Chapter 830: Testing the Demon with One's Own Body, The Hook-Sinking Sword Master

Under the cover of night, Li Fei and Wang Yilong quietly snuck into the Qingmian Shanzhuang.

He did not want others to know of his return to Datong Prefecture just yet.

"Are those 'Demon-Feeding Beasts' obtained from the Lu family still in the villa?"

Li Fei found Yang Zhe directly and asked him.

Yang Zhe was both surprised and delighted by Li Fei's sudden return.

Although he was not yet clear on the movements in the outside world, he had received a call from Li Fei the day before yesterday, and upon learning tonight that the Jing'an Marquis Mansion in Xingcheng had been attacked, he immediately realized that the situation was likely to undergo a massive change!

If Li Fei had not returned tonight, Yang Zhe had already prepared to arrange an escape route for himself.

Yang Zhe: "Those dozen or so 'Demon-Feeding Beasts' are all in the villa. If the Marquis needs them, I will have someone bring them to you immediately."

Li Fei shook his head: "Do not alert anyone else, and do not let word of my return spread. Just tell me the location, and I will go myself."

Yang Zhe understood immediately and informed Li Fei of the location of those 'Demon-Feeding Beasts'.

Li Fei immediately activated Sword State: Shadowless and Formless, and together with Wang Yilong, they silently snuck toward the depths of the villa.

The Qingmian Shanzhuang had originally been a large-scale exotic beast farm, and the back mountain was divided into several areas used for raising different types of exotic beasts.

Li Fei brought Wang Yilong to an isolated area in the back mountain, where a dozen-meter-high iron fence had been erected, and there were people patrolling 24 hours a day.

Special medicinal powder was also scattered around the iron fence to keep the exotic beasts from approaching.

In this area, there were a total of fifteen Demon-Feeding Beasts that had been implanted with mid-three-grade implants, all of which were part of the benefits previously divided from the Lu family.

"Sect Master Wang, I will have to trouble you to guard me next; do not let anyone disturb me during this time."

Li Fei said to Wang Yilong.

"You want to use the 'Demon-Feeding Beasts' to quickly master the 【Dragon-Elephant】 divine ability?"

Wang Yilong frowned.

Just now, when Li Fei mentioned the 'Demon-Feeding Beasts' to Yang Zhe, he had not avoided him, so he had guessed Li Fei's intention.

"Yes."

Li Fei nodded, admitting his plan.

The 【Dragon-Elephant】 divine ability requires a total of four mid-three-grade implants, among which one called the 【Dragon-Strength Armor】 implant is the most core component; not even the national treasury of Lanling City possesses this implant.

And apart from the 【Dragon-Strength Armor】, the other three types of implants are relatively standard and can be found in many places; the dozen or so 'Demon-Feeding Beasts' obtained from the Lu family this time also contained these three types of implants.

Li Fei had specifically rushed to the Longhu Sect to directly absorb the 【Dragon-Strength Armor】 there, because this type of implant cannot be transported over long distances.

Before setting out, he had already consumed blood souls through the 【Refining Objects】 divine ability to convert them into life force, accelerating the growth of the 【Dragon-Strength Armor】 so that it reached the peak of the Qi Transformation stage, allowing for 'Unity'.

"But even with the 'Demon-Feeding Beasts', you still have to perform 'Unity'. How could you possibly master the 【Dragon-Elephant】 divine ability in such a short time?"

"Besides, even if you have one extra divine ability, it won't mean much if you really end up facing a Grandmaster!"

Wang Yilong was very confused.

Li Fei did not explain further, only saying calmly:

"I have my own sense of proportion. I apologize for the trouble, Sect Master Wang."

After the warning from Shi Caiming, he had actually already given up the idea of taking shortcuts.

But circumstances change.

Even if practicing the demonic path leads to an unstable foundation and leaves hidden dangers for future cultivation.

Future problems can be left for the future to solve.

But as for some regrets, Li Fei had already sworn that he would never experience them again!

Seeing Li Fei's determined expression, clearly having made up his mind, Wang Yilong stopped trying to persuade him:

"Fine, I will guard you!"

Immediately after, the two walked into the jungle.

Li Fei quickly found a Demon-Feeding Beast that possessed the implant he needed.

This was an exotic beast covered in gray scales, with sharp teeth and claws, looking like a goat.

This exotic beast was a third-grade superior Rock Goat, and it now possessed a fully matured fourth-grade 【Earth-Elephant Foot】 implant.

Using the body of a third-grade exotic beast to cultivate a fourth-grade implant would cause the third-grade exotic beast's physical functions and lifespan to be severely affected.

The Rock Goat that Li Fei found at this moment had blood-red eyes and was panting heavily, clearly living in great pain.

Within a few years, even if the 【Earth-Elephant Foot】 inside it were not removed, it would exhaust its vitality and die.

Li Fei gently slapped the Rock Goat's head, ending its life.

Afterward, he used his internal energy as a blade to cut open the Rock Goat's abdomen, taking out a large, bloody mass.

Immediately following, he pressed this bloody mass against his own lower abdomen and began to circulate his cultivation technique to absorb it.

Demonic path cultivation also has corresponding demonic martial arts; the higher the quality of the demonic martial art, the higher the safety and success rate.

But Li Fei did not know any demonic martial arts at all; his absorption method at this moment was a standard one.

Using standard means to absorb a fully matured 【Earth-Elephant Foot】 was undoubtedly an extremely dangerous thing to do!

But Li Fei did not care at all; all damage encountered during the absorption process was transferred to the Myriad Blood Pearl.

More than an hour later, the 【Earth-Elephant Foot】 was successfully absorbed into his body.

Because he had not yet performed 'Unity' on the previously absorbed 【Dragon-Strength Armor】, the two implants, 【Dragon-Strength Armor】 and 【Earth-Elephant Foot】, immediately began to 'fight', creating a violent conflict within his body!

While using the Myriad Blood Pearl to bear the damage and continuously consume blood souls, Li Fei took out the elixirs he had prepared long ago.

Uncapping the bottle, he tilted his head back and swallowed the entire bottle of elixirs in one go!

This elixir could alleviate the conflict between the two implants, but the side effects were too severe.

Of course, in Li Fei's eyes, there was no such thing as side effects.

Having temporarily suppressed the conflict between the two implants with the elixir, Li Fei continued to search for the next Demon-Feeding Beast.

After finding it, he followed the same procedure, taking more than two hours to complete the absorption of the third implant.

This time, with three mature implants in his body that had not undergone 'Unity', the conflict between them became even more severe.

Relying on elixirs alone was no longer enough to completely suppress the conflict between the implants; Li Fei could only continuously use the Myriad Blood Pearl to bear the damage, while simultaneously activating the 【Refining Objects】 divine ability to consume blood souls and convert them into the life force required by the implants, maintaining the three implants so they would not damage his origin due to their mutual conflict.

At this point, the number of blood souls in the Myriad Blood Pearl had already been consumed by more than 1, 00!

Only Li Fei would dare to 'court death' like this; if it were any other martial arts master, they would have lost their lives several times over!

Li Fei found the last Demon-Feeding Beast and continued the previous operation.

It was not until 11: 0 PM that he completed the absorption of the third implant.

By this point, he already possessed the four implants required to refine the 【Dragon-Elephant】 divine ability, and all of them had reached the peak of the Qi Transformation stage!

He only needed to perform 'Unity' on these four implants to possess the foundation for refining the divine ability.

Every minute and every second, Li Fei was losing blood souls, so he did not hesitate and began 'Unity' immediately.

Performing 'Unity' on all four implants simultaneously!

Wang Yilong believed that even if Li Fei could successfully complete the absorption of the implants using the Demon-Feeding Beasts, he would have no way to master the divine ability in a short time because 'Unity' was still required.

If it were the Li Fei of before, even with the 'Ten-Day Breakthrough Method', he would have needed at least forty days for the 'Unity' of four implants.

But now that he had the 【Refining Objects】 divine ability, the most top-tier auxiliary divine ability, the situation was different!

The key to the 'Ten-Day Breakthrough Method' lies in first using internal energy to simulate the 'channels' of the implant branches, then directly excavating the local flesh, then directly extracting the implant branches and gathering them. Finally, use the recovery characteristics of the Myriad Blood Pearl to rapidly recover the excavated flesh.

Initially, the Myriad Blood Pearl could fully recover even the most severe injuries within ten days.

With 【Blood Breath】, the recovery time could be shortened to five days.

With the 【Refining Objects】 divine ability and the 【Blood Spring】 to store extra blood souls, the recovery time could be even shorter!

Besides this, using internal energy to simulate 'channels' is very draining on mental strength; previously, Li Fei could only complete a portion at a time and had to wait for his mental strength to recover before continuing 'Unity'.

But now, he could use the 【Refining Objects】 divine ability to convert blood souls into mental strength, thereby achieving continuous 'stamina'!

After these two major difficulties were solved, completing the 'Unity' of four implants simultaneously in a short time was no longer impossible.

The next day at 5: 0 PM.

The light of the setting sun fell on the back mountain of the Qingmian Shanzhuang, scattering onto the ground through the gaps in the branches.

Li Fei slowly opened his eyes.

He had successfully completed the 'Unity' of the four implants!

Unprecedented, and likely to have few successors!

Now, the main parts of the four implants required for the 【Dragon-Elephant】 divine ability were all retracted into his dantian, on the periphery of his 【Primordial Heaven Gold】 Dao foundation.

What needed to be done next was to begin refining the divine ability.

Similar to the refining of spell-type divine abilities, the refining of martial arts-type divine abilities is also divided into three steps:

Life Activation, Form Refining, and Dao Integration.

To acquire a divine ability, the most critical point is the deep-level fusion between the implants and oneself, fully stimulating the origin power.

Therefore, the more core-level extraordinary abilities one has when breaking through from the Dao Foundation stage to become a martial arts master, the greater the success rate of the breakthrough.

Because the more core-level extraordinary abilities there are, the higher the degree of fusion between the implants in the body and oneself, and the more the origin is stimulated.

But after the martial arts foundation is built, the martial artist's body has already fused with the Dao foundation, and there is no extra 'space' to undergo deep fusion with other implants.

Therefore, for the subsequent absorption of mid-three-grade implants, Li Fei had not stimulated any extraordinary abilities.

The first step, 'Life Activation', is to use one's own Dao foundation to stimulate the life origin of these mid-three-grade implants in the body, causing them to enter a special state.

The subsequent 'Form Refining' is to let the implants in the special 'excited state' gradually fuse into one's own Dao foundation, just like adding bricks and tiles to a house that has already been built.

The more solid one's own foundation, the less difficult this step is.

The final step, 'Dao Integration', is similar to when the five implants were refined into the Dao foundation; it requires completely fusing the mid-three-grade implants that have been integrated into the Dao foundation, and using one's own Dao foundation to refine them into a new divine ability.

Li Fei now began to attempt the first step, 'Life Activation'.

He quickly encountered a problem—

Of the four implants within his body, only the first, the 【Dragon Strength Armor】, had been cultivated bit by bit from the start and fused with his own being. The other three implants were mature implants obtained directly from the bodies of demonic beasts.

This resulted in Li Fei having a very poor fusion rate with these three implants, and his control over them was also very poor.

Under these circumstances, the probability of failure to complete "Life Activation" was as high as over ninety percent!

This was the drawback that Shi Caiming had previously mentioned to Li Fei.

Even if the success rate could be improved through certain demonic martial arts, it was still difficult for the probability of failure to drop below thirty percent.

Li Fei was very calm and did not panic.

He had anticipated this situation in advance.

His cultivation of demonic arts this time, while seemingly impulsive, was actually the result of careful deliberation.

He activated the 【Refining Objects】 divine ability to refine the blood souls into the life force corresponding to the implants, then injected it into them.

The step of "Life Activation" was to stimulate the life origin of the implants; if the life origin of the implant was sufficiently powerful, the difficulty of stimulation would naturally be lower.

It was like how it is difficult to start a large fire with a few pieces of wood, but if a large amount of oil is poured onto them, the situation becomes different.

The blood souls were consumed rapidly, and as a continuous stream of life force was injected into the four implants, Li Fei soon found the feeling.

After more than an hour, he completed the "Life Activation" of the four implants!

When other martial arts masters break through realms, they all complete the "Life Activation" of one implant first, then complete "Form Refining," and then proceed to the "Life Activation" and "Form Refining" of the next implant.

Li Fei was doing all four at once!

After all four implants entered a special "Excited State," he followed the cultivation method obtained from the Dragon Tiger Gate to perform "Form Refining" on the four implants in sequence.

In the step of "Form Refining," the stronger one's own Dao foundation, the more solid the roots, and the stronger the control over the implants, the higher the success rate.

Li Fei possessed the legendary-grade Dao foundation 【Primordial Heavenly Gold】, giving him a much greater advantage than those martial arts masters who possessed high-grade or top-grade Dao foundations.

Although his control over the three implants was very weak due to walking the demonic path.

But he had the 【Refining Objects】 divine ability, so the "Form Refining" step was actually the least difficult for him!

After more than four hours, the "Form Refining" of all four implants was completely finished!

At this point, Li Fei was only one final step away from successfully cultivating the 【Dragon Elephant】 divine ability.

The 49th year of Hongguang, July 8th.

6: 2 AM.

A square wooden house with sides over five meters long appeared above the provincial capital of Feng Province.

This wooden house was also a flight-capable magic treasure.

Because an invisibility-type technique had been cast, many people did not notice this magic treasure flying at low altitude.

Soon, this magic treasure arrived above the Lu Mansion and revealed itself directly.

The wooden house landed in a courtyard of the Lu Mansion.

A few minutes later, Lu Wenzheng arrived upon hearing the news, followed by Xu Jing.

The two stepped over the threshold, walked into the courtyard, and looked at the wooden house.

The door of the wooden house opened, and an old man with white hair at his temples walked out first.

The old man bowed to Xu Jing and Lu Wenzheng:

"Greetings, Lord Lu, greetings, Grandmaster Xu."

Xu Jing saw at a glance that this person was a sorcerer of the True Person realm, and the flight-capable magic treasure must have been controlled by him.

However, he and Lu Wenzheng were not waiting for this True Person.

Xu Jing said nothing, his eyes fixed on the inside of the door, having already vaguely sensed something.

Soon, a tall figure walked out of the wooden house.

This person wore a blue and white robe, carried a long sword on his back, had short gray-white hair, and a withered face, looking like an old tree that had lived for hundreds of years.

Yet Xu Jing could sense a majestic life force from within this "old tree"!

Not only that, he also vaguely felt a terrifying sword intent hidden within it.

But when he tried to perceive it carefully, it was as if everything were an illusion, and the old man before him was just an ordinary, aged man.

Xu Jing narrowed his eyes, somewhat surprised.

Lu Wenzheng only knew that the First Imperial Prince would send a Grandmaster to assist, but he had not been told who exactly it was.

Every Grandmaster in the world was renowned and a true titan of their region!

A Grandmaster coming to assist meant not only an extra top-tier combatant on their side but also the support of a top-tier faction!

Looking at the old man before him who looked like an old tree with a withered face, Xu Jing already had a vague guess in his heart, but he dared not be certain.

"I am Bo Chen, greetings to you both."

The old man said in a detached tone, without cupping his hands in greeting.

His voice was hoarse, as if produced by two stones rubbing against each other, sounding very grating.

Lu Wenzheng subconsciously felt uncomfortable, but he forced a smile and showed a look of delight:

"So it is the Hook-Sinking Sword Master who has graced us with his presence; this truly makes my home shine!"

Bo Chen, Sect Master of the Hook-Sinking Sword Sect!

Among the "One Tower, One Pavilion, Three Mountains, Four Sects, and Seven Great Families," besides the imperial court, these were the only factions in the martial arts world that possessed Grandmasters.

The Hook-Sinking Sword Sect was one of the "Four Sects"!

After martial arts cultivation reaches the Master realm, martial artists pursue more the quantity and application of divine abilities, and few people continue to delve into martial arts techniques.

The Hook-Sinking Sword Sect, however, went against the grain, delving into how to use divine abilities in conjunction with swordsmanship.

Half of the world's swordsmanship is in the Hook-Sinking!

The Hook-Sinking Sword Sect was such a sword-cultivating sect that pursued the pinnacle of swordsmanship.

The sect had been passed down for over four hundred years and possessed twelve "Creation" sword techniques, which were sword techniques that could reach the realm of Creation after being cultivated to great success.

Successive sect masters were required to master at least three Creation sword techniques and cultivate them to the realm of Creation!

Therefore, successive sect masters of the Hook-Sinking Sword Sect were honored as the Hook-Sinking Sword Master.

Bo Chen was the fifth-generation Hook-Sinking Sword Master, a Grandmaster of the Divine Extension realm.

More than forty years ago, when he took over as sect master, he had already mastered four Creation sword techniques and practiced them all to the realm of Creation!

More than forty years had passed, and no one knew how many more Creation sword techniques he had mastered.

Of the "Three Mountains, Four Sects, and Seven Great Families," the "Three Mountains" were slightly stronger than the "Four Sects," and the "Four Sects" were slightly stronger than the "Seven Great Families."

However, this ranking was based on comprehensive power.

If it came to individual combat strength, Bo Chen could definitely rank in the top three among these fourteen factions!

That the First Imperial Prince had actually won over the Hook-Sinking Sword Sect and could have the current Hook-Sinking Sword Master take action personally was undoubtedly a pleasant surprise.

"Greetings, Hook-Sinking Sword Master."

The proud and arrogant Xu Jing also restrained his arrogance in front of Bo Chen and took the initiative to bow.

Bo Chen looked at Xu Jing and said directly:

"To kill Shi Caiming, you only need to guard the flanks for me and prevent him from escaping; leave the rest to me."

"Very well."

Xu Jing was happy not to have to exert himself, as this would make it less likely for the problems with his own martial arts domain to be exposed.

"Let's go."

Bo Chen was a man of few words.

"Right!"

Xu Jing immediately activated the 【Cloud Soaring】 divine ability.

A streak of green clouds appeared out of thin air beneath his feet and then curled toward Bo Chen.

Grandmasters rely on the characteristics of their own martial arts domain to fly, which consumes a lot of energy and is difficult to sustain.

But if one has a flight-type divine ability, the situation is different.

Xu Jing used the 【Cloud Soaring】 divine ability to carry Bo Chen as they flew, which consumed little energy and was faster than most flight-capable magic treasures!

The two turned into a mass of green clouds and soared into the sky.

The wooden house also rose rapidly into the sky, following closely behind.

Lu Wenzheng looked up at the green clouds gradually moving away in the sky, a ferocious smile appearing on his face.

(End of chapter)