Chapter 7: My Dao is Achieved

Chen Ye waited quietly until dawn, but no second meteor streaked across the sky.

That limping lone wolf was finally exhausted, lying prone on the ground, panting heavily, yet its vital energy remained full, and even its limp seemed largely healed.

Chen Ye smiled at the wild wolf and said, "If I succeed in cultivating the Dao in the future, you will have made a great contribution."

Unfortunately, the wolf was too tired to even lift its head; it could only bare its teeth at him, venting its displeasure.

Chen Ye smiled, tossed down the remaining Wolf Blood Pills as a token of his gratitude, then strode toward the ruined temple facing the rising morning sun.

The root cause of the madness induced by Beast Blood Pills had been found; one only needed to remove the residual beast souls lingering in the heart's blood, and thereafter taking the pills would cause no further trouble.

It sounds simple, and the execution is not difficult either; at least Chen Ye felt seventy or eighty percent confident.

This concept of "fate" is truly mysterious.

Previously, to protect Hearing Mo Ci's soul, Chen Ye had racked his brains studying the Ten Thousand Souls Banner. After months of arduous study, his understanding of souls had become even deeper than Hearing Mo Ci's; to solve the trouble of these beast remnants, he had indeed thought of many methods. This is the benefit of digging deep into the root; if you truly understand the underlying principles, you can naturally deduce thousands of varied applications.

Chen Ye, filled with pride, climbed over a mountain ridge, only to bump into Zhao Hezhou, who was disheveled with several wounds on his face.

Seeing this, Chen Ye looked puzzled and asked, "Mr. Zhao, what is this?"

"Hero... I..." Zhao Hezhou's face flushed red. He had been worried that Chen Ye might meet with an accident at night, so he had ventured out in the dark to search; after searching the entire night without seeing even a shadow of Chen Ye, he had himself fallen several times during the night.

Now seeing Chen Ye appear unharmed, Zhao Hezhou felt extremely awkward and stammered, "I feared the hero might find traveling at night inconvenient, so I brought... I brought you a torch."

Seeing the bloodstains all over his hands, Chen Ye knew he had suffered greatly that night; he smiled, thanked him, and led the disheveled Zhao Hezhou back to the ruined temple.

For the following days, Chen Ye remained absorbed in cultivation.

Zhao Hezhou and his wife truly treated themselves as servants, taking on all miscellaneous chores. Chen Ye did not point it out; hunting a bit more game daily to feed this family of three was merely a trivial effort for him.

During the rest of his leisure time, Chen Ye buried himself in piles of books, occasionally tracing runes repeatedly on the ground. Zhao Hezhou boasted of having read ten thousand scrolls, yet the symbols Chen Ye drew looked exactly like talismans painted by a Daoist Priest; he stared in confusion, understanding not a single bit.

Chen Ye was seen sometimes frowning deeply as if trapped in a desperate situation, and sometimes laughing heartily as if he had found a treasure of the world. Day and night, he ate and slept not, completely forgetting himself.

Zhao Hezhou had seen this manner before. His benefactor, that highly esteemed old my lord, had displayed this same frenzied state when absorbed in reading. Completely immersed, obsessed and intoxicated, to outsiders he looked no different from a madman. Yet it is precisely such people who can make progress and achieve accomplishments in the path of learning.

Chen Ye's mad and frenzied state did not last long. On the fifth day after the flying sword meteor vanished, he suddenly burst into loud laughter, saying, "Finally, the great work is accomplished; my Dao is achieved!"

Having spoken, Chen Ye, disregarding that Zhao Hezhou's family was nearby, walked straight to the stove, lit a fire, and heated oil. Over these days, he had accumulated quite a bit of beast blood, which he poured all at once into the pot to begin refining pills.

Zhao Hezhou's family had never witnessed such a scene; as the intense fishy smell spread, the few of them nearly vomited up the meat from the night before.

Seeing this, Chen Ye hurriedly warned, "Please go outside the temple for a while; the smell of these pills is strong and they are somewhat toxic."

Zhao Hezhou immediately led his wife and children out of the ruined temple, leaving Chen Ye alone inside to busy himself.

Following his previous method, Chen Ye refined a gourd of Beast Blood Pills; the process was no different from before. But this time, instead of directly placing the pills into the gourd, he took out the Ten Thousand Souls Banner and spread it flat on the ground.

Immediately, Chen Ye's hands danced rapidly, drawing talismans without stopping, while activating his Spiritual Eyes. In an instant, his pupils turned golden, and everything in his vision was dyed with the colors of the Five Elements.

Yet this was not enough; Chen Ye gritted his teeth, bit his fingertip, and used his blood as ink to draw numerous runes on the Ten Thousand Souls Banner. As his vital energy rushed out with the fresh blood, his face instantly turned as pale as paper, and a sharp pain of being drained hollow surged through his body; yet Chen Ye clenched his jaw and struggled on painfully.

Over these five days, he had practiced countless times; over a hundred runes were traced out by him with perfect precision.

Once the final rune was perfectly completed, Chen Ye, forcing his weak body to stand, poured that gourd of Beast Blood Pills onto the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.

At this moment, his body was as soft as noodles, yet he still stared fixedly at the Beast Blood Pills. He saw tiny points of light escaping from the pills, which were then completely absorbed by the Ten Thousand Souls Banner.

Chen Ye clenched his fists tightly, overcome with excitement.

It worked! These are the beast remnants within the Beast Blood Pills!

But before he could rejoice for long, a furious roar came from within the Ten Thousand Souls Banner: "Wicked disciple, did you use your master as bait?!"

Chen Ye replied weakly, "Master, your disciple truly had no other choice. I could not gather materials for a second Ten Thousand Souls Banner."

These beast remnants were fused with vital energy and sealed within the blood pills; removing them was no easy task. Chen Ye's cultivation was still shallow; he lacked the ability to simply reach out and instantly refine the remnants. Helpless, he could only devise a way for the remnants to detach themselves.

The Ten Thousand Souls Banner inherently had the effect of capturing souls; although this crude version had mediocre results, Chen Ye could only improve it further, using Hearing Mo Ci's soul as "bait" to fish out these beast souls.

The remnants possessed no reason, only malicious instincts, so naturally they would erode Hearing Mo Ci's soul.

How could Hearing Mo Ci have expected that, just after saying his disciple was kind and gentle, he would be sold out by this boy in mere days.

"Master, do not be angry; these few remnants are to you merely like a gentle breeze brushing your face..."

"If the wind blows on me now, I will die!"

Given Hearing Mo Ci's current soul state, if truly blown by the wind, he would instantly scatter into the four winds and vanish.

In truth, Hearing Mo Ci was not truly afraid of these remnants; he was simply furious at Chen Ye's style of acting first and reporting later.

Anger rising from his heart, Hearing Mo Ci treated these beast souls as if they were Chen Ye, this wicked disciple, and with a wave of his hand, scattered them into the four winds.

Chen Ye stared intently at the Ten Thousand Souls Banner, his hands continuously forming hand seals, repeatedly confirming that the beast souls within the blood pills had been released completely, with not a single trace remaining, before he carefully stored the pills into the gourd.

At this moment, everything was ready; one only needed to wait three days before taking out these blood pills for testing. He pondered silently in his heart: if the animals that took the pills remained unharmed with no side effects, it would mean that from now on, he could devote himself to cultivation using the Beast Blood Pills, and the path to advancing his cultivation would open up brightly.

Perhaps there truly was the favor of the Heavenly Dao in the unseen; three days later, Chen Ye ventured deep into the mountains as usual and caught quite a few wild beasts. With anxiety and expectation, he fed them the pills. Whether wild boars or birds, green snakes or spiders, all the wild beasts and insects that had taken the pills survived smoothly, showing not the slightest abnormality. The terrifying side effects of frenzy and madness from before did not appear.

Witnessing this scene, even Hearing Mo Ci was slightly moved and sighed deeply, saying, "You boy, you have truly solved the difficulty of the Blood Refinement Method."

Many secret techniques in the Demon Path possess unparalleled power, but they suffer from the need for vast amounts of human blood during cultivation; if one could substitute it with livestock blood, they could be cast freely without worrying about killing too many and inviting endless pursuit from the Righteous Path.

Who could have expected that the Blood Refinement Method, which had always been the most trouble-prone and caused countless Demon Path elders headaches, would be cracked by a Spirit Awakening Realm cultivator who had only been cultivating for a few months.

Yet Hearing Mo Ci could not help but think further: with this, is it still the cultivation of the Demon Path?