"A fine fight. I originally thought that after you advanced to the Golden Core stage, your fundamental swordsmanship would lag behind your current realm, and I intended to give you a word of caution. Now it seems I was worrying needlessly."
"It's all thanks to your excellent teaching, Eldest Senior Sister."
How could Lu Yang dare slack off on his fundamentals? Thinking back to when he had first begun cultivating, Eldest Senior Sister had trained his fundamentals by having him play with tofu by day and soak in scalding-hot baths by night. If not for an abundant stock of spirit pills and miraculous elixirs, whether he would have survived was an open question.
If Eldest Senior Sister caught him with shaky fundamentals and put him through that all over again... Lu Yang shuddered at the mere thought.
Under no circumstances could he go through that again!
"Little Tao, comprehending a Golden Core of Yin-Yang transformation from the Twin Conjoined Lotus and weaving it into your illusion techniques is a great accomplishment. However, do not forget that you also possess the Feathering Immortal Physique. Do not neglect developing it."
"Yes, Eldest Senior Sister!"
"Very well. You two can review your battle after you head back. For now, let us watch Little Meng and Little Man's match."
"Those two have been fighting for this long?" Tao Yaoye was astonished. Her spar with Lu Yang had already dragged on, but she hadn't expected Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu to be even more tenacious.
"Both of them are body cultivators. In a slugfest between them, deciding a victor isn't easy." Lu Yang wasn't surprised. Meng Jingzhou's Golden Core had miraculous effects against monsters, demons, ghosts, and fiends, but against Man Gu, who was also a body cultivator, it was useless.
Man Gu held the leg bone of a demon beast—a trophy from the dense forest, taken from a Nascent Soul stage demon beast that he and Tao Yaoye had slain together.
Man Gu brandished the beast bone, howling and roaring like a savage, his eyes filled with madness and ferocity.
Lu Yang was puzzled. He had never seen Man Gu in such a state, and this manner of fighting hardly matched Man Gu's personality.
Man Gu fought with brute force, sure, but he had never been this feral—it was as if he were hunting wild beasts across the primeval wilderness.
Meng Jingzhou had also been startled by Man Gu's appearance. Having lost the opening initiative, he had been suppressed from the start, pouring most of his energy into defense and barely finding room to attack.
Moreover, although Man Gu's fighting style appeared wild and unhinged, a closer look revealed subtlety within the roughness. Seamless in offense and defense, it was a martial art forged through countless trials and refinements.
"Oh! That fighting style looks so familiar! It's just like those Barbarians I used to run into—grabbing rocks, bones, and whatever else was handy, swarming in a mob, and smashing the enemy's brains out!" Seeing something familiar, the Immortal Fairy grew quite excited.
Lu Yang wondered, "That's the fighting style of the Ancient Barbarian race? But didn't I hear that the Ancient Barbarians' combat arts were lost to history?"
The Barbarian clan suffered from severe generational fractures as well, with few records surviving from antiquity.
"Did you forget? Man Gu's bloodline was blessed by me! Demon beasts can pass down divine abilities and innate talents through bloodlines, so of course this fairy can do it too!"
Once a demon beast reached a certain realm, the ancestral heritage sealed within its bloodline would unlock, allowing the beast to master its innate divine abilities.
The Taotie clan's Devour and the Nine-Tailed Fox clan's Charm worked the same way.
The purer the bloodline, the earlier the ancestral power would awaken.
"By the way, what kind of Golden Core did Man Gu form?" Lu Yang turned his head to ask Tao Yaoye. By now, there was no need for secrecy.
"It should be like mine—a Golden Core that never existed before. It's called something like the All-Ancestors Core, I think. It allows him to summon the departed spirits of all his ancestors to possess him and assist in battle."
"That formidable?!" Lu Yang was stunned. "Doesn't that mean the souls of the Ancient Barbarians are still around?"
Yun Zhi shook her head slowly. "It is not as you imagine. A soul lingering without dissipating for three hundred thousand years—only an immortal possesses such power."
"Then what is happening with Man Gu?"
"Although the souls of Man Gu's ancestors dispersed and returned to heaven and earth, they share a bloodline connection with him. Sensing the presence of their kin, the ancestors reassembled a portion of their scattered spirits from the world and descended into Man Gu's body through the Ancient Barbarian bloodline. However, this possession is driven largely by instinct, devoid of true sentience."
Lu Yang was reminded of the Immortal Fairy. It bore some resemblance to her method, though it was nowhere near as heaven-defying.
"So Meng Jingzhou isn't fighting Man Gu alone, but an entire race of Ancient Barbarians?" Lu Yang felt that this bout would be tough for Meng Jingzhou.
The Ancient Barbarians were a race that had once followed the Immortal Fairy. Fighting was as routine to them as having a meal, and every last one of them was seasoned in battle. How could Meng Jingzhou possibly match that?
On the arena stage, Meng Jingzhou was beaten back step by step. Neither the Arhat Fist nor the Heaven-Shaking Six Forms did him any good.
Man Gu's eyes were dull and unfocused; he had been completely taken over by the ancestors of the Ancient Barbarians, fighting entirely on instinct.
In terms of pure physical toughness, Meng Jingzhou had a slight edge over Man Gu, but that couldn't withstand Man Gu's sheer wealth of experience.
Added together, the ancestors of the Ancient Barbarians had hundreds of thousands of years of combat experience. How on earth could Meng Jingzhou compete with that?
Though Man Gu held the upper hand and kept Meng Jingzhou pinned under a barrage of blows, he couldn't deliver a decisive defeat in short order.
"Does Meng Jingzhou look a bit strange?"
Meng Jingzhou felt himself slipping into a bizarre state. Inside his body, sensing Man Gu's Golden Core, his two Bachelor Golden Cores seemed provoked, spinning out of control like two miniature suns. They bathed his body in warmth, rendering his flesh translucent and popping his acupoints open, every single acupoint drinking in and expelling spiritual energy.
As the two Golden Cores whirled, Meng Jingzhou's mind emptied out, his past experiences flashing across his thoughts one by one.
His past experiences compressed to an absolute singularity, and then, with a roaring boom, his mind detonated.
Meng Jingzhou shook his head. Suddenly, the world felt clearer than ever before.
Did I just achieve enlightenment and comprehend a set of fist techniques?
Meng Jingzhou clenched his fists, finding it hard to believe.
He had heard that an enlightened state was something one could only chance upon by luck, not seek by force. Most cultivators never encountered it once in their entire lives, yet he had achieved enlightenment at merely the Golden Core stage?
And judging from what just happened, were his two Bachelor Golden Cores the ones helping him achieve enlightenment?
"I knew my Bachelor Golden Cores were invincible!"
Meng Jingzhou ran through the fist technique in his mind, his expression turning rather peculiar.
This fist technique seems to be...
"Hold on!" Meng Jingzhou thrust out a hand, halting the attacking Man Gu.
"I just comprehended a set of fist techniques! Barbarian ancestors, if you insist on fighting, don't blame me for unleashing them!"
Man Gu froze in place, seemingly curious to hear what else Meng Jingzhou had to say.
"The fist technique I comprehended involves the power of karma, the power of curses, and carries the deep-seated grievances of my bachelor lineage!
"Anyone struck by my fists will end up just like me for the rest of their days—a bachelor forever! This is a karmic curse!
"I dub it the Bachelor Curse Fist!
"This has got to be an innate fist technique granted by my dual Bachelor Golden Cores!
"If you are willing to let Man Gu take this punch, feel free to keep attacking me!"
Using Man Gu's body, the ancestors of the Ancient Barbarian race scrambled to leap off the arena stage and concede.
Their instincts told them that Meng Jingzhou was telling the absolute truth!
Chapter 313