Chapter 267: Learning Martial Skills
Tang Yin had thought long and hard before deciding to Devour several tens of billions of Low-grade Spirit Stones and a billion Mid-grade Spirit Stones which were all of the Low-grade and Mid-grade Spirit Stones that he owned.
The main reason for this was the new innate ability of the Heaven Devouring Abyss Physique, Passive Regeneration.
The Passive Regeneration would require Abyss Qi to passively regenerate Tang Yin’s body.
Even though there was a colossal amount of Abyss Qi stored away inside the Heaven Devouring Abyss, Tang Yin still felt uneasy.
If he ran out of Abyss Qi during a critical battle which determined his life and death, Passive Regeneration would stop functioning. This meant that he would not heal and would continue to accumulate injuries until he died. His focus would also be distracted since he would have to pay attention to his injuries which would only further speed up his death. It was simply too huge of a risk.
Therefore, Tang Yin decided to Devour all of his Low-grade and Mid-grade Spirit Stones for essentially a boundless amount of Abyss Qi. He would never need to worry about running out of Abyss Qi ever again.
Cultivators stopped using Low-grade and Mid-grade Spirit Stones once they reached the Spirit Ascension Realm.
They would usually use Supreme-grade Spirit Stones to transact with cultivators of similar strength. As for High-grade Spirit Stones, they would be used to transact with cultivators below the Spirit Ascension Realm.
Tang Yin did not need his Low-grade and Mid-grade Spirit Stones anymore. And the most efficient and worthy way Tang Yin had chosen to get rid of his Low-grade and Mid-grade Spirit Stones was by clearing his worry about running out of Abyss Qi.
Tang Yin took out several tens of thousands of Low-grade Spirit Stones and scattered them across the whole underground cave.
A thick amount of Qi instantly filled the underground cave.
Upon seeing the large pile of Spirit Stones and the dense Qi emanating from them, Xiao Fei felt the urge to pounce on the Spirit Stones and engulf them.
However, remembering that she possessed a huge amount of Demonic Beast Cores, most of her urges disappeared.
Tang Yin manifested the Heaven Devouring Abyss as usual and devoured the large pile of Spirit Stones.
The Qi inside the Spirit Stones was converted to Abyss Qi and stored inside the Heaven Devouring Abyss.
Tang Yin then took out an equally large pile as last time and devoured it. Thus, another cycle of devouring began.
3 years trickled by.
The sheer quantity and amount of Low-grade and Mid-grade Spirit Stones were cosmic. But it made sense considering how many organizations and families Tang Yin had destroyed and plundered.
Tang Yin had practically grown sick and tired of repeating the same action over and over again for the past 3 years. He was glad that all the Low-grade and Mid-grade Spirit Stones had finally been devoured and converted into Abyss Qi.
3 years of repeating the same action was boring, monotone, grey and repetitive. It left a bad taste in Tang Yin’s mouth.
Nevertheless, it was all over now.
Tang Yin had finally devoured almost all of the resources in his possession to increase his strength.
The only resources remaining now were the Tier 2 Domain Formation Pill, Tier 3 Holy Saint Brush, the Heavenly Demon Robe, the Beast Soul Receptacle, Tian Huang’s 3 jade tokens, a lake’s worth of Myriad Spirit Milk, a Myriad Spirit Milk Source Stone, several hundred million High-grade Spirit Stones and over a million Supreme-grade Spirit Stones.
Tang Yin turned his attention to his right index finger. There was a small strand of hair wrapped around it. The strand of hair represented Tian Huang’s one-time full-powered attack.
These were all the resources and items he had left in his possession if Xiao Fei and the Azure Luan Pouch were not included.
Tang Yin still felt satisfied and impressed with himself when he realised that he still had not utilized Tian Huang’s one-time full-powered attack.
The amount of life-and-death situations he had been through in his cultivation path was much higher than what a normal cultivator would face. Yet, he had overcome and endured all of these life-and-death situations with his own power.
Tang Yin was not done though. He still wanted to learn soul-type Martial Skills before leaving seclusion and emerging back into the world.
The first soul-type Martial Skill that Tang Yin wanted to learn was called Soul Needle.
Tang Yin had obtained this Martial Skill from one of the Spirit Ascension Realm cultivators he had killed and plundered in the Exotic Enclosure Region.
It was just as the name implied. One could condense and concentrate their divine sense into a needle and attack the opponent at lightning speed. The divine sense could even condense multiple Soul Needles to attack with.
It was a simple but ruthless attack.
The Soul Needle was only a Tier 4 Martial Skill. However, the advantage was that almost every cultivator with a soul less powerful than Tang Yin would be unable to resist the Soul Needle. Their soul would instantly be destroyed.
However, the disadvantage was that the Soul Needle was not very useful against cultivators with a similar or higher soul strength than him, it could even be deemed useless in most cases.
Cultivators with a soul on par with Tang Yin’s would not need to do much to defend against the Soul Needle unless there were hundreds or even thousands of them.
Tang Yin was only an Early-stage Spirit Ascension Realm. Most of his future opponents would be Spirit Ascension Realm and Principle Comprehension Realm cultivators.
Only very few among these cultivators would be like him who possessed a much more powerful soul compared to their cultivation base.
Against these cultivators, Soul Needle would be extremely useful and handy.
The Soul Needle wasn’t that difficult to learn either. It would just take some practice and a little bit of time which was negligible to cultivators.
Tang Yin concentrated his divine sense into one place and condensed it to take the shape of a needle, this part was the easiest.
However, the hardest part wasn’t really that difficult.
All Tang Yin had to do was condense the power of his soul and Soul Energy into that piece of divine sense that had taken the shape of a needle. It took Tang Yin around a day before he managed to do this.
Tang Yin then spent the next few weeks condensing as many Soul Needles as he could. He eventually managed to master the Soul Needle Martial Skill and he had even managed to find out the highest number of Soul Needles he could condense.
The upper limit of Soul Needles that he could condense was 368. It would cost him all of his Soul Energy and require the full power of his soul.
Another noteworthy thing was that Tang Yin had run out of Soul Energy twice whilst condensing Soul Needles. However, he had simply consumed a drop of Myriad Spirit Milk to return to his peak and instantly refill his Soul Sea with Soul Energy on both occasions.
Otherwise, without the Myriad Spirit Milk, Tang Yin would need to meditate and manually recover his Soul Energy. He also did not have any Soul Nourishing Pills or any similar resources to recover his Soul Energy any faster. The Myriad Spirit Milk had saved him around 2 weeks of time.
Now that he had mastered the Soul Needle Martial Skill and had even found out the maximum amount of Soul Needles that he could condense, Tang Yin moved on to learning the next soul-type Martial Skill.
It was a Tier 3 Martial Skill named Soul Dart.
It was similar to the Soul Needle in its size. But the Soul Dart mainly focused on speed, making its attacking force below average. A cultivator could also only use one Soul Dart at a time, unlike the Soul Needle.
However, all of these disadvantages were exchanged for 2 things. Extreme speed and quick cast time. It was worlds apart from the Soul Needle which tried to balance out its speed and attack.
The Soul Dart could be cast exceptionally quickly in less than a second. Its speed was also extremely fast, it could move faster than lightning. In fact, it was so rapid that it could cover a distance of a thousand feet in a fraction of a second.
If one did not know about the Soul Dart, it could be a very deadly surprise.
The consumption of Soul Energy was also quite low, making it optimal for consecutive use.
However, if one did not hit their target with the Soul Dart on the first try, the Martial Skill would be exposed. No matter how many more one cast the Martial Skill, the opponent would see it coming and prepare an effective counterattack.
Overall, the Soul Dart had multiple weaknesses in exchange for extreme speed, rapid cast time, and low consumption of Soul Energy and it did not require too much practice to master.
It was one of the weaker Tier 3 Martial Skills.
