaven Skill, which he had always prided himself on, seemed to have encountered its natural enemy—or a subject standing before an emperor. It trembled in his meridians, even stirring up a bizarre impulse to burst out of his body and submit to Su Yun!
"My inner force... is actually submitting?!"
Tang San's worldview crumbled in that instant. He had to circulate his inner force to forcibly suppress the unrest, cold sweat running down his temples.
"There's no resentment, only endless acceptance and transformation... How is this possible? Could it be that Big Brother Su is cultivating... the ancestor of the Mysterious Heaven Skill?!"
Su Yun couldn't hear anything around him.
As the Dao Canon: Mysterious Heaven Skill, refined through iterations of Earth's civilization and patched by countless grandmasters, began to circulate, he felt as if he had become a bottomless black hole.
On the podium, Teacher Li sensed the Heavenly Energy around him being sucked away at an unbelievable rate, all of it surging toward the child wearing sunglasses.
"Five times... ten times... thirty times..."
Teacher Li's trembling voice quickly turned into a shrill, cracking scream. He looked completely crazed, all his composure as a teacher gone, his pointing finger twitching.
"Fifty times!!!"
"My God! An absorption rate of fifty times! Is this even human?!"
"F...fifty times?"
Blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth, Luo Bu let out a hysterical laugh.
"Fake... It's all fake! A fix! This is rigged!"
"Cough, cough... It has to be the work of the capitalists! This world is so dark!"
As he spat up blood, Luo Bu glared at Su Yun with bloodshot eyes.
"I had Rat scratch my scalp raw... I nearly gave my life... just to reach 1.26x..."
"And he just sits there like he's having tea... and gets fifty times?"
"This isn't fair! This is persecution of hard-working geniuses like us! I want to report this! I want to appeal! I want... urgh..."
That bone-deep despair instantly broke Luo Bu.
He felt like an NPC being toyed with by high-level players, a laborer busting his back for a capitalist only to be mocked for being poor.
"Senior! Senior, don't get worked up! You'll bleed out if you keep this up!"
His underlings frantically pinched his philtrum.
Unlike Luo Bu's breakdown, Xiao Wu excitedly leaped out of her chair, her rabbit-ear hair clip bobbing in the gust.
"Wow—!"
She didn't even care that the wind had mussed her hair. She just gripped the edge of the desk with both hands, staring at the figure at the eye of the storm, the corners of her mouth lifting uncontrollably.
"I knew it! I knew it!"
"How could Boss ever be a useless 1.0? This is more like the real Boss!"
In her mind, Boss Su was so amazing that cultivating just a little faster was no big deal.
"Boss is so cool! Go for it!"
But it was far from over.
Even Su Yun was a little alarmed, wondering if this skill was getting out of hand.
Lei Zhan's voice came through his earpiece. He sounded a little odd, as if he were struggling to hold back a laugh.
"Su Yun, don't be nervous. Professor Zhang was looking through those bamboo slips just now and came across an interesting bit of unofficial history. Just take it as an amusing anecdote."
Maintaining his meditation, Su Yun asked, "What unofficial history?"
"Elder Zhang suspects that this iterative version of the skill, revised countless times, may have originated in the End of Dharma Era described in those records."
Lei Zhan explained unhurriedly:
"They say that during that period, the spiritual energy of Earth was nearly exhausted. To scrape together even a sliver of energy from their surroundings, cultivators of that era were forced to push their cultivation methods to the extreme..."
He paused there, his tone taking on a hint of teasing.
"It's like a sponge that's been baking in the sun for thousands of years, completely dried out. To soak up a little moisture from the dry air, it evolved its absorption capacity to the absolute limit."
"But now, you've tossed that dry sponge straight into the deep sea."
"And its absorption efficiency will only be..."
"Terrifyingly high!"
"I see..."
Su Yun understood.
No wonder this cultivation method was so ravenous. It had been starved.
Boom—!
The airflow around Su Yun surged again. This time, it wasn't merely a gust. A white tornado formed, enveloping his entire body!
Teacher Li's legs gave way, and he dropped straight to his knees.
Disheveled and dazed, he stammered out the estimate that made his soul tremble, relying only on what he could feel:
"One hundred times... at least one hundred times..."
"Madness... This world has gone mad... A miracle... It's a miracle..."
The terrifying hundredfold flow rate instantly drained all the Heavenly Energy from the classroom, forming a brief vacuum.
But Su Yun, at the eye of the storm, frowned slightly.
Something's wrong... It's fast, but uncomfortable.
His meridians felt intensely swollen, as if he'd eaten too much, and even started to sting.
Su Yun quickly discovered the problem.
This cultivation method from the End of Dharma Era was far too indiscriminate.
It didn't care whether the light points floating in the air were red, blue, or yellow. As long as they contained energy, it sucked them all into his body.
An ordinary meditation technique only absorbed the light points suited to the cultivator. It was slow, but the energy was pure.
But now, Su Yun was absorbing things recklessly, swallowing them all without caring whether they tasted good.
He was certainly full, but he had indigestion, and his body was filled with a jumble of different colors.
Watching the chaotic light points barrelling through his meridians, Su Yun had a sudden flash of inspiration.
Why am I absorbing these multicolored impurities?
Why should I adapt to my environment?
Because this is Douluo Continent, and the environment here is so mixed?
So I have to hold my nose and adapt to it?
No!
A sudden flash of inspiration crossed Su Yun's mind.
He remembered how, back in the Soul Hunting Forest, the Star Gate's coordinates had shifted and connected to an unknown plane. The light points that had seeped through the crack in the gate had been pure and deep, silvery-white, imbued with a vast, high-dimensional aura.
Those are the light points that suit me!
If the silver light points here are too sparse to absorb enough...
Then I can just connect to a new source myself!
A bold smile curled the corners of Su Yun's mouth.
If the mountain won't come to me, I'll bring the mountain here!
The next second, Su Yun moved his mind and thrust both hands out to either side, pressing against the air.
"Martial Soul, Star Gate, open!"
Hummm!!!
A deep, mysterious white Star Gate suddenly opened behind Su Yun.
The gate seemed to lead into the depths of the cosmos. The moment it appeared, the restless light points inside his body fell silent.
The Star Gate was now connected to the vast, boundless depths of space.
There, he saw countless specks of light—pure beyond compare, and perfectly suited to him!
In an instant, the chaotic vortex of violent currents changed color.
The disorderly specks of ochre, fiery red, and azure were forcibly pushed aside by that higher-level aura.
In their place came countless silver specks of light, surging out of the Star Gate!
It was as if the entire Milky Way had tilted and poured down!
BOOM—!
The next moment, the Star River flowed backward!
At that moment, the cramped classroom seemed to vanish. The ceiling and walls melted away in their perception.
They felt as if they were floating in the boundless depths of space, surrounded by billions of dazzling stars woven into a Silver Waterfall!
The silver radiance passed through the Star Gate and became a roaring, surging River of Light. Carrying the ancient aura of the Cosmic Wilderness, it rushed toward Su Yun!
The lights leaped with joy and raced one another, as if Su Yun were the sole destination of this Star Sea.
That pure, noble, and boundless spatial fluctuation descended upon the mortal world, bearing an overwhelming pressure that crushed every dimension.
"Uh..."
Tang San had been barely holding on with the inner strength of the Mysterious Heaven Skill, but now he had finally reached his limit.
Before that Majestic Heavenly Might, the proud violet gleam in his eyes was like a firefly beneath the full moon, fading instantly into darkness.
CRACK—
Tang San felt a sharp pain in his eyes. Even his Purple Extreme Demon Eye was pierced by the silver radiance filling the sky, bringing tears to his eyes.
He completely lost the strength to stand. His knees buckled, and he dropped heavily onto the floor, gasping for breath, his face filled with shock and awe.
At the lectern, the pen had already fallen from Teacher Li's hand.
His mouth hung open so wide that his jaw gave a soft click and dislocated.
Yet he felt no pain at all. He stood frozen like a stone statue, staring greedily at the dreamlike silver Star Sea, as if his very soul were being cleansed in that moment.
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