Successive Great Feats

"Eh? There's a light~"

Li Hai took three steps in two strides and, in the blink of an eye, raced to the desk amid a rush of fierce wind.

Then he saw that a large, dark square table held a mostly unfurled scroll painting, gray and colorless.

The thing that had just glowed red was the scroll's roller.

"What is this?"

Li Hai stood before the desk and leaned over to examine it closely.

At a glance, he noticed that the gray scroll wasn't entirely blank.

In one corner, there was a small, slightly blurred rectangular image.

Beside it, the words "Side Hall" had been carefully written.

Near the edge of the scroll's center, close to the mounting, was another line of small text: "Map of the Guiyou Grotto-Heaven of Naihe Mansion."

"So it's a map."

Li Hai was somewhat puzzled. "But what's a map doing here?"

Baffled, he immediately strode toward the edge of the great hall, wanting to see what lay outside.

"Thirty zhang... sixty zhang... ninety zhang... one hundred zhang. Here!"

After a few strides, Li Hai reached the edge of the great hall and saw a tall doorway standing open.

He didn't hesitate. With his head held high, he stepped into the pitch-black doorway.

As if passing through a thin veil of mist, Li Hai instantly found himself inside another great hall.

Strangely, this hall seemed incredibly familiar.

From the placement of the reliefs and murals to the arrangement of the tables, chairs, and other objects, it was exactly like the place he had just left.

Most notably, the black desk at the very front of the hall and the red-glowing scroll lying across it were identical in every respect to their counterparts in the previous hall.

"How bizarre."

An idea suddenly came to Li Hai. "Could the halls farther on be just like this one?"

To test his guess, he strode toward a doorway on the opposite side of the hall.

Then he found himself in yet another hall with the exact same furnishings and layout.

Unwilling to give up, Li Hai crossed the hall again and entered another doorway, only to arrive once more in a hall identical to all the others.

In an instant, he understood.

"So that's it. This is a hall that... loops infinitely through space. No matter which doorway you enter, you'll always end up back here."

Li Hai furrowed his brow and muttered, "A miraculous effect like this couldn't be achieved through martial arts, right? It must have been created with magic."

Since there was no way to reach anywhere beyond the great hall, Li Hai decided to be patient and began wandering around, hoping to find some rare treasures.

And sure enough, after searching the place, he actually found a few things.

Among them were porcelain medicine bottles whose inscriptions had blurred beyond recognition; a thick-backed saber, about two and a half feet long, engraved with strange dark patterns; a crimson crossbow with dozens of arrows scattered around it; and three books made of silk, written in complicated ancient characters.

It was worth noting that one of the three books was a fragment of the Evil Spirit Earth Yin Absorption Method that Asu cultivated.

The other two were the Moon Marrow Refining Technique and the Iron Barrel Bell-Coiling Manual.

Even Li Hai found it strange that, though the writing in this world was clearly different from Chinese characters, he could still read and understand it perfectly.

He could only attribute this to the power of the Study Hard system.

But Li Hai, with his blunt, straightforward nature, wouldn't waste time worrying over such a minor matter.

It was better if he could read them; if not, it didn't matter. He could always find someone to practice the techniques, then copy them once they had mastered them. In the end, the result would be the same.

But that was beside the point. After carefully reading and understanding the contents of the other two books, Li Hai now fully understood what they did.

First was the Moon Marrow Refining Technique.

Like the Evil Spirit Earth Yin Absorption Method, this book was meant for ghosts.

That's right. It was another evil art of the Ghost Path.

But compared to the relatively wide-ranging fragment of the Yin Absorption Method, this ghostly art trained in something very specific.

In short, it allowed ghosts to absorb the essence of moonlight at night and refine it into moon marrow, which they stored within their souls for use during the day.

They could use it to attack and kill, to defend themselves, or to sustain their existence.

Put simply, this ghostly art, which relied on basking in the moonlight to cultivate, could effectively extend the time a ghost could operate outside the Evil Spirit Land. It could also improve their severely diminished abilities after leaving the Evil Spirit Land.

The extent of that improvement, however, remained unknown.

All in all, this ghostly art was extremely useful to Li Hai.

After all, the world couldn't possibly be full of Evil Spirit Lands, but the convenience of the Ghost Path's abilities made it difficult for Li Hai to give them up.

Fortunately, the appearance of this ghostly art offered a solution to the problem.

Li Hai believed that as he continued to acquire Stronger Fragments, he would eventually strengthen the Moon Marrow Refining Technique until his Ghost Path abilities would suffer no reduction wherever he went. They might even grow stronger.

The second book, the Iron Barrel Bell-Coiling Manual, was a genuine martial arts cultivation method, and a high-level one at that. In particular, it far surpassed the Beast Intent Demon Claw in both body-hardening and tempering the mind.

Leaving aside the technique's extremely complex and grueling cultivation process, as well as all the various medicinal ingredients it required, its core principle could be summed up in a single sentence:

The body like an iron barrel, the mind like a coiled bell.

This technique had seven levels, from the lowest to the highest.

Almost every level required one to undergo the most excruciating physical training as well as arduous, intricate training of the mind.

The medicinal ingredients required along the way were also all kinds of strange and varied.

In short, it took time, effort, and money.

But once someone cultivated it to its peak, they would become one of the foremost among martial artists in the Steel Sinew Iron Bone Realm.

Its defenses, in particular, would be several times greater than those of an ordinary Steel Rank martial artist. The sinews, bones, and organs throughout the body, inside and out, would all become incredibly hard and resilient, as if truly cast from bronze and forged from iron.

Beyond physical strength, once the Iron Barrel Bell-Coiling Manual reached its seventh level, the practitioner's mental fortitude would also far surpass the norm. Hypnosis and illusions of the usual sort would be utterly useless against them.

High mental fortitude brought more than just that. It could greatly enhance a martial artist's will, perseverance, resolve, and intelligence, turning them into an iron-hard person in both body and spirit.

Without much hesitation, Li Hai finished reading the two manuals, sat down right there, and began another round of upgrades.