Night fell, and Xu Ying hid alongside the snake demon, Yuan Qi, within an abandoned, dilapidated temple on a rocky hill. Xu Ying built a campfire, and Yuan Qi drew close to the flames to warm his scaly body.
Snake demons feared the cold. When chilled, their qi and blood ceased to flow smoothly, causing them to stiffen and slip into hibernation. For that reason, he loved huddling near the blaze when night arrived.
Xu Ying passed him the remaining half of the roast duck they had brought, contenting himself with chewing on some dry rations.
In truth, Mount Wuwang and Qinyan Cave were not far away. With their traveling speed, they could have reached them in a single day at most, but the path was infested with rampaging gods and demons, not to mention the pursuing Nuo masters, which had delayed their journey.
Taking advantage of the remaining twilight, Xu Ying strolled around to inspect the surroundings. The ruined temple was modest in size, fronted by a Mahavira Hall. It was unclear what deity had once been worshipped there, for not only was there no statue, there was not even a shrine.
In the rear courtyard stood a pavilion, inside of which hung a large bronze bell taller than a man, thoroughly mottled with rust.
Beneath the bronze bell lay a deep, hexagonal well. Peering downward revealed only pitch darkness, seemingly bottomless. Suspended along the well's stone walls were several black iron chains as thick as a man's calf, their far ends plunging into the depths.
Xu Ying gave one of the black iron chains a tug. It was exceedingly heavy, sending a clattering metallic echo rolling up from the abyss.
*The deity worshipped here probably fled long ago,* Xu Ying mused.
Returning to the campfire, he slowly evened his breath, mobilized his qi and blood, and performed the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist with deliberate, unhurried motions. "Yuan Qi, I'll teach you the subtleties of circulating power in the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist," he said. "Watch closely first, and compare it against the scripture."
The snake demon Yuan Qi promptly raised his head, watching Xu Ying execute the forms while cross-referencing the manual by the firelight.
Wherever Xu Ying's qi and blood circulated, radiant light followed, as if a great sun burned within him, illuminating his internal organs, flesh, and skin from within, until light seemed to flow beneath the surface of his skin!
Yuan Qi looked baffled. "Wait, that's not right. Did you train wrong?"
There was no record in the scripture of driving qi and blood to manifest as a great sun!
Three generations of the Old Niu family had been snake demons, and all three generations had cultivated the Great Sun Guiding Technique and the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist. Yet the version Xu Ying was practicing was clearly a completely different beast from what they had cultivated!
As Xu Ying demonstrated the forms, the sun of qi and blood within him grew increasingly brilliant, sending billows of white steam rising from the crown of his head!
Within that mist lingered a faint, rank odor—the physical impurities purged from his flesh as the great sun of qi and blood tempered his body!
The Taiyi Guiding Technique already contained thunderclap body tempering, which had long since expelled the ordinary impurities from Xu Ying's body. Yet this Great Sun body tempering could actually reach places that the thunderclap vibrations could not, proving that the Great Sun Guiding Technique indeed possessed its own unique merits!
The problem was, Yuan Qi had flipped through the manual until its pages were dog-eared, and he had never found a single mention of Great Sun body tempering!
"Stop looking. Great Sun body tempering was a method I comprehended during my fight with Ding Quan," Xu Ying said. "It seems to be a missing technique connecting the Great Sun Guiding Technique and the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist. It wasn't hard to figure out."
Yuan Qi puffed with indignation. "You can comprehend a missing martial method in the middle of a battle? Are you trying to trick me? Why didn't three generations of my family figure it out? Could it be that three whole generations of my Old Niu family are complete fools?"
Xu Ying said nothing.
He was, after all, a kindhearted youth.
He continued circulating his qi and blood. When the surge reached its absolute peak, his skin felt as though it were tearing apart inch by inch; his progress in the fist art had outpaced what his physical body could endure!
In martial cultivation, whether the flesh could bear the concussive power of the art was of paramount importance. Forcing progress beyond what the body could withstand placed immense strain on the vessel; the more one trained, the more the body broke down, inviting severe internal injuries and lingering ailments!
Just as Xu Ying was about to stop, five-colored light suddenly radiated from his five viscera as the great sun tempered his flesh!
Without him even realizing it, the resilience of his internal organs soared, and his qi and blood surged with newfound vigor!
Every pore on his body seemed to snap open like countless steam valves, hissing as qi and blood vented into the air!
At the same time, his heart thudded like a war drum within his chest, the heavy beats sending a suffocating reverberation through the air as it continuously forged fresh qi and blood, keeping him permanently at the peak of his vitality!
A spark of realization flashed through Xu Ying's mind, and he drove his qi and blood even further.
The overflowing vitality coalesced into a fiend aura behind him—qi sha and blood sha melding together until they condensed into the form of an elephant-headed, human-bodied Elephant God!
Watching the fiend aura rising behind Xu Ying, Yuan Qi felt his mind go numb.
Xu Ying had only obtained the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist that very morning. The fifth tier—the Elephant God apparition—had been mastered earlier today when he slew the Green-Robed Deity.
And now, right in the middle of teaching him this martial art, Xu Ying had actually mastered the sixth tier!
*It seems the heads of our Old Niu family really aren't too bright,* the snake demon grumbled inwardly. *My grandfather, my father, and me—none of us are clever. But there are clever folks out there. Ah Ying is so brilliant. If I just follow his lead, won't I never have to use my brain again? It's not like using my brain ever accomplished anything anyway.*
Xu Ying brought his cultivation to a halt, feeling slightly sheepish.
He had come here to teach, yet somehow he had casually broken through on the spot, forgetting to explain the vital mnemonics to Yuan Qi.
The fifth tier of the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist, the Elephant God apparition, was merely an indistinct phantom formed from qi and blood; the boost it offered Xu Ying had been relatively modest.
The sixth tier, the qi-blood fiend body, possessed defined form even if it lacked physical mass. It harbored tremendous power, granting Xu Ying double his ordinary strength—an advancement that could not be compared to the mere apparition of the previous tier!
The Taiyi Guiding Technique was already a supreme method of qi refinement, and Xu Ying possessed a pure heart, cultivating without stray thoughts or distractions. His progress was naturally meteoric.
After seven years of cultivation, his vitality was already comparable to that of gods and devils!
As the saying went, deep accumulation brought explosive release. With seven years of foundation paired with extraordinary comprehension, his mastery of the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist could advance by leaps and bounds.
Still, once that accumulated potential was exhausted, making further rapid strides would become exceedingly difficult.
"Brother Niu, the key to the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist lies in qi, blood, and body tempering. Only when your vitality is sufficiently boundless and your flesh sufficiently resilient can you advance to the next tier. The Great Sun body tempering I comprehended happens to suit you perfectly."
Xu Ying explained the technique in meticulous detail. In truth, this body-tempering method was even better suited to a snake demon.
A snake demon's body was essentially a straightforward cylinder of flesh. Circulating a full heavenly cycle of Great Sun body tempering was remarkably simple, without any need to divert energy into limbs and branching extremities.
When Xu Ying cultivated it himself, for instance, in addition to tempering his five viscera and six bowels, he had to temper his four limbs and his head, which was terribly tedious. What was even more tedious was having to temper his fifth limb, which wasted both time and vitality.
Although he had no idea what use there was in tempering that fifth limb, if he didn't temper it tough enough, it would still hurt like hell if someone kicked him there.
Yuan Qi had no such troubles. While others completed one cycle, he could complete three.
Coiled beside the campfire, the snake demon drove the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist while circulating the Great Sun body tempering. The two arts complemented each other seamlessly, running in perfect harmony.
Being a snake demon, cultivating a fist technique was no easy task; he had to contort his body to imitate the striking stances of a humanoid martial artist.
For a serpent to practice a martial art so inherently ill-suited to his form—and to have persevered this long—demanded an endurance that earned even Xu Ying's heartfelt admiration.
Sitting by the fire, Xu Ying took advantage of the light to produce the cloth bundle he had pinched from Ding Quan.
Earlier, when using his snake-catching technique to dislocate Ding Quan's joints, he had casually swiped the bundle from the man's robes, but he hadn't had a chance to inspect its contents until now.
The bundle was small. Unfolding it revealed several taels of broken silver and a handwritten booklet.
Xu Ying stowed the silver, his heart swelling with joy. *I can eat my fill for many meals to come!*
This was the greatest sum of wealth he had ever laid eyes on in his life!
He then opened the handwritten manuscript, reading it by the firelight. It detailed a method of qi refinement. After skimming through it, he let out a soft exclamation of surprise. The qi refinement technique recorded within was unlike any he had ever seen.
He had encountered fifty or sixty different techniques before, all of them guiding arts used by the demon race. They drew upon the solar essence, refining essence into qi to bolster one's own vitality—a process of taking from the sun's abundance to replenish one's own deficiency.
Yet the technique recorded in Ding Quan's booklet drew purely upon the power dormant within the human body itself, relying entirely on the self without taking an ounce from the outside world!
*Could this be the cultivation method of a secret depository?*
Xu Ying's heart thudded violently against his ribs. He studied it with intense focus, but soon found himself completely in the dark.
The text stated that within the human brain lay a secret depository called the Mud Pill. Surrounded by chaos, it harbored immense energy. By mastering the Mud Pill and extracting its power to form a Hidden Scenery, one could forge an undying body and wield unfathomable divine might!
However, the booklet did not mention a word about how to locate the Mud Pill depository, nor did it explain how to open it. Even with the manual in his hands, he had no way of cultivating it!
The pages only described how to harvest the Mud Pill's power and refine a Hidden Scenery!
From the information revealed in the text, becoming a Nuo master required more than just dragon-seeking and vein-spotting to locate the body's secret depositories; one also needed the assistance of a Grand Nuo to break them open.
Yet even opening the depository was not enough to make someone a true Nuo master!
One still required a specialized technique to harness the depository's energy and forge a Hidden Scenery.
A Hidden Scenery was not the depository itself, but an acquired construct forged from the depository's harvested power.
*What that petty official Ding Quan cultivated must have been the Mud Pill depository, forging the Hidden Scenery of the Mud Pill Palace,* Xu Ying reasoned as he put away the transcribed manual. *He only cultivated an imperfect imitation, yet his strength was already so terrifying. The true Hidden Scenery arts of the Zhou clan must be vastly more formidable!*
*Still, now that my Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist has broken through to the sixth tier, I have no reason to fear Ding Quan,* he thought. *If I face him again, even without Yuan Qi's help, I can definitely defeat him!*
He had that confidence!
A demon art paired with the martial path was by no means inferior to the Nuo arts of a Nuo master!
Suddenly, the sound of crashing waves echoed from nearby, growing louder by the second. Xu Ying hurriedly turned toward the noise, only to see Yuan Qi glowing with blinding radiance at a critical juncture in his cultivation!
*Hrooooom—!*
Yuan Qi threw open his jaws, but what emerged was the sonorous trumpet of an elephant, deafening in its intensity!
This was the unmistakable sign of qi and blood coursing through the entire body—the achievement of the fourth tier: Divine Elephant Strength!
Not only that, but vitality billowed outward from every part of his serpentine form, gradually coalescing behind him into the divine apparition of an elephant-headed, human-bodied figure!
The fifth tier of the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist!
"I... I mastered the fifth tier of the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist! I've attained Divine Elephant Strength and the Elephant God apparition!"
Yuan Qi was both stunned and ecstatic. Slithering swiftly out of the ruined temple, he whipped his tail around a massive boulder weighing two to three thousand jin, hoisting it into the air before flicking the tip of his tail to fling the stone straight into the sky!
Yuan Qi laughed uproariously, his long tongue flickering like rippling waves in wild excitement.
Yet as he laughed, he suddenly broke down into weeping tears.
Three generations, two to three centuries, and not a single snake had ever reached the fourth tier of the Elephant-Strength Bull Demon Fist. Yet with just a brief pointer from Xu Ying, he had broken through straight to the fifth tier in mere moments!
He had never imagined that cultivation could be so effortless, so simple!
"Before long, I'll be able to reach the sixth tier, and maybe even take human form! Once I become human, won't practicing fist techniques advance by leaps and bounds every single day?" he thought, overcome with emotion.
Of course, his progress was so swift only because a hundred and twenty years of bitter cultivation had built a foundation of boundless vitality; once taught the proper method, his breakthrough was only natural.
Suddenly, Xu Ying snuffed out the campfire with a sweep of his palm and hissed, "Your breakthrough just now released an elephant's roar that echoed through the valley. It will surely alert the local deities and the constables hunting us. We have to leave immediately!"
Yuan Qi's heart tightened, and he hurriedly fell in behind him, whispering, "Traveling by night is perilous! Lingling's nights are not safe!"
Xu Ying was equally reluctant to travel under the cover of dark. Under the moonlight, the mountain forests were dense and tangled; losing one's bearings in the deep wilderness was easy enough, but a single misstep could send one tumbling down a precipice or right into the jaws of a savage beast.
Yet they had no choice. If their pursuers cornered them inside the ruined temple, doom was certain!
Man and snake moved carefully through the pitch darkness, picking their way down the mountain. Suddenly, a thunderous roar of surging waves rose in the distance, growing louder until, in the blink of an eye, it morphed into an earth-shattering din that seemed to tear heaven and earth asunder!
The ground beneath Xu Ying's feet trembled violently. Reacting swiftly, he sprang upward, leaping into the branches of a towering ancient tree.
With several agile bounds, the youth reached the treetop. Following the sound with his gaze, his jaw dropped in disbelief.
Under the pale moonlight, a brilliant white line surged upward from amidst the vast mountains, climbing ever higher. It was a colossal river wider and more ferocious than even the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, appearing out of thin air as its torrents swallowed everything in their path!
"Impossible... There's no river like this anywhere around Lingling!" Xu Ying stared blankly, eyes wide.
Yuan Qi climbed onto a nearby branch and peered into the distance. Seeing ghost fires darting wildly across the water's surface, he suddenly recalled a passage from an ancient tome he had once read, and cried out in sheer panic:
"It's the Nai River!"
His voice turned shrill and piercing, grating against the ears: "The underworld's Nai River has changed course! Back up the mountain! Hurry, back up the mountain!"
He scrambled down the tree as fast as he could. Xu Ying dropped down after him, and together, youth and serpent sprinted frantically back toward the ruined temple atop the rocky hill.
Surging from the underworld, the torrential Nai River roared through the mountains. Wherever it passed, flowers and grass withered, ancient trees perished, and birds and beasts alike were stripped of all life!
Strangely enough, though the rushing torrent rose over a hundred zhang above the ground, it seemed bounded by invisible riverbanks. The water did not spill out into the surrounding wilderness, coursing strictly along that invisible riverbed.
The only problem was that the rocky hill where Xu Ying and Yuan Qi stood lay right in the dead center of the river's path!
Chapter 6