Clink!
The treasured sword in Dugu Cheng's palm trembled faintly like a living creature, giving a low hum as though answering his words, rejoicing at them.
A divine sword awakened to sentience, human-weapon unity!
At this sight, those words surfaced unbidden in Yuwen Zhong's mind.
True arts, the pill path, and astral bodies-three roads.
True arts gave birth to variant force, with its countless transformations.
Astral bodies were like demons and monsters, and possessed such inconceivable, intangible, formless means as the Phantom-Soul Astral Art.
Only the pill path seemed the simplest, with comparatively the least risk: refine pills and take medicine to strengthen blood and qi.
Once blood and qi grew sufficiently abundant, expanding and projecting them outward formed the outer elixir method, while compressing them into unity formed the inner elixir method.
But the outer elixir method and inner elixir method alone could make someone a top-tier expert, yet could not truly stand shoulder to shoulder with true arts and astral bodies.
Thus, through centuries of exploration, pill path experts gradually discovered two viable roads to increasing their combat power.
The first was human-weapon unity.
They suffused a weapon with blood and qi, communicated with it through meditation, and regarded it as a thing with a spirit, nurturing sentience within it through long years of cultivation.
The second was the breath of all things.
They suffused heaven and earth with blood and qi, turning the world into an extension of their own bodies and breathing together with mountains and rivers. Their every movement could borrow the vast momentum of heaven and earth, granting boundless power.
It sounded extravagant, but a mere mortal was as insignificant as an ant before this vast world. Even after spending decades or a century, how much land could they suffuse?
No more than a