Blood Vitality Conversion

Chen Jue took out his phone and browsed the local news.

He found all manner of speculation online, yet not a single person had connected it to the Medicine King Sect currently ravaging Henan Province.

Chen Jue tried using an anonymous account to post several speculations online concerning the Medicine King Sect, only to be muted for fifty years each time.

He understood at once.

Compared to the likes of the Room Fire Cult and Zhen Water Cult, the Medicine King Sect's vicious reputation blazed far too fiercely.

Other than the upper third-rank clans of Linshui and the Jiangnan Myriad-House Office stationed there to suppress the region,

no force would dare fearlessly face a super demon cult like the Medicine King Sect, one that slaughtered people like cutting hemp and could not be stamped out despite the authorities' repeated campaigns.

Thus, properly blocking the news that the Medicine King Sect had already extended its reach into Linjiang became the task of online media outlets.

"Uncle, be more careful when you patrol these days."

"Especially if someone sells spiritual herbs or precious medicines in the neighborhood at absurdly low prices, you absolutely must not approach them..."

"They're from the Medicine King Sect."

"The explosion at the black market today was the Medicine King Sect's warning blow to Linjiang's four great clans."

Chen Jue's warning made He Yuanshan's scalp crawl.

"You mean... the Medicine King Sect has already reached into Southern Province?" His hands and feet went slightly numb.

The Medicine King Sect's devastation of Henan Province was a calamity known to everyone in the Great Ming Divine Dynasty. Its disaster had been even more severe than the dragons flooding the Yellow and Huai Rivers or the fishfolk coming ashore.

"I'm not sure about that, but there's no harm in being cautious."

"As for whether the Medicine King Sect intends to recreate Puzhou's catastrophe in Linjiang, that isn't something we can control."

"But Uncle, you don't need to worry too much either. If the sky falls, the tall ones will hold it up. The four great families have foundations built over ten thousand years, all rooted in Linjiang's capital. How could they allow the Medicine King Sect to ravage their homeland?"

Chen Jue's words eased some of He Yuanshan's anxiety. He said to Chen Jue, "What happened at the black market today must not be known by a third person..."

"Don't worry, Uncle. I know what's at stake." Chen Jue nodded to his uncle and picked up the lightness skill manual again.

Not wanting to disturb his nephew, He Yuanshan turned to leave, but happened to notice the long horse-chopping saber Chen Jue had placed beside the coffee table.

The blade was a full four feet and seven inches long. Though concealed within a black alloy scabbard, its carefully woven hilt revealed that it was unquestionably a fine saber into which a craftsman had poured his heart and soul.

A sudden flash of inspiration struck him, and he recalled his colleagues' discussion at work that day.

The killer at the alley entrance had been a young man dressed in gray, skilled with a long saber.

His nephew had gone out in gray that morning, then returned from the black market with a long saber.

And his nephew had ample motive to kill Zhang Yaozu and the other three!

"Ah Jue, tell me honestly. Were Zhang Yaozu and the others killed by you?" He Yuanshan sat down beside Chen Jue.

Chen Jue turned back in surprise and looked at his uncle.

The two met each other's eyes. At first, each maintained an expression of probing suspicion and astonishment, but in the end, neither could hold it in any longer. They exchanged a knowing smile.

"Was it that obvious?" Chen Jue scratched his head.

"Of course it wasn't obvious."

"If I didn't know your blood vitality was abnormally powerful, and that at the first level of True Qi you could erupt with strength far beyond that of an ordinary early True Qi cultivator, I never would have guessed that you were the one who acted, not even if you beat me to death."

After sighing with emotion, He Yuanshan asked, "Ah Jue, how many times greater is your blood vitality than that of a normal martial artist?"

"These past two days, I spent money to connect with an expert in the Spirit-Root Planting Realm online... I asked him how blood vitality could be converted into actual combat power."

"He gave me some formulas, something about how to calculate this many times and that many times. I couldn't understand any of it, so I copied it all down for you to look at."

"..." Chen Jue was speechless.

"Uncle, are you trying to split the bill for scrolling short videos and tipping female streamers onto my head?!"

"I don't dare carry that black pot. If my mom finds out, she'll skin me alive!"

"What are you talking about?! Do you think your uncle is that kind of person!?"

He Yuanshan shot Chen Jue a guilty glare, stuffed the sheet covered in doodles into his hands, and turned to leave the living room.

Chen Jue spread the sheet open. After looking over the doodles resembling ghostly scribbles several times, front to back, his head began to ache. "Uncle, what the hell did you write?! I can only understand the numbers."

He Yuanshan poked his head back out from the room and pointed at the handwriting, wilder than cursive itself. "This is blood vitality, that is elemental True Qi, and this is the conversion formula..."

After He Yuanshan repeatedly identified them for him, Chen Jue finally recognized those words that had been distorted beyond recognition.

At the same time, he began to gain some understanding of his current strength.

According to the formula, the upper boundary of his current 161% blood vitality value was roughly around the fifth level of True Qi.

However, since he, the reference point, cultivated Five Elements True Qi, the combat power of a so-called fifth-level True Qi cultivator was actually enough to rival that of a sixth-level True Qi martial artist with three-element True Qi.

And with the Setting Sun Blood Reversal BUFF that he could stack at any time...

Chen Jue felt that he might not be able to defeat a seventh-level True Qi martial artist, but within the mid-stage True Qi realm, he should be able to crush them with ease.

This was also because he had taken advantage of the fact that True Qi martial artists had yet to undergo a complete rebirth.

One had to know that once a martial artist broke through the True Qi Realm and planted a spiritual root within their body, they could draw in the spiritual energy around them day and night to temper themselves.

As a result, every minor realm would open up an enormous gap in physique from the previous one.

By then, even if he raised his blood vitality value to 300% and successfully advanced the Lesser Pure Yang Physique into the Pure Yang Divine Physique, there was no way he could continue as he did now, crossing five or six minor realms to crush martial artists of the same rank.

"That wasn't hard to understand. No matter how powerful a physique is, it still needs cultivation to support it..."

Chen Jue comforted himself, but he still felt somewhat unhappy inside.

After all, his progress in grinding blood vitality was far faster than his progress in grinding True Qi. Now, the expert's blood vitality formula had told him that blood vitality enhancement had an upper limit. How could he not feel depressed?

After teaching Chen Jue how to recognize the words, He Yuanshan returned to his room to chat endlessly on the phone with his wife and daughter.

As a cultivation fanatic, Chen Jue did not have the habit of idly shooting the breeze.

He paced back and forth through the living room, continuing to work out the methods for practicing the two lightness skills.

A hodgepodge porridge simmered in the pot, stuffed with a heap of cheap medicinal ingredients such as astragalus, angelica, codonopsis root, prepared rehmannia, and white peony root, along with half an old hen.

He Yuanshan ate a small bowl with Chen Jue, only to nearly be sent off by the earth-shattering bitterness of the porridge.

"Ah Jue, is this what you normally eat for cultivation?"

"Is there something wrong with it?"

Chen Jue thought it was fine. As the saying went, only by enduring the bitterest of hardships could one rise above others.

If eating medicinal herbs dry were not difficult to digest and unsightly to watch, he would not even have bothered cooking porridge. He would have simply chewed the grass straight.

"..." He Yuanshan was speechless.

It seemed that once his wife and daughter came home, the earthen pot in the house would have to go.

The bitterness had surely seeped into the pot itself. Even plain water boiled in it would turn into coptis soup.

Chen Jue never put down his book. After drinking more than half a pot of the fortified porridge, his blood vitality finally recovered to about seventy or eighty percent.

He returned to the study and continued sitting in meditation to regulate his breath.