The next day, Leon woke up at 5 AM as usual and started practicing the Ultimate Body Forging Art according to the memories in his mind. Although the Primordial Law Codex could increase his proficiency with different techniques, the direct increase it brought to his cultivation was quite minimal. So he had to cultivate diligently if he wanted to break through to the next realm. But this was not a big problem for Leon. With his understanding of the Ultimate Body Forging Art at the perfection realm, he just had to go through the motions according to his muscle memory and his cultivation would skyrocket without much effort.
The Ultimate Body Forging Art was a mysterious technique he had chanced upon inside a half destroyed palace in the forest. If not for this technique, Leon doubted whether he would even be able to cultivate to the 2nd heaven of the mortal realm with the Stone Fort Village's only cultivation technique, the Berserk Monkey Palm.
Woosh. Woosh.
Leon's hands moved like whips as he allowed his hands to move freely in the air. With each strike of his palm, a burst of audible airflow could be heard, as though energy was released from his palms at a single point, creating a strong impact.
This was the training style of the Ultimate Body Forging Art. It trained the body by infusing whip intent inside the human body, treating the body as a piece of metal which was continuously refined into a supreme weapon, while the body itself contained the very essence of a whip.
With Leon's understanding of this technique at the perfect level, he had acquired various perks. His bones, skin, and muscles were somewhat flexible like a whip. Even if a very large force was applied to his arm, instead of breaking like others, it might actually bend slightly and bounce back.
The next benefit was the ability to perfectly control forces and redirect them to any direction according to his will. For example, when Leon was battling the tiger yesterday, he had parried the claw strike of the tiger, which would have been impossible considering the difference in their cultivation realms.
The reason he was able to do it was because when the claw struck his saber, Leon redirected the impact of the blow through his hand to his feet and then to the ground below, successfully negating the force behind the strike.
Even when he hacked at the tiger's neck, due to the property of whip intent to concentrate the energy from the swing at the tip of the whip, each time Leon swung down his saber, the strength was far more than anyone at the 8th heaven of the mortal realm could muster.
[Primordial Law Codex - page no: 1]
[Owner: Leon (Human)]
[Body Realm (Mortal): 7th Heaven]
(Life Essence: 450/812)
[Spirit Realm (Mortal): 1/10]
(Soul Essence: 20/100)
[Elemental Grade: ???]
After an hour of practice, Leon finished his training and freshened up. The training this time had increased his life essence from 204 to 450, which was way faster than usual.
With a satisfied smile, Leon swung both of his sabers to his waist and went to John's house.
"Big brother, I am off to that palace once more. You coming?" Leon called out when he reached outside his house.
After a few minutes, John groggily opened the door and shook his head. "That old bastard is crazy. If you want to be beaten up, go. Do not try to drag me in. Last time, that old bastard even kicked me in the balls."
Leon shrugged. "Fine. Be prepared tonight. We will enter the Devil Swamp to honey. If we let this opportunity pass, we will have to wait over a month for the next full moon."
John's mouth twitched. "Last time, we were stung until our heads looked like pig heads. Do you really want to go in again?"
Leon snorted. "The profit we made from that single trip was over a 100 iron grade coins. From that, 20 percent was given to you, while the healing ointment will only cost around 15 mortal realm coins. Are you sure you do not want to come?"
"Stop it, kid. I understand. I will prepare the barrels to collect honey," John waved his hand impatiently and closed the door.
Leon smiled lightly and walked outside the Stone Fort Village into the forest after buying a bottle of 50 year old fine wine from Uncle Derin's house.
As he entered the deep forest area, he started encountering wild beasts frequently. But with Leon's strength, these ordinary beasts were no threat to him. He swiftly dealt with them and collected the beast cores before continuing his journey without taking any other materials from the beasts.
About three hours later, Leon reached outside a huge palace which looked ancient and luxurious. Even though it looked worn out and covered in moss like a horror mansion, the palace still had an allure which made one uncontrollably attracted to it.
Leon jumped over the broken wall of the mansion and directly walked inside through the door covered in spider webs and moss.
He and John had accidently found this place two years ago when they were hunting in the wild. Out of curiosity, both entered in to explore only to see an old man with messy hair staring at a huge painting hung on the main hall.
Leon and John tried to strike up a conversation with the old man and soon they became friends.
But the only problem was that this old man liked to spar with them every time they met in the name of giving guidance to the younger generation. And without a doubt, every time, Leon and John were thrashed so badly that it was nothing short of torture. But thanks to this, both of their combat skills improved so much that no one in the village could even be considered a tenth as good as them.
Leon walked through the main hall and soon noticed a robust old man with white hair and a long beard sitting in a meditative position in front of a 30 meter square painting on the wall.
The painting was mostly damaged, likely due to its age. From the parts that were intact, one could see small nail sized human figures doing several poses as though they were performing some martial arts sequence. If you looked closely, there was also the qi flow pattern for each pose drawn on the bodies of these figures. The entire picture was a collection of such small figures totaling more than 5 million of them in different poses.
"Brat, how is it? Any progress with the technique?" The old man's eyes lit up when he saw Leon coming in.
Leon tossed the wine bottle to the old man and smiled. "Did I not tell you? It is easy to decipher this technique if we can study techniques compatible with this painting and integrate the understanding from it into this. Have you thought about this idea?"
The old man caught the wine bottle and rolled his eyes. "Bullshit. About 80 percent of this technique depicted in the wall only have the cultivation poses, but the intent behind most of these poses has already faded away due to erosion of time. If you try to rashly circulate without knowing where the qi circulation should start and where it should end, the most likely outcome is that you will die with your acupoints exploding."
Leon smiled mockingly at the old man. "Senior, you are evaluating a genius with the same eye that you use for a normal person."
The old man's mouth twitched when he heard this. "A crippled bloodline heart, spiritual core completely damaged, vital core already fallen to the single layer level. As for the elemental cores, I cannot even sense them, likely destroyed completely as well. And you dare call yourself a genius?"
Leon's expression stiffened when he heard this. "Can you explain?"
The old man shook his head. "First you explain why your body is in such a state. I wanted to ask you this question long ago, but every time you came, that kid was with you. Since you are alone today, let us speak about this first."
Leon was not surprised to know that the old man could tell his bloodline was crippled. After all, he had already guessed this old man might be a hidden expert long ago. What surprised him was the term 'single layer core' that the old man used, as he had no idea what that meant.
After a moment of pause, Leon shrugged his shoulders. "I was actually from a prominent family, born to a war slave my father brought to serve him. When I first awakened my bloodline heart, my mother hid it from my father fearing they would harm me, since I was not favored in the family."
"But seven years ago, they somehow found out about it. My mother tried to protect me but she was killed for the crime of speaking up for her own son. In the end, they threatened me with my sister's life and I had no choice but to extract my own bloodline heart and give it to my mother's killers."
"After that, I ran away from my home and ended up in this forest. By the villagers' grace, me and my sister were accepted as members of the Stone Fort Village and now we have been living here for seven years already."
The old man took a sip from the wine bottle Leon had brought and sighed. "Are you angry?"
Leon looked at the old man strangely. "They killed my mother and made me pluck out my own bloodline heart. Ever since, I have been living with severe pain in my chest, especially when I circulate my life force. Do you expect me to thank those bastards for this?"
The old man chuckled. "Anyway, I take back my previous words. You really are a genius, perhaps even the best I have seen in my entire life."
Leon shook his head. "Old man, I was not boasting earlier. I really improved the technique displayed on the wall by merging the insights I have earned from practicing the Stone Fort Village's cultivation technique, the Berserk Monkey Palm."
With that, Leon started demonstrating the poses of the Ultimate Body Forging Art in front of the old man.