Chapter 3592

Everything, as Ye Chen had guessed.

The mysterious thing within his body was making a silent transaction with him.

When it took away ninety percent of his spiritual energy, it then displayed the new hand seals one by one in the heavens above.

And what was displayed this time was still sixteen hand seals, only more complex than yesterday's sixteen hand seals.

After Ye Chen recorded all the hand seals, he tried to perform them completely.

But what made him feel strange was that after the entire set of hand seals was fully executed, there was no change in his spiritual energy at all.

Yun Ruge and Song Ruyu beside him were not as quick in their movements, nor as proficient, and only after a delay of over a minute did they successively complete the hand seals, and their experience was the same—spiritual energy neither increased nor decreased, with no change at all.

Lin Waner asked with concern, and upon learning that the new hand seals were ineffective, she also fell into deep thought.

Ye Chen suddenly had a vague thought and said: "Perhaps today's sixteen hand seals belong to the same part as yesterday's sixteen hand seals."

Having spoken, he immediately said to Yun Ruge and Song Ruyu: "Try connecting yesterday's hand seals with today's hand seals and execute them in sequence."

The two, upon hearing this, also found it reasonable, and thus began to meditate, executing the obscure Buddhist hand seals one by one.

Ye Chen was the first to complete all thirty-two hand seals, and immediately, his sea of consciousness absorbed a steady stream of spiritual energy from all directions, at least three to four times stronger than yesterday.

This made Ye Chen overjoyed.

Yesterday's sixteen hand seals, today's thirty-two hand seals—although each cycle took twice as long, the spiritual energy gained was at least three to four times greater; thus, the overall cultivation efficiency of the thirty-two hand seals must be more than double that before.

An increase of more than double is absolutely a tremendous advancement!

Of course, since the base was already minuscule, even if efficiency doubled, the rate of spiritual energy acquisition remained slow, but this gave Ye Chen great hope: if this set of hand seals has further developments, and if another sixteen hand seals are added later, or even thirty-six or seventy-two hand seals, the efficiency might increase tenfold, or even dozens of times.

If that were truly the case, the speed of spiritual energy replenishment would be quite objective, and he would no longer have to rely solely on pills to force through; in just a few days he could replenish his body's spiritual energy, and then everything would enter a completely new realm.

Shortly after, Yun Ruge and Song Ruyu also opened their eyes, and compared to yesterday, they were even more moved to tears.

They clearly felt the tremendous increase in efficiency—this cultivation speed far surpassed how long it used to take them to obtain a single minor Yuan-Nourishing Pill from Wu Feiyan; previously, getting one such pill in one or two years was already a cause for gratitude, but now, with the efficiency of the thirty-two hand seals, they could obtain the same amount of spiritual energy in just one or two months.

Seeing the three of them unable to hide their joy, Lin Waner knew Ye Chen's attempt had succeeded, and she felt especially relieved in her heart.

Upon learning that the overall efficiency of the thirty-two hand seals had increased by more than double, she felt delighted and could not help but exclaim: "I just observed that the Young Master, Miss Yun, and Miss Song performed the thirty-two hand seals at different speeds; if one could master the hand seals thoroughly and further increase hand speed, cultivation efficiency would continue to grow."

Ye Chen was suddenly reminded by her, and excitedly said: "Miss Lin is correct—the Buddhist hand seals are obscure and difficult; even copying them by rote is no easy task, and I need at least ninety seconds to execute one round, but everything follows a law, as the oil seller said: 'Only skill from practice.' If one truly becomes familiar with each hand seal, doubling the speed is not impossible."

Having spoken, he couldn't help but sigh: "When I was young, my mother taught me to play piano for several years; back then, no matter what instrument people played, they liked to perform a piece called 'Flight of the Bumblebee' at their fastest speed; when I was young, I stumbled through the entire piece, needing at least five or six minutes, but top masters could finish the entire performance in one minute—here the speed difference is seven or eight times; the Buddhist hand seals are like a musical score—how fast or slow one plays, besides talent, diligent practice is also very important."

Lin Waner nodded: "I mean the same thing; the Young Master now has to expend large amounts of spiritual energy each day to obtain hand seals, and to replenish spiritual energy, he must continuously consume precious pills; if this continues, the pills will soon run out, leading to the exhaustion of alchemical ingredients, and such extremely precious things as pills should be reserved for critical moments to play a critical role, rather than wasted in daily cultivation; if spiritual energy could be replenished through hand seals, that would be most suitable."

Ye Chen agreed: "That makes sense, but I plan to make another transaction with it to see if there are new hand seals; if so, how much the overall cultivation efficiency would improve; if the improvement is still doubling, then spending some pills would be worth it; if the speed increase is not that great, I'll first slow down, go into seclusion, and try again later; otherwise, I truly won't be able to sustain my pill consumption."

Currently, Ye Chen has only ten Yuan-Nourishing Pills left, and the raw materials for refining them have been exhausted; although Lin Waner instructed Old Zhang to help search, the raw materials are not something money can simply buy—they also depend on opportunity and fate, so before the raw materials are resolved, Ye Chen plans to keep five pills as a reserve for emergencies.

Therefore, the number of pills he can use to trade with the mysterious entity within his body is also only five.

……

Returning to the villa in the morning, Ye Chen began closed-door cultivation with Yun Ruge and Song Ruyu.

This time in closed-door cultivation, the main focus of the three was on how to make the thirty-six hand seals more proficient.

But the thirty-six hand seals are not easy to memorize clearly in the mind, and when performing them, the brain still needs to think ahead, so efficiency improvement is not immediate—just like a difficult piano piece, one must develop strong muscle memory before speed can see significant improvement and breakthrough.

And this muscle memory is a long process; referring to pianists, it may take over a decade of arduous practice to reach the peak of perfection.

They cultivated until evening, when Ye Chen's alarm rang; upon opening his eyes, Yun Ruge and Song Ruyu also awoke from meditation due to the alarm's sound,

Ye Chen instructed the two to prepare to go out, and then he stepped out first.

In the living room, Lin Waner was happily chatting with Helena.

Helena originally had some reservations and competitive feelings toward Lin Waner, but after talking with her for a while, she found that this young lady's personal charm simply surpassed her understanding; astonishingly high IQ and EQ aside, her knowledge base was terrifyingly broad, so during Ye Chen's trio's closed-door cultivation, she had been pulling Lin Waner to chat, chatting and chatting until they became close friends.

Seeing Ye Chen come out, Lin Waner hurried forward, slightly bowed, and said: "Young Master, I have consulted some classical texts, combined with my own past observations and heard accounts, and made a rough judgment about your hand seals these past two days."

Ye Chen delighted: "Miss Lin, please speak quickly."

Lin Waner said: "If I haven't guessed wrong, the hand seals bestowed upon you by the mysterious entity through the aurora should be the true Buddhist Great Sun Tathagata hand seals, also known as the Vairochana Seal."

"Great Sun Tathagata hand seals?" Ye Chen asked: "What is its origin?"

Lin Waner explained: "The current Great Sun Tathagata hand seals are completely different from the true ones; the true Great Sun Tathagata hand seals are the meditation seal of Vairocana Buddha, a hand seal truly possessing spiritual power—in other words, this is the hand seal of Buddhist cultivation; later, such spiritually powerful hand seals were gradually lost, and what was passed down became merely a Buddhist ritual."

Ye Chen not understanding religion, he humbly asked: "Miss Lin, you just mentioned Vairocana Buddha—who is this Buddhist master?"

Lin Waner smiled and said: "Vairocana Buddha is the Great Sun Tathagata Buddha, that is, Shakyamuni; however, they are not absolutely equivalent; it can be understood that Shakyamuni is the Buddha's 'response body' manifested to adapt to the mundane world; the Buddha has three bodies: the Dharma body, the response body, and the reward body; the Buddha's 'Dharma body' is Vairocana Buddha."

Ye Chen sighed: "Buddhism and Daoism, though their thoughts and aims differ, in the path of cultivation they have arrived at the same destination by different routes; it seems the legend of cultivating to sainthood is not a myth; perhaps those ancient sages truly opened their own pure lands of bliss! I never imagined I would have such an honor, to learn the true Buddhist secret art—it is indeed a great fortune."

Lin Waner nodded, sincerely saying: "I have believed in Buddhism since childhood, yet I have never had such fortune as you; it seems you are truly one with a Buddhist affinity!"

Yun Ruge and Song Ruyu, upon hearing this, were already moved to tears.

Since the first time they saw the hand seals up close, their emotions have become extremely fragile and sensitive, often bringing tears at the slightest provocation.

Originally already deeply grateful to Ye Chen for the opportunity he gave them, now learning that this opportunity might still be the incomparably precious Great Sun Tathagata hand seals, they are grateful beyond measure; in their entire lives, they never imagined they could have such fortune, and all of this is entirely due to Ye Chen.

Thus, the two joined hands and again knelt with both knees before Ye Chen, weeping uncontrollably.

Ye Chen felt a bit overwhelmed—these two truly have a kneeling habit, wanting to kneel at the slightest thing, really hard to deal with.

So he quickly stepped forward to help them up, but unexpectedly, they had no intention of using momentum to rise, their legs still bent at ninety degrees.

And Yun Ruge then spoke with a choked voice: "Mr. Ye, you do not know—since I awakened to the Dao, I have been like rootless duckweed, a begging cultivator; wanting to obtain a cultivation method or a pill is as hard as climbing to heaven; even having no choice but to bow and scrape beside Wu Feiyan, doing her bidding, to the point of doing all her evil deeds, I barely obtained a few cultivation resources; but since knowing Mr. Ye until now, I have not yet exerted even a bit of effort for you, and yet I have continuously received various great opportunities from you; my gratitude toward you cannot be described in words—only one sentence: in this life, I only wish to one day sacrifice my head and shed my blood for you, to repay your kindness with death!"