"Let's take a look at these three evil movement techniques!"
The stall owner shoved the defensive technique manuals aside and jabbed a finger at the three remaining yellowed booklets. His eagerness practically spilled from his voice.
He picked up the thickest one first. Faint dark red patterns covered its cover, like dried blood. "The first one is called the Blood-Step Soul-Burning Method. It's incredibly sinister and domineering!"
"It uses your own blood and qi as a catalyst. With a single thought, you can ignite its power, unleashing speed and explosive force far beyond anyone at your level. Even a Second Blood Martial Artist could be left in the dust for a time!"
When he got to the price, the stall owner's voice suddenly dropped. "But this technique burns through your life! Every time you use it, it crazily consumes your blood and qi, and even your lifespan! If you practice it for long, your blood and qi will eventually burn away. You'll be young but wrinkled, with white hair. Premature aging is the least of it. At worst, your blood and qi will melt through your meridians while you practice, and you'll drop dead on the spot!"
After finishing, the stall owner casually tossed the booklet aside and picked up the second one.
Its cover showed several twisted afterimages, their edges traced with fine bone patterns.
"This Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique is more than twice as fast as the last one! Practicing it means forcibly breaking the shackles binding your bones and tendons. You use the humming vibrations of your joints as a rhythm to drive your body forward. Not only can you move at high speed for a long time and cross mountains and ridges as if walking on level ground, your stamina will far surpass that of other martial artists at your level!"
The stall owner stuck out his tongue and licked his yellowed teeth. A vicious glint showed in his eyes. "And the price? Naturally, you pay for it with your bones!"
"During cultivation, fine cracks will keep appearing in your bones, and you'll have to rely on specially made Bone-Mending Medicine to keep you going. If you stop taking it or interrupt your practice, those cracks will worsen in an instant, shattering your bones from your fingertips all the way to your spine. In the end, your entire skeleton will be crushed to pieces. You'll die more miserably than anyone!"
At last, the stall owner picked up the thinnest booklet. Its cover was bare except for a single black character: "Shadow."
"This Shadow-Erosion Evasion Scripture is the trickiest and most insidious of them all! By spending a long time walking and exerting force in ways that defy your body's instincts, you forcibly twist your frame and alter your stride until your movements perfectly match the shifts of light and shadow."
"Once you've mastered it, you can move swiftly and silently through shadows, dark corners, and backlit areas, vanishing from your opponent's senses by exploiting the blind spots in their vision."
"It isn't true invisibility. It simply takes visual misdirection and deceptive footwork to the extreme. It's peerless for ambushes and escapes!"
"But this technique will slowly eat away at your joints and nerves."
Then the stall owner changed tack, his voice turning chilling. "As you delve deeper into your practice, your sense of space will grow increasingly disordered, and your judgment of distance and direction will become fatally inaccurate."
"In the end, you'll develop the strange affliction known as shadow-position illusion. Even though your body is still where it was, you'll misjudge your position. You might charge headfirst into a wall, or misstep in the middle of a fight and leave yourself wide open, dying without even knowing why!"
Having finished introducing all six techniques, the stall owner folded his arms smugly. His eyes fixed on Chen Jing beneath his mask, and his tone turned coaxing. "Young hero, what do you think? Every one of these is the genuine article! Pick whichever defense or movement technique you like. Since you're a regular, each one is only ten taels of silver. Fair to everyone, young or old!"
Chen Jing's gaze fell on the six booklets on the table and lingered there.
There was no denying that the effects of these evil techniques were tempting. Whether defensive or focused on movement, they could precisely make up for his current weaknesses.
But the costs were vicious, one worse than the next. Any ordinary martial artist would have to weigh the trade-off between staying alive and shortening their life.
Chen Jing lightly rubbed his chin as he quickly considered his options.
With the Exemption Bead, these seemingly fatal costs meant nothing to him.
What Chen Jing really cared about wasn't how severe the costs were, but whether these techniques could keep pace with his current strength.
That night, while practicing his punches, Chen Jing had noticed something.
The boost he got from the Five Harms Technique had become negligible. It had practically stopped working altogether.
Put simply, before Chen Jing became a martial artist, a normal punch could gather only three parts of blood and qi. After he activated the Five Harms Technique, that amount doubled to six parts. The boost had been terrifying.
But after he broke through to the First Blood Realm, Chen Jing could gather five parts of blood and qi with an ordinary punch, even without the technique. Activating it only raised the amount to six parts, a boost of just ten percent.
Now that Chen Jing had broken through to the Second Blood Realm, his body could gather nine parts of blood and qi from a punch alone. Activating the Five Harms Technique did nothing at all.
In short, the evil technique that had once helped Chen Jing rise rapidly had fallen behind the times.
That was precisely why Chen Jing had risked coming to the Ghost Market this time. His first goal was to find defensive and movement techniques suited to his Second Blood strength, improving his survivability and mobility.
His second goal was to find a technique that could further speed up the gathering of blood and qi and help him break through, so his cultivation wouldn't stagnate.
After weighing his options, Chen Jing's gaze finally settled on the two techniques that best suited his needs: the Essence Blood Body-Covering Technique and the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique.
The former could condense blood into a shield and withstand a Second Blood Martial Artist's full-force attack. The latter could use the vibrations of his bones to increase his speed. Whether hunting someone down or fleeing for his life, it would be a formidable tool—just what he needed to shore up his current weaknesses.
With that in mind, Chen Jing didn't hesitate. He took five taels of silver from his money pouch, placed them on the wooden counter, and gently pushed them toward the stall owner. "Five taels for the Essence Blood Body-Covering Technique and the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique. I'll take them."
In Chen Jing's view, these two evil techniques were far more useful in actual combat than the Five Harms Technique he'd bought before. Ten taels apiece wasn't an unreasonable price.
Still, he remembered all too well how he'd been fleeced last time, so he went straight for a seventy-five-percent discount.
Chen Jing was sure that the booklets cost next to nothing to produce. The stall owner wouldn't take a loss.
"No problem!"
The stall owner didn't show the slightest anger. Instead, his eyes lit up, and the corners of his mouth stretched wide beneath his skull mask, revealing a greed he could barely conceal.
Then, as if afraid Chen Jing might change his mind, he snatched up the five taels of silver and quickly rubbed his fingers over the ingot to make sure it was genuine.
He turned around and pulled four booklets from the wooden chest beneath his stall, then stuffed them all into Chen Jing's hands.
Seeing how readily the stall owner had agreed, Chen Jing couldn't help but twitch at the corner of his eye.
He'd thought he'd driven a hard bargain, but judging by the stall owner's reaction, he'd clearly still made a hefty profit.
Next time he haggled, he'd have to be even more ruthless.
Chen Jing picked up the booklets and flipped through them. He confirmed that the two he wanted—the Essence Blood Body-Covering Technique and the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique—were the upper volumes, while the other two were their lower volumes.
Then Chen Jing tucked the booklets into his robes. Suddenly remembering something, he asked, "By the way, the Five Harms Technique still gathers blood and qi too slowly. Do you have a faster evil movement technique?"
"A faster evil technique than the Five Harms Technique? I really don't have one."
The stall owner's expression immediately turned peculiar.
The Five Harms Technique was already fast enough, yet Chen Jing still wanted something faster.
Techniques like that were all terrifying methods that could have you practicing in the morning and dead by nightfall.
Naturally, the stall owner had nothing of that level.
He put away the silver, then thought for a moment and lowered his voice, as if sharing a secret. "But since you're one of my regulars, young hero, I'll point you in the right direction."
"See that little house up ahead? It only admits martial artists of the First Blood Realm and above. The techniques inside are a hundred times better than the ones at my little stall!"
Chen Jing followed the direction the stall owner pointed, his gaze sharpening slightly.
The little house was brightly lit, and two martial artists with focused auras stood guard at the door. It was unmistakably the same place Zhuang Tao had entered last time!
"Thanks."
Chen Jing replied calmly, tucked away the booklets, and turned to leave.
He didn't plan to go to that house right away. He still didn't know how deep the waters ran there. It would be better to find out more about Zhuang Tao's situation after he got home, then decide what to do.
When Chen Jing left the Ghost Market, the night had grown even darker. Moonlight spilled across the road like water.
He hurried home in the silvery glow and arrived before long.
The courtyard was quiet. Chen Sanwu was already fast asleep.
Chen Jing slipped quietly into his room without lighting a lamp. By the moonlight streaming through the window, he laid the four booklets on the table and looked again at the Essence Blood Body-Covering Technique and the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique.
After thinking it over for a while, Chen Jing finally decided to practice the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique first.
A defensive technique was certainly important. It could let him withstand a few more blows in a fight, but movement skills were the foundation of survival.
If he encountered a powerful enemy he couldn't beat, mastering a movement technique would let him flee in time. After all, as long as the green hills remained, he wouldn't need to worry about firewood.
But if he practiced only defense, he could at best last a little longer when outmatched. In the end, he still wouldn't escape death.
Having made up his mind, Chen Jing didn't hesitate. He lit a candle, opened the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique booklet, and studied it carefully, word by word.
The candle flame wavered, illuminating the dense lines of text in the booklet.
In less than half an hour, Chen Jing had thoroughly grasped the method for practicing the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique.
The booklet clearly stated that practicing this technique required the specially made Bone-Mending Medicine to keep the practitioner alive. But that applied to ordinary martial artists.
After all, the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique caused cracks to form in the bones, so practitioners had to rely on medicine to suppress the backlash.
But Chen Jing had the Exemption Bead. Once he'd accumulated enough energy, he could simply exempt himself from the cost of bone fractures. He wouldn't need any Bone-Mending Medicine at all.
As time passed, Chen Jing committed the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique's chants, breathing method, and footwork secrets completely to memory.
Then Chen Jing touched his forehead and clearly sensed that the energy in the Exemption Bead inside his mind had passed the halfway mark. If he kept nourishing his blood and qi by eating Green-skinned Horned Pig meat every day, the bead would be fully charged in less than ten days.
Once it was full, Chen Jing would begin practicing the Bone-Humming Swift-Travel Technique right away!
As for a technique to speed up the gathering of blood and qi, he would consider that after asking Zhuang Tao.
Before you continue