Immortality Begins With Internal Breathing

A hearty voice echoed throughout the hall. ”Haha! A guest is still a guest. Why resort to bloodshed the moment you meet? The Martial Alliance is a place where martial artists exchange techniques and discuss the Dao. Life-and-death battles are not permitted here. Fellow friends, please join me at the Discussion Pavilion. Let us sit down together and explore the path of martial cultivation.”

His voice carried a powerful, mysterious force. Like the gentle sweep of an enormous hand, it erased every ripple left behind by the clash of martial cultivation wills, as though nothing had happened just moments before.

Woo Jin narrowed his eyes as he thought, Qin Hu! Wasn’t his cultivation supposed to have gone awry? Why does he seem even stronger now?

Qin Hu’s voice seemed to possess an inexplicable, almost mystical power. The instant Woo Jin heard it, the energy within his body began circulating of its own accord. Even the instability in his aura left by the recent battle was smoothed away in an instant.

With a sweep of his sleeve, Woo Jin said coldly, ”Very well. Since the alliance leader has extended such a gracious invitation, I’ll give the alliance leader the respect he deserves.”

He spoke as though he were sparing Xia Ping’s life solely out of respect for Qin Hu, the alliance leader of the Martial Alliance. Xia Ping merely responded with a faintly mocking smile and said nothing. Since the alliance leader had intervened personally, there was no point in further escalating the conflict with Woo Jin. He gestured to Lin Xian, signaling him to escort Woo Jin to the Discussion Pavilion.

Though Lin Xian detested the old bastard, he still rose to his feet, walked over to Woo Jin, and politely gestured for him to proceed. ”This way, Senior.”

Once the two had departed, Xia Ping’s face suddenly flushed crimson, and his formidable aura visibly weakened. The clash of martial cultivation wills had been far from as effortless as he had made it appear.

Although he looked down on the ancient martial families for pursuing a path that transformed themselves into Desolate Beasts, he had to admit that their Bloodline Martial Cultivation possessed genuine merits.

In fact, the reason the three ancient martial esteemed families could continuously produce experts comparable to the Deity Transformation realm without interruption was precisely because of this unique cultivation path.

”Huff...” Xia Ping took several deep breaths, gradually calming the aura within his body as the color slowly returned to his face.

A trace of loneliness flickered across Xia Ping’s eyes as he murmured to himself, ”I heard the Woo Family’s heir apparent, Woo Yiyan, is dead. Judging by that old bastard’s reaction, it seems Xiao Yu had something to do with it. Good. Well done. Just as expected of the young man I had high hopes for. It’s a pity, though. Even a peerless genius like Xiao Yu failed to uncover the mysteries hidden within the divine repositories. I wonder if I’ll live to see the day a martial artist finally unravels their secrets.”

In his quest to uncover the mysteries hidden within humanity’s three great divine repositories and chart the future path of martial cultivation, Xia Ping had devoted his entire life to studying them. He could clearly sense that he stood only a single step away from revealing their secrets, yet that final barrier remained impossible to break through. The thought filled him with profound frustration.

***

In Yanwu City, within the courtyard where Lin Zheyu resided. Whether by fate or sheer coincidence, the very junior of the Martial Alliance in whom Xia Ping had once placed such high hopes, Lin Zheyu, was at that very moment studying the martial cultivation divine repositories that Xia Ping had pursued his entire life.

For more than three months, Lin Zheyu had immersed himself completely in the boundless sea of knowledge bestowed upon him by Qiong Yun, a vast expanse as endless as the ocean and as brilliant as the stars. It contained nearly the entirety of the Suhe tribe’s knowledge and the complete body of its shamanic system. Compared to such an immense sea of knowledge, three months was truly insignificant.

There was no need for Lin Zheyu to fully comprehend every last piece of it before moving forward. This inheritance had been prepared by Qiong Yun specifically for his successor. It encompassed shamanic knowledge ranging from the Profound Communion realm to the Body Fusion realm and onward to the Mountain and River realm, progressing from the fundamental to the profound.

Compared to the Immortal Dao and Martial Dao, however, the Shamanic Dao divided its cultivation realms in a far cruder manner, lacking the intricate hierarchy of major and minor realms found in the other two systems.

Within the Shamanic Dao, reaching the Mountain and River realm was equivalent to attaining the Dao Converging realm of the Immortal Dao. Currently, Lin Zheyu was merely a Shackles realm martial artist who had broken free of a single shackle. Although his actual combat strength had already reached the peak of the Golden Core realm, leaving him only a step away from the Nascent Soul realm, he still needed time.

Give him just a few more years to fully convert the latent potential released by breaking that first shackle into real strength and Lin Zheyu’s combat prowess would undoubtedly rival that of a Nascent Soul cultivator.

Yet regardless of how powerful he had become, his martial cultivation realm still corresponded only to the early Golden Core realm. Meanwhile, in the Shamanic Dao, merely cultivating the very first major realm, the Profound Communion realm, to perfection was already equivalent to reaching the peak of the Nascent Soul realm in the Immortal Dao.

In other words, when measured by the standards of the Shamanic Dao, Lin Zheyu was still little more than a beginner. He remained at the level of the Profound Communion realm and had yet to fully comprehend the profound mysteries and Dao resonance within it. To skip ahead and study the Body Fusion realm, let alone the Mountain and River realm, would be like trying to run before learning to walk.

Of course, it would be absurd to claim that Lin Zheyu had no interest in the knowledge and manuals concerning the Body Fusion and Mountain and River realms. His will was undoubtedly strong, but even he could not remain completely unmoved in the face of such temptation. So what allowed him to stay true to his path and resist it? The answer was simple. His master, Qiong Yun, had placed restrictions within the bone talisman.

A gentle breeze drifted through the courtyard, rustling the leaves as the blossoms on the trees released a faint fragrance that filled the air. Yet Lin Zheyu was not cultivating in the courtyard.

At the center of the courtyard sat the Primordial Chaos Pool. Lin Zheyu floated in the air above it, immersed in an incomparably dense sea of chaos origin energy. The sensation was indescribably soothing. This powerful energy was immensely beneficial to all living beings, and Lin Zheyu could clearly feel subtle, mysterious changes gradually taking place within his body under its influence.

Suddenly, Lin Zheyu snapped his eyes open.

”Still not enough. Simply relying on spiritual sense to explore the divine repositories isn’t sufficient. It’s a shame my soul can’t leave the sea of consciousness. Otherwise, if I could enter the void spaces hidden within the divine repositories with my soul, I might be able to uncover the secrets concealed within the martial cultivation divine repositories once and for all.” Lin Zheyu shook his head helplessly. His soul was firmly bound by the Heavenly Dao shackles that extended into his sea of consciousness, making it impossible for him to leave.

”It looks like there’s no way to verify this hypothesis for the time being,” Lin Zheyu said.

While studying the Shamanic Dao and its scriptures, Lin Zheyu was suddenly struck by a flash of inspiration, reminding him of the void spaces within the divine repositories. He still remembered that beyond the three void spaces connected to the three great divine repositories lay an even greater expanse of void. That realization sparked a bold idea.

He speculated that the mysterious void beyond might contain the energy and laws required for cultivating the Shamanic Dao. Unfortunately, it remained nothing more than a theory for now. Lin Zheyu had yet to comprehend the secrets hidden within the divine repositories and had no means of entering the greater void connected beyond those three smaller void spaces.

Lin Zheyu gathered his thoughts. ”Let’s begin. I can’t cultivate the Eight Desolations World-Suppressing Art. Without the corresponding Shamanic Dao environment, reading these texts is like trying to decipher an incomprehensible heavenly script.”

Over the past three months, Lin Zheyu had greedily absorbed every piece of Shamanic Dao knowledge within the bone talisman that he could understand. It was not because his comprehension was so extraordinary that he had mastered an immense body of knowledge in such a short time. Rather, it was because the amount he could actually understand was pitifully small.

Unlike the natal shamanic pattern, whose rudiments could be grasped through sheer force of comprehension, the knowledge of the Shamanic Dao required an appropriate realm of cultivation as its foundation. Without it, studying those texts was no different from trying to decipher an indecipherable heavenly tome. At the moment, Lin Zheyu had only just condensed his natal shamanic pattern and was still a complete beginner in the Shamanic Dao.

As the saying went, he was still a rookie. The number of Shamanic Dao texts he could truly comprehend was extremely limited. Left with no other choice, Lin Zheyu decided on a different approach.

He would first integrate the Shamanic Dao knowledge he had absorbed over the past three months into martial cultivation, creating a technique infused with Shamanic Dao principles. As he cultivated it, his understanding of the Shamanic Dao would deepen alongside the technique itself.

That deeper understanding would allow him to comprehend even more advanced Shamanic Dao knowledge, which he could then incorporate back into his martial cultivation technique, refining and improving it in an endless cycle.

”Since it’s a martial cultivation technique that incorporates shamanic arts, let’s call it the Primordial Chaos True Art,” Lin Zheyu muttered.

A cultivation art deserved an impressive name. Once he had settled on one, Lin Zheyu’s thoughts stirred. The panel of information in his consciousness blurred for an instant before becoming clear again. Nothing had changed.

[Heaven Rewards the Diligent]

[Name: Lin Zheyu]

[Origin Force: 1051]

[Skills: Heaven-Deceiving Art (Perfection), Seven Absolute Sabers (Seventh Stage: 100%), Earth Shrinking Technique (Third Stage: 100%), Primordial Golden Body (Fourth Stage: 100%), Eight Desolations World-Suppressing Art (First Stage: 0%)]

”Again,” Lin Zheyu muttered to himself. He revised the technique once more and sent out another thought.

Time slowly passed. Lin Zheyu refined the technique over and over again, failing each attempt, yet never giving up. Ten times... a hundred times... a thousand times...