The days prior to his departure, Cao Yun focused heavily on his cultivation and on everything he had obtained. Although it had been risky, fighting Gu Song had allowed him to reap a lot of benefits. And the best of them wasn't even those weak spiritual senses. In Cao Yun's eyes, the fact that the Drop of Wrath was now fully integrated in his body was certainly the best thing. Even if his mind cultivation was impressive, that single drop of blood had belonged to two existences who had transcended everything known in the Hongchen Kingdom. From what he knew both Axiu Qian and Cleansed Asura had lived in other universes.
There was nothing left to do for Cao Yun. With Yong Ke's intervention, no one dared question him on what had exactly happened. Besides, he had to go to the Imperial City right after leaving in order to participate in the Alchemy Conference as the Yun family's representative. There he might see Yong Ke again. With what he had learned, there were many thoughts in his mind.
He couldn't stop himself from hoping that some of his family members might still be alive. If Emperor Weide had been after his mother's Soul Embryo, maybe her soul had been captured and was still trapped. Although souls couldn't survive very long outside of the body, there were ways to preserve them. It was possible that some of his family members' souls were being tortured right now. Or they could have already been turned into ghosts. Besides, he now had some doubts about Yong Ke herself. The feeling he had from her and the fact that she had awaken from her coma not long ago. A terrible thought crossed his mind.
It was possible that Emperor Weide had not been looking for his mother's soul for his sole benefits. Maybe he had used it in order to heal his daughter. That would explain why she seemed so familiar and why he trusted her almost immediately. Of course, there were other possibilities. Some of them were just too good to be true. But then again, no one had seen Yong Ke's face and no one even knew she existed. She had claimed that she remembered nothing about what had happened to her. Yong Ke might be a victim of the Shui family who had been kept captive.
Because of the veil on her face, Cao Yun had no idea about her age. In fact, she might even be way younger than he thought. If she truly had no recollection of the attack, then she wasn't a very reliable source of information. Since he didn't trust a single word out of Emperor Weide's mouth, Cao Yun decided not to disregard any hypothesis. Recently, he had found out he had an uncle. As long as there was a sliver or hope, he would entertain it. That woman may be of his blood. If that were the case, Emperor Weide would indeed be training her as fast as he could in order to make her a Spirit Warrior. In that case, she was just a pig for slaughter.
Anyway, it was useless to torment himself. Soon, he would enter the Imperial City. Now he had all the answers about who had killed his family and why. The remaining ordeal would be to avenge them. He was way too weak to take down the Emperor. Even if he wasn't, he would probably not do so. And so wouldn't neither Sect Leader Xuan nor Matriarch Huang. First of all, he was considered as the direct descendant of Emperor Nuwa. In order to take him down, it would be necessary to prove beyond a doubt what he had done. But more than that, war was near. Killing Emperor Weide right now would be a disaster for mankind.
No matter what he had done, he was essential for the morale and the strength of mankind. Indeed, the greatest advantage of humans over demons was their cohesion. Since the Founding Era twenty millenniums ago, there was a direct line of transmission between each emperor. And mankind had stayed united despite some tension now and then. Emperor Nuwa was the reason behind this, and Emperor Weide was a symbol representing her.
Apart from all those thoughts, Cao Yun decided to focus on the Flying Poison. Right now it was being kept trapped in his Nine Soul Peaks. Although he had subdued it for good, the Flying Poison still contained some of Axiu Qian's memories. They had been corrupted and deformed but they were in there. Hopefully, he might be able to extract something useful out of those. Thus, he used his mind cultivation to activate his Chamber of Moving Pearls. Then he saw many images from Axiu Qian.
They were fractured and didn't make much sense. This wasn't helped by the fact that Cao Yun didn't speak the language. Bits and pieces became transparent to him though. That language was very different from everything he had ever studied. After all, it had been created in another universe by asura. Asura and demons were almost the same thing. Demons were asura who had mixed their blood with humans and it was a name invented by Demon God Da Mo on the Piaolu planet. The general term was indeed asura, Demon God Da Mo's species.
Although he couldn't speak whatever language Axiu Qian had spoken during his life, he had a few notions and a bit of vocabulary now. In fact, he didn't even know what this language was called. Looking through Cleansed Asura's memory, he discovered that there was sadly nothing written in this language. However, Cao Yun thought that learning fragments of yet another language was getting him closer to finally read the Ancient Sixian used by Cleansed Asura. By now, he was able to decipher a few hundred characters here and there. This was nowhere enough to read the manuals left behind by his master. Besides, he would have to possess a great knowledge of both languages in order to decipher them since Nuhua and Ancient Sixian had been mixed together in various ways.
Before working on something else, Cao Yun decided to try out his knowledge on 'Death Verses'. This particular manual had been pointed out to him by Cleansed Asura himself before his ultimate death. During his fight, he had used Death Energy. Better yet, he had absorbed Death Energy in the form of the Black Heart Flame. While he was reading 'Death Verses' once more, Cao Yun manipulated the obsidian flame within his sea of consciousness. He even tried to replicate the Insight Writings from 'Death Verses' with the fire itself.
'See Through the Mud' allowed Cao Yun to sense Death Energy as he would sense Qi. Right now, he had a rather great proficiency in it. To be honest, it wasn't too difficult to master, especially in the Yellow Death World which had had a lot of Death Energy in it. 'Death Reeling' was the art of controlling said Death Energy. Once again, by working with Death Energy directly, with Evil Qi and even with his own Po, Cao Yun had more or less mastered it. His control over Death Energy wasn't as good as his control over Qi yet, but it was still impressive. In fact, the Black Heart Flame was particularly easy to control thanks to his incomplete Rune of Fire.
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Right now, Cao Yun was interested by 'Living Death'. Thanks to his new experience, he was able to understand the Insight Writings better. And with that, it allowed him to guess the meaning behind the Ancient Sixian with more ease. He would still need to spend a few weeks on it to really get it. But he knew that he would be able to do so. During his travel on Hongyu's back, he would focus on that as much as he could. From what he could understand, 'Living Death' was the art of using one's own Po to create Death Energy from within. Obviously there was a risk of harming one's soul. Thus, he wouldn't test it out without having a good understanding of it. Besides, he had Death Energy under his control right now, he didn't necessarily needed more. But being more knowledgeable about the soul and its corrupted versions was always a good thing.
Before his departure, Cao Yun trained with Yun Po to improve his spearmanship. Unfortunately, he wouldn't have the opportunity to use it during the Alchemy Conference. However, improving his cultivation would always be helpful. So he spent his last days in Qingyun City to finally break through. He would have spent less than two years as a 3rd-grade Mortal Warrior. This was rather fast, especially after considering the time wasted because of his injury in the Demon Palace.
The breakthrough to the 4th-grade Mortal Warrior had nothing really extraordinary. The entire point of this grade was to temper the Five Prodigious Gates. After that, they would be strong enough to absorb Fire Qi in great amount and this would drastically improve one's Qi Manifestations as well as one's Wei Qi.
In his secluded room, Cao Yun had set up several array formations both to protect him and to focus all of the energies around him. Indeed, during such a breakthrough, his Wei Qi would expand quite a lot and he might lose a great amount of Qi. If he could prevent this loss, he could gain a few weeks in his cultivation journey. This wasn't much but as each grade tended to be longer than the previous one, a few weeks now could mean years later on.
Circulating his mind cultivation, he particularly focused on the Nine Soul Peaks. The vines coiled around them were the same vines that had connected his Five Prodigious Gates. In the center of his array formations, Cao Yun was sitting so his palms and his soles were all facing upward, just like his Bai Hui, the summit of his skull. Using his newfound control of it, Cao Yun split the Drop of Wrath into five drops. According to 'Cultivation of Wrath', the blood of certain demonic beasts could be used to make the breakthrough smoother.
Each Prodigious Gate was associated to a specific element. Of course, they had all five, but the balance between them made it so that they were stronger in a specific element. As an alchemist, maintaining such a balance was easier for Cao Yun. He had chosen the blood of five different demonic beasts that would complement each other and go well with his Five Prodigious Gates. Since he was in the Major Hall, obtaining said blood was extremely easy even though the chosen beasts had been at least 7-core demonic beasts. There was even an 8-core among them, the Stormy-Feathered Phoenix that was rich in Fire element. Its blood had gone on his right Lao Gong. The left one was the gate who had the strongest connection with the heart and was thus rich in Fire element as well. So it was necessary to balance it out with this blood on the other point.
Once everything was ready, Cao Yun sent his vibrant blood and plentiful Qi into those Five Prodigious Gates. Before long, he felt them pulsate under those assaults. His blood was incredibly rich in Fire Qi compared to the blood of any other human. At the same time, the gates themselves were surrounded and imbued with Wood element due to the vines of the world tree. Finally, he had used most of the Water Qi from his Lower Dantian. Earth and Metal were the only elements that weren't too present in his body. In terms of gates, they were strong in the two Earthly Springs, or Yong Quan, located on his soles. For those, he had chosen the blood of a Bronze Cliff Eagle and a Bark Mauling Boar.
As he was cultivating, he could feel the blood seeping in his skin and permeating the Five Prodigious Gates. At the same time, he chanted a mantra from the 'Cultivation of Wrath'. In resonance with it, the Drop of Wrath began to act out. Within each of his gate, the full intent of those five small drops of blood was altering everything around them. Even Cao Yun's Wei Qi was changing as well, becoming both denser and fiercer as his killing intent was mixed with it.
Outside of his body, his Wei Qi was not pierced by five small vortexes. More and more Qi from the outside was being absorbed as his Five Prodigious Gates were being tempered. Within his body, it was as if he could hear the sound of five hammers striking at the same time. And he had to control each one of them so they had the same strength and the same rhythm. At the same time he had to balance out the five elements within each of the gates and between themselves. For someone who hadn't studied alchemy a lot, this would be very difficult. As a result, they had to spend much more time preparing their Five Prodigious Gates so such subtlety wasn't necessary to succeed.
Finally, a powerful boom erupted, it was even heard reverberating in the secluded room. All five of his Prodigious Gate vibrated as though his muscles had spasms. Suddenly, a large amount of Qi was sent in all directions by those Five Prodigious Gates. Now that they had been perfectly tempered, they opened in full for an instant. Thankfully, Cao Yun had been ready for that. All of this Qi was stopped by his array formations and sent back to him.
Absorbing a large amount of Qi was difficult than simply releasing it. However, he had prepared for that and it didn't cause him any major trouble. By preventing this great loss of energy, Cao Yun had indeed reduced the time he would need to reach the next stage of his cultivation.
Indeed, at that very moment, Cao Yun was officially a 4th-grade Mortal Warrior.
Now, he would need to gather Fire Qi in his Middle Dantian just as he gathered Water Qi in his Lower Dantian. And for that, he already was a bit ahead of things thanks to the Fire Qi present in his own blood. Moreover, he had the perfect idea to improve the amount of Fire Qi in his Middle Dantian, the Hellish Dragon Fruit he had stolen from the Five Bloods Pheasant.
The moment he had heard about this fruit, he had thought about the perfect pill to help him in his Qi cultivation. And the fruit might also help him deal with Hongyu's problem in a permanent way. In fact, he realized that the Black Heart Flame and his newfound spiritual senses might also be able to help him quite a lot with this endeavor.