More than ten days later.
Qinggang County, over a hundred li north of Crossing Peak Stronghold.
Light snow fell from the gray sky, its grains striking the blue roof tiles and sliding off with a soft rustle.
Yi Yang sat cross-legged with his eyes closed in a room on the inn's top floor, an open booklet spread before him.
"Grand Void Breath-Hiding Art."
His fingers pressed against the pages as true qi seeped into the paper through his fingertips. The characters gave off an extremely faint glow, a reaction unique to the circulation of this cultivation art.
This art was harder to cultivate than he had imagined.
It was not that the formulas were obscure or difficult to understand. Quite the opposite-the manual Jiang Zhongtian had given him was exceptionally detailed, with accompanying diagrams of the mental methods for every layer.
The difficulty lay in its realm requirements.
The Grand Void Breath-Hiding Art had three layers.
The first layer, "Breath Convergence," emphasized "a stone sinking into a deep pool, leaving not a ripple." The practitioner drew the true qi throughout their body inward, gathering every trace of escaping aura into their dantian. During cultivation, the true qi became as docile as sheep returning to their pen, no longer allowing even a thread to escape to the body's surface. When the practitioner stood still, the aura within three feet of them was like stagnant water; even an insect landing on their shoulder would not sense a person there. Neither martial artists in the first three stages of Profound Connection nor those below the second divine sense realm could see through it.
The second layer, "Spirit Dissipation," emphasized "withered wood and dead ashes, revealing no vitality." Building upon Breath Convergence, it locked every strand of spiritual thought in the sea of consciousness