Chapter 64

Alright.

Yan Buji admitted he was somewhat arrogant.

Since reaching the peak of the Heavenly Human realm, even before attaining the Heavenly Human realm he could break out of encirclement and counterkill them under the siege of the Iron Tiger Guard sect leader, naturally he had his confidence and arrogance.

But he never expected reality to give him a hard slap.

Mundane martial arts are ultimately mundane!

Not to mention whether Yan Buji could gain any insight from sparring with this ancient senior; just dodging the opponent's attacks nearly cost him his life, this...

This is the real gap!

Fighting a corpse that's been dead for who knows how many years, with strength less than a tenth of what it had in life, is already this difficult; one can imagine how tough the cultivation world is.

But it's not without benefit; at least Yan Buji finally discovered a fact!

That is, the cultivation of ancient martial artists must be the path of refining the spirit, because the mortal flesh body has a limit that is hard to break through no matter how much it is trained.

But the spirit is different!

The golden flame on this corpse is the manifestation of his Martial Dao will. Although lacking the invincible power to support it, even without instinct, during combat it still displays an extremely terrifying experience.

From Yan Buji's miserable state, one can also see a bit of it.

After meditating for a day and a night, Yan Buji barely managed to suppress his injuries, avoiding dying on the spot from severe wounds.

At this point, Yan Buji dared to open his eyes and observe the corpse before him.

The corpse's dantian and skull naturally became Yan Buji's primary focus of observation.

But strangely, even though the corpse is desiccated to this state, its vigorous vitality is hard to imagine. Many of his meridians are broken; can he still circulate qi like this?

Or perhaps a corpse doesn't need to circulate qi?

Maybe it has to do with that strange blood fragrance inside his dantian!

Yan Buji's expression remained calm as he cut open the corpse's belly; seeing the withered intestines and stomach didn't faze him, and after rummaging for a while he suddenly spotted a red bead about the size of a grain of sand.

Yan Buji leaned in and smelled it; the faint fragrance attached let him confirm that this was the source of the corpse's sudden burst of power earlier.

This thing......

It couldn't be something cultivated from internal energy, could it?

Although a Heavenly Human realm martial artist's internal energy is almost substantive, internal energy is inherently formless; how could it become a tangible, substantive object?

This is probably the cultivation method of ancient martial artists!

After putting away the red bead, the corpse suddenly collapsed, turning to ash before Yan Buji's eyes and vanishing.

It seems this thing is indeed the core of the ancient martial artist's power!

Yan Buji hurriedly stored it properly and walked into the tile house.

The tile house inside and out seemed to have no mechanisms; upon pushing the door open, Yan Buji saw only thick layers of dust covering the tables, chairs, and stools.

Besides, there was a stone bed nearby, with nothing else around.

On the side table, however, a stone tablet was simply placed.

Yan Buji's eyes lit up; he walked over, blew off the dust, and examined it carefully.

"This seems like a way... to circulate internal energy?"

Yan Buji found it strange; the stone tablet bore a crude drawing of a human body. Following the lines on the pattern, starting from the dantian there are three ways to circulate simultaneously, and the certain acupoints and meridian locations along the way match the two internal arts he has learned!

Could this be the internal art of that ancient martial artist?!

No, three internal arts circulating?

"I'm still missing one internal art?"

Yan Buji's expression instantly turned grim; after roughly deducing the internal energy circulation routes on the left and right, he found they indeed resembled Blood Essence Skill and Guān Tiān Dēng Mó Zhuàng, but the middle internal energy circulation method was different.

This internal energy seems to be the core of this set of internal arts; the circulation of Blood Essence Skill and Guān Tiān Dēng Mó Zhuàng mainly relies on this internal art's energy, assisting in operation to fully enact the circulation method depicted on the general outline.

As for what can be cultivated from it, it might very well relate to the ancient martial artist's formidable power!

Sigh!

Forget it, forget it.

Yan Buji searched around; indeed he found no other information about the third internal art, so he noted the circulation method on the stone tablet and then smashed the tablet into powder with a slap!

Leaving the tile house, Yan Buji looked around, searching for where spiritual energy was located.

"It seems Chen Li didn't dare come up; perhaps he knows the origin of this ancient martial artist..."

Yan Buji's eyes shifted; he originally wanted to go back now to ask about the situation, see if he could get news of the third internal art.

But after thinking, since he told me this place, he wouldn't fear me coming here.

That is, even if I go find him to ask, he's quite confident he won't be forced to answer anything.

This could stem from his unique Hundred Herbs Sect means, or from knowing I wouldn't lift a hand, or perhaps other reasons, such as even if this internal art were cultivated it wouldn't be considered great in the cultivation world; on the contrary, my past coercion of him might instead make him suspicious......

If so, then there's no rush.

Whether this ancient martial artist's cultivation method can be learned is another matter; the key is that since this cultivation method hasn't given cultivators excessive expectations of mundane martial artists, it might not be a good path to take.

Otherwise, given the combat power of those ancient martial artists shown in the murals, even if today's cultivators were utterly foolish, there wouldn't be not a single martial arts master in the jianghu worth taking away to cultivate.

If there really were, the martial world would have long been in an uproar.

Yan Buji doesn't know what talent is needed to become a cultivator, but those who can sense spiritual energy must be few.

If one could enter the cultivation path through mundane martial arts, this would not only greatly increase the number of cultivators, but for small sects and forces in the cultivation world they would certainly not mind boosting their own sect's strength!

Moreover, a crucial point is that someone like Chen Li, who has had contact with the cultivation world, did not choose mundane martial artists to rebuild the Hundred Herbs Sect, showing that mundane martial artists wanting to enter the cultivation path is by no means easy.

Even if Yan Buji knows that Blood Essence Skill and Guān Tiān Dēng Mó Zhuàng come from the ancient martial artist's cultivation method, and he has obtained the general outline here, he still lacks one internal art.

The key is that even if Yan Buji has the Patterned Mystery Art and can now cultivate two internal arts simultaneously, whether he can achieve the third internal art remains unknown.

After all, the outline requires that the three internal arts must circulate simultaneously.

"From ancient times to the present, countless mundane martial artists have cultivated two internal arts simultaneously; for someone like me who relies on heretical and demonic arts to cultivate two and survive to this day without dying is already extremely fortunate. Yet I never imagined that entering the cultivation path would be this difficult—three internal arts...... must also be related to the ancient martial artists."

Yan Buji took a deep breath.

On the path of cultivation, it's truly difficult beyond imagination!