Blood Torrent Grandmaster Zhang Ming's remains of consciousness, seeing Baotian faint, smirked.
'Hah, this insolent junior, trying to extort me through grand words…'
He chuckled as his consciousness disappeared. It was a shame, really, if Baotian had come just five years earlier, he could have stolen his body…
'Hah, lucky brat. He reminds me of my youth'
As he thought, old Zhang Ming continuously instilled information into Baotian's mind.
'Hehe, you were blabbering about living through you? Fine then, let's see how far you will go before failing miserably, little brat!'
With these words, Zhang Ming's split soul disappeared.
A few hours later
"Ah… ah… what… what is this?"
Waking up, Baotian felt something foreign engrained in his mind. It felt somehow familiar and yet, fundamentally alien.
"It's… a scripture!"
And a complete one, at that! The Liu clan's Liu Sword Scripture was originally one that went up to the mid stage Nascent Soul realm, but the last part of it was lost, meaning the current members of the Liu clan could only reach up to the Core Formation stage before switching to a similar scripture. Even as the disciple of an elder, being stuck at the Qi Refining stage, he could only learn up to the mid stage Qi Building realm.
But now, he was just given a scripture going up to the peak of the Nascent Soul realm, the Crazed Demonic Blood Burial Mantra.
"And as expected of a demon path grandmaster, it seems to be based on human sacrifices"
Baotian had mixed feelings about it…
But that was about it. How many dozens of mortals had he killed just a bit ago, along with these five cultivators that tried to help them? While he had felt bad about it, when he killed that mid stage Qi Building, he had not the slightest guilt in his heart: he had killed to live, he simply did what was necessary according to the laws of nature. Even now, as he looked at Liu Jiaoshi's disfigured corpse, Baotian felt nothing.
What was the difference between killing someone because they tried to kill you and sacrificing someone to avoid death catching up? Beyond moral, both were simply cases where the winner lived and the other died. And what use were morals when you were dead?
"Useless" Baotian decided, grabbing Liu Jiaoshi's body.
Along with the information implanted in his mind, Zhang Ming left him full authority over the wooden cave's formations. Using it, he completely extracted the corpse' blood essence and made it rotate around him, then sat with his legs crossed.
"Yes, that's doable"
Normally, to recover his cultivation, Baotian would have had to spend at least ten years cultivating with the Liu Sword Scripture that he had perfectly mastered. Even though all scriptures fundamentally followed the same formula, reaching the peak of Qi Refining from its bottom with a completely new scripture would take him at least fifteen years.
"At least, that's what it would have taken me without you, my savior: Liu Jiaoshi!"
Laughing like a madman, Baotian began to absorb the nearby spiritual energy and, at the same time, let the blood essence turn into a mist that enveloped him, slowly being absorbed into his body.
The blood essence of a freshly dead Qi Building cultivator! With that, the time needed would be cut by half! And this time, with the Crazed Demonic Blood Burial Mantra, he finally had a way to break through!
And so, years passed.
For the first three years, Liu Baotian followed the formula of the early Qi Refining stage, accumulating energy until it filled his middle dantian and helped him break to the mid stage.
For the next three years, Liu Baotian methodically reorganized this lump of energy, and eventually split this lump into Qi Components, reaching the late stage.
And finally, for two years, he slowly shaped these Qi Components into defined forms, his spiritual sense chiseling them as a goldsmith's sash would.
The Qi Refining realm was, in essence, nothing more than a succession of processes that prepared the creation of a Qi Cube in the Qi Building stage. That was why to advance to the next realm, it was necessary to create Qi Pieces with a definitive shape, necessary to build the cube. Then, this cube itself would become the basis from which his Spiritual Core would form, and the beginning of his Dao. Then, this Spiritual Core would become the basis to become his Nascent Soul, and such would happen for every new realm!
Many people believed that Cultivation, because it was divided in realms, was simply a process of leaping to the next level and repeating the process. But finally, Baotian understood that in truth, cultivation was a flowing process, like an upward waterfall leading to supremacy!
"That's why I couldn't advance even though I completed every stage perfectly, because I was unable to complete a small, but necessary process in the transformation of Qi Components into Qi Pieces. If a step is incomplete, the whole process is stopped. And that's why, to advance…"
Baotian concentrated the nearby spiritual energy into his dantian at the most of his abilities and made the Qi Components clash against each other. Slowly but surely, they began to crack.
"I must get rid of this step altogether, and find an alternate one to make my way upstream!"
Activating the cave's formations, he extracted Liu Jiaoshi's Qi Cube and blew it into bits. At the same time, he finished the process of completely smashing apart his Qi Components!
Now was the last step. Using the energy liberated by the Components' explosion, for just an instant, Baptian managed to 'emulate' the status of a Qi Building cultivator. Even then, due to the absence of Qi Pieces in his middle dantian, he would soon fall back to early Qi Refining.
Now was the moment of truth.
"Activate!"
The Qi Building realm was where was determined the general direction's of one's dao. In other words, it was in this realm that one could begin to use the techniques tied to their scripture. Thus, by emulating it for an instant, Baotian could force out a single advanced spell:
"Crazed Demonic Blood Burial Mantra, Spiritual Source Annihilation!"
The bits of the Qi Cube began to assimilate into the remains of his Components.
"I… am a transmigrator. For a long time, I thought that this alone meant I was special, and I was probably right. But eventually, I came to realize that being special doesn't mean that I am talented or that I can rise above others. No matter what, I am still just an insignificant, average person, with average talent, intelligence and willpower. But, there is one advantage gained from coming from a civilized country of the modern world… and that is, creativity!"
Five years passed, and during this entire time, Baotian didn't stop cultivating even once, surviving off Jiaoshi's blood essence the whole time. In these five years, he could have easily reached the Qi Building realm, but he didn't, and that for one reason:
"After all this time, wouldn't it be too little to simply aim for early Qi Building? No… Now that I see the path after all this time, I will aim for higher peaks! I will reach the mid stage in one go!"
Liu Jiaoshi, to reach Qi Building, had used the Liu Sword Scripture, the same Baotian had cultivated his entire life. And what he used to create Qi Pieces was Jiaoshi's very own Qi Cube's remains. With a bit of reverse engineering, he could definitely create Qi Pieces of similar form, and then assemble them in the exact same way as Liu Jiaoshi did to directly reach the mid stage!
Ten more months passed, and Baotian had now half-completed his Qi Cube. However, he sighed, realizing an unpleasant fact: he couldn't progress farther.
"I guess it was to expect"
In the first place, it was unlikely to successfully replicate Jiaoshi's Qi Cube's configuration. Maybe someone more talented could've fared better but he couldn't, and ended up deviating from it. Even though the half he assembled was correct, it was now different enough from the model that, if he kept trying to copy it, the whole thing would crumble.
He only had two more months to live, his teeth had already fallen. Trying to go further would only lead to death. Accepting that fact, he engraved the lesson into his heart one more time: to walk further in the path of cultivation, he would have to find something beyond his talent.
Using the Crazed Demonic Blood Burial Mantra's Spiritual Source Annihilation technique again, he solidified his progression, advancing to the early stage Qi Building, already half the way to the mid stage. And that's where the miracle happened:
"Aah… ahh… AAAAARGH!"
This atrocious pain, it was body reconstruction!
The hair that had fallen grew back on his head, progressively returning to a black color with only streaks of grey left. The teeth that were gone grew back as well, almost white. His face's wrinkles softened and his body became tonic once again.
From a hundred years-old fossil, he had returned to a handsome man that barely looked fifty!
And yet, even though he should have felt happy at the moment, Baotian's expression suddenly crumbled, and he began to shake violently.
It wasn't because Blood Torrent Grandmaster Zhang Ming had trafficked the scripture before giving him, and it wasn't either because he realized he had fallen into the demonic path and sunk into guilt.
It was because at the moment of his breakthrough, when his vigilance had lowered, someone had neutralized the defensive formations of the cave and was now standing in front of him, a stern look on their face. This person seemed to be at the late stage of Core Formation, but the aura emitted was comparable to the threshold of the Nascent Soul realm.
Seeing the man, who looked to be in his twenties but he knew had celebrated his seventieth birthday this year, Baotian paled.
"I-it's you, Zhenyun!"
The suspected cause of all his troubles, his junior brother, had found him!