Since she had already given him a signal, it would be unwise for him to waste time.

Illyan completely let go of his worries and began to gather the blood energy.

Normally, the scripture would take a very long time to take effect, and the blood energy would be misplaced and wander through the body.

That was because this was an unorthodox way to awaken the blood energy.

There were only two orthodox ways to create blood energy that would appear in your pathways.

One was for body refiners or other body practitioners to reach the limit of their bodies, and the second was for one to have inborn might within them. Sorcerers were like this.

However, Illyan was different. He had obtained the strange technique from the aborigines, which actually focused the essence of his body deep into his blood, purifying and strengthening it.

The other effect was the blood energy condensing within it.

While this was also considered an unorthodox technique, it achieved results in the same way as the orthodox methods, making this technique quite valuable.

Now, because of his already formed blood energy, it started to attract the power that Illyan was trying to form, empowering his blood.

Aurelia, who observed this, didn’t show a surprised expression as she had already guessed this outcome.

However, there was a flash of envy in her eyes.

When she created this scripture, she knew she would need to generate this energy and guide it properly into her energy pathways and bloodstream so that it wouldn’t flow loosely inside her body.

Illyan would save quite a bit of time because of this.

Of course, it would also be that much more dangerous. There was a reason why only sorcerers and body practitioners obtained blood energy in the orthodox way.

There was no way to avoid the impurities and such that would coalesce together with the blood energy. These could easily poison someone if they entered the bloodstream.

Only through rigorous training and body tempering would pure blood energy form. On the other hand, only sorcerers with a certain purity in their bloodline could form blood energy without any technique.

She assumed that Illyan had gained his blood energy through relentless training, so she wasn’t coveting the technique he hadn’t revealed to her.

She also knew that now the scripture technique would cause his pure blood energy to turn slightly impure due to this quicker gathering. Whether it would harm him depended on how pure his blood energy had been previously.

“Your bloodstream will gather some impurities through this. Are you sure you want to continue? We can start from the second layer since you already have some blood energy.” She didn’t want to hide this from him, as she had certain principles she didn’t wish to violate.

“Don’t worry,” Illyan said indifferently as he continued. He saw her good intentions, but there was really no need.

With his regeneration and [Blood Feeding Technique], what did he have to fear? If the impurities weren’t too severe, his regeneration would keep him safe until he extracted them.

If they were more serious, he could use the [Blood Feeding Technique], which would likely resolve the issue easily.

With such a mindset, Illyan continued gathering the energy.

Aurelia guided him, as he was a little clumsy at the start. He would sometimes make mistakes in chanting or guide the energy incorrectly.

It wasn’t anything serious to him, but it would definitely slow his progress.

But with her mentoring him in real time, he corrected all of his mistakes and didn’t repeat them, perfecting the practice.

After some time, the bright light from his veins started to dim. It wasn’t because he had stopped practicing or because his blood energy had lost its potency. In fact, it was stronger than ever.

However, impurities had now appeared in his blood, veiling the bright and pure blood energy.

“All right, you can stop. Since your gathering of blood energy is quite fast, it also means you gather impurities quickly, and now you need to oust them from your body.”

Aurelia explained the next step of the first layer.

Illyan listened to her words as he changed the chanting and contracted his muscles. This chant was meant to put pressure on his blood energy, thereby extracting the impurities within.

In the scripture, the extraction of impurities was done through the pores as her blood energy flowed through her pathways, and this was the best method available.

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Unfortunately for Illyan, he wasn’t that skilled in controlling the blood energy and feared he would fail miserably.

Thus, he decided to get rid of these in a rather brutal way.

He continued to extract the impurities by slowly separating them from the blood energy. It showed on his veins, which once again shone brightly but with small blotches of dark covering them in some places.

These were the impurities.

Seeing them piling up, Illyan decided it was time.

He started to move the energy from his left side to his left arm.

The black spots covering him were visibly moving inside the bright veins on the left side of his body as they slowly entered his hand.

And from his hand, they traveled right to one of his fingers.

Spurt

With one flick of the long nails on his right hand, he deeply cut his forefinger, causing the blood to spurt out like a geyser.

The blood dimmed the moment it left the body, but the black blotches remained as they melted inside the blood.

The disgusting blood fell on the ground as the viscous impurities created small mounds on the floor of the tent.

Aurelia used incense sticks to mask the scent of blood as he continued his bloodletting.

The reason why the blood spurted so much was because of his blood energy manipulation, which caused the blood to flow at a much higher speed than it normally would.

Illyan almost groaned in pleasure from the feeling but felt that his right side’s impurities almost overflowed to his left side, so he immediately focused and started to do the same thing on the right side.

The reason why he did both sides separately was because of Aurelia’s warning not to let the impurities flow in large quantities through the heart as it could cause problems in the long term.

Illyan knew she was right since staring at the vile impurities spilled on the ground in front of him almost made him want to vomit.

Its smell was rotten and putrid, making him feel nauseous that something like this was inside his body. It made him feel dirty, especially since he liked clean environments.

Aurelia’s brows also rose and fell as she took out a handkerchief to cover her mouth in an elegant style. Nobody would expect this noble-like lady to be actually a fierce fighter who was killed in cold blood.

When he cut his right forefinger, the left side was already done as his left forefinger had already sealed itself.

There was a certain loss of the blood energy that he had accumulated, but it was worth it considering the time he would need to use to get rid of the impurities while retaining all of his blood energy.

The loss was negligible considering this.

The bloodletting continued as he got rid of the rest of the impurities.

At first, he was aghast that every time he bled, he would lose blood energy, but fortunately, that was not the case at all.

Only when he consciously circulated the blood energy into the place of the wound would there be a slight loss. After all, the blood energy was only a wisp inside the real blood, so most of the blood was just ordinary.

Not in Illyan’s case, of course, since his blood was tempered by blood energy and had hidden life force within.

But fortunately for him, he could regain any loss almost instantly.

When he was done, he stopped to check on his body. There were still wisps of impurities so small that they were negligible, but they were still there.

That made Illyan frown.

“Don’t worry about it. It is almost impossible to get rid of all impurities. Not to mention, these are the ones that are visible to you. The problems are those that can’t be seen.”

Aurelia sighed after seeing his expression. How could she not understand his feelings? She had the very same feelings, except hers were much more intense.

Everything she had done was not enough to get rid of these imperfections, which annoyed her to no end.

However, Illyan didn’t dwell on it for too long as he knew he had a lot of time to fix that. One step at a time was crucial for building a foundation.

Illyan comforted himself with the optimistic thought that being talentless could actually be beneficial to him.

People with great talent usually sped through ranks as they lusted after power to dominate their peers.

Not all of them were like this, but most of these people would rather consider the problem of an imperfect foundation later on when they have proper strength, wealth, and backing, despite it being much harder to change. After all, people with talent were numerous. But how many of them were actually able to live up to their potential?

Many of them were killed before even being able to realize they had any talent. Those who discovered it were targeted by others. Only those with great talent and background had certain guarantees to succeed.

On the other hand, people with average talents usually fought not with their talented peers but mostly with their inner selves. Only by working diligently and being careful with laying down your foundation could you make some progress.

People didn’t care how you became strong or how long it took. They only cared about your capabilities.

Because Magisters who could change the tide of war were always in demand.

Unfortunately, in the end, most of them die trying or just die naturally with their lifespan being at its end.

But this was where Illyan’s gift shone the most.

He was almost unkillable, and his lifespan was longer than others.

That meant that he didn’t need to be disturbed by anyone as he slowly climbed at his own pace.

There were definitely many ways for him to die, but as Illyan continued to survive them one by one, his experiences grew as well. He was now confident in his survival capabilities.

Thinking so, Illyan exhaled the putrid air in his lungs as he stood up and stretched his arms.

“I don’t feel much difference,” Illyan said without a change in his expression.

What he said wasn’t exactly true. What he meant was that he didn’t feel any difference in his body strength. However, his blood energy felt different somehow, but he couldn’t guess why.

“You won’t feel any differences even if you accumulate more. The way of accumulation and usage are different, so it obviously won’t feel the same. The sorcerer’s blood energy is usually much calmer than the refiner's blood energy and will erupt only when performing magic. However, once both types of blood energy fully fuse together, it could be said that they would complement each other,” Aurelia said.

Illyan saw the desire in her eyes but ignored it as he acted as if he didn’t see it.

Instead, he focused on her words.

“Did you say you can perform magic with just blood energy?” Illyan involuntarily widened his eyes as much as he could.

In the [Thirteen Layers Of Blood Energy], you could perform magic once you fused the blood energy with mana. Even sorcerers couldn’t avoid this if they wanted to cast better spells at higher efficiency.

Illyan was prepared for a long wait before he would be able to fuse the mana into blood energy to finally use magic. Seeing these acolytes wield the elements of nature made him feel like a child again, as he was hyped to perform such acts too.

However, Aurelia said something contradicting the scripture she wrote.

“Well… Magic can be performed even with just blood energy. It would be just weaker and less efficient. Moreover, the blood energy would be depleted faster during casting when there is no mana in it. It is better to wait to fuse the mana with it before performing the magic.”

Aurelia explained with a calm expression.

Illyan’s eyes shone when he heard that.

‘I guess I will have the opportunity to use magic much sooner than expected…’