Chapter 59: Chapter 53: Cultivation Techniques 4
They made simple beds with the leftover bamboo leaves. Zeke sat in one corner. He was incredibly excited, because he could now finally focus on his cultivation technique. It was something that was long overdue.
The other three wouldn’t disturb him for some while because it would take them at least six months to visualize four pairs of wings. He took out the ’Energy/Qi’ notebook and opened it. He reviewed the runes that he currently had fourteen runes;
’Ekatrit’ (Gather)
’Sanshodhit’ (Refine)
’Sahacharya’ (Go with the Flow)
’Shuddhi’ (Purify)
’Avirodha’ (Peace)
’Sammilit’ (Inclusive)
’Parivartit’ (Transform)
Sankṣepit’ (Condense)
’Nau’ (Nine)
’Param’ (Absolute)
’Andhakaar’ (Darkness)
’Maut’ (Death)
’Neeraj’ (Lotus)
’Kaid’ (Prison)
He also had three compound runes;
’Abhisanshodhan’ (Refining into Something Usable)
’Narak’ (Hell)
’Kamalkaid’ (Lotus Prison)
He started thinking about the runes that he would need to use in his technique, or rather the runes that he wouldn’t use. He had thought about it a lot. And the only runes that didn’t fit were ’Avirodha’ (Peace) and ’Sahacharya’ (Go with the Flow). After all, refining the energy of the Land of the Dead in the land of the Living was anything but.
If he removed them, he would be able to create a new, stronger technique. The first compound rune in the formation of this new technique would be ’Abhisanshodhan’ (Refining into Something Usable).
It was the foundation. But it was kinda tough to build a technique like that. He had to reverse engineer the process. He would first decide the intent of the formation, and then start building it. He started brainstorming. A month later, he finally decided on one.
’Gather natural energy and refine it into extremely inclusive and pure internal qi. Transform it into the absolute energy of Hell and condense it into nine lotus prisons.’
This was the only translation where he didn’t deduce any conflicts between the runes and the only situation where they could potentially synergize well with one another.
He was a bit worried that the ’Shuddhi’ (Purify) rune would conflict with the ’Narak’ (Hell) rune. But fortunately, it didn’t. Zeke guessed that the concept of purity and impurity wasn’t absolute and could differ depending upon the situation.
He was done with the easy part. Now, he had to run countless simulations inside his mental realm so that he could create a formation which didn’t result in him exploding.
Everyday, he would run simulations until his head started hurting. Although it was strenuous, he was starting to see the desired results. The good news was that the internal qi gathered by this new technique was also purifying his meridians. The bad news was that it was still extremely violent.
Not unstable. Just violent. So it wasn’t delicate like the Three Origins Technique, that passively purified his meridians. No, it was violent and almost destroyed his meridians by actively clearing the blocked ones.
Four months passed and the technique was almost complete. The only problem was that Zeke still hadn’t been able to change the violent nature of the technique. Apart from that, the technique was smooth.
The formation worked nicely, it was faster than the Three Origins Technique, and it was infinitely more stable than the Nine Lotus Hells Technique. The only solution that Zeke could think of was making his body stronger.
So he put the matter of the body tempering technique on the agenda. To create a technique that strengthened his body, he had to understand his own body first. After all, his body had mutated when he had eaten the poison. But before he could get into that, Woo came to him.
She said, "Ryeong, somethings wrong with my cultivation. It’s related to the tattoo. I successfully visualized the fourth pair of wings last week and started cultivating the Hell Lotus Manual. But the tattoo started heating up and the circulation routes started changing on their own.
I’ve tried and tried but I’m unable to circulate anything apart from the new routes."
Zeke stood up and grabbed her wrist. He used his internal qi and Will to examine her body. Or at least tried to. It was like he had hit a wall. Behind that wall, he could sense a wildness that was beyond his understanding.
And he had a feeling that if he didn’t stop trying, he would face disastrous consequences. He released her wrist. Woo looked at him worriedly and said, "Ryeong, you’re bleeding."
He felt a wet sensation above his nose. He touched it and he was indeed bleeding. He said, "Just don’t cultivate until I tell you to. Tell the same to Woong and Bum. You can cultivate the Asuran Neo-Nephilim Primogenitor Visualization until then."
Zeke went back to his corner and started thinking. Had the tattoos activated? He still couldn’t think of a reason why they had been able to obtain them. He started going through everything he knew about the Divine Beasts. As he was thinking, a theory started to form in his mind.
There was a legend that the Divine Beasts were born from Heaven and Earth themselves. When they had fallen, their blood had soaked the earth and given birth to all the beasts that exist today. Some had extremely high concentration, and created the Spirit Beast Clans.
If this legend was true, then it would explain everything. When the trio had sacrificed the beasts, the Totem had devoured them whole. Except for the Divine Beast bloodline that it was unable to.
They had no Faith in this world and the Aurevion Pantheon was too far away. The Totem was barely functioning. It’s plausible that it was unable to digest the Divine Beast bloodlines. So it did the next best thing. It gave those extremely pure bloodlines to the only believers that they had in this world. Hence, the Bloodline Imprints.
And now that they had started cultivating, the Bloodline imprints were passing on the inheritance of the Divine Beasts however they could. As they continued to cultivate the new techniques, Woo, Woong, and Bum would assimilate more and more of this bloodline.
Eventually, they would completely assimilate the bloodlines and become Divine Beast-Human hybrids. It would also explain why he was unable to examine Woo’s body. So it was a good thing for them. And for him.
’Because I’ll transform them into Neo-Nephilims as soon as I can after that. And use Primogenitor’s Blood on their firstborns. Then their children could cr...’
An evil smile appeared on his face when he imagined the possibilities of three more variant bloodlines of the Neo-Nephilim Race. It would make his plan much easier.
Woo had told Woong and Bum what Zeke had said. The trio was worriedly looking at Zeke. But when they saw Zeke smiling like a demon, they shivered. Even though he wasn’t looking at them, they could feel the greed hidden in those closed eyes.
Zeke opened his eyes and saw the shivering trio. He asked, "Is something wrong?"
The trio shook their heads. He continued, "Well good. I figured out Woo’s problem. Don’t worry about and cultivate the new circulation routes. They’re much more suitable for you than the Hell Lotus Manual.
The same goes for Woong and Bum. Also, I’m at a critical point, so don’t disturb me. You might experience some changes in your bodies while cultivating. They would be positive changes so don’t worry."
After saying that, Zeke once again closed his eyes and started visualizing. He needed to heal the injury that he had suffered. After he was done doing that, he decided that he had been cooped up for too long. If he wanted to create a body tempering technique, he needed his body to be in its peak condition.
He spent the next month training with his weapon and pushing his body to its limits. He would wrestle with Pooki everyday, and then at some point, he started eating the bamboo shoots without soaking them. As he continued to train, he could feel that his body was becoming complete.
(Don’t ever do that in real life. You could die. Also, do not try to find scientific accuracy in the following part. This is a fantasy novel.)
Another month passed and now he was ready. He entered his mental realm and materialized a model of his body. This one was a complete model. He zoomed it as much as he could until he could see his DNA. And what he saw shocked him. He had non-human genes inside him.
And they were unstable. They were stabilizing but they needed a catalyst. He assumed that the non-human genes were the result of the Gu, but that didn’t explain the why? Why did his body mutate? That was never the plan. He only wanted poison immunity. So why?
He delved even deeper to understand the abilities that this mutation brought him. They were molting, extremely heightened senses, danger premonition, and toxin immunity. There were two more but the genes were still too unstable for them to manifest. From what he could tell, one of them was closely related to molting, while he had no idea about the last one.
This reminded him of the special physiques that some residents of the Murim world possessed. But of all the special physiques he knew of, none had his body’s abilities. That didn’t mean that his body’s abilities were unique. It just meant that no recorded special physique had these particular abilities together.
But he suddenly remembered the terrifying guess that he had once had.
