Time flew by, and another year slipped away.
During this past year, Long Xuan stayed at the inn opposite the Treasure Pavilion of the Qian Clan whenever he had free time.
Then, using Origin Realm illusion techniques, he duplicated the entire Treasure Pavilion into an Illusion Realm, cast the illusion upon himself, and stepped inside to thoroughly study every single cultivation method within the Treasure Pavilion.
Even the clan-guarding cultivation methods of the Qian Clan members were inadvertently stolen and learned by him; the matter was so simple that he even found it unbelievable.
Because his Ten Extremity Physique was special and prevented him from practicing other methods, he had no choice but to gather the strengths of a hundred schools and forge a cultivation method uniquely his own.
This creation process alone took a whole year, and that was merely researching the superficial basics.
Creating a cultivation method on one's own was naturally no simple task—it was time-consuming and could never be accomplished in a short period.
It was just that any progress written wrongly on paper by Long Xuan would vanish, leaving him with zero trial-and-error costs. If anyone else attempted creation, they would not even dream of researching a mere surface level in their entire lifetime, especially since it was the most difficult cultivation method tailored for the Ten Extremity Physique.
This also effectively narrowed down Long Xuan's creative scope, falling under topic-bound self-creation. He directly named it the "Ten Absolutes Scripture" to set a restricted scope, infinitely raising the difficulty.
Fortunately, his cheat could prompt errors, and he could dash into the Illusion Realm to conduct human experiments. Even if an experiment caused blood to gush from his seven orifices, his physical body in the outside world would remain completely unaffected.
What could not be accomplished in the Illusion Realm could certainly not be accomplished in reality, and what was feasible in the Illusion Realm was also guaranteed to be viable when copied into reality.
It was precisely by relying on the dual effects of the Illusion Realm and his cheat that Long Xuan managed to self-create a cultivation method suitable for the Ten Extremity Physique; otherwise, no matter how wild his imagination was, he could never have succeeded.
Long Xuan had read too many xianxia novels in his past life and believed in the doctrines of mutual generation and mutual overcoming of the five elements, which had three types of cycles.
Mutual Overcoming Cycle: fire melts metal, earth blocks water, metal severs wood, water extinguishes fire, wood restrains earth.
Mutual Return Cycle: fire burns wood, wood absorbs water, water erodes metal, metal moves earth, earth cures fire.
Mutual Generation Cycle: water generates wood, wood generates fire, fire generates earth, earth generates metal, metal generates water.
Therefore, based on this theory, he created a Five-Element Cultivation Method.
The attributes of his current body happened to encompass all five elements, so in his view, the Dao of the Five-Element Cycle was the most suitable for this body.
In this world, this kind of thinking could definitely be called a rebellious path.
Just like the xianxia novels of his past life, this world also emphasized the pure-attribute stream.
The fewer attributes the better; having only a single attribute made one a heavenly-grade genius, and single-attribute cultivation progressed extremely rapidly. All cultivation methods in this world were likewise purely single-attribute.
Yet Long Xuan was determined to be unorthodox, creating such a miscellaneous-attribute cultivation method that was completely incompatible with this world.
The grand five-element cycle was indeed astonishing in power. Once the five elements formed a cycle, the might was by no means as simple as adding five individual ones together.
The Spirit Sea of the Ten Extremity Physique was as firm as a boulder, resulting in the drawback of high breakthrough difficulty. Long Xuan intended precisely to borrow the powerful shockwave generated by the five-element cycle to impact this boulder, thereby resolving this flaw.
Thus, the five-element concept could be considered a suitable path for the cultivation of the Ten Extremity Physique. It was precisely because of this concept that he successfully self-created a cultivation method fit for the Ten Extremity Physique.
Although he had only scratched the surface for now and the cultivation method's progress was merely three percent, all things are difficult at the start. Once he pushed through the beginning, the subsequent path would be smooth sailing.
After forming the concept, he had to complete the three essentials of cultivation methods; a powerful cultivation method could not afford to lack any of the Three Essentials of Cultivation Methods.
The first step was the spiritual power circulation route. By directly drawing inspiration and groping along, it was entirely possible to grind it out through sheer effort, though imbuing the spiritual power with attributes added a bit of difficulty for him.
The spiritual power attributes he wanted were not basic ones like metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Since he was going to create his own method, he had to craft the absolute best; otherwise, he wouldn't do it at all.
His brainstormed ideas for mutated spiritual power had long been settled. Every day he rushed into the Illusion Realm to conduct various spiritual power fusion experiments, frequently leaving himself with shattered meridians, blood gushing from his seven orifices, and on several occasions, teetering on the verge of death.
Basically, every entry into the Illusion Realm left him crippled. But because the experiences within the Illusion Realm were illusory, his real-world body suffered no harm, so he had zero fear of the consequences of experimental failure.
Under such crazed experimentation, how could he fail to research mutated spiritual power? His success had become inevitable.
Wood generates fire; abundant wood makes fire flourish, and fire becomes strong fire because of wood. Long Xuan called this strong fire "Blazing", and thus Blazing Spiritual Power, formed by the fusion of fire and wood, was born through his frenzied research.
By the same logic.
Fire generates earth; fire and earth merge to form strong earth, and thus Mountain-Earth Spiritual Power, named by him, was born.
Earth generates metal; earth and metal merge to form strong metal, and thus Tri-Metal Spiritual Power, named by him, was born.
Metal generates water; metal and water merge to form strong water, and thus Twin-Water Spiritual Power, named by him, was born.
Water generates wood; water and wood merge to form strong wood, and thus Forest Spiritual Power, named by him, was born.
Therefore, what circulated in his five-element cycle were not metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, but Tri-Metal, Forest, Twin-Water, Blazing, and Mountain-Earth.
He did not know how strong the mutated spiritual power he researched actually was, nor how it compared to other mutated spiritual powers, but his mutated spiritual power could become even stronger.
This was still only the fusion of two attributes; he had already even conceived the general outline for the cultivation method.
The first layer of the cultivation method was the fusion of two attributes to cultivate Tri-Metal Spiritual Power, Forest Spiritual Power, Twin-Water Spiritual Power, Blazing Spiritual Power, and Mountain-Earth Spiritual Power.
The second layer of the cultivation method was the fusion of three attributes to cultivate Golden Spiritual Power, Deep-Forest Spiritual Power, Triple-Water Spiritual Power, Flame Spiritual Power, and Mountain-Earth Spiritual Power.
The third layer of the cultivation method was the fusion of four attributes to cultivate Golden Spiritual Power, Deep-Forest Spiritual Power, Triple-Water Spiritual Power, Fury-Flame Spiritual Power, and Mountain-Earth Spiritual Power.
It was not that he did not want to reach his goal in one step; on one hand, his current strength did not permit it, and he could not research it temporarily.
On the other hand, it was entirely because a novice who had just started cultivating could never immediately practice the top-tier cultivation methods of this world right from the start.
There were many reasons for this.
Among them, the biggest reason was that the Spirit Sea could not be pioneered in the early stages.
The task of a Gu cultivator in the Spirit Gathering Stage was to accumulate spiritual power, the task in the Marrow Cleansing Stage was to cleanse marrow and forge bones to lay a solid foundation, and the task of the Spirit Sea stage was precisely to pioneer the Spirit Sea.
As for the task in the Spirit Severing Stage, it was to strengthen the soul sufficiently to accomplish soul severance. The soul was an incorporeal entity and could ignore the vast majority of attacks.
Therefore, even if a Spirit Severing Stage Gu cultivator had their physical body destroyed, they could still spirit away their soul and escape with ease. Experts of this realm were extremely difficult to kill, and even if their physical body was destroyed, there was still a chance to start over through possession. Naturally, due to various reasons, everyone only had a single chance at a rebirth via possession.
Thus, Gu cultivators could only pioneer the Spirit Sea upon reaching the third realm. Prior to the period without a Spirit Sea, all spiritual power would be stored in the human body's meridians, and the fragile meridians could simply not withstand overly violent spiritual power.
Moreover, even upon reaching the Spirit Sea stage, everyone's Spirit Sea was different, and not just any Spirit Sea could easily accommodate top-tier mutated spiritual power.
Top-tier cultivation methods were destined not to be practiced by everyone; the most powerful cultivation methods would forever remain in the hands of a small minority. This was the difference between geniuses and mediocrity.
Otherwise, where lay the advantage of Long Xuan's Ten Extremity Physique? The strength of the Ten Extremity Physique lay precisely in its Spirit Sea being as firm as a boulder, capable of bearing any violent force.
If others were to cultivate his five major mutated spiritual powers—Tri-Metal, Forest, Twin-Water, Blazing, Mountain-Earth—their Spirit Seas would inevitably be blown apart, to say nothing of accommodating all five simultaneously.
Only the mighty Ten Extremity Physique could contain all five of these spiritual powers.
Only a non-human could concoct a cultivation method courting death to this extent.
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