Shushan: Extinction

Chapter 98 Learning Thunder Magic
By this time, the goods had been almost sold out, and even the person selling at the stage had changed. Judging from his attire, he should be a disciple or something like that. The crowd of onlookers gradually dispersed.

After all, the remaining monster blood and monster meat could be smelled with a fishy odor more than ten meters away. There was no doubt that the smell was extremely bad, so the number of people interested in it naturally dropped sharply.

At this time, Gong Tianwu stepped forward, bowed and said:

"This big brother is invited."

The disciple who stayed behind was also good-tempered. As the saying goes, harmony brings wealth, so he greeted warmly:

"Do you have a spirit beast? My stall sells the rare Kui beef, which is a great tonic for spirit beasts. If you miss this opportunity, you will never find it again!"

Gong Tianwu hesitated for a while, then whispered:

"To be honest, I came here to help Master purchase monster blood to make fertilizer for the flowers. He only gave me ten spirit stones, which also included the running fee. If it's economical, I'll ask a few junior brothers to come to your place to buy together."

The disciple was not annoyed when he heard this:

"Okay, then I'll give you eight spiritual stones of Kui Niu blood, and a spiritual leather bag that can maintain the spiritual energy in the blood for a long time!"

As he spoke, he took out a leather bag and poured blood into it.

Gong Tianwu looked carefully and found that the leather bag seemed to be the same one used to hold mare's milk. The shop selling this thing was only thirty meters away, but people with high emotional intelligence would see through it but not say anything.

After some bargaining, Gong Tianwu bought four leather bags filled with demon blood for eight spirit stones and took them directly back to the inn.

The reason why Gong Tianwu paid for this thing was because he suddenly thought of something, that is, the Wanling Thunder Method requires one to have corresponding talent in one's body in order to practice it.

The demon blood brought back at this time contained a very weak Kuiniu bloodline, but Kuiniu was a divine beast that was born with the ability to control thunder and lightning, so there was a high probability that the demon blood had the corresponding talent.

Therefore, as long as this demon blood is injected into one's body, wouldn't it satisfy the requirements for practicing the Wanling Thunder Technique?
Of course, if someone else did this, they would be courting death! If the demon blood entered their body, they would probably suffer from vomiting and diarrhea, which would be extremely painful, let alone directly drawing blood into their body.

However, don't forget that Gong Tianwu was practicing the Taoism of the Blood God Sect. The entry-level Blood Surge Power was said to be able to transform all the blood in the world for his own use, not to mention the upgraded version of the Blood Wheel Power.

Gong Tianwu took a deep breath and inserted his fingers into the leather bag. The blood wheel in his lower abdomen began to rotate rapidly, and began to absorb the demon blood containing the blood of the Kuiniu into his body.

To be on the safe side at the beginning, Gong Tianwu only absorbed a small amount of demon blood into his body. He was already in great pain, with cold sweat pouring down his forehead, and even some strange illusions appeared before his eyes.

It was also thanks to Gong Tianwu's strong will and the miraculous skills of the Blood God Sect that he was able to barely endure it.

Seizing this opportunity, Gong Tianwu began to silently recite the introductory secrets of the Wanling Thunder Method, and at the same time, began to sense the breath of thunder and lightning between heaven and earth as mentioned above.

Gong Tianwu originally thought that this step would be extremely obscure and difficult, because according to Shi Gong's description in the jade slip, his aptitude was already good, but it took him ten full years to get started!
But what Gong Tianwu didn't expect was that he could take this step so easily!
There was no time to think for a moment, and he hurriedly began to practice until his meridians could no longer bear it.

When it was time to rest, Gong Tianwu thought about it and realized that there were two reasons why he felt so relaxed:

First, the trace of Kuiniu blood in the body took effect.

Second, that is the cultivation of the Martial Saint.

After all, when practicing to this stage, the Martial Saint emphasizes transforming the vitality of heaven and earth into his own use. So does the power of thunder count as the vitality of heaven and earth? Of course it counts.

Next, Gong Tianwu began to go into seclusion, but after two days of practice, he found that although the Wanling Thunder Method was very fast to practice, it had two major shortcomings, which he was unable to overcome even after all his demon blood was consumed.

The first shortcoming is that it is easy to learn but difficult to master. Wanling Leifa reached the level of having a basic understanding of it within just one hour, but his progress stagnated thereafter.

According to Gong Tianwu's understanding, he originally did not have the talent to practice thunder magic, and now he relies entirely on demon blood to get started, so he can only practice to this level. After all, talent determines the upper limit, and diligence determines the lower limit.

Without the support of talent, your ceiling is here and no matter how hard you try, it will be useless.

The second shortcoming is that the Wanling Thunder Method conflicts with all the spells of the Blood God Sect, and the two cannot be used interchangeably.

Of course, it is not entirely true to say that Gong Tianwu gained nothing. The most suitable use of Wanling Thunder Method is when displaying the skills of a martial saint and using it in close combat. The power of thunder and lightning can be surrounded in the fists and palms, which is extremely powerful.

The disadvantage is that the cultivation of Wanling Thunder Method is too shallow, and three punches and two kicks will consume the power of thunder and lightning, so it must be used at the critical moment.

After that, Gong Tianwu went to look for the monks who had hunted down the Kuiniu bloodline monster, but learned that the remaining flesh and blood had been bought up by an alchemy workshop.

In order to prevent the spiritual energy in his flesh and blood from dissipating, he was used as an auxiliary material and added into the alchemy furnace that day, which left him with nothing but helpless sighs.

***
At this time, there was new progress in weakening the soul, and Gong Tianwu finally found a solution that suited him best:
There is a Taoist master named Qing You who is good at this. His specialty is the Soul-Killing Needle, which is extremely vicious and specifically designed to hurt the soul.

Without resistance, Master Qing You could control the power of the Soul-Killing Needle and weaken the soul bit by bit until he was satisfied with the situation.

Moreover, afterwards, as long as one takes a pill made by Master Qing You, one will be able to recover as before without any future troubles.

Of course, there are always imperfections in everything, because Qing You Zhenren will be invited to attend a Dharma Assembly in three days, and the place where the Dharma Assembly is held is thousands of miles away.

Therefore, if Gong Tianwu wants to explore Shimen Village again, he must go find Master Qingyou within these three days.

Gong Tianwu's original plan was to wait until he had successfully passed the tribulation before leisurely planning his trip to Shimen Village, but at this time Kang took the initiative to step forward and give a hint:

"Your calamity should come at dawn fifteen days from now. Based on the various information that has been fed back, the calamity you will be going through this time should be a typical heart fire calamity."

Gong Tianwu rarely saw Kang actually willing to take the initiative to give a hint, so he hurriedly asked:
"Can you explain clearly what these disasters I have to face are all about?"

Kang Dao:

"After you form a bond with me, you will be able to reincarnate continuously. As long as your soul's life span lasts, you will be immortal."

"There is a saying: Jump out of the three realms and be outside the five elements. This actually explains it very clearly."

"But because of this, your actions have gone against the laws of heaven, so you must face heaven's punishment."

Gong Tianwu frowned and said:

"Is the way of heaven so wise? Is it targeting me like this? Will I be punished if I violate the rules?"

Kang shook his head and said:

"That's not the case. Heaven is ruthless and vast. How could it possibly target a mere mortal like you? Even my true form is just a drop in the ocean in front of it."

Gong Tianwu said:

"Then why do I deserve to be punished?"

Kang Dao:

"Let me give you an example so you can understand. If you go into the water to collect pearls, will you suffocate? Suffocation is your punishment for going into the water to collect pearls!"

"Violating the laws of nature is just like entering the water. In fact, there is no right or wrong, reward or punishment. There is only compliance and resistance!"

"If you follow the way of the water, you won't be in danger of drowning, but you will be doomed to miss the pearl. If you go against the way of the water, you will have to pay the price of suffocation!"

"If you follow the way of heaven, you will have to endure birth, aging, sickness, death, and the mysteries of the womb! If you go against the way of heaven, you will have to endure the three disasters and five calamities that come with it!"

Gong Tianwu sighed:

"After hearing what you said, I think I understand a little bit. Can you be more specific? Which three disasters and five calamities are they?"

Kang Dao:

"The three disasters refer to natural disasters, life disasters, and spiritual disasters."

"The five calamities refer to birth, aging, sickness, death, and suffering!"

"Now as time goes by, you should be able to clearly feel the coming of the calamity, right?" Gong Tianwu nodded and said:
"Yes, it will probably arrive in half a month."

Kang Dao:

"What you are facing this time is the bitter calamity among the five calamities. This calamity is not particularly dangerous, but it is extremely painful and difficult to endure. It changes in many ways and there should be many variations."

"But according to my observation, the calamity-response heart fire is most likely related to your practice of the Blood God Sect's technique. This sect's technique is very easy to trigger heart fire. The deeper the cultivation, the more severe the heart fire."

Gong Tianwu was shocked after hearing this and said:

"Then I didn't hit the jackpot this time?"

This time when he went on a business trip to the north, Gong Tianwu had been working tirelessly to find a way to eliminate the heat and poison brought by the blood circulation in his body.

In fact, it stands to reason that he has only reached the third level of Qi Refining, and the heat poison would not cause much harm. But for some reason, Gong Tianwu always felt that this thing was like a maggot on the heel, very uncomfortable, and he must get rid of it as soon as possible.

On this issue, he just felt that he was just like an obsessive-compulsive patient with mysophobia, but now that he thought about it carefully, he must have sensed the corresponding crisis in his subconscious.

Kang Dao:

"You didn't hit the jackpot by accident. This is more like an intuition to avoid danger and seek good fortune."

"In Earth's terms, it's called the seventh sense. In Taoist terms, it's a sudden impulse to calculate with your fingers! In martial arts terms, it's like the cicada senses the coming of autumn before the wind blows."

Gong Tianwu said:

"So this is ah?"

Kang continued:
"The benefits of your reincarnation this time are much better than I expected. You have obtained a lot of extra karma points. So now I can give you a choice, which is to consume all the karma points and then trigger this heart fire disaster in advance."

Gong Tianwu was surprised:

"Ah? Can this still happen?"

Kang Dao:

"Of course, the usefulness of the causal points is incomparable. Triggering a small catastrophe is really nothing."

Gong Tianwu said cautiously:
"The consequences of triggering it in advance should reduce the intensity of the Heart Fire Tribulation, and my chances of overcoming it will be greatly increased. However, everything has its pros and cons. What do you think are the cons?"

Kang Dao:

"The disadvantage is that you have to consume a lot of causal points, and this small calamity was triggered before it matured. Then after this calamity, the time for the next calamity to come will be shortened and the intensity will increase."

Gong Tianwu pondered for a while and said:
"Since you said that I now have the intuition to avoid danger and seek good fortune, then I choose not to trigger it in advance and keep the original plan unchanged."

"After all, there are still fifteen days before I can overcome the Heart Fire Tribulation, and I happen to have prepared a large amount of materials, so I still want to go to the Ice Sea in Shimen Village first."

Kang Dao:

“It’s good to follow your heart.”

***
In fact, going to the mysterious area outside Shimen Village is something Gong Tianwu has always been thinking about.
He always felt that there seemed to be some huge secret hidden there, and that it was very important to him.

More importantly, Gong Tianwu now has enough patience. He has no intention of trying to eat a fat man at once. His plan is divided into six steps!
This is just the first step, which is to rely on the Martial Saint's agility to roughly explore the periphery. At the same time, he also needs to disguise himself and collect some basic information.

After making this decision, Gong Tianwu went to find Qing You Zhenren and asked him to perform a spell to forcibly damage his soul to the level of an ordinary person. It can be seen that the "Spiritual Consciousness" item on the attribute panel also turned bright red, which was greatly reduced.

After the spell was completed, Master Qing You warned, probably because Gong Tianwu paid so readily:

"Although I don't know the purpose of your doing this, there is one thing I must explain. Your spiritual power is much stronger than that of ordinary people, so your recovery speed must be quite fast."

"Plus, I used the most gentle method when performing the spell, without using any curses. So according to my guess, even if you don't take medicine, your soul injury will recover in just over a month."

"So if you want to do something, you have to hurry up, otherwise it will be easy to change."

After hearing the words of the immortal, Gong Tianwu thought about it, then took his luggage and decisively left the city and rushed towards Shimen Village day and night. In this way, he would definitely make it in time.

Gong Tiantian had to sleep in the open air five times a day on the journey, which was quite tiring. It only took him a few days to reach Shimen Village.

Although he was in a hurry, Gong Tianwu was also very clear about the principle of sharpening the knife before chopping wood, so he found a place in the village to eat a hot soup and rice, and then had a good sleep to recover to his best condition, and then quietly left for the future extremely yin place.

Before going here, Gong Tianwu specially changed his disguise and left only one storage bag on his body, which was filled with necessities such as pills, healing medicines, weapons, etc. The remaining storage bags were buried.

Then he put on the linen clothes he got from Shimen Village, picked up an axe, disguised himself as a woodcutter, and walked into the woods.

After entering this time, Gong Tianwu did not feel any discomfort and was overjoyed. He then started to chop a load of firewood and put it on his back, and then began to explore inside.

It was around two o'clock in the afternoon and the sun was still shining down, but after Gong Tianwu went deeper inside, he found that the place was emitting an indescribable cold atmosphere.

The sunlight here seems to have become timid, and can only barely penetrate the dense treetops, casting mottled light and shadows, wandering on the ground like a ghost.

Compared with other explorers, Gong Tianwu from the future has a clear exploration direction, which is to move towards the future sea icebergs.

After walking about two or three miles, he began to realize that something was wrong, because if he was heading in the right direction, he should have seen the sea.

Fortunately, Gong Tianwu was well prepared for this and had already learned the corresponding common sense. He first took out a "Dinglan ruler" from his arms. This thing is similar to the dragon-seeking ruler. It was originally used to measure the size of the tomb. Its size is one foot, two inches and eight points long.

One foot is approximately 38.78 centimeters long and is divided into ten grids with the cross of "wealth, loss, prosperity, death, official position, righteousness, suffering, prosperity, harm, and children" engraved on it.

However, Gong Tianwu does not need such complicated functions at the moment. After directly inserting it into the ground, he carefully checked the rotation of Ding Lan ruler.

If there is a formation here, it will definitely involve the veins of the ground below, and then circulate slowly, allowing the formation to exert its maximum power according to local conditions.

This is similar to the principle of "cutting the bends and making the straight" when developing water conservancy projects.

Ding Lan's ruler is most sensitive to the flow of the earth's veins, so it can easily and quickly measure whether there is any formation in this place.

It can be seen that after blowing a breath, Ding Lan's ruler rotated twice and pointed to the northwest, then stopped. This was repeated three times in a row and its direction remained unchanged, so it can be almost certain that there is no formation here.

"So what's deceiving people here is an illusion?"

Gong Tianwu took out a small bottle from his arms and smeared the sticky liquid inside on his eyes.

The liquid in the bottle is a mixture of cow's tears and incense ash from the Zhong Kui Temple. It is called the Dongzhen Agent, which has the effect of seeing through the darkness and breaking illusions. The disadvantage is that it will continuously consume one's own vitality.

After opening his eyes again after a while, Gong Tianwu suddenly felt that his vision had undergone subtle changes.

After walking more than a hundred meters, they discovered that a path had suddenly appeared in the forest, and it was paved with white stones. It was very recognizable, so Gong Tianwu was sure that he had never seen this path before.

Walking slowly along this path for only a hundred meters, Gong Tianwu felt that the surrounding environment had changed significantly:
The trees were tall and twisted, their trunks covered with thick moss and vines, like heavy shackles left by the years, binding them tightly in this endless darkness.

The branches and leaves of some old trees almost touch the ground, forming deep arches that seem like portals to another world.

There was a damp, musty smell in the air, and occasionally a subtle floral scent could be detected, but this floral scent was mixed with something disturbing.

Like the rustling of leaves in the wind, the sound echoed in the silent forest, being infinitely amplified, and even making Gong Tianwu feel heartbroken and anxious.

In addition, his own spiritual consciousness was damaged and suffered great restrictions, so this emotion was quickly amplified.

(End of this chapter)