Chapter 383 - 247: [Void Clearing Mirror] and the Mystery of the Gods (2)

Chapter 383: Chapter 247: [Void Clearing Mirror] and the Mystery of the Gods (2)

Only a sufficiently powerful soul can cultivate the Soul Foundation Skill; this is a prerequisite for perceptual abilities.

Ordinary Martial Artists can also cultivate the Soul Foundation Skill at a certain level. However, since they haven’t awakened the divine potential of their five viscera during the second martial realm, it’s like having fertile land but no seeds.

Thus, the benefits of the Soul Foundation Skill are minimal for them. If they have the means, practicing it can help clear the mind and eliminate distracting thoughts.

Of course, nothing is absolute. A rare, fortuitous encounter might offer a chance to overcome this limitation and grant special perceptual abilities, but the probability is minuscule and impossible to replicate.

An ordinary Martial Artist’s conventional perception depends on two things: the natural awareness of the world’s ambient energy that comes with realm advancement, and the instinct for danger honed through years of life-and-death combat.

Once Yu Fei masters the Melt Gold Jade Body Skill, he will also be able to cultivate proper stealth and enhancement Secret Techniques, which will further boost his explosive power and concealment abilities.

There are countless types of Iron Body Skills, and their effects vary dramatically. Some of the weaker ones might allow a practitioner to meet the prerequisites for related Secret Techniques early on, but the results are often disappointing.

They might be good enough to overwhelm ordinary Martial Artists, but they’re useless against truly strong opponents.

Even so, possessing such abilities at all is a rare feat. More than ninety percent of Martial Artists already struggle to balance their primary Cultivation Technique with their Slaughter Blade Skill.

Versatility is the privilege of a genius, but for Yu Fei, that is merely the threshold. Mastery in all things is his true pursuit.

Listening to Ye Shuping’s explanation, which made complex concepts easy to understand, Yu Fei silently finished the pot of unknown tea. He had gained a great deal from it, in more ways than one.

"Alright. I will give you a list of Cultivation Techniques. Go back and practice them well. By the way, how are you progressing with that catalog of Swordsmanship techniques?"

Yu Fei looked a little sheepish. He hadn’t dedicated much time to his Swordsmanship practice, so he could only answer truthfully.

"I’ve perfected the four Swordsmanship techniques related to the concepts of ’lightness’ and ’heaviness’. I’ve started on more than twenty others, achieved minor completion in five, and reached major completion in only one. I haven’t begun practicing the rest..."

Ye Shuping nodded slightly. "That’s not bad. Once you practice the Void Clearing Mirror to a certain level, your progress in Swordsmanship will be much faster than it is now."

"As long as you master all these Swordsmanship techniques before reaching the Gang Qi realm, that will be enough. When that time comes, you will merge all methods into one. Your boundless Sword Qi will then become one of the world’s top-tier Slaughter Blade Skills. With that, even after you advance to Grandmaster, you may still be able to dominate."

Yu Fei smiled. "I’ll work hard, Teacher!"

After a moment of deliberation, Ye Shuping said to Yu Fei, "There’s one more thing. You asked me about the planetary will last time. I’ve since looked through a lot of materials, and there’s an ancient sect that might be related."

"It’s now known as the Earth Mother Goddess Sect. It’s extremely mysterious, and only fragments of information about it ever surface. This sect is quite malevolent. If you ever run into them in the future, you must be extremely careful..."

Ye Shuping then shared everything he knew, and the two of them discussed it at length. They came to suspect that this sect might be cut from the same cloth as the Illuminati’s so-called god of Dark Ash.

The only difference was that one was rumored to reside in the Exotic Origin Realm, while the other was right beneath their feet.

"Teacher, I’ve heard that members of the Illuminati are almost impossible to wipe out, that there are always Martial Artists being corrupted by them, causing their personalities to change..."

Ye Shuping’s expression grew grim as he slowly explained.

"As you know, we control numerous border realms. Four of them have been confirmed to be connected to the god of Dark Ash. In those four, our strategy is primarily defensive, with Wanren Mountain taking the lead."

"The most notorious of these is the Blood Crystal Realm. To this day, we still don’t understand how the corruption works. All we know is that many Martial Artists, after returning from the Blood Crystal Realm, begin to perform blood sacrifices to the so-called god of Dark Ash of their own accord."

More importantly, without exception, these corrupted individuals develop cannibalistic tendencies.

"Based on statistics gathered over the years, it seems those with lesser aptitude are more easily corrupted, their personalities twisted."

After a brief pause, Ye Shuping added gently:

"I suggest you stay away from any border realms connected to the god of Dark Ash until you become a Grandmaster. So far, we have not found any cases of a Grandmaster having their mind warped."

But nothing is ever certain; the higher one’s realm, the deeper one’s doubts become.

Ye Shuping prided himself on having a knowledge of the martial world that ranked in the top ten, but this only made him more cautious, especially when facing such unknown entities.

From the looks of it, the Earth Mother Goddess, Zhong Qing, favored the supremely talented, while the god of Dark Ash preferred the common man.

But no matter how one looked at it, both were steeped in malice.

Yu Fei carried Ye Shuping’s hopes, so naturally, Ye Shuping didn’t want him to take any unnecessary risks.

After six months of interaction, Ye Shuping had discovered that Yu Fei responded to gentle persuasion, not brute force. Thus, he had become much more tactful in his communication, while still directly pointing out the risks. It seemed the effect was quite good.

At the very least, he could feel Yu Fei’s trust this time. It was a good start.

With the discussion concluded, Ye Shuping acted quickly. The very next day, he notified Yu Fei to come and collect the exchanged resources. For an elder of his stature, the matter was trivial—a simple signature on his personal terminal was all it took.

With his new resources in hand, Yu Fei plunged into a busy training regimen.

He woke early each morning to practice his Swordsmanship, refined the purple qi from the east at sunrise, and then cultivated the Melt Gold Jade Body Skill. His afternoons were entirely dedicated to the All Things Return to Origin Scripture.

In the evenings, he would work on his Body Technique and the newly acquired Void Clearing Mirror, finishing with a session of the Star Soul Forging Scripture just before sleep.

His schedule was packed to the brim. He even had to find spare moments to have Xiaohai prepare various portable, high-energy meals.

The Void Clearing Mirror truly lived up to its reputation as the foremost Daoist Cleansing Skill of the Middle Ages.

It took Yu Fei several days of study just to grasp the basic principles of this marvelous technique.

Cultivating it required one to gather their thoughts, then use the power of their soul to simultaneously condense thirty-six special runes. These runes would then reflect upon the user, creating a wondrously profound ’clearing mirror’ from nothing.

The difficulty lay in condensing all thirty-six special runes simultaneously. ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

It required a Martial Artist to possess a powerful soul foundation, as well as a natural gift for incredibly fast reactions and the ability to split their focus.

Even with all his cultivation and the boosts from his innate talents, "Spiritual Insight" and "Fleeting Moment," Yu Fei barely met the requirements to begin learning this technique.

The requirements were incredibly harsh, but Yu Fei practiced diligently every day without fail.

He coveted the effects Ye Shuping had described, and he was intensely curious about the miraculous perception Secret Technique.

Each of the strange runes required for the Void Clearing Mirror was a three-dimensional structure whose fine details were in constant flux, like a dynamic 3D puzzle. A cultivator had to seize a fleeting moment to perfectly align all the runes. Only then could they be considered to have mastered the basics of this wondrous technique.

This training regimen left Yu Fei utterly exhausted by the time he went to bed each night.

He felt like his brain had turned to mush. Practicing the Void Clearing Mirror was like tying his brain cells into a series of dead knots, and practicing the Star Soul Forging Scripture afterward was like taking a sharp knife and painstakingly picking each one of them apart.

This resulted in him having a few minutes of complete mental blankness every morning when he woke up.

In cultivation, one loses all track of time. When he next awoke from his deep meditation, his eyes were vacant and unfocused.

"Esteemed Master, there is a package for you."

Xiaohai reminded him, tiptoeing over carefully.

As a mature artificial intelligence, it had keenly analyzed that its master’s emotional state had been abnormal lately.

"This is..."

He stared blankly at the package in his hands. He opened it to find a row of twelve vials filled with an emerald-green liquid.

Having just finished practicing the Star Soul Forging Scripture, his mind was still sluggish. He instinctively read the engraved label one word at a time.

"Senluo... Jade... Fruit... Seems... I can drink it..."

He then mechanically unwrapped the vials and downed them, one after another.

"Tastes pretty good... just a little too sweet..."

An energy filled with vitality coursed through his body. Yu Fei felt an inexplicable sense of comfort, and even the throbbing in his head seemed to subside.

With that, he flopped onto his bed and fell into a deep sleep.

That night, he had an unusually vivid dream. In it, he seemed to have become a strange thread of light.

This thread of light constantly intertwined and wove itself into complex patterns. These patterns resonated with one another, suddenly erupting with immense power that destroyed everything with resolute, cold indifference.

The next morning, Yu Fei rose in a groggy state, still filled with the marvelous sensation from his dream.

He immediately sat cross-legged on his bed. His mind was empty. His soul power, moving like the thread of light from his dream, rapidly formed the three-dimensional runes.

"Resonance..."

This was the natural insight gained from his strange night-long dream. In that moment, Yu Fei grasped a flash of inspiration. The thirty-six runes suddenly connected, head to tail, and released a dazzling pulse of energy.

In his sea of consciousness, a fantastically clear and wondrous mirror materialized, hovering above the core of his soul.

The Void Clearing Mirror was complete!