Chapter 142: The True Ultimate Darkness
Half a day after leaving Shopkeeper Zhang’s residence, Tang Wen was no longer worried about money.
It wasn’t that he had gotten the money or thought of a viable way to earn it.
Rather, he recalled that he had already arranged to see the Night Divine Fist’s Contemplation Method in three days.
For a mere Martial Artist like him, coming up with five thousand taels in just three days would be too outrageous, no matter how he did it.
It was better to learn the Contemplation Method first, then decide whether to raise the money to experience the "Extreme Darkness."
For the next few days, Tang Wen alternated between practicing several Cultivation Techniques without leaving his courtyard.
「Three days passed in the blink of an eye.」
Early in the morning, Tang Wen went to find Shopkeeper Zhang, bringing another five hundred taels of silver with him.
With the Silver Coins handed over, the shopkeeper nodded and a smile spread across his face.
"Follow me."
Shopkeeper Zhang led Tang Wen into an underground stone chamber.
As soon as they entered, a soft, bright white light filled the entire secret chamber.
In the center of the ceiling, a basketball-sized white orb glowed brightly.
"What is this?"
"A type of ore from deep underground. It glows naturally."
Tang Wen was greatly surprised.
Shopkeeper Zhang said, "See the lever on that pillar over there? Flip it up, and this light source will retract, plunging the room into pitch darkness. It’s eight in the morning now. Someone will come knocking at eight tonight!"
Tang Wen nodded. Looking at the two Visualization Images on the wall, he asked, "And these are?"
"Two Visualization Images," Shopkeeper Zhang said matter-of-factly. "The one on the left is for the Core Power, and the one on the right is for the first form of the Night Divine Fist."
Huh?
’It’s not the complete set?’
Tang Wen struggled to control his expression. "Are the other forms in different rooms? I can only see these two?"
Shopkeeper Zhang chuckled. "Aren’t two enough for you to practice? Young man, don’t bite off more than you can chew. The remaining six forms are in six other rooms. Each payment grants you one entry, and you can only enter one room at a time."
’Son of a bitch.’
’So that means I need another six thousand taels of silver in total, right?’
’Damn it!’
’That damn profiteer!’
"Understood," Tang Wen forced a smile.
Shopkeeper Zhang turned and left, leaving Tang Wen alone in the room.
He resisted the urge to curse out loud.
Still unable to calm his mind, Tang Wen paced around the room a few times.
He confirmed there were no peepholes or observers.
Then, he settled into a stance and began practicing the Eight Vajra Techniques, one form after another.
Over and over again.
He didn’t open his eyes until his mind was as still as water.
He walked over to the mural-like Visualization Images.
Unlike the ones at Flame Camp and from the Wang Family of Five Families City, the Visualization Images before him were far more exquisite.
Tang Wen carefully touched the edge of one.
It was slightly cool and soft to the touch.
It was made of some material he had never encountered before.
Taking a few steps back, he sat on the cushion on the floor.
He focused on the first image, the one for the Core Power, and concentrated his gaze.
BUZZ.
A barren wilderness appeared before his eyes.
The red sun began to rise, its light brilliant and vast.
The wilderness was bathed in a golden hue.
Ordinary sand and gravel transformed into golden dunes.
The sun slowly climbed, reaching its zenith and casting down endless rays of light.
The shadows of the tiny pebbles on the ground were crushed into minuscule dots by the fierce sunlight, huddling beside the stones.
Gradually, the sun began to set.
The shadows of the stones stretched out.
The sun disappeared below the horizon, and the sky turned a deep orange.
The sky turned completely black, and darkness enveloped the plains.
Night had fallen.
Tang Wen had never experienced the night with such detail and profundity.
It was a starless, moonless night.
So dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
The night was tranquil, yet it seemed to hide endless mysteries.
The night wore on, seemingly without change.
But upon closer perception, it seemed to shift from faint to dense, reach an extreme, and then fade again.
Tang Wen was puzzled.
’This just seems like a normal day, doesn’t it?’
’This is the Core Power Contemplation Method for the Night Divine Fist?’
’Are they kidding me?’
He watched it several more times but was still clueless.
He calmed his mind and tried to perform the Visualization, picturing the light and shadow, and finally arriving at the silent night.
It seemed to have some effect, but it was far too weak. He threw a sudden punch but couldn’t even generate a sonic boom.
Even a casual Inch Force punch from him was more powerful.
He watched the Contemplation Method two more times but still couldn’t figure it out.
But the Night Divine Fist couldn’t possibly be this weak.
Otherwise, it would have vanished into the annals of history long ago for lack of students.
’So where’s the problem?’
He racked his brain but came up with nothing.
He decided to just look at the first form of the Night Divine Fist: Shadow Kill!
Darkness cloaked the body, the fist struck like a shadow.
It was incredibly fast and violent.
The fist left a sky full of afterimages, a blur of real and illusory.
A glimmer of understanding sparked in Tang Wen’s mind. ’I have to borrow the Traits of the night.’
’Only then can I make the real and illusory so convincing.’
The key was to visualize the night.
’But how can the night possibly have any Power?’
In his past life, Tang Wen had grown up in a modern, peaceful world.
His impression of the night was one of peace and tranquility.
Even on the rare occasions he walked at night and got the paranoid feeling of being followed, his fear would vanish as soon as he stepped under a streetlight.
Of course, this wasn’t to say that the night in his original world wasn’t dangerous.
It was just that Tang Wen had been lucky; the dangers of the night had never found him.
Later, when he started working, he grew to love staying up late.
He felt that only at night, when all was silent, could he enjoy the rare, precious free time that was truly his own!
He certainly never found the night to be terrifying or scary.
His upbringing had determined this perspective.
Shadow Kill!
Tang Wen performed the Visualization and threw another punch. It was limp and powerless.
It was like a lover’s playful tap.
Tang Wen was left speechless.
’This shouldn’t be called Shadow Kill. It should be called the Pretty Me Up Fist.’
The problem still lay in the fact that he hadn’t grasped the Core Power of the Night Divine Fist.
’For a Visualization Fist Technique, the emphasis is on the Visualization.’
’This punch of mine has only scratched the surface of the form.’
’I’m not drawing any of the proper Power from the Visualization at all.’
’But isn’t the night just a part of the natural cycle of the sun and moon?’
’What the hell kind of Power could it have?’
’And what about that "Extreme Darkness" Shopkeeper Zhang mentioned?’
Tang Wen sighed.
He sat on the cushion, back hunched and right hand propping up his chin, frowning in thought.
The knowledge from his past life gave him a scientific understanding of how night and day occurred.
’If I can’t borrow Power from visualizing an ordinary night...’
’...why not try visualizing the transition itself?’
Back when he was first exposed to Visualization Martial Arts, he would never have dared to try something like this.
But now, he knew more than one set of Visualization Martial Arts.
He had long since developed his own understanding of Contemplation Methods.
He estimated that randomly altering the Core Power’s Contemplation Method would be a little dangerous, but it shouldn’t be a major problem.
He immersed himself in the Visualization, focusing his Spiritual Power. An orange-red dusk appeared in his mind.
Dusk gradually faded... and the perspective suddenly zoomed out. A massive, cratered sphere slowly rotated, blocking the glowing sun.
BUZZ.
Tang Wen’s vision blurred.
He was forced out of the Visualization state.
He had failed.
The brief attempt left his mind fuzzy and drowsy. He felt completely drained of energy.
His condition was terrible.
His hand trembled as he picked up his bamboo flask. He managed to drink a little water, and without even bothering to lay out the Beast Skins he had brought, his head lolled to one side, and he instantly fell into a deep sleep.
He had altered the Contemplation Method too drastically, causing a massive drain on his Spiritual Power.
Learning a Contemplation Method already required one’s full, wholehearted focus.
One had to completely believe in the visualized image to imbue the Fist Technique with its corresponding might.
Tang Wen had visualized the movement of celestial bodies to bring about the night.
In a single instant, his Spiritual Power had gushed out like water from a dynamited dam, vanishing completely.
「When he woke up.」
He checked his pocket watch. Three hours had passed.
Exactly two sleep cycles.
His energy had recovered to about eighty or ninety percent.
Tang Wen adjusted his state, looked at the Dark Divine Fist’s Core Power Visualization Image, and immersed himself once more.
While asleep, he had figured something out: darkness has Attributes.
The restlessness of a spring night.
The stifling heat of a summer night.
The crispness of an autumn night.
The freezing cold of a winter night.
The darkness in a mountain village graveyard is subjectively eerie.
The darkness of Yihong Tower, filled with the scents of cosmetics, alcohol, smoke, and bodily fluids, is decadent and corrupting.
But all of these were too abstract.
They held no real Power.
There was no point in trying to visualize them.
But that was fine. Tang Wen had already thought of a kind of darkness that could truly be called "extreme."
It was the eternal night found in the corners of the universe—a place in the void of space untouched by the light of any star for hundreds of millions of years.
Ice, deathly silence, and nothingness were its core melody.
That was an eternal and extreme darkness.
Everything fell silent.
Tang Wen closed his eyes, feeling as if he were floating in that eternal, silent darkness.
SWISH!
He opened his eyes, and they were filled with cold indifference.
Shadow Kill!
WHOOSH~
A sound like rushing wind echoed through the room.
Tang Wen threw a single punch, creating three afterimages.
Two were illusory, one was real—and the real could become illusory, the illusory real.
As he executed the Fist Technique, a faint white mist appeared in the air.
The temperature in the secret chamber dropped slightly.
’It worked!’