The calm was slowly coming back to Baziyun City. Unfortunately, all rescues had been over. There were still many missing persons, but they were most likely dead by now. After the fights had been over, many Spirit Warriors had used their spiritual senses to locate as many people as possible. Under the rubbles, some corpses had remained and they got extracted. Thanks to spiritual senses, getting rid of the rubbles was fairly easy. However, rebuilding was another thing entirely.
Spiritual senses could be used with Qi to manipulate even heavy objects with someone's mind, but that didn't make them architects. Moreover, many array formations also needed to be repaired. Governor Leng had sent a lot people to oversee the damage and according to them, it would take less than two months to rebuild the city if every Spirit Warrior helped. But they still required some materials. Transporting the necessary materials would in fact be the most lengthy phase of the reconstruction.
Moreover, nine provinces had been attacked. Apparently, the Wubei Sect's defenses had been sturdy enough to avoid almost any problem. After all, they were literally at the summit of a mountain. It was easier to defend. But the Golden Flowery Fragrance Institute had suffered from several breaches in its wall. In itself, this was very impressive. Even a 9-core demonic beast shouldn't have been able to achieve such a result. But two of them had attacked and they seemed to have been incredibly well coordinated. There was no doubt that someone had trained them together.
Cao Yun spent a lot of time with Sun Liao and the unconscious Ren Chao. He only woke up once and went back into a coma after seeing Cao Yun's face. The young man also went to pay homage to City Lord Dun Mofan. His corpse had been brought to Baziyun City, but they intended to bury him in Yinmen City. In fact, the Myriad Cherry Blossom Hall had commanded a statue in memory of his incredible feats. Hopefully, they could rebuild the small city. Although it wasn't very large, it was still an important hub for the Myriad Cherry Blossom Hall, reason why they had a small branch there. This small city was a perfect location to connect the Wu Province to the Meifen Province.
The Myriad Cherry Blossom Hall had nothing of great value there, but they had still paid some vagrant cultivators to protect it. However, no one had expected such a result, after all Dun Mofan was a 1st-grade Spirit Warrior. The presence of a 6-core demonic beast had not been enough for the city to fall. It was also the work of a traitor amidst its defenders.
The young man visited Yun Ping as well. During the fight, he had lost his left arm. So of course, he was completely dispirited. But this wasn't due to the injury alone, it was also the fact that almost everyone around him had died. Despite his battle formations, they had failed. As the son of a general, Yun Ping had learned to care for the men serving under him. Right now, he was still mourning them. If he had been able to give his other arm to bring them back, he would have. In fact, the idea that losing an arm may impede his spearmanship did not occur to him for one instant.
Yun Ping had no intention whatsoever to change his weapon. Even with one arm, he would keep fighting with his trusted 'Eternal Rampart', the treasure of his family.
-
Everything felt gloomy and melancholic. There had been a lot of losses and anyone could smell it in the air. Literally, the air still had the lingering smell of a handful of incenses all used during funeral ceremonies.
Not wanting to dwell on those emotions for too long, Cao Yun focused on his cultivation.
His Qi cultivation was progressing without any problem as it turned out. All the pressure he had suffered from, especially in the depths of the Ocean of Turbid Anguish, had helped him advance it in fact. Now that he was calm, he realized that he was extracting even more benefits. The cells he had already tempered were pushed further and further. More and more Qi could flow through his body and he was already able to sense it strengthen his Wei Qi. In fact, instead of rushing to temper all of his cells, he focused on strengthening those he deemed most important.
After all, he was not in a rush. He still had around two months before entering the Ancient Ruins. And Cao Yun thought that it would be wise to seek Chief Instructor Peng's advice before breaking through to the Mortal Warrior realm. The Mortal realm was also called the Foundation Realm. It would be wise to do everything he could to ensure that his next cultivation realm was as smooth as this one. There were some mistakes one could not compensate for in other realms.
It didn't mean that Cao Yun was not progressing fast at all. He just made it so that he wouldn't break through yet. That being said, he was certain that he could break through at any moment now, just by applying a bit more pressure. In fact, he could almost feel a physical veil between him and the Mortal Warrior realm. With a single push, the veil would tear and he would enter a new world.
Then, he also focused on the six stars of 'Azure Dragon's Seven Piercing Stars' and even more so on the first Insight Writing he had extracted from his sea of consciousness. This single Insight Writing contained many secrets of his spearmanship. As it had been produced by his own mind, it was almost a crystallization of his own understanding of the way of the spear. As such, it contained knowledge that was in him but not yet fully in his conscious mind. This was what had allowed him to enter the state of Spear Aura.
According to what Chief Elder Baishen had told him, the next state he would reach would be the state of Spear Intent. Only then could he hope to fully enter the state of Spear Heart. For now, everything was still a bit blurry for him as not that many books talked about those concepts. Hopefully, Chief Elder Baishen would help him make more sense of it. That being said, he studied this Insight Writing as much as possible while the seventh star was very slowly forming itself in his sea of consciousness.
From his own experience, this Winnowing Basket Star would be the hardest to condense yet. Because, once he would have this final star, he would have completed the very first layer of 'Azure Dragon's Seven Piercing Stars'. Many people stopped even before completing this first layer, but there were still two other layers. After forming the seven stars, they would be turned into constellations and finally into mansions. If one was able to achieve seven mansions, then the spirit of the Azure Dragon would be formed in his mind. Cao Yun was not even certain whether the creator of this technique had achieved such a result. But since he had been able to observe a true Azure Dragon, it was a real possibility.
As he was working on his martial arts, Cao Yun realized how much his spear had been damaged. 'Nine Chi Black Dragon Spear' had suffered a lot during his stay in that Yellow Death World. Thankfully, it was not destroyed. But Cao Yun was able to feel the scale of the Ebony Snake Dragon within. It was as though he could hear a howling animal. On one hand, he may need to change his spear in a very near future. On the other hand, he felt attached to this one because of the connection of this scale with his own martial art.
Apart from those cultivations, Cao Yun also worked on his mind cultivation. And before the end of the month, he was able to fully condense a new Five Echoes Pearl. Finally, he was able to energize his sixth chamber, the Chamber of Heavenly Court. This chamber was in the anterior upper part of the Upper Dantian. According to what 'Sealing the Seven Demons in the Nine Peaks' stated, it could improve decisiveness and reactivity.
Now that he was used to it, Cao Yun had absolutely no problem energizing this new chamber. At first the changes were not apparent. But when he went back to his martial art training, he realized that he was able to slow down time a little. Rather, he was able to think faster. If he thought fast enough, the world around him seemed to go a bit slower. Of course, the difference was not gigantic and it was only his mind, not his body that was faster. However, during a fight, that would be a great help for him. That being said, he did not feel much change concerning his decisiveness.
After having overcome his indecisive nature by himself, this Chamber of Heavenly Court did not bring him that many benefits in terms of personality. Yet, he found another use for this faster thoughts. Now he could read way faster than before and memorize entire books in a few minutes. Almost as soon as he had turned a page, he had had enough time to read it. As long as he wasn't too fast, he just had to flip the pages of a book to memorize its entire content. Then, he could read it more carefully once memorized and try to fully understand it.
Speaking of memorizing books, Cao Yun also went through the documents of Can Mouye he had been given. They were absolutely disgusting. Some detailed how poisonous insects could be birthed within living humans. Each volume contained more perverse ways to acquire power of any kind. Still, it was useful to know one's enemies. And the more Cao Yun learned about them, the more he wanted to put an end to their entire existence. If he could, he would wipe out all of their heritage as well. As passionate as he was about learning new things, there were also things that should never been studied.
Almost none of the documents concerning beast taming were useful for Cao Yun as they all involved pain and torture. Some explained how to prepare the victims to feed particular demonic beasts in order to maximize their growth. The more Cao Yun read, the more he was nauseous. The worst thing was that all those methods had been used. Worse even, they were still being used right now by demonic cultivators...
There was a document that was really useful though, the dictionary of Moshenhua. What Cao Yun was really looking forward to would be a dictionary Nuhua-Antique Sixian. Indeed, he had the entire knowledge from Cleansed Asura in his mind and just couldn't read it at all. Amidst this knowledge, there was 'Death Verses' and he could only understand the first two chapters 'See Through the Mud' and 'Death Reeling'. But those two chapters were only useful with Death Energy around. In the Hongchen Kingdom, there was none. And Cao Yun was convinced that the other chapters were talking about how to use this Death Energy or even create it from his own Po. With the Drop of Wrath, this would be the kind of knowledge that would be useful.
For now, he focused on trying to understand the Antique Sixian. But he got the idea that learning another language for which he had more learning materials first would be a good thing. Learning Moshenhua would also be useful because this was the basis of the current demon languages. If the demonic cultivators had found ruins from the era where the demons ruled, understanding this speech would be incredibly important as well. What if he found documents from those demonic cultivators and was unable to read them? Besides, learning a new language would help his mind learn yet another one more easily in the future. So, while a part of him was still analyzing the Antique Sixian, Cao Yun put a lot of effort into understanding this Moshenhua.
-
Finally, Cao Yun decided to bring his attention to both the 'Ashen Feather Seal' and the blood cultivation he had received, 'Storms in the Crimson Furnace'.
Although Huang Liyue had given a simplified version of her technique to Cao Yun, he had mostly understood every concept. Now, he only needed to work on those in order to improve and slowly erase his presence completely. Using his achievement in 'Locking the Seven and Stopping the Waves' that was graded 4-star Earth, he had already a small advantage when working on this other stealth technique. Right now, he was essentially trying to wrap his head around the concept of the last chapter, 'Blood Withers While Life Flourishes'.
Clearly, this was related to blood. But this technique had been invented by Huang Liyue who had the bloodline of the True Fiery Fenghuang. And there were many words clearly referencing the Huang family secret techniques which Cao Yun had no way of knowing. Hopefully, if he had been given a blood cultivation method, this was for that purpose.
And this 'Storms in the Crimson Furnace' was crazy!
It was very simple in principle. In order to improve the quality of blood, Cao Yun had to gather all of his blood into his heart and then use Fire Qi to turn his heart into some kind of furnace. That meant that not only would he have no more blood in his body for several seconds, or even minutes. But he would also subject his heart to intense pressure both from outside and within. Damn, there was literally a sentence warning that this could kill a lesser cultivator. Who had come up with this cultivation method?!
The more Cao Yun read though, the more he realized that it was sound. Indeed, this technique could bring great results. And with the Drop of Wrath residing in his Chamber of the Mysterious Elixir, right in the middle of his heart, this was even more certain to work. Moreover, the technique was not as insane as he had thought. There were several stages. In each one, more blood was brought to the heart to build resistance.
Seeing this method, the young man got several ideas. Considering that his blood had changed thanks to the Drop of Wrath, he could maybe improve the effects by putting all of his blood in contact with the drop in a sealed furnace before tempering it with his Qi. Slowly, the idea became more and more enticing.