Chương 313: Surging Spirit Art (IV)

Why did Master suddenly leave? This was his room, after all. Long Tao smiled faintly as he looked down at the two new additions; he wasn't quite sure what to expect, but knowing his Master, it was probably something quite fascinating. He first focused on the pill and its shimmering glow. It took him a moment to recognize it, but once he did... his heart stopped. He forgot to breathe. Every ounce of his weight pressed into his soul akin to an anchor, and his mind began to scream. It was a Divine Essence Pill.

No doubt. Though every fiber of his being was telling him it was impossible, there was no way he'd mistake something so mind-bending. This slightly glowing pill, with hazy mist surging just beneath its thin coating, was undoubtedly a Divine Essence Pill. A pill so rare that this was his second time seeing it in person and the first time ever holding it. A pill so rare that he watched hundreds of Emperors fight and lose their lives just to get it.

A pill so rare that materials to make it were said to appear once every ten million years. And it was said that there were and would never be more than two alchemists alive who could concoct it, oftentimes sacrificing their future as an alchemist to do so. A pill that cannot be found even within the Imperial Vaults... his Master somehow produced it. He just barely held himself back from chasing the man down and beating him up for even taking the thing out of the spatial ring, but he held back.

It was truly unlikely that his Master knew the true value of the pill. He may know its effects and what it can do, but likely not that it was the kind of thing literal worlds were obliterated for. Long Tao felt his hands shake as he held the pill, his heart suffused with greed the likes of which he hadn't felt since he was a child yearning for greater power.... it wasn't simply miraculous. Which meant it was a massive waste to use it here.

The reason why Emperors and Empresses fought with all their might to obtain it was precisely because it was akin to having another life--it meant that, in a battle against another Emperor, they would almost always win because they could fight with no recourse. And now, such power was in his hands. Stolen story; please report.

In the hands of a Spirit Manifestation Realm body, in some backwater realm that most of the cultivators had never even heard of, procured by a man who seemed less and less of this world with each passing day. With trembling fingers, he pressed the pill against his lips, gritted his teeth, pushed it in, and swallowed. Nothing happened after--the pill merely broke away from the pathway and settled within the depths of his dantian, going into deep slumber.

It had no other purpose--it could not aid in cultivation, it could not be used as a way to replenish a spent dantian, and it would simply not activate unless one had received a deadly blow. That was also its exploitable weakness; if anybody knew you had it, they could simply not kill you and imprison you instead. But nobody would know; how would they?

They just barely had some vague knowledge of Emperors and Empresses, but couldn't even list the vast differences within that scope, let alone what a Divine Essence Pill was. Taking a deep breath to forcibly calm himself down, he glanced down and saw the tome; however shocking it may be, unless it was a literal Hymn of Eternity Sutra, it could not compare with the pill. Regardless, any time his Master brought out a new art, it was... different.

With a faint sense of expectation, he pulled open the first page and then the second, and he would soon read through all forty-nine pages of it, his breathing growing haggard towards the end. As he suspected, it wasn't as miraculous as the pill, but it was not merely different, either. It did yet another thing the world of cultivators deemed worthless and impossible--it was a recovery art, rather than a healing art.

There were thousands and thousands of ways to heal a wound, and most cultivators deemed letting the body do it to be the least efficient. Why wait a month for the body to heal the broken bone when a proper Alchemist can do it in a few minutes? The body cannot regrow a limb, yet there exist not just Alchemist but even pills that can do precisely that. The only exceptions were the innate physiques and bloodlines, though nobody knew how to replicate precisely how they healed the body quicker.

Well, not nobody--his Master did, as the Surging Spirit Art did precisely that. Still in slight disbelief, Long Tao spent the next four hours just barely attaining the most minor of understandings; extending his hand, he used the other to form a sharp array of Sword Qi and cut his palm. Before the blood that had sprayed out of the wound landed back on his hand, the gash... was gone. As was the pain.

His jaw agape, he did a few more tests, realizing that he could no longer even remotely underestimate the strange Master of his. He'd managed to create something unfathomable yet again, something that was the course against the reason. Naturally, it wasn't something that those in the higher realm would yearn for, as they could use raw Qi to achieve similar effects by just forcing it, but... Long Tao knew, in the depths of his heart, that Master's ability to create was merely limited by his realm.

If he could get the man to the higher levels, unbind him from the pathetic talents... just what could he create then? He glanced back at the still-comatose body of a soul-snatcher, standing up and leaving. He still couldn't calm down, actually having to use Qi to do it. As soon as he left the house, the sounds of the battles became apparent; with each passing day, as the 'competition' neared, there were more and more of the incidents. He ignored them all, looking up at the quite cloudy sky.

Though he had the Divine Essence Pill, he was also kind of annoyed at it; there was a good chance it might become his undoing, as he would feel too confident in doing something thinking that he could always recover. But using it here, this early, was an utter waste that would make every living being aware of it weep.

"GODDAMMIT, BASTARD! ARE YOU TRYING TO PUT ME OUT OF BUSINESS?!!" It was the weep of an old alchemist who'd likely seen the art and realized it really might have the ability to do that, to a degree. Long Tao chuckled, feeling a knot in his throat lessen; he wasn't the only one left utterly flabbergasted by that dear Master of his. No, not the only one--just one of the many...