The power of the breathing method

In a hall in the rear residence of the Black Tiger Fist Hall.

Hall Master Tian sat upright in a Grand Preceptor's Chair, leisurely sipping his tea. Hearing a flurry of hurried footsteps, he set his cup aside and said mildly:

"Ziying, you're back."

"Father, I'm back, and I've brought back what we traded for." The tall woman stormed into the hall and handed him the booklet.

"You gave him the entire Breathing Technique?" Hall Master Tian took the booklet from his daughter and asked calmly.

"That brat was too crafty. He kept insisting this was a Body-Tempering Method used by Immortal Cultivators, so I had no choice but to give him all the instructions." Tian Ziying spoke through gritted teeth.

"Heh, he was most likely telling the truth. Only an Immortal Cultivator's Body-Tempering Method could have such marvelous effects, raising the Black Tiger Fist Technique to this level in one stroke." Hall Master Tian seemed unconcerned. He opened the illustrated booklet, revealing a drawing of a little figure performing the first of the Four Tiger Pounce Forms on its first page.

"Father, why not just seize him and force him to tell you? Why bother making a trade?" the tall woman asked in puzzlement.

"What do you know? He may be young, but that earlier blow already showed his strength was on par with mine. What's more, he's an Immortal Cultivator. At his age, his cultivation can't be very high, but he might be a disciple of some cultivation Lineage. Our martial hall has backers too, but we're still mere mortals ourselves. If we can avoid offending him, we should." Hall Master Tian spoke mildly as he examined the illustrations.

"I suppose that's all we can do. The first layer of the Black Tiger Breathing Method is one thing, but the second requires a secret medicine to cultivate. With only the instructions and no formula for the medicine, he'll never master the second layer, let alone the third." The tall woman suddenly giggled.

"We only agreed to exchange methods and instructions. We never said the accompanying secret medicine was included. How is that cheating?

"Besides, the secret medicine is one thing. Since he's an Immortal Cultivator, he'll surely be able to find the relevant formula. But cultivating the second layer of the Black Tiger Breathing Method requires that other thing as well, and even in the cultivation world, it's exceedingly rare. If it were easy to obtain, would I have been stuck at the first layer for so many years...

"Hm? This method of his seems a little difficult..." Hall Master Tian studied the illustrations and made a few small motions with one hand, his brows unconsciously knitting.

"How difficult could it be? I watched him demonstrate the entire method in those drawings myself." The tall woman sounded surprised.

"At the very least, you can't cultivate it as you are now. Even I seem to be barely capable of it!" Hall Master Tian's expression grew increasingly grim.

The tall woman...

Two months later, atop an unremarkable hill outside Tongzhou City.

Bare-chested, Wang Yu sat cross-legged on an enormous rock, his loosely curled hands resting on his knees and his eyes tightly shut. His chest rose and fell at a strange rhythm, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, while a faint rumbling in his abdomen grew steadily louder.

Suddenly, he opened his mouth and expelled a stream of white breath. Then he inhaled forcefully, sending the surrounding air surging backward and swallowing not only the white breath he had just expelled, but most of the nearby air as well.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Three thunderous booms rang out inside Wang Yu's chest. His muscles writhed, veins bulged, and his bare body swelled like a balloon. A Tiger Head Pattern much larger than before emerged on his back.

He sprang to his feet, crystalline light flickering deep within his eyes. His fists and feet struck out like a raging storm, and his body continued swelling until, moments later, he had become a small giant nearly two meters tall.

Rumble!

Wang Yu sank into a horse stance and shook his shoulders. Both arms blurred out of sight as a string of firecracker-like reports erupted around him. When his thick arms reappeared, a fierce wind suddenly sprang up in the surrounding space, sending rolling waves of air sweeping in every direction.

In his enlarged state, he had unleashed more than a dozen Sonic Boom Fists in a single breath.

At that moment, he had the illusion that he could burst any of the early Qi Refining Realm Immortal Cultivators he had seen before with a single punch!

Huff!

Wang Yu opened his mouth again. Great clouds of white breath poured from his mouth and nose, and his body rapidly returned to normal as though deflating.

"Exit overclocked synchronization mode."

The crystalline light gradually faded from Wang Yu's eyes. Feeling the burning in his lungs and chest, he marveled inwardly.

So this was the power of the Black Tiger Breathing Method's first layer!

With the help of overclocked synchronization mode, he had taken only two months to fully master the first layer of this Breathing Technique, which Hall Master Tian had described as extremely difficult to cultivate. Moreover, its effects seemed quite different from what Hall Master Tian had experienced. He had not comprehended the so-called black tiger true meaning, but his body's explosive power had increased enormously.

He sat back down on the rock, took out the yellowed booklet containing the Black Tiger Breathing Method, and opened it to study it again.

After an indeterminate amount of time, he closed the booklet once more, a thoughtful expression on his face.

As he saw it, the first layer of the Black Tiger Breathing Method used a strange breathing rhythm to draw vast quantities of air into the body, continually tempering the internal organs and strengthening the entire body.

In short, it treated the human body as a giant balloon. By repeatedly inflating and deflating it, the balloon grew tougher and thicker, becoming more resistant to blows and capable of greater explosive power.

By the understanding of the scientists on Blue Star, this was naturally nonsense.

Human lung capacity was limited. No matter how forcefully someone breathed, they could not inhale that much air, much less spread it throughout every part of their body.

Even among martial artists on Blue Star, although there was talk of hard qigong, it was essentially achieved by training the toughness of the body's exterior. It had little to do with "qi" in the true sense, and no practitioners of anything like "internal energy" had ever been discovered.

But this was, after all, a cultivation world containing supernatural powers.

At first, he had merely followed the method recorded in the booklet and tried its complicated breathing rhythms: long inhalations, short exhalations, rapid breaths, then slow ones. Yet after only a few attempts, the strange phenomenon of drawing astonishing quantities of air into his mouth had actually occurred.

That immediately gave him some confidence in this qi refiner's method, allowing him to continue cultivating without interruption for the next two months and finally master the first layer of the Breathing Technique.

For an ordinary person, of course, this would have been impossible.

After all, the internal organs were extremely fragile. Without an elder personally guiding them, even with the mysterious Breathing Technique's protection, carelessly inhaling too much air too forcefully could easily cause internal injuries. Inhaling too little, however, would have no training effect at all.

With the help of overclocked mode, however, he could precisely control the force of his breathing according to his body's condition. He kept every intake of air at a particular limit, maximizing its training effect without injuring himself.

Even so, whenever he practiced the Breathing Technique, the air tempering his internal organs still felt like countless sharp blades lightly scraping over them. The pain and itching had nearly made him give up several times.

Fortunately, while overclocked synchronization could not actively shut off his pain nerves the way Taiyuan could, it could reduce some of the pain by controlling muscle contractions and the speed of his blood flow. That was how he had managed to persevere.

After bloodline awakening and strengthening through the Four Beast Diagram, his body had already been no weaker than Hall Master Tian's after mastering the first layer of the Breathing Technique. Now, once he activated the first layer of the Breathing Technique, his physical strength alone was enough to crush Hall Master Tian. If he also used overclocked synchronization mode to further refine his muscle control, he could make his body even larger and increase his explosive power still further.

What amazed Wang Yu even more was his discovery that activating the Black Tiger Breathing Method seemed to produce a thin "Qi Membrane" over his skin.

This "Qi Membrane" had astonishing defensive power. Completely transparent, colorless, and shapeless, it enveloped his entire body and could not be seen with the naked eye.

He had tried striking his membrane-covered arm with a sharp blade, only for it to bounce straight off, unable to penetrate it at all.

Wang Yu was naturally very pleased with this effect. It meant that activating the Black Tiger Breathing Method covered his body in invisible armor impervious to blades and spears.

This made him look forward all the more to the power of the second layer of the Breathing Technique.

Unfortunately, although he had thoroughly comprehended the instructions for the Second Layer of the Black Tiger Breathing Method with the help of overclocking, two things mentioned in them left him at a loss.

The first was the "killing intent" mentioned in the second layer's instructions.

Starting with the second layer of the Breathing Technique, what one inhaled and exhaled was no longer the surrounding air, but this substance called "killing intent," which also had to be nurtured within the body over a long period.

According to the booklet, there were many kinds of killing intent, and their differing properties bestowed different benefits on the cultivator.

The second was the accompanying secret medicine for breathing killing intent, the Baleful-Harmonizing Powder. It had to be taken when cultivating the second layer of the Breathing Technique. Otherwise, prolonged exposure to killing intent within the body would cause the internal organs to rot and die.

He had never heard of either, and none of the various books he had collected contained any mention of them. Hall Master Tian, however, surely knew. Intentionally or not, the man had probably tricked him a little. Even if he went to ask, he would most likely get nowhere.

At that thought, Wang Yu felt aggrieved. But remembering how difficult the Four Tiger Pounce Forms he had given Tian Ziying were to cultivate left him feeling a little guilty.

He had first cultivated the Four Wolf-Running Forms, and only after his bloodline had fully awakened had he barely managed to practice the Four Tiger Pounce Forms. Hall Master Tian and his daughter most likely could not cultivate them.

Thinking of it that way, he abandoned the idea of visiting the Black Tiger Fist Hall again. As long as he had the names, he would eventually find clues to the killing intent and the medicinal formula.

Having made up his mind, Wang Yu immediately sprang down from the rock and headed downhill. He entered a small wooden cabin halfway down the slope and sat on a crude wooden bed to meditate and regulate his breathing.

After completing his trade with Tian Ziying that day, he had feared they would discover they could not cultivate the method and come looking for trouble. He had fled Tongzhou City that very night and built a temporary dwelling here.

Now, he intended to break through the bottleneck that had kept his cultivation stuck at the Yin Water Art's second layer for so long, striving to reach the third layer of the Qi Refining Realm as soon as possible.

As for how, naturally, he would continue practicing the Yin Water Art's instructions and ceaselessly tempering his dharma power.

More than ten days later.

Inside the wooden cabin, Wang Yu was meditating and regulating his breathing when his body suddenly trembled. A surge of dharma power far stronger than before swept outward from him. He immediately opened his eyes, an intensely joyful smile spreading across his face.

Just now, he had successfully broken through the bottleneck of the Yin Water Art Second Layer and entered the third layer of the Qi Refining Realm.

But before he could examine the changes in his body, his smile abruptly vanished. He hastily closed his eyes again and resumed regulating his breathing.

The spirit seed within him, which had remained stable all this time, had begun frantically devouring his dharma power, undergoing some mysterious transformation on its own.

Wang Yu was both startled and delighted.