Blood Flame Ox Demon Technique

After eleven months of honing your blade technique, your Demon-Slaying Blade Technique has reached perfection.

Experience: 120 points

Chen Xian was speechless. It had taken thirty-seven months to train a blade technique to perfection.

The original owner had trained for three years, after all.

This talent...

Fortunately, beyond Demon-Slaying Pass lay nothing but Experience Points.

If talent fell short, demons and fiends would make up the difference.

Images flickered through his mind like a slideshow. Summers, autumns, winters, and springs passed year after year, while every blade form seemed carved into the walls of his mind.

With his eyes closed, Chen Xian struck at will, every move swift, fierce, and precise.

Afterward, he began improving the Great Tablet Smashing Hand.

After ten months of honing, your Great Tablet Smashing Hand has reached minor mastery.

After eighteen months of honing, your Great Tablet Smashing Hand has reached major mastery.

It was not until forty-six months had passed that the Great Tablet Smashing Hand reached perfection.

It had taken even longer than the Demon-Slaying Blade Technique.

Naturally, its power was beyond question as well.

Experience: 74 points

Martial Arts: The Ox Demon Body Refinement Technique (Perfection), Demon-Slaying Blade Technique (Perfection), Great Tablet Smashing Hand (Perfection)

Realm: Body Refinement Completion

Lifespan: Nineteen years and seven months

After glancing at the panel, Chen Xian's gaze settled on The Ox Demon Body Refinement Technique. The panel had previously indicated that his qi and blood were abundant, yet he had found no way to advance his realm.

In other words, if he wanted to advance to the next realm, he had to deduce the next stage of this martial art.

Chen Xian did not begin deducing it immediately. He genuinely went to the latrine first. After returning to the front of the tent, he practiced blade techniques with Zhao Tong, Ding Chen, and the others, then trained the Great Tablet Smashing Hand against thick stone slabs.

Late at night, when all was still.

Chen Xian lay on the communal sleeping platform in the tent, unable to sleep. First, he was unaccustomed to it. Second, thinking of this world thrown into chaos by demons and fiends, where he could lose his life at any moment, left him restless.

Worst of all, he had only nineteen years and seven months of lifespan left. Could it rise again?

Seeing everyone sound asleep, he turned over and went outside the tent.

He looked up at the heavens. Beneath the cold moon, the sky was awash in blood-red.

"Can't sleep?"

A voice came from behind him.

Chen Xian had heard the footsteps long ago, but had not turned around.

Only now did he look back. It was Ding Chen.

"Isn't Brother Ding unable to sleep too?" he said with a smile.

Ding Chen smiled and came to sit beside Chen Xian on a stone slab.

"You were very brave this evening," Ding Chen said.

Meeting Ding Chen's slightly puzzled gaze, Chen Xian said calmly, "Wasn't it all forced out of me?"

Ding Chen agreed with that, but he still felt that Chen Xian had changed somewhat.

"Have you been secretly refining your body behind our backs?" he asked.

Chen Xian's eyes flickered. Since he had been asked, he needed an explanation.

He could not help but smile. "My family circumstances are poor, and my talent is poor too. If I do not work harder, how can I survive in these troubled times?"

Ding Chen nodded. Rising to his feet, he patted Chen Xian on the shoulder. "Don't think too much. If you have any problems or needs, tell me. If I can help, I will do my best."

"Thank you, Brother Ding!" Chen Xian nodded.

"Sleep," Ding Chen said, then turned and entered the tent.

Chen Xian followed him back into the tent and lay down to rest.

Once he closed his eyes, he began using Experience Points to deduce The Ox Demon Body Refinement Technique. This body-refinement technique could no longer satisfy him.

He had to deduce the method for further cultivation.

After ten months of day-and-night deduction, your The Ox Demon Body Refinement Technique has made no progress for now.

Images flashed through his mind like fleeting glimmers of light, and ten months passed as swiftly as a white colt slipping through a crack.

There had been no progress whatsoever in the technique.

After fifteen months of day-and-night deduction, your The Ox Demon Body Refinement Technique has begun to show a clue.

Again, fleeting images flashed through his mind, and Chen Xian could not help but smile bitterly.

Two years of time in exchange for four words: "a clue has emerged."

After eighteen months of day-and-night deduction, you have developed three methods of circulating qi and blood, but they are not yet mature enough.

"...!?"

Chen Xian was speechless. Yet when he saw the words "circulating qi and blood," the next realm flashed through his mind: the Blood Moving Realm.

The original owner seemed to have heard Ding Chen mention it once, and it now surfaced in his mind.

After twenty-five months of day-and-night deduction, your The Ox Demon Body Refinement Technique has finally made further progress and has been renamed the Blood Flame Ox Demon Technique.

Martial Arts: Blood Flame Ox Demon Technique (Not Initiated)

Experience: 6 points

Looking at the panel prompt, Chen Xian finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He discovered that deducing martial arts consumed a great deal of Experience Points.

After sixty-eight months of deduction, he had finally worked out the subsequent method of circulating qi and blood for The Ox Demon Body Refinement Technique.

Next, he only needed to use Experience Points to improve this technique.

Until the technique reached perfection.

Chen Xian stared at the remaining 6 Experience Points. After hesitating for a moment, he still used them to improve the Blood Flame Ox Demon Technique.

After six months of diligent honing, your Blood Flame Ox Demon Technique remains Not Initiated.

Seeing the panel prompt, Chen Xian froze slightly. After six months of training, it was still Not Initiated?

It seemed he had thought things too simply.

In the blink of an eye, three days passed.

The vanguard went out every day to hunt demons and fiends, and Chen Xian could not help but envy them.

Those were all Experience Points!

However, during those three days, he practiced the Blood Flame Ox Demon Technique alone every night.

Though progress was slow, it was effective.

That day, Zhao Tong brought over seven cooks and handed them to Ding Chen, the head cook, filling their squad to full numbers.

Chen Xian remained a man of few words. Other than cooking, he practiced martial arts.

Naturally, Ding Chen and the other seven worked hard as well.

Especially after the danger they encountered while clearing the battlefield last time, none of the seven dared slack off in their training.

Half a month passed like this.

Every day, Chen Xian hid away to practice the Blood Flame Ox Demon Technique. The panel still showed Not Initiated, but when he circulated his qi and blood, it was noticeably smoother. The circulation also quickened, and his qi and blood boiled.

Besides that, he had made a new breakthrough in body refinement. His physical strength allowed him to lift a seven-hundred-and-fifty-kilogram weight.

That still left him very satisfied.

"Chen Xian, did you fall into the latrine?" a voice called from outside.

"Coming!"

Chen Xian straightened his clothes and walked out of the latrine.

Not far away stood a young man with a face like a red date. He was one of the survivors from before, named Wang Yan.

He was usually quite smooth and tactful, though he trained diligently as well.

"Brother Wang, go ahead!"

"Go ahead for what? There's work. Brother Ding told me to call you. Hurry up!"

Upon hearing that, Chen Xian's eyes lit up. "Are we clearing the battlefield?"

Wang Yan nodded. "We've finished eating all the wolf demons brought back last time. The vanguard fought another hard battle today and killed quite a few Demonic Beasts."

As they walked, Chen Xian asked, "How were the vanguard's casualties?"

Wang Yan said, "I heard over a hundred more died... Every time there's a hard battle, so many people have to die."

Having come to this world for half a month, Chen Xian had heard of vanguard soldiers dying nearly every day. He had long grown used to it.

He arrived before the tent with Wang Yan.

Ding Chen and the others had already put on their armor, which was a dark red.

Chen Xian had worn it when he first arrived. A full set of armor, helmet, bracers, and knee guards weighed fifty kilograms. The straight saber weighed thirteen kilograms. Everything worn on the body came to roughly sixty-five kilograms.

To a body-refinement martial artist, that amount of weight was not worth mentioning.

The Great Ning Dynasty measured martial artists' strength in dings. A body-refinement martial artist needed at least the strength of half a ding, while the strongest possessed strength beyond a ding—that was, the strength of one ding.

Chen Xian had compared it before. In his previous life, one ding was only about six hundred kilograms.

He now possessed strength beyond a ding.

After the two had put on their armor, Ding Chen swept his arm forward.

"Set out!"

Following behind him, Chen Xian asked in a low voice, "Brother Ding, what demons and fiends are on the battlefield today?"