Cultivation Art

This cave dwelling should be able to serve as a safe house.

In the heroic Cangyuan worldline, the protagonist faced the same situation he did now: pursuers were hot on his heels. And since the plot had already reached its midpoint, those pursuers were strong enough to drive the mid-story protagonist all over the world. They were naturally no pushovers.

They might not be able to fly through the air like Ran Qingmo, but they could still scale cliffs and run along their edges to search for someone.

Even so, those hunting him had never found the protagonist while he was staying in this cave dwelling.

There must have been something outside the cave, or perhaps an array, that blocked their senses.

Thinking this, Xu Yuan swept his gaze around the cave dwelling again.

He hadn't noticed it when he first awoke, but now Xu Yuan realized that the cave dwelling had no entrance or exit.

It was like an empty hollow embedded inside the mountain.

He and Ran Qingmo must have been sucked inside after triggering some sort of prearranged teleportation array.

After making a simple analysis based on his past memories and the information at hand, he concluded that the cave dwelling was more or less safe. Only then did he finally relax completely.

He had been transmigrated for so many days, and only now was he truly safe, at least for the time being.

Thinking this, Xu Yuan let out a faint sigh.

If he hadn't transmigrated in such a low-level way, his biological father's men might have already picked him up, and he'd be living it up as a second-generation heir to a top tycoon.

It wouldn't have come to this.

Xu Yuan shook his head and stopped dwelling on it.

He had never been someone who feared problems.

When a problem appeared, complaining was useless. He simply had to find a way to solve it. It was a simple principle.

Sitting at the head of the ice-jade bed, Xu Yuan began reading through the cultivation manual in his hands, making use of the faint light from the luminous pearls embedded in the stone walls. It was called the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art.

This was the only viable way to resolve the incompatibility between his body and Will Soul.

Although he had already obtained a Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill, he couldn't just take it.

All medicine was at least a little poisonous. Pills that greatly benefited cultivators could instead be deadly poison to ordinary people.

The Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill had been refined from all sorts of top-tier natural treasures. The vast amount of Source Qi it contained was far beyond what an ordinary person like Xu Yuan could digest.

If he swallowed it directly, he would most likely explode and die.

Fortunately, he had the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art in his hands.

This was the key to resolving the instability between his body and Will Soul.

"Walk the path of life through death, tempering body and soul"—that was how the formula book described it.

But now that the manual had become reality, Xu Yuan couldn't possibly master it with a click of the mouse like he could in the game.

For a time,

the only sound in the cramped cave dwelling was the occasional rustle of turning pages.

In the utter silence, Ran Qingmo quietly regulated her breathing and healed her injuries, while Xu Yuan silently read the cultivation art.

Time trickled by. No one knew how long had passed.

Xu Yuan suddenly closed the book, let out a long breath, then leaned against the head of the bed and shut his eyes in thought.

This was the first time he had truly come into contact with the cultivation arts of this world.

He was curious and excited, but more than anything, he was bewildered.

They were all Chinese characters. He could understand every one of them separately, so why did putting them together leave him completely lost?

What were the Qi Source acupoints? What were the White Sea meridians? What did it mean to absorb Qi into the body? What was a Heart Source Will Soul?

Who was he?

Where was he?

What were all these things?

Why could other transmigrators start cultivating as soon as they got their hands on a manual, while he couldn't even understand the words?

"..."

Silence.

Xu Yuan raised a hand and rubbed the space between his brows. His thoughts were in a tangle.

Clearly,

the Blood Origin Heart-Fall Technique—one of only three blood-red-grade cultivation arts in Cangyuan—was no beginner-level material.

To put it roughly, it was like this:

"You've learned your Chinese characters. Now go make a nuclear bomb by hand."

After reading the entire manual from start to finish, Xu Yuan's only gain was a rough understanding of the general process for beginning the Blood Origin Meteor-Heart Art.

Take the Calamity Meteor Pill and Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill together.

The first stage of the Calamity Meteor Pill's effects would directly strike the meridians hidden throughout the body's limbs and bones.

Compared with cultivators, ordinary people had blocked, unopened meridians.

Just as Ran Qingmo had been unable to use Qi to heal Xu Yuan's injuries earlier because he was an ordinary person, the impact of the Calamity Meteor Pill's effects would physically tear apart the meridians it struck.

Once the meridians were completely torn, the body would enter a near-death state.

When the body was on the brink of death, the Will Soul would begin to disperse.

At that point, the second stage of the Calamity Meteor Pill's effects would spread through the body, accelerating the dispersal of the Will Soul countless times over.

If things continued, death was inevitable.

But the Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill had the opposite effect: it condensed the Will Soul, gathering the scattered Will Soul back together.

The two completely opposing medicinal effects would merge, while the Blood Origin Heart-Meteor Art circulated alongside them.

The Will Soul inside the body would repeatedly be shattered and then recondensed. After going through this cycle again and again, the body and Will Soul would ultimately become a perfect match.

Throughout each brush with death, the vast medicinal effects of the Blood Spirit Body-Fusion Pill would also repair the damage to the body and Will Soul.

Cultivating this Blood Origin Meteor-Heart Art, which sought life through death, was a nine-in-ten gamble with death. If he lost focus for even a moment during any one of those near-death experiences and failed to circulate the art in time, he would die for real.

But the danger came with an extremely generous reward.

Once he mastered it, not only would his body and soul become incomparably solid, but all 127 meridians inside his body would be completely unblocked!