Su Changsheng opened the panel and focused on the realm and cultivation technique fields.
Realm: Level 1 Half-Demon 33/100 Cultivation technique: Green Snake Breathing - Proficient 2/500
"Three points added to my realm after the breathing technique reached Skilled Level, but it cost me six whole hours of breathing exercises."
Su Changsheng silently worked out the numbers. At his current cultivation speed, two hours of full breathing exercises could yield roughly one point of realm experience. To reach the level of a Level 2 Half-Demon, he would need to perform full breathing exercises for 134 hours straight.
That was a little over a week.
However, breathing exercises rapidly depleted his body's energy, blood vitality, mental reserves, and so on. With his pitifully small stockpile of food, Su Changsheng could manage no more than six hours a day before he had to stop.
In other words, reaching Level 2 Half-Demon would take him around twenty-three days-nearly a month.
"A month isn't bad."
Su Changsheng took a deep breath. This body had a lifespan of only twenty-two years, and its previous owner had spent his first ten years reaching merely Level 1 Half-Demon. Compared with those long ten years, what was a single month?
That was the benefit of improving his cultivation technique. Otherwise, with this body's abysmal aptitude, he probably would not have reached Level 2 Half-Demon even by the end of his life.
"Survival points... food, knowledge, cultivation, avoiding danger... Looks like I'll need to plan things out properly tomorrow."
Su Changsheng stretched, and his spine immediately crackled and popped. Once he relaxed after finishing his breathing exercises, waves of hunger washed over him.
His stomach churned with acid, painfully uncomfortable. Left with no choice, he cut another small piece off the chunk of beast meat and ate it bit by bit, not sparing even the crumbs on the ground.
He did not dare eat much, nor could he bear to. This little stockpile of meat was something his predecessor had painstakingly saved for winter. Until he found another source of food, he had to stretch it as far as possible.
After drinking some cold water to fill the gaps, fatigue surged over him like a tide. He blocked the doorway with several more boulders, then wrapped his long snake tail around his body and fell asleep, looking like a roly-poly toy.
Su Changsheng: As long as my head isn't cold, I'm not cold.
Snake tail: ...
A bitter wind howled, and heavy snow swirled through the air.
A bone-piercing gust woke Su Changsheng. It had snowed all night again, bringing the temperature down another few degrees. The stone hut was almost completely buried.
There was no need to clear the snow. Its covering actually kept the hut a little warmer.
With nothing else to do, he began sorting through the fragmented memories in his mind: memories of Half-Demons, the Black Mountain Demon Stockade, the Wilds of the Wasteland, humans, and more.
His predecessor had known little. After all, he had been nothing more than a Half-Demon, and his entire world had consisted of the Black Mountain Demon Stockade.
Still, learning that this world also had humans and immortal cultivators came as quite a surprise to Su Changsheng.
Humans supposedly lived in the far south of the wasteland, millions of miles away. Most demons would go their entire lives without ever crossing paths with a human.
His predecessor had never seen a human, but he had heard of them.
As for half-human, half-demon creatures like Su Changsheng, there were plenty in the Yao Stronghold. Some had inherited Half-Demon bloodlines from ancestors who had failed to transform fully. Others were the result of bloodline mutations, while still others descended from unions between demons and humans.
In short, Half-Demons came into being in many complicated ways, and Su Changsheng could not tell which kind he was.
"Daytime isn't suitable for cultivation. Yang waxes while yin wanes, doubling the expenditure. For now, I'll leave all my cultivation until after midnight."
"As for survival points... Looks like I'll have to start with knowledge."
Following his memories, Su Changsheng retrieved two snake scales etched with pictures and writing from the corner.
The writing was Demon Script, which he could just barely read. The two scales recorded methods for making two kinds of Demon Art Runes.
They were the Shedding Rune and the Concealment Rune.
The former accelerated shedding in demons that shed their skins, while the latter concealed the user's aura.
Both required special materials with demonic properties as a medium, with demon blood used to inscribe them. They were equivalent to the talismans of the human world.
"For the medium, I happen to have a shed snakeskin. It should just about work. As for demon blood..."
Su Changsheng decided to use his own.
There was no shame in being self-sufficient.
Studying these two demonic arts was not difficult. They were only low-level Demon Art Runes, after all, and his predecessor had studied them before. He had even managed to make them occasionally, though his success rate was enough to bring tears to one's eyes.
Calm the mind.
Nourish the spirit.
Making Demon Art Runes demanded absolute care and patience.
Su Changsheng first cut some of the snakeskin into pieces roughly the size of his palm. These would serve as the Demon Art Rune bases.
Then, using a snake fang he had shed in the past, he carved rune grooves of varying depths into the bases.
This step was troublesome. A little too deep would not do, and neither would a little too shallow.
Fortunately, he was using his own shed snakeskin, so its feel was familiar. Even then, it took him nearly half a day to finish carving ten bases.
"Next comes guiding and infusing."
Su Changsheng took a deep breath. This was the most critical step in making a rune.
He needed to envelop his demon blood in Demon Power and feed it little by little into the spell grooves on the base.
It had to be done in one uninterrupted flow.
There could be no pauses, no lapses, and no distractions whatsoever.
The slightest mistake would bring all his efforts to nothing.
At that moment...
Su Changsheng mentally controlled his Demon Power, using it to envelop his demon blood, separating it bit by bit and feeding it into the grooves of the base.
Everything went smoothly at first. But just as he was about to finish, a fluctuation in his emotions caused the Demon Power enveloping his blood to spill over. The Demon Power lingering on the base instantly began to boil.
The next second...
The base burst into flames, turning to ash in an instant.
"Ten pounds of meat!"
Su Changsheng sucked in a breath of cold air, his heart aching.
A single Concealment Rune could be exchanged for ten pounds of fresh meat in the Yao Stronghold. For someone whose home was as desperately impoverished as his, this was a loss he simply could not afford.
Yet what followed was even crueler!
Failure, failure, and more failure!
After seven failures in a row, Su Changsheng finally managed to produce one complete Concealment Rune as midnight approached.
Coming back to his senses, he found himself mentally drained and ravenously hungry, with every last bit of Demon Power in his body spent.
"Whew!"
"No wonder even low-level runes like these fetch a good price in the Yao Stronghold. They're just too hard to make."
"A success rate of barely one in ten."
Su Changsheng gazed at the Concealment Rune in his hand, feeling that his strength fell short of his ambitions.
In truth, a one-in-ten success rate was already quite high. Other demons found making runes even harder, and plenty had success rates of only one in a hundred.
Aside from his greater ability to quiet his mind, much of Su Changsheng's high success rate came from using his own demon skin and blood. These materials were highly compatible with his Demon Power, making them considerably easier to control.
At that moment...
As he gazed at the radiant rune in his hand, brimming with Demon Power, Su Changsheng's tears involuntarily trickled from the corners of his mouth.
"Ten pounds of fresh meat!"
"Gulp!"
"Smells so good."
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