Dou Qi Techniques

"Hiss."

The longsword was yanked out in a flash, and blood gushed wildly from Azure Tiger's throat. With a bang, its body smashed to the ground and kept twitching, those tiger eyes fixed on Diya, filled with hatred. Blood flowed from Azure Tiger's throat across the ground around it, dyeing the blue-gray rock crimson.

Diya quickly lowered the longsword, raised his right fist viciously, and hammered a punch down at Azure Tiger's head, smashing it against the rock. Azure Tiger died on the spot, its body no longer moving in the slightest. Diya hurriedly grabbed Azure Tiger's body with both hands, aimed the throat that was spraying blood at his own mouth, and gulped down the tiger blood in great mouthfuls.

At a time like this, how could Diya care how many parasites and the like were in the tiger blood? Compared to the fact that he had gone a day and a half without a single drop of water or bite of food, none of that counted for anything. Diya's throat bobbed in and out as he swallowed, mouthful after mouthful of fresh blood pouring into him. The thick reek of blood spread through the surroundings, and also through Diya's mouth.

After drinking for roughly a dozen seconds, Diya finally set down Azure Tiger's corpse, panting heavily. He gave a satisfied burp and reached up to wipe the blood from his lips. Only a little blood still seeped from Azure Tiger's wound, like water trickling from a clogged pipe. After a while longer, no more blood flowed out.

He touched his stomach. It felt a little swollen. Diya smiled in satisfaction, picked up the longsword again, and chopped off Azure Tiger's entire hind leg.

Then Diya left the spot and found a comparatively flat place nearby. The blazing sun shone down on him; the black robe on his body had long since become tattered.

Diya casually found a fairly thick dead tree trunk nearby, then used the longsword to sharpen a thinner, straight branch. He began using the most primitive method—drilling wood to make fire. With his physique, as his hands rubbed together, the small stick spun rapidly, bringing with it a faint whistling sound. Before long, a flame caught at the tip of the small stick. Diya placed it onto the dry leaves and twigs he had already arranged, lit them, and then began preparing Azure Tiger's hind leg.

Before long, the sizzling sound of dripping oil spread out. Drops of thick golden oil fell from Azure Tiger's hind leg and landed in the flames, immediately making a noise and sending up curls of white smoke. A rich meaty aroma spread at once. Diya sniffed, and his appetite was instantly stirred.

Once the roasted meat was cooked, Diya directly grabbed Azure Tiger's hind leg meat. He took out Flick Sword and sliced at it cut by cut, shaving off tiger meat and putting it into his mouth, chewing slowly. Without seasonings, the tiger meat tasted a little bland, but in this situation, being able to eat his fill was already good enough. How could he quibble over so much?

Besides, he had eaten things ten or several dozen times worse than this in his life, so there was nothing strange about it. What was more, tiger meat was extremely nutritious. Before long, Diya had finished off the entire Azure Tiger hind leg and gave a satisfied belch.

Walking back to Azure Tiger's corpse, Diya looked at it with regret. If he took it to Rose Restaurant, it would definitely sell for a good price. After all, whether it was tiger meat, tiger gall, tiger bone, tiger whip, and so on, they were all good things. What a pity, what a pity. With him fleeing for his life, it could only rot here. Diya felt a pang in his heart. This was all money.

Helplessly, Diya could only cut off the other hind leg, fling the blood dry, and carry it on his shoulder. Holding the longsword in one hand, he continued walking toward the mountaintop, thinking as he went.

His current body had already reached a limit, and the reason his body had achieved what it had now was inseparable from fusing with the first Hell Fragment. According to Diablo's explanation, each fused Hell Fragment would grant some abilities, randomly.

And the fragment he had fused with, named Rogue Encampment, had brought about the remolding of his body, a shedding of the mortal coil and a rebirth. Every attribute of his body had risen comprehensively, aside from his spiritual power, and the improvements were extremely balanced. His body would also continue strengthening over time, until the fusion power of the first fragment was completely brought out.

However, thinking about it, the potential limit of each fragment had to be different. Looking at himself now, his body had already reached a bottleneck. This very likely meant that the energy contained in the first Hell Fragment had almost been completely fused into him, and the fusion was about to be fully completed. Then how should he improve his strength?

Now, becoming stronger had already become the foremost goal in Diya's heart. It clung to him like a nightmare, making him think at every moment about how to become stronger. The strengthening of his original body would have been a good choice, but when that choice had reached its end, Diya had to think of another way.

Originally, with the intensity of Diya's spiritual power, cultivating spiritual power would have been very suitable, but unfortunately there seemed to be no such cultivation method on the Brahma Continent. Even if there was, it was not something Diya could know about, so this point could be ruled out.

As for magic and summoning, without magic power, it seemed to be nothing but wasted effort. What remained was cultivating battle qi. Any kind of cultivation method could allow humans to reach the peak and become supreme existences. With his current physical strength, Diya could cultivate battle qi rapidly, which should count as a method to improve his strength. Although the battle qi method Diya had obtained in Carlos Library was a basic, attribute-less battle qi method and was absolute trash, at a time like this, having something was better than having nothing. Any increase in strength, however slight, would be of immense help.

Diya did not need to worry at all that if he encountered high-grade battle qi in the future, he would be unable to cultivate it because he had cultivated basic attribute-less battle qi. That kind of situation did not exist. Cultivating high-grade battle qi would assimilate and refine low-grade battle qi, thereby transforming it into high-grade battle qi. It was that simple.

As he walked, Diya completely made up his mind. The blazing sun gradually softened, and its blazing whiteness slowly turned dim yellow. The sun was about to set in the west, and Diya still had not reached the mountaintop. Although it did not look very far, there were no roads in Crouching Dragon Ridge, only extremely uneven mountain walls, making it exceptionally difficult to walk. Sometimes he even had to bend and wind around, and he would even run into fierce beasts and the like, such as wolf beasts, Azure Tigers, brown bears, and so on. They wasted a great deal of Diya's time while also making his heart ache terribly. One sum of money after another, and he could not take them away.

After walking upward for a while longer, Diya finally stopped. He picked up some dry branches and leaves from the surroundings. By this time, night had fallen. The wild wind blew with a mournful howl, and the temperature gradually dropped. Diya found a place sheltered from the wind and began making a fire to roast meat. Before long, he had finished roasting Azure Tiger's hind leg meat. In two or three moves, he ate the tiger meat clean, then sat on the spot to rest while also recalling the basic battle qi cultivation methods he had read.

Actually, when it came down to it, battle qi cultivation was very simple, especially attribute-less battle qi. It only required sufficient physical strength. The human body itself was a treasure vault, and the muscles contained a great deal of energy, but this energy was something ordinary humans could not use. It could only lie dormant within the muscles, cycling again and again. After all, the strength of the muscles was limited, so the energy they could contain was naturally limited as well.

A battle qi cultivation method was a method that, through tempering the body, mobilized and stimulated the energy contained between the muscles—qi—bringing it out, then effectively using and gathering that energy.

The stronger the body was, the greater the qi contained within the muscles would naturally be, and the easier it would be to stimulate it out and make it flow. As it flowed, the body would become even more formidable and powerful because of battle qi's enhancement. It was just like the principle of taking from the people and using it for the people.

In essence, battle qi cultivation was developing the unusable energy within the muscles of the human body, then gathering, fusing, and refining it until it became an obedient little darling. At the necessary moment, it could erupt and form powerful attacks and so on. After battle qi was consumed, however, it would not recover automatically; it had to be done manually. It was just that recovering battle qi was countless times simpler than cultivating battle qi in the first place, since it had already been developed.

In addition, the muscles of the human body all had a limit to what they could endure. The stronger the body, the greater its endurance. Battle qi cultivation was not that simple either. Aside from needing the correct method, it was best to have someone else's guidance. That was the first point. The second was that during battle qi cultivation, one had to know when to stop. During cultivation, the stimulation of qi would place a burden on the muscles. The stronger the body, the smaller this burden would be, so naturally the longer one could cultivate, the more qi could be stimulated, and naturally the quicker it would be.

After Diya reviewed the points to watch out for in battle qi cultivation, he began cultivating. Battle qi cultivation did not deliberately require any specific posture; as long as one was comfortable, it was fine. So Diya leaned against a huge boulder and closed his eyes, with only a fire burning before him.

First, he had to concentrate his own spirit and focus his attention on the muscles of his body. He had to first sense the existence of qi and nurture the compatibility between his own will and qi. This was a long process, because qi was hidden within the muscles and had no consciousness. Even the qi on the surface of the body was so difficult to sense, let alone the qi concealed inside the body.

Many cultivators were often stuck at this step for a very long time before they could sense the existence of qi.