Long before they arrived, Zhao Cheng had already led three thousand Assault Cavalry on a surprise raid against the beacon towers along the way, leaving troops behind to guard them and setting the victory beacons alight at precisely the right time.
As he stepped through the city gate, three thousand elite Assault Cavalry waited silently in the darkness behind him. Like a black flood draped in a cloak of death, they lay still in the depths of the night.
The night was still dark, and the wind was strong.
The three thousand Assault Cavalry suddenly surged forward at a gallop, swift as wind and arrows, charging straight for the walls of Chou City!
The thunder of hooves swept across the plains and echoed through the towers, as though trampling on Yuan Ming's heart. He shuddered from head to toe.
"Hold the city gate at all costs!!"
"Stop him! Don't let him open the gate! Everyone, stop him, no matter the cost!"
He issued his orders at the top of his lungs.
Wave after wave of defenders poured in behind the city gate, only to be beheaded one after another by Zhao Cheng.
Heads flew into the air in quick succession.
Zhao Cheng slaughtered the enemy frantically, seizing their lifespans.
[You killed an enemy soldier and seized thirteen years of lifespan] [You killed an enemy soldier and seized seventeen years of lifespan] [You killed an enemy soldier and seized twenty-three years of lifespan] ... [Current lifespan remaining: 45,879 years] [Current lifespan remaining: 46,154 years] [Current lifespan remaining: 46,358 years] ...
In a short time, Zhao Cheng had cut down every soldier who had poured in. Those rushing up behind them saw the mountain of corpses and sea of blood and no longer dared to enter the city gate.
They could only watch helplessly as Zhao Cheng sauntered up to the gate, lifted the massive crossbar with one hand, and threw the city gate open with a thunderous crash.
The flood of Assault Cavalry surged in behind it, sweeping into the city like a dead branch before a gale. They charged through the defenders with unstoppable force.
The city descended into chaos. Zhao Cheng alone fought his way up to the towers, strolling through the carnage until he reached Yuan Ming. He grinned at him.
"You should've been more careful."
Yuan Ming was so terrified he stood frozen in place. Zhao Cheng beheaded him with a single sword stroke.
As his head flew into the air, his deputy had already removed his armor and fled into the city disguised as a commoner.
Chou City was now completely leaderless. It had only ten thousand troops to begin with, and they could barely bring a third of their strength to bear.
Under the onslaught of three thousand Assault Cavalry and the terror inspired by Zhao Cheng, a veritable god of slaughter, they quickly collapsed.
In the end, only a thousand men remained. They were taken prisoner, stripped of their armor and weapons, bound with ropes, and kept to do menial labor.
The Assault Cavalry Battalion had once again enjoyed a satisfying slaughter. Three thousand men had killed nine thousand; every one of them had won outstanding merit. They all wished they could tie themselves to Zhao Cheng's leg and follow him into battle from now on.
The lifespan Zhao Cheng had seized had also surpassed fifty-two thousand years.
Chou City had fallen. The three thousand Assault Cavalry occupied every part of the city, and Zhao Cheng finally had time to rest in peace and quiet.
Feng Quan had no idea where he found a rattan chair. He brought it up to the city wall and set it down for Zhao Cheng, letting him recline and look out over the city below at night.
Of course, there wasn't much of a night view to see below—everything was pitch-black. Still, it was pleasant enough to feel the breeze.
Primordial Qi now surged through Zhao Cheng's body, and his strength was inexhaustible. Even after several fierce battles, he wasn't especially tired.
Still, it was quite pleasant to enjoy a moment of leisure now and then.
Feng Quan and Feng Ruo had found a few wild rabbits in the city kitchens. Following Zhao Cheng's example, they roasted the meat for him.
Meng Tian also benefited from Zhao Cheng's good fortune. He sat nearby, happily eating roasted meat and enjoying a better meal for once.
As Zhao Cheng ate his roast meat, felt the night breeze, and looked at the system's lifespan count of more than fifty thousand years, he felt a wave of abundance.
"I've got more than fifty-two thousand years of lifespan. Maybe saving up a hundred thousand will unlock a new system function, but if I just keep saving, who knows whether I'll reach a hundred thousand by the time Han falls."
"But if I use it to deduce cultivation techniques without a clear direction, I'll inevitably take a lot of wrong turns."
"At least there's one clear direction now: keep refining the Primordial Qi in my meridians and make it denser. That can't be a bad thing."
After battle upon battle, some of the Primordial Qi in his meridians had already been depleted.
He hadn't had time to sit quietly and meditate lately, so he might as well spend lifespan on cultivation.
"System, spend two thousand five hundred years of lifespan on breathing cultivation."
[Beginning lifespan investment to cultivate the Basic Body Refining Technique...] [Year one: Your Basic Body Refining Technique has reached perfection, but your Primordial Qi is still far from fully refined. You continue breathing and absorbing Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi. The Qi circulates on its own through your Eight Extraordinary Meridians, refining itself bit by bit...] ... [Year one hundred: After a century of breathing cultivation, the Primordial Qi in your meridians has recovered to fullness, and its density has increased by half a percent. Your rate of Primordial Qi absorption has increased by half a percent...] ... [Year five hundred: You feel that letting the Primordial Qi circulate on its own refines it too slowly—not even as fast as you absorb more Qi. So you begin trying to guide it along a specific pattern.] ... [Year one thousand: You finally get the feel for it and manage to guide a little Primordial Qi through its course. But it still doesn't quite obey, and your guidance keeps breaking off...] ... [Year one thousand five hundred: You can now continuously guide more Primordial Qi through its course...] ... [Year one thousand seven hundred: You guide a stream of Primordial Qi along the Conception and Governor Vessels, trying to actively circulate the Lesser Celestial Circuit. You go astray and severely damage your Primordial Qi...] ... [Year two thousand: You finally recover from your injuries and restore your Primordial Qi. Guiding it from a different direction, you send it through the Conception and Governor Vessels to circulate the Lesser Celestial Circuit. Your whole body grows feverish, and your Primordial Qi suddenly begins flowing faster and faster until it gradually slips out of control. You severely damage your Primordial Qi...] ... [Year two thousand three hundred: You recover from your injuries once again. After reflecting for three hundred years, you grow even more confused. Moving with the flow doesn't work, and moving against it doesn't work either. Just this little stream of Primordial Qi has severely damaged your Qi. If you circulated all the Qi in your body at once, wouldn't you end up gravely injured—or dead?] ... [Year two thousand five hundred: You dutifully absorb Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi and let it circulate naturally. Its density increases by one tenth, and your rate of Primordial Qi absorption increases by one tenth.]
The deduction ended, and Zhao Cheng felt a little speechless.
"Those novels really are all lies! They say moving with the Conception and Governor Vessels leads to orthodox divine techniques, while moving against them leads to demonic ones. I didn't manage to cultivate either kind of divine technique. Instead, I nearly went into cultivation deviation."
His reckless experiments had severely damaged his Primordial Qi twice in a row. It had taken him six hundred years just to recover. That was absurd.
Still, denser Primordial Qi was clearly beneficial. The denser it became, the faster he could absorb Qi through breathing cultivation.
Once the Primordial Qi grew denser, its total amount also decreased by a tenth. But because his breathing cultivation became faster, he soon replenished that tenth.
"The meridians in the body are a tangled web. Finding a pattern that can refine Primordial Qi quickly is harder than reaching the heavens."
"There must be some kind of law of Heaven and Earth hidden in all this."
Zhao Cheng vaguely sensed that the natural circulation of Primordial Qi in his body followed some law governing the workings of life.
This law was incredibly complex; it might even come down to the workings of every single cell.
When Primordial Qi followed the laws of life, it refined itself naturally. The process was slow, but steady.
To advance by improving the efficiency of refinement through a particular circulation pattern, he needed to find a path that followed the laws governing life and yet was more advanced.
That pointed toward a single direction—Unity of Heaven and Man.
If the Primordial Qi in his body circulated along a path that followed certain laws of Heaven and Earth, it should greatly increase the speed of cultivation.
This also explained why Qi Refiners had appeared among the Hundred Schools of Thought.
Some people were born with excellent constitutions and extraordinary insight. Their meridians were naturally open, and as they sensed Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi, they also saw through the laws of Heaven and Earth.
They matched their own meridians to the workings of Heaven and Earth and naturally drew Qi into their bodies through cultivation.
Zhao Cheng, on the other hand, had started with the Basic Body Refining Technique, tempering his body to its limits. Then he had used a Marrow Cleansing Pill to cast off his mortal body and forcibly drawn Heaven and Earth Primordial Qi inside.
"There are too many meridians in the body. Trying different sequences would give me hundreds of millions of possible paths. Better not to mess around."
Just then, the clouds in the sky began to part, and moonlight spilled down.
Zhao Cheng gazed up at the stars and moon. The countless stars shimmered in the distance, as if they followed some hidden pattern.
Moonlight poured down, its brilliance flowing across the plains. The distant mountains and rivers wound like dragons, seeming to conceal some profound principle as well.
The mountains, winds, lakes, and marshes, the turning of the seasons—weren't they all patterns of their own?
Unfortunately, Zhao Cheng could think himself into knots and still had no idea how to match the meridians in his body to the stars and geography of the world.
As he watched, a thought suddenly struck him: he could refine an Insight Pill.
An Insight Pill took a thousand years to make, but its effect lasted a full ten years. If he swallowed one before trying to deduce a technique, perhaps he could find a direction.
Once the idea came to him, Zhao Cheng acted at once and spent a thousand years of lifespan to exchange for an Insight Pill.
Then he swallowed it.
In an instant, the tangled thoughts in his mind grew many times clearer. It was as if a giant knot of threads had suddenly been combed into neat, distinct strands.
The patterns of the stars and the veins of the mountains and rivers all seemed to turn into visible laws, imprinting themselves on Zhao Cheng's heart.
He immediately invested lifespan and began his deduction.
"System, spend ten years of lifespan to deduce a path for circulating Primordial Qi."
[Beginning lifespan investment for deduction.] [Year one: After swallowing the Insight Pill, your insight has greatly increased. You can now grasp many truths from all that has happened before. The arrangement of the stars and the veins of the mountains and rivers all reveal distinct patterns to your eyes. You sit absorbed in observation and contemplation...] [Year five: You contemplate day and night, growing ever more aware of the vast complexity of Heaven and Earth's principles. They seem connected to the circulation of the meridians, yet you still can't grasp that one point of perfect alignment. You dare not act rashly...] [Year nine: Several years pass in a flash. As you observe the heavens at night, you suddenly see a star flicker with baleful light. Looking closely, you find a glimmer of blood-red light shining from it. You are immersed in the sight. Scenes of slaughter and killing rise in your mind, along with mountains of corpses and seas of blood. The Killing Intent from countless enemies slain surges through your consciousness, and the Primordial Qi in your Thoroughfare Vessel suddenly begins circulating on its own. It rushes into the Great Collateral of Shaoyin, then joins four of the Twelve Standard Meridians in a circuit before returning to the Thoroughfare Vessel...] [Year ten: You observe Killing Star Orion and comprehend a method for circulating the Thoroughfare Vessel. The Primordial Qi in the Thoroughfare Vessel refines itself at a greatly increased rate. One circuit of the Thoroughfare Vessel is equivalent to dozens of circuits throughout your body. But every time it circulates, you struggle to suppress the killing intent in your heart, and the Killing Intent clinging to your body grows ever more intense...]
Outside, Zhao Cheng's eyes snapped open. A faint crimson glint shone in his pupils, and the force of his killing intent made the soldiers within ten meters of him shiver involuntarily!
They hunched their shoulders and looked around in confusion, feeling as though a ferocious tiger had locked onto them and could take their lives at any moment.
The sensation was so vivid that their hearts filled with unease, and every hair on their bodies stood on end.
Zhao Cheng closed his eyes again to calm his mind, then examined his Thoroughfare Vessel from within.
He saw the Primordial Qi in it sharpen like blades, surging into the other four Standard Meridians. It circulated through a section of the meridians, then returned to the Thoroughfare Vessel at another junction, forming a loop.
Yet there was a ferocious killing intent in the flow of Primordial Qi. It was strange.
"How did I end up with a path like this?"
Zhao Cheng shook his head, then turned to Meng Tian. "Brother, when are we marching on Wan City?"
Meng Tian turned to meet his gaze, and a chill ran through him at once.
Zhao Cheng's eyes seemed to hold a sea of killing intent, enough to make even him break into a cold sweat.
Had his bloodlust flared up again?
They had only just cut their way through Chou City, and not even two hours had passed. Now he wanted to kill again!
Your bloodlust's a little too strong!
Before you continue