"This must be what they're looking for." Zhao Changhe gasped for breath, but his voice was brimming with excitement. "You know more than I do. Do you know what this means?"
Luo Qi looked stunned, staring blankly at the blood dragon coiling around the moon in the pool, his eyes holding something between sorrow and joy.
Only after a long while did he answer quietly, "Some restriction has been unlocked. Perhaps a hidden door that was invisible before has now appeared, or perhaps a restriction that killed anyone who touched it has been lifted, allowing us inside. Whichever it is, it should be somewhere nearby, not somewhere eight poles couldn't reach."
"I see..." Zhao Changhe rose weakly and looked around.
This was feeling more and more like a fantasy world.
"So the Blood God Cult settled here because the killing intent in the blood of those practicing its arts could unlock the restriction." Luo Qi spoke as though murmuring to himself. "All that suffering you endured practicing the Blood Baleful Art..."
"Wasn't for nothing, right? That's what you call a protagonist's fate. So many people have learned the Blood God Cult's arts, but none of them came here to drip blood." Zhao Changhe had recovered considerably from his weakness and strode around the pool with renewed vigor. "Come here, come here. If there's a hidden door, I bet it's here."
Luo Qi followed as though sleepwalking, only to see Zhao Changhe heading toward the cliff behind the waterfall.
Years of splashing water usually wore a hollow or a small cave into the rock behind a waterfall. Naturally, there was one here too, but Luo Qi, who had deliberately been searching for something, had clearly examined it long ago and found nothing unusual. In fact, the Blood God Cult's followers had searched this place countless times already. Anything here should have been discovered long since.
At this moment, however, Luo Qi agreed with Zhao Changhe's judgment. With the restriction unlocked, this was a very likely place for a hidden door to appear.
Sure enough, when they passed behind the waterfall, they found a strange pattern of countless stars in the hollow where there had previously been nothing, as though a multitude of stars had been scattered across a hemispherical sky. It looked profoundly mysterious.
"This is another formation. We have to decipher it before we can enter." Luo Qi pondered for a while. "This star chart looks a little like the Azure Dragon Constellation Chart..."
He reached out and touched the stars corresponding to the Azure Dragon Seven Stars, one after another. The chart flickered faintly, but nothing else happened.
Luo Qi's expression soured. "That reaction means we're on the right track, but we're missing something crucial... What is it...?"
Zhao Changhe frowned too.
If Luo Qi could not solve it, he certainly could not. But now that it had appeared, it would be rotten luck if someone else got there first.
Even though he had absolutely no idea what was inside.
"For now, this place probably won't be discovered anytime soon. Everyone else must have searched it countless times already. They won't come back for another look just to make work for themselves." Zhao Changhe said decisively, "We need to find that crucial point within the next few days."
Luo Qi looked at him with a complicated expression and said quietly, "You could try asking Instructor Sun indirectly. As for how to ask..."
Zhao Changhe found that a real pain in the balls too. How was he supposed to ask...?
"I'll give it a try." Zhao Changhe murmured, "Whatever happens, our greatest hope of escaping our current situation is right here."
Luo Qi turned to look at the pool outside. The blood dragon coiling around the moon had already disappeared. From outside, nothing looked any different.
"You broke through?"
Early the next morning, Zhao Changhe went to see Instructor Sun as usual. Seeing his noticeably fiercer bearing, Instructor Sun knew he had broken through.
Incidentally, leaving aside whether grandmasters possessed other marvelous methods, ordinary martial artists could not determine someone's cultivation simply by looking at them. Even Helmsman Fang had needed Luo Qi to reveal that he had reached the first level of the Profound Pass before he could judge his capabilities. Instructor Sun could tell only because he knew Zhao Changhe had been attempting a breakthrough the night before. Otherwise, he would not have been able to discern Zhao Changhe's cultivation either.
That was why the martial world saw so many assassinations carried out in disguise, and why so many heroes died nursing bitter regrets.
"I did." Zhao Changhe answered calmly, betraying no sign of whether he harbored any resentment. "I tested it. My explosive power is almost twice what it was, and my ability to withstand blows has improved considerably too. The first level of the Profound Pass really is impressive."
Instructor Sun did not pick up that thread. After studying him for a while, he volunteered, "Once you've practiced the Blood Baleful Art long enough, the baleful intent boils up, biting like ants. Ordinary people can't endure it, so they need our cult's Blood-Stabilizing Pill to suppress it. Actually, it doesn't happen only during breakthroughs. It can flare up from time to time; it's simply more pronounced during a breakthrough... The reason we allow the Blood Baleful Art to be taught to outsiders is precisely because of this..."
Before he finished, Zhao Changhe calmly interrupted him. "I know. You hesitated before, Instructor. Several times, you wanted to tell me... That alone means I can't blame you. I can only blame myself for chasing quick results."
He also knew that if he had stopped practicing this sinister art half a month earlier, he probably could have extricated himself in time. Once he had practiced it long enough, it was too late. By the time he reached the threshold of yesterday's breakthrough, it had probably already been too late.
The best answer seemed to be to follow this road all the way into the darkness and aim for the Blood God Art. The claim that the Blood God Art could eliminate these drawbacks was probably true. Or perhaps a more powerful grandmaster could offer guidance. There had to be a way.
Instructor Sun continued, "I think highly of your potential. That fellow Fang keeps leaving you hanging, and I've always thought he was wasting talent for his own selfish interests. I may be transferred back to the main altar in a while. When that happens, I'll lodge a complaint against him with the cult leader and try to get you formally admitted. Then we can see whether you'll have a chance to practice the Blood God Art."
Zhao Changhe paused. "You're leaving, Instructor?"
"That depends... On the outcome of something..." Instructor Sun did not elaborate. He only said, "Anyway, it'll be a while before we know. In the meantime, I'll teach you the Blood Baleful Saber Technique... You can rest easy this time. Although the technique is more powerful when fueled by the Blood Baleful Art, the saber technique itself has no harmful effects. It's a good technique. Even if you switch to another cultivation art later, you can still use it. You'll simply need a different method of channeling your power."
Zhao Changhe cupped his fist. "Sorry for the trouble, Instructor. Also, I've heard there are things called formations. Is my current cultivation enough to learn them?"
That "outcome of something"... Of course he knew what it meant. In the past, he might have reported it to the instructor so everyone could come out happy, but now he was unwilling. Was he supposed to leave himself no escape route and wait to be toyed with until he died?
Instructor Sun did not know whether he was merely seeing a stolen axe in his neighbor's every gesture, but he kept feeling that although Zhao Changhe looked calm and remained polite today, something else lurked beneath it... He said he could not blame the instructor, but nobody could tell whether he blamed him in his heart.
He did not dwell on it. It was perfectly normal for a young man to have feelings about such a situation. Soon enough, he would understand that this was how things were in the martial world. How could everything go as one wished? Precisely because he was under their control, the Holy Cult would trust him more. Things like formations, for example, touched upon the cult's relatively core knowledge, but there was no harm in discussing them now.
"You want to learn formations?" Instructor Sun said. "If you cram too many things into your head at once, you'll bite off more than you can chew. You don't have that much energy."
"I should at least know how to break them, right? If someone traps me in a formation while I'm traveling the martial world, wouldn't I just be waiting to die if I'd never learned anything about them...?"
"You still want to travel the martial world... Heh..." Instructor Sun chuckled. "But you do have a point. You should at least understand the basics of breaking formations."
"Please teach me, Instructor."
"Breaking formations comes down to two things: the formation's core and the sequence. Take the Heaven-Earth-Human Three Powers Formation. The way to break it is to identify the sequence: first break Human, then Earth. If you head straight for Heaven at the start, it's no different from running into a wall. With something like the Big Dipper Seven-Star Formation, you first need to discern where the Heavenly Pivot lies. Only by grasping the formation's core can you seize the initiative..."
The sequence. The formation's core.
Zhao Changhe recalled what Luo Qi had done. He could recognize that those stars belonged to the Azure Dragon Seven Stars and identify them among the vast array of stars. His approach had been correct. That was already impressive. Zhao Changhe himself could not make sense of them; if he had pressed things at random, he might have blown up the door.
But that was as far as Luo Qi's understanding went. Clearly, he could not discern the correct sequence and had pressed them in the conventional order of Horn, Neck, Root, Room, Heart, Tail, and Winnowing Basket, so the door had not opened.
Thinking of it that way, it was not actually difficult... If he studied this world's accounts of star charts and learned which of the seven stars was the most crucial, wouldn't that be the formation's core?
Instructor Sun added, "For now, you're a complete novice. You wouldn't even recognize it if someone formed an array, so there's no point talking about breaking one. Take it slowly. At least learn the Blood Baleful Saber Technique first. Its accompanying footwork has something of formations in it. By drawing connections from one thing to another, you'll gradually get the hang of it..."
Before you continue