Continuous Marvelous Achievements

"Huh? There's light~"

Li Hai moved with the speed of a gale, covering the distance in two or three strides and arriving before the desk in the blink of an eye.

Then, he saw that resting horizontally upon the dark, heavy square table was a scroll painting, mostly unfurled and gray in color.

It was the scroll's roller that had just emitted the red light.

"What is this thing?"

Li Hai stood before the desk, leaning over to observe it closely.

After only a single glance, he noticed that the gray, nondescript scroll was not entirely blank.

In the corner, there was a small, slightly blurred rectangular pattern.

Beside this pattern, the words [Side Hall] were explicitly noted.

At the same time, near the outer edge of the scroll's center, a line of small text was inscribed: [Map of the Guiyou Grotto-Heaven of Naihe Mansion].

"So it's a map."

Li Hai was somewhat confused. "But why would a map be left here?"

Unable to make sense of it, he immediately moved toward the edge of the hall, wanting to see what lay outside.

"Thirty zhang... sixty zhang... ninety zhang... one hundred zhang, reached it!"

After crossing to the edge of the hall in a few strides, Li Hai saw a tall, open doorway.

Without hesitation, he held his head high and stepped into the pitch-black portal.

It felt like passing through a thin veil of mist, and in an instant, Li Hai arrived in another great hall.

Yet, strangely, this hall felt incredibly familiar.

Whether it was the placement of the relief murals or the arrangement of the tables and chairs, this hall was identical to the one he had just left.

In particular, the black desk at the front of the hall and the red-glowing scroll resting upon it were exactly the same as in the previous chamber.

"How bizarre."

A thought suddenly occurred to Li Hai: Could it be that every hall ahead is just like this one?

To test this hypothesis, he strode purposefully toward a doorway on the other side of the hall.

He then arrived in yet another hall, identical in layout and furnishings.

Refusing to believe it, Li Hai crossed through the hall again, entered another portal, and once more arrived in a chamber exactly like the last.

In an instant, he understood:

"So that's it. This is a hall that loops infinitely in space; no matter which portal I enter, I only ever return here."

Li Hai frowned and whispered, "This kind of magical effect shouldn't be possible through martial arts alone; it must be the work of sorcery."

Since he could not reach anything outside the hall, Li Hai simply settled his nerves and began to pace around, hoping to find some rare treasures.

And sure enough, after a thorough search, he actually found a few things.

Among these items were porcelain medicine bottles with completely faded labels, a thick-backed blade about two and a half feet long engraved with strange dark patterns, a crimson crossbow surrounded by dozens of scattered arrows, and three silk-bound books written in complex, ancient characters.

It is worth mentioning that one of these three books was the incomplete fragment of the Evil Spirit Earth Yin Absorption Method that Asu practiced.

As for the other two, one was the Moon Marrow Refining Technique, and the other was the Iron Barrel Bell-Coiling Manual.

Li Hai found it strange that even though the characters in this world were clearly different from Hanzi, he could read them perfectly and understand them thoroughly.

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

However, being a straightforward person, Li Hai didn't waste time dwelling on such minor details.

If he could understand them, great; if not, it didn't matter. He could just find someone else to practice them, and once they succeeded, he could simply copy the results.

But getting back to the point, after reading and understanding the contents of these two books in detail, Li Hai fully grasped their functions and effects.

First was the Moon Marrow Refining Technique.

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

That's right, this was another form of evil ghost sorcery.

However, compared to the broader content of the Yin Absorption fragment, the scope of this ghost art was very narrow.

In short, it allowed ghosts to absorb the essence of moonlight at night, refine it into "moon marrow" to store within their souls, and then use it freely during the day.

Whether used for attacking, defending, or sustaining one's own existence, it was versatile.

Put simply, this ghost art, which relied on basking in moonlight, could effectively extend a ghost's operational time outside of an Evil Spirit Earth and mitigate the severe decline in power that occurred when leaving such areas.

As for the extent of the improvement, that remained to be seen.

Overall, this ghost art was extremely useful to Li Hai.

After all, the world could not be filled with Evil Spirit Earths everywhere, yet the convenience of ghost-path abilities was something Li Hai found hard to give up.

Fortunately, the appearance of this ghost art provided a solution to this dilemma.

Li Hai believed that as he continued to acquire more "Stronger Fragments," he would eventually be able to strengthen the Moon Marrow Refining Technique to the point where his ghost-path abilities would never be weakened, no matter where he went—perhaps they might even be amplified.

The second manual, Iron Barrel Bell-Coiling Manual, was an out-and-out martial arts technique of no low grade; especially in terms of hard qigong training and tempering the mind, it far surpassed Beast Intent Demon Claw.

Setting aside the extremely complex and arduous cultivation process of this technique, as well as the various medicinal herbs required during training, its true core essence could be summarized in a single sentence:

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

From low to high, this technique was divided into seven levels.

Basically, every level required experiencing extremely painful physical tempering, as well as complex and difficult mental refinement.

The medicinal herbs required during this period were also varied and diverse.

In short, it was time-consuming, energy-draining, and expensive.

However, once cultivated to the very peak, the practitioner would become a leader among martial artists in the Steel Sinew Iron Bone Realm.

Especially in defense, they would surpass ordinary steel-level martial artists by several times, with their entire body—inside and out, muscles, bones, and organs—becoming extremely solid and tough, as if truly cast from copper and forged from iron.

Beyond physical strength, upon reaching the seventh level of the Iron Barrel Bell-Coiling Manual, mental fortitude would also far exceed the norm; hypnosis or illusions in the conventional sense would be meaningless against them.

The benefits brought by high mental fortitude were not limited to this; it also allowed the martial artist's will, perseverance, persistence, and intellect to leap forward significantly, subsequently becoming a man of steel who was incomparably "hard" in both physique and spirit.

Without much hesitation, after flipping through these two manuals, Li Hai sat down on the spot and began a new round of the grand undertaking of leveling up.