Chapter 276 - 271: Flesh and Blood Slaughter, Further Enlightenment

Song Ciwan dodged the epicenter of the Tribulation Thunder. She saw the fisherman rise from the boat’s floor, taking off his bamboo hat and untying his straw cloak.

Both items had been turned to charcoal by the Tribulation Thunder. After tossing them aside, the fisherman revealed his bare torso.

His physique was firm and powerful, with smooth, well-defined muscles. He looked incredibly young—a stark contrast to his aged face.

Of course, this wasn’t surprising. Whether he was a Cultivator or an Immortal Seeker, he was a man of Cultivation. Possessing power beyond mortals and a long life, his body naturally wouldn’t be in poor shape.

Song Ciwan’s attention was drawn to a faint red light in the center of the fisherman’s abdomen, at the location of his Dantian. Beneath the onslaught of lightning, it constantly spun, contracted, and pulsed.

Spiritual Qi from the world funneled continuously toward the red light.

The Tribulation Thunder descended, branching across the fisherman’s body in countless arcane patterns. As the lines of lightning flowed and flickered, they all converged at his Dantian, forming a circuit with the red light.

The red light pulsed as if breathing.

Given its position in the fisherman’s Dantian and its perfectly round shape, Song Ciwan guessed that it must be his Golden Core—a Golden Core in the process of forming!

And that nascent Golden Core seemed to possess a life of its own.

Its presence was brilliant, vibrant, and alive. It commanded the energy in every direction, its aura faintly suggesting it was one with heaven and earth.

In short, the object was truly marvelous!

No wonder the fisherman had said the Golden Core Dao was the true path to eternal life. Song Ciwan, who cultivated the divine, had never felt that her own power could possess an independent life.

The divine path prioritized Refining Spirit and used Body Refining as a supplement; it was fundamentally about cultivating oneself.

The path of the Golden Core, on the other hand, seemed to be about cultivating heaven and earth itself.

It was as if one were cultivating another, entirely different form of life!

Song Ciwan’s gaze was involuntarily fixed on the red light in the fisherman’s Dantian. As the thunder continued to crash down from the sky, the fisherman raised his head and continued his chant, "I ride the cosmos to perceive the infinitesimal, I see Yin and Yang to illuminate the past, I cultivate luminous virtue to temper my self, I draw from all creation to attain the Immortal Dao..."

As the lightning struck him, chunks of his flesh were sloughed off, his meridians were torn asunder, and blood spattered everywhere.

The red light in his Dantian flared, and slender red threads grew out to reconnect his sundered tendons and bones. New flesh began to grow from them.

The process bore a strange resemblance to Song Ciwan’s own Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique.

Since Song Ciwan was also cultivating her Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique, she didn’t compete with the fisherman for the Tribulation Thunder. Instead, when the aftershocks washed over her, she used the Refinement method from the Third Layer of her technique to mitigate the damage from the Thunder Tribulation.

The core principles of the Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique flowed through her mind. There had been many aspects she found difficult to grasp, but now, watching the fisherman endure the Thunder Tribulation and regenerate his flesh, she felt as if something had clicked into place.

It is worth mentioning that the Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique has five layers in total. Song Ciwan currently possessed the complete cultivation methods for the first three.

The First Layer was the Jade Bone Dharma Body, the Second Layer was the Body of Impermanence, and the Third Layer was the Flesh and Blood Slaughter.

And what did "Flesh and Blood Slaughter" mean?

It meant that upon mastering this stage, one would gain the ability of Limb Regeneration and the power to reforge one’s own flesh!

At this stage, the amount of resources consumed by the Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique became truly staggering.

In terms of power, if one were to draw a comparison with the realms of Cultivators, the Third Layer of the Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique would roughly correspond to the Divinity Transformation Stage.

Of course, this was only a rough comparison. In reality, it was difficult to say for sure who would be stronger.

After all, in the Great Zhou of today, Body Cultivators were practically extinct.

The reason it had failed to become mainstream was simple, boiling down to one thing: it was too resource-intensive!

Furthermore, the agony of Body Refining was beyond what most people could endure.

A Body Cultivator’s Attack Power was also often limited—

Body Cultivators lacked dazzling Magic and explosive Martial Techniques. They couldn’t, like Scholars, turn spoken words into curses or command paper to form boats. In short, there were many limitations, and the immense investment was rarely proportional to the rewards.

For example, as Song Ciwan borrowed the fisherman’s Thunder Tribulation to cultivate her Flesh and Blood Slaughter, she activated her Insight Technique, and a panel appeared:

Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique (Third-Layer Flesh and Blood Slaughter, Proficiency 236/1000)

Despite the aid of the Thunder Tribulation and the seemingly abundant Energy, her cultivation progress on Flesh and Blood Slaughter wasn’t particularly fast.

At the very least, it was much slower than when she had cultivated the Body of Impermanence back in the Inverted Deceitful Realm.

For one, most of the Tribulation Thunder here was striking the fisherman; Song Ciwan was only absorbing the aftershocks. For another, the difficulty of cultivating the Thunder Fire Body Devouring Technique increased exponentially from the Second Layer to the Third Layer.

’So, should I really not try to take some of the Tribulation Thunder from the fisherman?’

Standing at the bow of the boat and looking at the fisherman at the stern, Song Ciwan naturally and unhesitatingly dismissed the thought.

She wasn’t that shameless. The fisherman’s situation was completely different from Gao Xiaolang’s.

Most importantly, the true gain from observing the fisherman’s tribulation wasn’t the Tribulation Thunder itself. It was in observing the circulation of his energy, the recitation of his Daoist Technique, and the various forms of Dao resonance that manifested each time the Golden Core in his Dantian pulsed.

Song Ciwan had no intention of switching to the Golden Core Dao, but that didn’t stop her from using this opportunity to comprehend its subtle and profound mysteries.

While absorbing the aftershocks of the Tribulation Thunder to cultivate her Flesh and Blood Slaughter, she also closely studied the various forms of Dao resonance that appeared as the fisherman’s Golden Core took shape.

This "Dao resonance" was supposed to be abstruse and intangible, yet here, Song Ciwan discovered an interesting phenomenon—

From the nascent Golden Core in the fisherman’s Dantian, slender red threads emerged. At first glance, they seemed to merely form the pattern of human meridians. But upon closer inspection, Song Ciwan realized the threads were distinctly forming a character, a word in Seal Script: Forbidden!

Yes, that had to be the Seal Script character for "Forbidden."

The abrupt understanding brought a sense of shock, mingled with an indescribable feeling of dawning realization.

It made sense she would feel that way; after all, this wasn’t the first time she had encountered Seal Script in this world.

The first time was seeing the four words "Heaven and Earth Treasure" on the Ancestral Dragon Coins.

The second time was on the three gates of this Secret Realm, where she saw the three words: "Human," "Demon," and "Fiend."

This was now the third time—

As the saying goes, a shock loses its power on the third strike. No matter how stunned Song Ciwan had been, by the third encounter, she ought to be able to rationalize it.

Filled with a mix of complex and wondrous emotions, she unconsciously raised her right hand.

Then, Song Ciwan traced the character for "Forbidden" in the empty air before her.

Each stroke, each turn, each winding loop formed a marvelous rhythm of its own.

Finally, as the character for "Forbidden" took shape, Song Ciwan tapped a finger into the void. An aftershock from the Thunder Tribulation that was about to strike her was suddenly ensnared by the character!

By simply watching the fisherman’s tribulation, Song Ciwan had unknowingly managed to comprehend an entirely new form of Magic!