Chapter 363: Extra Troublemaker (1)
The hammer struck, compressed, and purified Su Yu's willpower. His 70 percent willpower started dropping, but it had improved in toughness and durability. The burden of six Divine Characters also felt much lighter than before.
At the same time, Su Yu was also opening the acupoints of the Soul Devouring Art. One acupoint after another opened. The Soul Devouring Art only required 36 acupoints, and due to the high number of acupoints Su Yu had opened, a lot of the required acupoints overlapped with what he already opened.
He only needed to open 15 new acupoints. He had 100 drops of late Infinite Strength mountainbreak bull blood essence and he only needed 2 drops to open an acupoint. He was improving rapidly. In the blink of an eye, 15 acupoints were opened.
In total, Su Yu had opened 168 acupoints. When he linked the 36 acupoints of the Soul Devouring Art, the source qi in those acupoints started changing. From a calm state, the source qi transformed into a burning state.
Su Yu tried pulling the burning source qi with his willpower. Instantly, the flame formed a black wall of flame around his sea of willpower. Corrosive and burning. This was the Soul Devouring Art.
Eventually, the source qi in the 36 acupoints was fully exhausted, but Su Yu did not mind. After some thought, he took out his cultural weapon. With the pull of his willpower, a layer of black flame only he could see appeared around the weapon.
"Soul Devouring Art!"
Su Yu's eyes flickered. This flame was actually not harming his own willpower. So it was actually able to determine the difference between friend and foe? So his own source qi wouldn't burn his own willpower? But after thinking about it, he tried to give it a try. After all, he had been controlling the flame earlier to not actually attack his own willpower. This time, he controlled the black flame and slowly touched his willpower with it.
"Ahhh!"
A miserable wail rang out. Hugging his head, Su Yu wailed. He wasn't someone who had never suffered any pain before. But even he was feeling greatly tortured by the pain. It was incomparably painful. As though his head was being burned from the inside.
"This..."
This felt much stronger than the version he had activated with blood essence.
"Is it related to my source qi?"
He had a lot of opened acupoints and pure source qi. Thus, the quality of his source qi was far higher than the quality of the source qi contained within blood essence. When he utilized the 36 acupoints to generate the altered source qi, he was able to generate something as powerful as what ninth-stage Great Strength cultivators were capable of.
That resulted in a black flame that was even stronger than before. Su Yu felt like this felt even more painful than a single death in one of his dreams. In fact, it was comparable to the pain he had felt when Zhao Li hammered him.
"It hurts so much!"
Su Yu still had lingering fears from having his willpower burned for a split second. Would his victim even be able to continue fighting after being burned? He inhaled and tried something new: wrapping the layer of black flame around his hammer.
The hammer lashed out. The hammer could turn both corporeal and incorporeal. And the hammer was moving out in the incorporeal form without even causing much source qi undulations. Nevertheless, the willpower exhaustion of doing this was quite high.
"I wonder how effective this can be against others."
This could be considered his new trump card. First, he would burn his opponent's willpower. Then, he would use the chance to get near his opponent and unleash his Crushing Mountainsea move. He could probably defeat his opponent with a single kick.
"I have 168 acupoints, giving me a scarily dense source qi. But the 168 acupoints are not all linked into a system. They will only be truly linked if I can fuse all my acupoints into one."
But that was probably something only those at the Mountainsea Realm could do. According to his martial uncle, a cultivator would only be able to start fusing acupoints for the second time during the Mountainsea Realm.
Since he still had some mountainbreak bull blood essence left, he started wondering if he should open the acupoints of Time's second level or some other acupoints. For example, he could open some Pure Source Art acupoints. That way, he wouldn't need to use clearbright bird blood essence each time he needed to purify his source qi.
"But even with the acupoints of Time's second level, I might not be able to actually use that move. I should focus on Pure Source Art for now. It doesn't require a lot of acupoints and I will no longer be dependent on blood essence after cultivating that art."
It required 36 acupoints, but a lot of them overlapped with what he already opened. He only needed to open 12 new acupoints. After opening all these acupoints, his total number of acupoints opened would reach 180.
Su Yu had discovered that the more acupoints opened, the easier it was for him to find overlapped acupoints. When he cultivated new cultivation methods or techniques, the actual acupoints he needed to open would be much lower. The Pure Source Art was a great example of this. He only needed to open 12 new acupoints for it. The other 24 acupoints all overlapped with his existing acupoints.
At that thought, he couldn't help but to wonder about the total number of acupoints in a human body. If he could open all of them, would he be able to fuse all of them into a single acupoint?
...
While Su Yu was immersed in his cultivation.
Time passed.
Sub-city. Great Xia City's Eighteenth Secondary School. Rear mountain.
At the foot of the mountain was a lonesome grave. It looked bleak and desolate. In front of the grave, Liu Wenyan did not look too sorrowful. He only looked somewhat moody. Zhang Ruoling. This was once an arrogant genius who had declared that he would one day step over Mountainseas, crush Sunmoons, and step into the Invincible Realm.
But ultimately, he had been buried as a Mental Tempering Stage cultivator. If it wasn't for the fact that Zhou Mingren was planning to dig up his grave, how many people would still remember his name?
"Ruoling...rest well."
With a sigh, he poured a glass of liquor on the ground. Nine years ago, he hadn't been able to see Zhang Ruoling off. He hoped that Zhang Ruoling wouldn't mind. Then again, something like that was probably too trivial for people of their generation to care about anymore.
Liu Wenyan had already stayed in front of the grave for several hours. And he had said all he wanted to say to the grave. At that time, willpower undulations started emerging around them.
Liu Wenyan looked around and said, "He's already dead. Must you do this? Everyone will die one day. It would be fine if Ruoling had voluntarily left the Divine Character behind. Are you telling me that he deserves to have his grave dug up because he hadn't done so? Everyone, be honest. After you die, should your corpses be harvested just because someone thinks that your bones would make for a good material for weapon forging? Right, they can also harvest your blood essence from your corpses.
"Killing is easy. Even members of the Myriad Race Cult will be left alone after being killed. Should we start feasting on their corpses after killing them from now on? We have been silent for decades. Why must you force our hand like this?"
Someone spoke, "Indeed. It is improper to dig up the grave of the deceased. Even as a member of the single character faction, I stand by my opinion. This is wrong. Zhou Mingren's choice is wrong. He will ruin his reputation doing this."
Liu Wenyan smiled, "Is this Elder Tang from the Nine Heavens Cultural Research Academy?"
"Yes." The old man replied from the darkness, "This is an internal affair of the Great Xia Cultural Research Academy. We shouldn't have gotten involved. And Zhou Mignren is the only person intending to dig up Zhang Ruoling's grave. I am not here to target anyone. Liu Wenyan, I am only here to ask you one question."
"Feel free to ask your question."
"Does the so-called data about the path to the Invincible Realm exist? Of course, since you have crippled yourself instead of reaching the Invincible Realm, I am more inclined to believe that the data does not exist. Or maybe it's simply not in your hands.
"But back then, a lot of people had perished while helping the fifth principal. And a few of them are from the Nine Heavens Cultural Research Academy's single character faction. Before the fifth principal left for his breakthrough, he was confident he could affirm his dao and reach the Invincible Realm. But he ended up failing and even caused so many deaths..."
Elder Tang paused slightly and said, "Whatever the truth is, you need to make it clear. If there is really no such data, can you let us have a look at the Divine Character? We can't let all those people die for nothing, right? All of them had died due to the fifth principal's lies!"
Liu Wenyan smiled, "I understand. You are here for the Divine Character. So even you guys believe that the Divine Character is the key to reaching the Invincible Realm. Am I correct?"
"Yes." Elder Tang was forthright, "All these years, all of us have been waiting for a miracle. Some of us even hope to see you succeeding. But you have not succeeded. Since you have achieved nothing after studying the character for 50 years, why keep it to yourself selfishly? Why don't you let others give it a try?"
He raised his voice, "We don't have any issue with you receiving the inheritance of the fifth principal. But how about the ones who had perished fighting for the fifth principal? Are all of them unqualified for compensation?"
Liu Wenyan sighed guilty and said, "Yes, they are qualified."
"Back then, my senior brother had ignored all objections to follow the fifth principal. Ultimately, he perished in the Allheaven Battlefield. In that case, am I, Tang Yunfei, qualified to take a look at the fifth principal's Divine Character?"
"About this..."
"Liu Wenyan, stop finding excuses." Elder Tang's voice turned cold, "You are now capable of materializing your Divine Characters. Things are no longer the same."
Liu Wenyan smiled bitterly and said, "Sigh. I was already suspicious back then. Why did no help come during the Nanyuan incident, forcing me to enter the Skysoar Realm? So this is what you guys have been waiting for."
Not far away, Wu Yuehua snorted coldly, "Those people had picked the perfect timing to carry out their plan. Both He Ji and I were either busy or in seclusion. It was during that time that Nanyuan was attacked. Bai Feng is truly garbage. He actually took so long to reach Nanyuan. What's the point of arriving if he was going to be late?"
Elder Tang said, "Are you saying that we colluded with the Myriad Race Cult? You overestimate us. Using the lives of several Sunmoons to force Liu Wenyan to achieve willpower materialization? No. That was the arrangement of fate. Fate itself wanted Liu Wenyan to achieve willpower materialization during that time. Even the heavens can't accept this anymore. In the past, he has been using his cultivation as an excuse to avoid showing the character. How about now? Can he still use the same excuse?"
Fifty years ago, Liu Wenyan had absorbed the fifth principal's Divine Character. Alas, the experiment ended in failure. Instead of strengthening himself, he suffered serious injuries and nearly killed himself.
Subsequently, some people looked for him and asked to take a look at the Divine Character. But Liu Wenyan said that he had yet to achieve willpower materialization so he had no way of showing them the character.
Fifty years later, Liu Wenyan had finally achieved willpower materialization. It had taken him five decades. And this plan to force him to return had coincidentally been carried out not long after he achieved willpower materialization. It was understandable that Wu Yuehua and the others would be suspicious. Was Liu Wenyan's breakthrough a coincidence or a part of a bigger scheme?
But like Tan Yunfei said, the Divine Skywing Sect and the divine skywing race had lost several Sunmoons during their attack on Great Xia. Could anyone even make several Sunmoons risk their lives to enter Great Xia just to force a breakthrough out of Liu Wenyan?
Perhaps everything was really a coincidence?
Liu Wenyan did not insist on talking about the conspiracy. He helplessly said, "Elder Tang, you are actually right. Sure, I have achieved willpower materialization. But I still can't materialize the Divine Character. I really can't. My sea of willpower is in a mess. All my characters are orbiting that one character. And all of them are trapped inside. I can't even materialize any of my characters."