Dao Heaven: Steal Heaven!

Chapter 2: Dao Heaven: Steal Heaven!

Halfway through his meal, Chen Lin contentedly rubbed his belly.

"If I had paired martial arts with an inner cultivation method, that fight just now would have been much easier." Chen Lin licked one of his forelimbs, savoring the taste, and sighed wistfully.

Although his mind was filled with countless martial arts techniques, he had no inner cultivation to support them. He had only their forms and moves, without much power behind them.

Unfortunately, humans and other creatures were all different, with complex variations in their physiques and meridians. As he was now, Chen Lin simply couldn't cultivate inner arts.

"Hmm? An inner cultivation method!"

Suddenly, a spark of inspiration flashed through his mind.

"There seems to be... another kind of technique that doesn't require a particular physique or meridians!"

As if he'd thought of something, Chen Lin felt a flicker of excitement and could hardly wait to try it. Forgetting all about the delicious meal before him, he smacked his lips and nimbly climbed a towering tree. In a secluded spot, he put together a temporary shelter, carefully arranging leaves and dead branches with his forelimbs to seal off every side. He left only a narrow gap overhead, letting the sunlight stream through.

Once he was sure he was safe, Chen Lin eagerly stood upright and felt the sunlight spill over him. He began recalling the technique that might change his life—Dao Heaven!

In his previous life, Chen Lin had been a martial artist.

Martial artists were among the most mysterious people in the East. Their cultivation followed set principles: they drew in the spiritual energy of Heaven and Earth, circulated it through their internal organs and out to every limb and bone, then tempered their bodies.

Dao Heaven was different.

All things in Heaven and Earth are stolen; the thief upholds the Dao, and the Dao walks the path of theft!

That was the first sentence on the first page of Dao Heaven. Its cultivation wasn't limited to humans.

Dao Heaven was also Heaven's thief. It turned the body into a whole world, opening five great meridian wheels within: the Heaven Meridian, Earth Meridian, Yang Meridian, Yin Meridian, and Void Meridian.

Yang was the sun, Yin the moon, and Void the stars. Just as Heaven and Earth held the sun, moon, and stars, these five great meridian wheels served as the foundation for evolving a small world within the body.

Chen Lin had stumbled upon this technique by chance while carrying out a mission in his previous life. Unfortunately, it was an incomplete copy.

When Chen Lin had found the book, he had read it carefully from beginning to end. The writing in Dao Heaven was strange and obscure, in a script that had never been seen before. Yet the instant Chen Lin laid eyes on the words, they seemed to come alive and imprint themselves deeply in his mind. He understood their meaning in a flash. Even more astonishing, the moment he finished reading the last character, the book spontaneously burst into flame and vanished mysteriously from the world, as if Heaven and Earth would allow only one person to cultivate it.

That only made Chen Lin more certain that the technique was mysterious and no ordinary thing. But he hadn't dared to cultivate it recklessly, because it required the cultivator to discard all their existing cultivation and use this technique as their foundation before they could practice any other martial arts.

Dao Heaven was divided into three volumes, but he had obtained only the first, the foundational volume.

It was midday, and the sun blazed like fire. Bathed in the light filtering through the mottled shadows of the trees, Chen Lin calmed his mind and circulated the technique, slowly drawing in a trace of Essence of Li Fire contained in the sun.

Half an hour later, with a soft hiss, a golden flame no thicker than a strand of hair rose from Chen Lin's abdomen. It was nearly impossible to make out, frail as a candle guttering in the wind and on the verge of vanishing in an instant. Yet Chen Lin's heart leapt with joy.

"Essence of Li Fire! This is the Essence of Li Fire described in the technique. It really works!"

Suppressing his excitement, Chen Lin focused his thoughts and slowly guided the golden flame around his body.

"Hiss!"

Suddenly, Chen Lin's whole body began to shake and convulse, his two long antennae snapping straight. Wherever the golden flame passed, a tearing pain surged through him, burrowing into his bones and reaching his mind.

This was the first tempering. The Essence of Li Fire refined his body. It was the most overbearing and thorough body-tempering method, burning away the impurities and dregs within a living creature and hammering its muscles and bones into shape.

As the golden flame tempered his body, it also continually absorbed Essence of Li Fire from the sun and spiritual energy from Heaven and Earth, replenishing the energy it consumed.

"This... it can absorb spiritual energy from Heaven and Earth at the same time!"

Feeling pure spiritual energy seep slowly through his skin, Chen Lin was overwhelmed with joy, despite the agony tearing through him.

"So much spiritual energy from Heaven and Earth!"

Before long, Chen Lin discovered something even more astonishing: the spiritual energy in this place was far beyond anything he could have imagined. It was nearly limitless, vast as an ocean and unending—nothing like what he'd known on Earth.

In his previous life, even if Chen Lin had breathed in and out without stopping for a month, he probably wouldn't have gained as much as he could by cultivating here for three days. This made him all the more certain that this place couldn't be the Earth he'd known in his previous life.

This tempering of his body with Essence of Li Fire continued for several hours. Chen Lin's mind grew foggy and exhausted, and he'd become somewhat numb to the pain that felt as if his meridians were being torn apart. At last, night fell.

Moonlight poured down like a silver river, its gentle glow illuminating the sky and earth. Deep in the forest, tree shadows swayed and flickered. Now and then, a furious roar or the shrill cry of a raptor shook the area, sending a shiver through anyone who heard it.

Flames invisible to Chen Lin slowly gathered from the moonlight, forming a streamlike blue flame that flowed into his body.

Mystic Yin Essence!

Though it was also a flame, Mystic Yin Essence didn't burn at all. Instead, it gave off a coolness like water. The blue flame was like a woman's slender, gentle hand, slowly brushing over Chen Lin's body and soothing every wound. It was more like a cleansing by water.

His meridians, muscles, bones, and skin—burned by the Essence of Li Fire during the day—quickly recovered as they were nourished by the Mystic Yin Essence. Chen Lin studied the changes closely and found that the meridians it passed through had become wider and tougher, while his muscles and bones had grown denser and stronger. The skin over his whole body was no longer pure green; instead, it gleamed with the mysterious, deep luster of crystal.

In the blink of an eye, Chen Lin had been cultivating Dao Heaven for almost a month. During that time, he'd faced several crises. The most dangerous came one night while he was hiding in a tree and absorbing Mystic Yin Essence. A flower-faced, poisonous spider as large as a millstone had set its sights on him. Taking advantage of his cultivation, it spun out silk and laid a web that covered him completely. Though the strands were fine, they were astonishingly tough. Fortunately, after many days of cultivation, the two sickle blades on Chen Lin's chest had grown sharper and stronger. He managed to cut through the web with great difficulty, but only at the cost of severe injuries that nearly killed him. He escaped by the skin of his teeth, avoiding the fate of becoming a meal.

The crises made Chen Lin even more vigilant. He hadn't been cultivating for long, and even the most inconspicuous creature in the forest could take his life. Every moment was like walking on thin ice, with no telling how soon disaster might strike. Even while cultivating, he kept a sliver of his attention on the area around him. It slowed his progress somewhat, but made him much safer.

"Hiss!"

Hidden high in an ancient tree so wide it would take several people to encircle its trunk, Chen Lin suddenly swung the great blade on his chest. It cut through the air with a swish, fast as a phantom, and beheaded a red, strange-looking bird that had been resting nearby.

Fresh blood spurted out. Chen Lin strolled unhurriedly over to the bird, still twitching, and waited until its body had gone completely still. Then a wisp of faint black light, as fine as a thread, rose from the carcass and shot into Chen Lin's body.

Chen Lin's eyes flickered. He didn't try to stop it; instead, he stood still. The many days of experience had already proven that he couldn't stop it anyway.

After a long while, he felt nothing at all. Chen Lin carefully examined his body and found not the slightest change. The faint black light was some unknown thing. It vanished into his body like a mud ox sinking into the sea, without causing even a ripple.

He'd lost count of how many times this had happened, and Chen Lin still hadn't figured out where the black light came from.

"But this feeling... it's a lot like Death Energy."

The thought had suddenly come to Chen Lin. He had indeed sensed a fleeting trace of Death Energy in the black light.

In his previous life, Chen Lin had taken many lives. Though the black light had appeared and vanished in an instant, he'd still keenly detected a hint of its aura. It was much like the heavy Death Energy that had hung in the air on a battlefield.

He'd even grown suspicious and secretly watched two fierce beasts fight from a hidden spot. When one of them died, the black light appeared. The surviving beast seemed completely unaware of it. Strangest of all, the black light seemed to have chosen Chen Lin: whenever he got too close, it would burrow into his body, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

This left Chen Lin even more bewildered. Such a strange thing happened only to him, and it made him realize that there was something different about him.

Though he felt uneasy and unnerved, in this perilous forest, where disaster could strike at any moment and anyone could become another beast's meal, no one knew whether they'd see the next moment. So despite his worry, Chen Lin chose to face it calmly.