When Lin Yi left the secret passage and entered the courtyard,
the sky had already darkened.
"Phew..."
Lin Yi slowly exhaled a breath of stale air and stretched. His bones cracked all over.
[Destiny: Know Heavenly Fate, Empathic Corpse Dissection]
[Technique: Long Rainbow Technique (Fourth Stage)]
[Proficiency: 1125/1500]
[Technique: Corpse Kui Rebirth Method (First Layer)]
[Proficiency: 738/1000]
[Qi Refining Paths: Corpse Puppet Path, Martial Way]
[Realm: Corpse Puppet Path, Ninth Rank; Martial Way, Unranked]
[Martial Skills: Reckless Blade (Fragment) (Novice)]
[Corpse Puppet Path Skills: Yin Coffin Crafting (Mastered), Puppet Control Art (Mastered), Corpse Obstruction Eye (Mastered)...]
Over the past few days,
Lin Yi had focused on training in the Martial Way.
His cultivation in the Corpse Puppet Path had fallen behind.
First, he had no empathic experience or access to the yin energy needed for cultivation, so his progress there was relatively slow.
Second, Lin Yi needed a backer now. Becoming a Martial Artist would let him travel under the Martial Hall's name, giving him a backer of sorts.
"I won't go back to Lian Niang's home tonight. I'll return tomorrow."
With that, Lin Yi took out the second half of Reckless Blade, the martial skill he had obtained earlier. He would practice this Martial Way technique first.
He wondered how much power he could bring out of the skill when he hadn't even become a Martial Artist yet.
The Martial Hall had martial skills too, but students could only learn them after becoming Martial Artists.
Of course, it wasn't that the Martial Hall was stingy. Only Martial Artists could nurture True Qi within their bodies, and only True Qi could unleash the power of martial skills.
Without True Qi, even if someone fully understood a martial skill, they couldn't bring out its power. Practicing it would be of little use.
So, before breaking through the Martial Pass, techniques were the main focus of cultivation. At most, ordinary people learned some basic fist and foot techniques, which still made them far stronger than the average person.
But Lin Yi was different.
He had cultivated in the Corpse Puppet Path and had its True Qi in his body.
He just didn't know whether the Corpse Puppet Path's True Qi could support the Martial Way.
Lin Yi took a bottle of Insight Pills from his sleeve. They could improve one's ability to comprehend martial skills.
There were seven pills in the bottle. Lin Yi had bought them by chance earlier and planned to save them until he broke through to become a Martial Artist and began learning martial skills. He hadn't expected to have a use for them now.
"Keep the edge in the heart, the sharpness in the mind; let the body be an empty valley, and the qi will hide itself..."
Lin Yi silently recited the formula.
With Hu Ma's empathic experience, he learned the remaining fragment of Reckless Blade quickly.
Nearly an hour later,
the word "Fragment" had vanished from the panel entry [Martial Skills: Reckless Blade (Fragment) (Novice)].
That meant Lin Yi had fully mastered the skill.
[Martial Skills: Reckless Blade (Novice)]
[Proficiency: 13/100]
Suddenly, Lin Yi's expression turned to astonishment.
The qi and blood throughout his body surged, gathering together and coursing through his meridians and bones in a strange pattern!
Almost by instinct, Lin Yi drew the long saber at his waist and viciously hacked at the wooden dummy standing before him!
His qi and blood surged like a rainbow, pouring down like a suspended waterfall.
Crack!
The wooden dummy split in two with a single slash!
Lin Yi stared in amazement at the perfectly smooth cut in the wood.
He couldn't believe he'd made it himself.
"So that's how it works!"
"Martial Artists nurture True Qi, which they can use to unleash martial skills. I'm not a Martial Artist yet, and the Corpse Puppet Path's True Qi runs counter to the Martial Way, so I can only draw on my body's qi and blood to unleash the skill's power."
"But the cost is huge!" Lin Yi frowned.
After one slash, he felt that at least thirty percent of his qi and blood had been drained.
With his body's current strength, he could manage three slashes at most.
[Martial Skill: Reckless Blade (Novice)]
[Proficiency: 19/100]
His proficiency was rising incredibly fast.
Lin Yi shook his head, put the thought aside, and threw himself into training.
He practiced through the night.
Lin Yi lost track of time.
Only after he had completely used up both bottles of pills did he finally come to his senses.
[Martial Skill: Reckless Blade (Advanced)]
[Proficiency: 342/500]
Martial skills were generally divided into four levels: novice, minor mastery, advanced, and perfection.
Perhaps because it was a fragment and he had used the pills,
this skill wasn't very difficult. His progress had been astonishingly fast.
In just one night, Lin Yi had trained it to the advanced level.
His clothes were soaked through with sweat. He looked as if he'd just been hauled out of the water. He didn't care how he looked, simply dropped onto the ground, and devoured meat to replenish his depleted qi and blood.
"Poverty in letters, wealth in martial arts... Poverty in letters, wealth in martial arts... What ordinary family could afford to burn through so much meat and so many pills?"
A bottle of Insight Pills cost twenty taels of silver on the black market.
Body Forging Pills were cheaper, but still cost ten taels.
And that was on top of the meat he needed to replenish his depleted qi and blood.
The cost of training in just one martial skill was already enormous.
The resources he'd used in a single night could have covered an ordinary family of three's expenses for a year.
Lin Yi thought of all the other expenses that would come after he became a Martial Artist. The five hundred-odd taels of silver in his little nest egg still wouldn't be enough.
"The resources gained from [Know Heavenly Fate] are too unpredictable. I still need to find a steady way to make money."
The next day, at noon,
Lin Yi arrived at the Martial Hall after waking up.
"Brother Yi!"
"Where'd you go yesterday? I didn't see you in your room!"
As soon as he saw Lin Yi, Xiao Dong hurried over.
"There was something going on at home, so I went back for a while," Lin Yi replied.
"Oh." Xiao Dong paused, then continued, "Senior Brother Liu just came by and said that Senior Brother Li and Senior Brother Zhang, who shared our bunk, drank too much yesterday at dawn. Their house caught fire, and they died!"
Though Lin Yi knew exactly what had happened, he still put on a look of surprise. "That really happened?"
Xiao Dong nodded mournfully. "What a pity. We had the chance to practice martial arts alongside those two senior brothers, but now I never even got to meet them. They're already gone..."
Lin Yi offered a suitably rueful sigh. "Fate is fickle."
"Yeah. And yesterday, Senior Brother Wu tried to break through the Martial Pass at the Martial Practice Platform and become a Martial Artist, but he failed too. I heard the backlash from breaking through was severe. His qi and blood were completely scattered, and he's lost all hope of ever breaking through the Martial Pass. Senior Brother Liu was furious when he came back..."
Lin Yi wasn't very surprised.
If the man had actually broken through, Lin Yi would have been far more astonished.
A trace of sorrow for a fellow sufferer appeared on Xiao Dong's face. He murmured, "Senior Brother Wu had a Grade B bone structure. Even a prodigy like him has fallen... What chance do we have of becoming Martial Artists?"
Lin Yi wasn't in the habit of preaching. Everyone already knew the truth, and too much encouragement would only sound hollow and annoying. So he pretended not to hear Xiao Dong's mutter.
Each had their own fate, and the road lay beneath their feet.
You couldn't understand without experiencing it. Other people's outcomes couldn't change the steps you took.
Lin Yi thought this silently, his gaze growing even more resolute.
Having crossed into this world, he had witnessed the earth-shaking power of Qi Refiners.
He wanted to grow stronger.
He wanted to make peace with his birth mother's resentment toward him, repay the aunt who had saved his life, find his unknown biological father, honor the Lin Clan that had raised him for sixteen years, and avenge Yu Qinglian...
There was so much Lin Yi wanted to do.
He had no reason to give up.
Besides, he had the potential to accomplish all of it.
"Bang, bang, bang!"
A series of hurried knocks suddenly rang out, pulling Lin Yi from his thoughts.
"Brother Yi, I'll get it."
Xiao Dong moved first and headed toward the courtyard gate.
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