Chapter 13: The Titan Godslayer Canon

And then...

Nathan discovered that besides the Mystic-Gold iron thread between his brows, there was one other peculiar spot inside his body.

In his lower abdomen coiled a mass of strange black light, bleeding out wisps and threads of black aether that spread to every corner of his body. Only the region near his brow was free of black aether—or rather, it wasn't that there was none, but that any black aether that approached the Mystic-Gold iron thread there got devoured by it.

Now and then it put out one or several feeler-like strands of black light, but they soon drew back in. Where the Mystic-Gold iron thread asserted its presence with overbearing force every second of every day, this eerie mass of black light had almost no presence at all.

If it weren't his own inborn awakened bloodline, he'd never have noticed the countless pure-black runes sinking and floating within that hazy black light. Sensing the boy's attention, the myriad black runes came dancing out, shaping themselves into a formula as well, called—the Titan Godslayer Canon!

Inexperienced as he was, even Nathan got it now: he'd awakened two bloodborn bloodlines at the same time. One was obviously the legacy of that peerless Titan who'd smashed the many-tiered palace tree with one blow of his rod; the other was the Ten-Color Bloomvine that had grown from that many-tiered palace tree itself.

Whether this sort of thing counted as common among bloodborn, he had no idea—but either way, neither one was the Yggdrasil Line, that much was certain.

Mildly stunned, Nathan couldn't resist muttering aloud: "So this is the legendary lineage inheritance? Then why didn't the Godstone at the Greyhaven Wardens' Office detect that I had one?"

The Ten-Color Bloomvine's bloodline had awakened early and digested every one of those "meteors" he'd swallowed—more than a hundred times mightier than the Mystic-Gold iron thread. The Titan's bloodline had awakened late, never nourished by the "meteors'" energy, so it could only plunder the Ten-Color Bloomvine's black-light vitae, and for now it was still very weak. But comparing the two: the Titan could smash the thirty-three-tiered palace tree in one blow, while the Ten-Color Bloomvine was merely a burl that dropped off the thirty-three-tiered palace tree. Clearly, the Titan's bloodline was the mightier.

After a bit of thought, Nathan still chose the Ennead Crucible, sank his mind into the Mystic-Gold iron thread, and began the first Art session of his life.

This Ennead Crucible tempered tendons, vessels, sinew, and bone, cleansed the marrow and refined the organs, with the aether moving through the four elemental strata of the skin—a first-rank, top-of-the-top method for forging the physical body, and not merely "Sinew-Reforging" alone. Judging by its effects, it really ought to be called the Ennead Crucible, Marrow-Cleansing, Bone-Tempering, Organ-Forging, Four-Element-Skin Method. The way in was to first open up the body's innate eight wandering bloodways and twelve ordinal bloodways.

Nathan didn't know a thing about bloodways, but his newly awakened X-ray-like vision let him see the flows of vitae inside his body crystal clear, and he could easily work out the ins and outs of the eight wandering bloodways and the twelve ordinal bloodways.

The Ennead Crucible was broad, deep, and endlessly subtle; it flowed as the heart wished, all naturally. With a slight turn of thought, a Mystic-Gold iron thread set out from the spot between his brows, poured into the brow node, rose up the forehead, passed through the five brow-nodes, and converged at the crown node atop his head. A branch of it ran sideways from the crown node to the corner above the ear. The main trunk drove deeper from the crown node, linking with the brain; emerging, it passed through the nape's three knotted nodes, then ran down both sides of the spine to the waist-node, bored along the muscles flanking the spine deep into the abdomen, linked with the kidneys, and entered the bladder. A branch line ran down flanking the spine from the waist node through the sacral nodes, bent inward and upward, then down again beside the tip of the tailbone, passing through the buttock and down the back of the thigh to the knee-node. Another branch ran down from the back of the neck, past the shoulder blade, through the hip joint, and down the thigh, all the way to the outer tip of the little toe—the bloodway's last and farthest node.

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This bloodway route was precisely one of the twelve ordinal bloodways—the Solar Bloodway!

The icy essence from the "meteors" Nathan had swallowed had long since been swallowed up by that mass of black light in his lower abdomen and mostly digested, converted into that strange black-light vitae that could pass through matter. More than ninety percent of this black-light vitae had pooled in his lower abdomen; only a tenth was scattered through the veins of his whole body.

With the Ennead Crucible running, the Mystic-Gold iron thread began to extend without stop, driving straight through the Solar Bloodway like a hot knife through butter, seizing every wisp of black-light vitae along the way to nourish and grow itself, tyrannical and fierce to the extreme. That mass of black light in his lower abdomen offered no resistance at all; its eight streams of black light pulsed in and out, faintly cowed.

More than seventy percent of bloodborn, the moment they awaken their bloodline, condense a heart-seed in their body!

The heart-seed was the wellspring of bond-power and also stood for the grade of the awakened bloodline. Its structure could be anything under the sun, any shape at all—the Mystic-Gold iron thread at his brow and that mass of black light in his lower abdomen both counted as rather exotic varieties.

Bloodborn bloodlines were graded in five ranks: supreme, sub, third, fourth, and fifth.

From supreme on down to fifth, bloodline quality decreased step by step, and heart-seed structures grew simpler. The mightier a bloodborn's awakened bloodline, the stronger they generally were and the easier Art came; the worse the bloodline, the weaker they were, and Art was harder than for higher-grade bloodlines. The fifth rank was so low that, despite awakening a bloodborn bloodline, one couldn't even condense a heart-seed. A small portion could manage it through acquired training, but most would never be able to formally practice any spells in this lifetime, keeping only a few inborn little abilities—and those little abilities were basically not worth mentioning.

The World Tree was a sub-tier bloodline. The Ten-Color Bloomvine was clearly stronger than the World Tree—maybe a supreme-tier bloodline. And the Titan's bloodline was stronger still, beyond any way of estimating its grade.

With the Solar Bloodway opened, one small push from Nathan and the Mystic-Gold iron thread swam through the bloodway at will. His ten toes flexed slightly, the muscles across his whole body drew taut, giving off faint twanging sounds.

Nathan knocked off a few low-squat dribbling moves with ease—technique he'd never quite managed before now came off smooth and effortless, like it was nothing. He was over the moon, gloating: "What a Method, this Ennead Crucible. One session and my fitness and coordination have jumped way up. Give it a month and wouldn't my body be on NBA players' level?"

Nathan rocked on his feet and ran through a few moves—a crossover, a spin, a jumper. The first few came as easily as breathing, but that last jump shot ate him alive. One light hop, and his explosive leg power shot his head straight into the ceiling.

If Nathan hadn't reacted fast and hurriedly fired up his black-light vitae, he'd have smacked right into it.

Thanks to the black-light vitae's matter-penetrating property, Nathan passed straight through the ceiling; opening his eyes, he was looking into the bedroom of the family that lived upstairs.

A dainty little foot dangled off the bed, swayed in front of Nathan's head, then gave a casual little flex—and landed right on his face. Who knows what the owner of that dainty foot was dreaming about, but the toes actually went and nimbly "felt around" on his face!