He saw words displayed on the Jade Tablet.
Black Water Profound Yin Art (Art, Foundation Establishment)
Cultivation method: Gather the kidneys of nine kinds of living creatures, along with Mandala Flowers, Nether Grass, and Profound Yin Vines. Grind them into juice, arrange the ritual cloth, and write the Black Water Profound Yin Incantation. Sense the vital essence in the nine creatures' kidneys from within the formation, absorb it into the body, circulate it through the body a hundred times, and store it in the kidneys. This will produce Black Water Essence.
Innate spell: Profound Yin Black Water. Anyone struck by it will have their yang absorbed by the black water and die.
Cost: Remain a virgin for life.
Black Water Art (Art, Foundation Establishment)
Cultivation method: Gather Black Profound Ganoderma, Nine Yin Grass, dew from a full-moon night, Nether Fruits, and Profound Yin Ink Stones. Grind them into juice, then write the Black Water Incantation over the kidneys. Sense the vital essence in your own kidneys, circulate it through the body, transform it into Black Water Essence, then return it to the kidneys to nourish the kidney marrow.
Innate spell: True Yin Black Water. Anyone struck by it will have their life force stolen and freeze to death.
Cost: None.
Looking at this cultivation art, Li Qing's eyes held an indescribable expression.
"This art cultivates the vital essence of the kidneys, completely unlike the Spirit Blood Art."
"Could it be that the cultivation arts in this world each correspond to the vital essence of a different part of the human body?"
"And the places where that vital essence is stored aren't always the same, either."
"It can be stored in the blood or in the kidneys. Maybe it can also be stored in the meridians or the dantian."
"Where it's stored must depend on where the vital essence comes from."
"And vital essence comes from all sorts of sources."
"For example, nearly every cultivation art I've obtained involves plundering the vital essence of other living creatures to cultivate."
"After the Jade Tablet modified them, nearly all of them involved cultivating with my own vital essence instead."
"There's definitely something strange about that. Judging from all the scriptures and books I've found, the Jade Tablet's function is to optimize everything."
"If it optimized all these cultivation arts into methods that refine one's own vital essence, that means this approach is safer and more reliable."
"That much is clear from the fact that it comes without a cost."
"Besides, given the different places where the vital essence is stored, these cultivation arts don't seem to interfere with each other."
"Could I cultivate multiple arts at once?"
A little excitement stirred in his heart. "Could I follow the path of the Smelting of Hundred Schools?"
"The human body has its five organs and six viscera, eyes, ears, mouth, nose, and tongue, skin, sinews, flesh, and bones, as well as the brain, marrow, and blood."
"If each of them has its own kind of vital essence, then there must be at least twenty or thirty different types of cultivation arts."
"If I could collect them all and cultivate every one of them..."
"Then every part of my body could store a different kind of vital essence and possess a different innate spell."
"Would I be more than ten times stronger than other people at the same realm?"
The more he thought about it, the more excited Li Qing became. It really was possible.
But he quickly reined in his agitation.
"No. I absolutely can't rush into this."
"This is a Cthulhu Cultivation World. Anything involving power could hold unknown dangers."
"Could cultivating different kinds of vital essence make them clash, and turn me into a monster?"
"I need to learn more before I can determine whether it's possible to cultivate several kinds of vital essence at once."
He turned his gaze to another book.
This was a diary that recorded some things about the attacker.
Li Qing began to read it carefully, absorbing its various details bit by bit.
An hour passed in the blink of an eye. Li Qing now had a rough understanding of cultivation in this world.
The man who had attacked him was named Wang Dexiu, and he came from a sect called the Black Water Profound Sect.
The sect was only a small Daoist temple, and its abbot was merely a cultivator at the peak of Foundation Establishment.
Wang Dexiu was one of his five disciples.
But Wang Dexiu had defected from the Black Water Profound Sect because he'd discovered that the abbot was treating them as ingredients for a great elixir.
The Black Water Profound Yin Art they cultivated seemed to be an auxiliary art for another cultivation art.
Once they reached the Body Strengthening stage, the abbot would kill them, rip out their kidneys while they were still alive, and refine them into a great elixir, extracting the vital essence from their kidneys for his own cultivation.
Wang Dexiu had discovered the truth after finding the bodies of two senior fellow disciples who'd gone out to gain experience.
Both had had their kidneys removed.
That was when he realized something was wrong with his master.
He found an opportunity to escape from the Black Water Profound Sect, endured hardship along the way, and eventually settled in Jade City.
A few years ago, unable to bear the loneliness any longer, he'd gone to a brothel and broken his vow.
That was when his troubles began. He discovered two tentacles growing from his body, right where his kidneys were.
Black pustules had also appeared on his body, often causing him unbearable pain. He needed special medicines to suppress it.
He'd also developed an appetite for flesh and blood. He knew he was beginning to undergo an Aberration.
The street where he set up his stall was called Hundred Gates Alley, meaning that anyone could enter, no matter their background.
In Jade City, most cultivators were at the Foundation Establishment level, and there were at least a thousand cultivators in total.
Each had a public identity, hiding among the crowds while cultivating and drawing in the city's vital essence.
Quite a few of the shops in Hundred Gates Alley belonged to major sects with branches throughout the Great Tang Dynasty.
These sects didn't accept Dharma Coins. They only accepted spirit medicines, ores, magical artifacts, special materials, or all kinds of unusual cultivation arts, spells, and divine abilities. They would appraise them in Essence Stones, and only then could you purchase items from their shops.
As long as you had something valuable enough, you could buy most of what you wanted from them.
Even cultivation arts with established lineages could be bought.
So many Rogue Cultivators would do whatever they could to seek out ancient ruins or dangerous places in search of all kinds of treasures.
Wang Dexiu's diary clearly recorded several Dao Lineages within the Great Tang Dynasty.
The Dao Lineages of the entire world could be broadly divided into seven kinds.
The Daoist Sect, Buddhist Sect, Confucian Sect, Demonic Path, Ghost Path, Monster Path, and Hundred Schools of Thought.
Some dwelled in the halls of government, while others hid among the rivers and lakes. They guided the development of human society and ruled over everything from time immemorial to the present.
This was a vast world, full of countless legendary tales. The cultivators of the Dao Lineages were its true rulers.
Rogue Cultivators like them were at the very bottom of the Dao Lineages. They had to use every means at their disposal to trade with those true Dao Lineages for the resources and cultivation arts they needed.
Wang Dexiu had heard some rumors that certain truly enormous cities had populations in the tens of millions.
The boundless vital essence produced every day was collected by the Dao Lineages and transformed into mysterious Blessed Lands.
Blessed Lands were never in the mountains or across the Four Seas. They lay within the mortal world.
Wang Dexiu didn't know much about the realms of cultivation.
He only knew of Foundation Establishment and the True Method Realm. Foundation Establishment had three stages.
Essence Refining, Body Strengthening, and Human Tribulation!