Immortality Begins With Internal Breathing

Lin Zheyu examined the data in his mind. The long list of techniques filled him with a considerable sense of accomplishment. This was the 'empire' he had built over nearly two months.

"Cultivating demon arts consumed around 1000 units of Origin Force in total, somewhat more than I expected. Still, the results are quite good," Lin Zheyu said with a smile.

By cultivating demon arts, he had accumulated sufficient knowledge and insights into the Yao Dao. His next task was to use these accumulated insights as nourishment and transform them into the raw material needed to advance his martial cultivation.

Before refining and perfecting my divine patterns, I first need to sort through the techniques I've cultivated and resolve the conflicts between them, Lin Zheyu thought.

Divine patterns were like the precision machinery of his previous life. The more precise and perfect they became, the less tolerance they had for errors. Even the slightest flaw or conflict could render a precision instrument completely inoperable. His current divine patterns were still relatively crude and therefore had a high tolerance for errors.

If he refined them first, Lin Zheyu feared that the conflicts among the techniques within his body would intensify. The slightest mistake might even cause everything to collapse and lead to cultivation deviation. This was what concerned him most.

When I first created the Primordial Golden Body, my cultivation realm was too low, so both its foundation and underlying conception were somewhat lacking. The Primordial Golden Body simply cannot accommodate so many techniques forcibly transformed from demon arts. It's time to start anew and create an unprecedented martial cultivation technique... Lin Zheyu thought.

Sitting cross-legged in the void, he calmed his mind and immersed his consciousness in martial cultivation. Every experience he had undergone since transmigrating, from his weak beginnings to his present strength, flashed through his mind one after another. His immense martial cultivation insights collided fiercely with the Yao Dao, Shamanic Dao, Immortal Dao, and even the small amount he knew of the Barbarian Totem Dao. Through these continuous collisions, the contents of the various cultivation systems gradually fused, producing an endless stream of inspiration.

***

Time slowly passed.

In the blink of an eye, more than a month had gone by. This was the first time Lin Zheyu had spent so long doing nothing but contemplating, without pausing midway to perform extreme cultivation. He had immersed himself entirely in cultivation. He forgot the passage of time, his surroundings, and even his arrangements with Fan Hongwei, Cao Hongchang, and the others. Only martial cultivation remained in his mind.

Once martial cultivation reached the Shackles realm, there was no established path beyond it. Every martial artist had to explore for themselves and forge their own path of martial cultivation.

Ever since breaking free of the first Life Shackle and advancing to the Shackles realm, Lin Zheyu had been contemplating his future path. Although a vague direction had already taken shape in his mind, he had only ever been accumulating knowledge, experimenting, and exploring. He had never truly taken the first step along his own path of martial cultivation.

Now, through the martial cultivation technique he was about to create, Lin Zheyu was taking half a step toward exploring the future of martial cultivation. It could only be half a step. After all, he was still merely at the Shackles realm. However, his achievements within the Shackles realm were so extraordinary that he could no longer continue cultivating unless he took this half step.

Within the void inside the Primordial Chaos Pool, there was nothing but Lin Zheyu. He had specially created this space for his seclusion. Suddenly, a dazzling golden light erupted within the pitch-black void. His eyes snapped open as an unprecedentedly powerful momentum burst from his body.

"Next, I need to test whether the technique is feasible..." Lin Zheyu murmured.

After more than a month of seclusion, he had finally integrated all his knowledge and insights from the various cultivation systems he had mastered into martial cultivation. Using them as his foundation, he had formulated a highly inclusive set of guiding principles for martial cultivation. His next task was to use these principles as the foundation for creating a powerful martial cultivation technique. This was the most difficult step.

It was no easy task for other martial artists to create a technique corresponding to their own cultivation realm, much less one founded upon such an ambitious set of martial cultivation principles. Without decades, or even centuries, of exploration, experimentation, and trial and error, they wouldn't even be able to produce a prototype of a cultivable technique. For Lin Zheyu, however, this was far easier than formulating his guiding principles for martial cultivation.

"I'll call this entirely new technique the Martial Dao True Scripture!" Lin Zheyu said softly.

With a thought, an initial version of the Martial Dao True Scripture took shape within his consciousness. The data in his mind blurred for a moment before returning to normal. Unsurprisingly, this version of the technique was unworkable.

Martial Dao True Scripture 2.0...

Failed...

Martial Dao True Scripture 3.0...

Failed...

Martial Dao True Scripture 4.0...

Failed...

Martial Dao True Scripture 5.0...

Failed...

***

Failure after failure, attempt after attempt, Lin Zheyu exhausted the cultivation insights within his mind to formulate every possible version of the technique he could conceive. The aspirations behind this technique were simply too lofty, making it unprecedentedly difficult to create. Time held no meaning in cultivation...

More than ten thousand versions of the technique failed, but Lin Zheyu was not discouraged. Hundreds of thousands of versions failed, yet he still refused to give up. Then came the millionth version...

Oh, it worked!

Lin Zheyu's eyes snapped open, surprise and delight flashing through his exhausted gaze. He had finally succeeded. Through failure after failure and attempt after attempt, he had nearly exhausted all his accumulated knowledge and tested every possible technique he could conceive. If he had still failed to succeed, it would have meant either that his chosen direction was wrong or that his accumulation was far from sufficient. Neither was an outcome he wished to see.

Fortunately, he had succeeded, even if he had only created the cultivation method for the first stage. The beginning was always the most difficult. As long as he successfully created the technique, it didn't matter how difficult it was to cultivate, how painful the process might be, or how severe its side effects were. None of these posed a problem. With Origin Force at his disposal, Lin Zheyu could repeatedly perfect the technique through iteration and refinement.

I'll first cultivate the first stage of the Martial Dao True Scripture to Perfection. Once I've consolidated the foundation and accumulated sufficient cultivation experience, I'll create the second stage, third stage, and beyond... Lin Zheyu thought.

The first stage of the Martial Dao True Scripture embodied his guiding principles for martial cultivation. It was the foundation of everything and the basis of Lin Zheyu's cultivation. For the second stage, he intended to incorporate the Primordial Chaos True Art, which had already integrated Shamanic Dao cultivation methods.

The third stage would incorporate demon arts he had just cultivated to Perfection and forcibly transform them into martial cultivation techniques. This was merely his rough division of the technique's future contents. During actual cultivation, the divisions would not be so distinct. Each would be intertwined with the others, differing only in which aspect took precedence.

With the technique's issue resolved, all that remained was relentless cultivation. Lin Zheyu's figure flickered as he left the Primordial Chaos Pool and entered the demonic lake. He glanced up at the node's void beyond the lake. Several months had passed, and the number of yao had continued to increase.

Fortunately, the strongest yao capable of passing through the space-time node were still six-pattern yao at the Golden Core realm. As long as no seven-pattern yao at the Nascent Soul realm appeared, there would be no problem.

Thus, Lin Zheyu would not need to hold back too much when he began cultivating. He withdrew his gaze, exhaled softly, and cleared all distracting thoughts from his mind. After more than two consecutive months of seclusion, he had begun to miss cultivating with Origin Force. Closing his eyes, he sent out a thought: Use 20 units of Origin Force to cultivate the Martial Dao True Scripture.

In an instant, an immense surge of mysterious energy erupted and swept through Lin Zheyu's entire body.