Chapter 142: Chapter 142: Three Annotations: Blood Sacrifice, Taiyin, and Refining Form

After obtaining the two versions of the Taiyin Refining Technique, Qi Suian meticulously cut the entire divine statue into tiny pieces to ensure nothing was left behind.

Naturally, this yielded no further discoveries.

Finally, he dug three feet deep into the ground. After confirming there were no other secrets in Changlou Temple, he set up traps around the area.

He hadn’t forgotten that people from the Fei Kingdom were coming. Of course, it didn’t matter who came. Anyone who triggered the traps would just be blown to bits.

As for the statue fragments, Qi Suian took them all. He kept a portion and threw the rest, along with the desiccated corpse, into the Melting Furnace to be converted into evolution energy.

After taking care of everything, Qi Suian found a safe house within the Yan Kingdom and began to study the Taiyin Refining Technique.

The first one he studied was naturally the bamboo slip version. Although the human skin version was an annotated edition, it was ultimately built upon the foundation of the bamboo slips.

Qi Suian had no intention of getting ahead of himself by jumping straight to the human skin version. He needed to be practical and take things one step at a time.

’I have to admit, the Taiyin Refining Technique truly lives up to its name as the number one Qi Cultivation Method. It’s far superior in every aspect to the methods I currently possess.’

’And unlike those other Qi Cultivation Methods, it has clearly defined stages of progression.’

’Once mastered, if not completely invincible, you could at least roam the world unopposed.’

’But the drawbacks are also very obvious. Aptitude and resources—both are indispensable.’

’Especially aptitude. If your aptitude isn’t up to par and you force yourself to cultivate it, you’ll need hundreds of times more resources to compensate.’

’With resources that could get someone to the third level, a person with poor aptitude could barely even reach the entry-level.’

Qi Suian could see that its immense combat power was the result of the Taiyin Refining Technique perfectly leveraging both aptitude and resources.

Therefore, if one’s aptitude was insufficient, one could only make up for it with resources.

And what about having aptitude but no resources? Then you’d just get stuck, or you’d force your cultivation and end up injuring or crippling yourself. If you still didn’t stop at that point, you would undoubtedly cultivate yourself to death.

’Unfortunately, I have neither the aptitude nor the resources.’ Qi Suian set down the bamboo slip version of the Taiyin Refining Technique.

Qi Suian was not a Winter Human and lacked the corresponding aptitude, making the Qi Cultivation Method completely unusable for him. In his hands, it could only serve as a reference.

His gaze then fell upon the annotations of the human skin version of the Taiyin Refining Technique.

The opening Chapter described a method for manifesting a Divine Technique.

Of course, nowadays they weren’t called Divine Techniques, but abilities.

’These annotations are truly extraordinary. You have to understand, not even the various kingdoms have figured out how to guide the formation of abilities.’

’All abilities manifest randomly.’

’But this one starts by having you generate a specific ability.’

Qi Suian skimmed through it. The general idea was that before acquiring an ability, one had to find an Insect King Egg from a Beast King-level Cold Energy Monster called the Blood Heart Worm King.

After consuming it, one would gain an ability called Blood Sacrifice.

After that, it was simple: just start killing.

If one felt that the effects of simple slaughter were insufficient, they could later use the methods from the Taiyin Refining Technique to perform corresponding levels of sacrifice.

The object of the sacrifice was oneself, and the process was a blood sacrifice.

Whether the target was a human or a Cold Energy Monster, you would torture them before death, maximizing their agony to a point where life was worse than death, then flay their skin, pull their tendons, and harvest their organs while they were still alive.

Then, using the Blood Sacrifice ability, you’d offer them up as a sacrifice to yourself.

This would provide feedback based on the sacrificed target’s power, their resentment before death, and the degree of torture they endured.

Of course, if that still wasn’t enough or the process was too slow, there was a more convenient shortcut to the top.

You could perform a large-scale blood sacrifice. Although the effect wasn’t as efficient as a single sacrifice, the sheer volume made up for it.

There were downsides, too. First, the process was rather troublesome and required considerable strength.

Otherwise, if you weren’t strong enough, how could you possibly support such a large-scale blood sacrifice?

’But this "large-scale"... it’s a bit pathetic, isn’t it? It’s only the size of a single village,’ Qi Suian commented inwardly.

But on second thought, a village wasn’t actually that small.

Even King Zhen Ao, a mid-tier Beast King among Cold Energy Monsters, could only smash a farmhouse—an ancient one at that.

By that measure, a person capable of sacrificing an entire village would already be a top-tier existence.

This Blood Sacrifice wasn’t just for strengthening oneself; anyone caught within its range would also be harmed.

The ability could not only be used to rapidly advance the Taiyin Refining Technique but also as a means of killing enemies. It was, after all, a combat ability.

’If I could use the Blood Heart Worm King itself instead of its egg, would the ability’s effect be even better?’ Qi Suian read the note of regret left by the author at the end of the Blood Sacrifice Chapter.

The reason was simple: the Blood Heart Worm King was powerful from the moment it was born. For someone who hadn’t even started Qi Cultivation, how could they possibly eat it instead of the egg?

It was a Beast King. If you actually tried that, you’d just end up as food for the Blood Heart Worm King.

Even a newly hatched Blood Heart Worm King was no match for an ordinary person. The Blood Sacrifice Chapter contained detailed records about the Blood Heart Worm King.

The creature was born at the Beast King level and would grow to become extremely powerful.

Likewise, this creature was also exceedingly rare.

Therefore, if someone could actually consume a Blood Heart Worm King instead of an Insect King Egg, the resulting ability would definitely be an enhanced version of Blood Sacrifice.

Further on were the Taiyin and Refining Chapters, respectively.

They all served to supplement the Taiyin Refining Technique, creating a complete growth system with the Blood Sacrifice ability at its core.

’If you ignore all the cruel and bloody methods, this is basically an entirely different Qi Cultivation Method, and in terms of quality, it’s even a notch above the Taiyin Refining Technique.’

Qi Suian knew that the Taiyin Refining Technique was simply too demanding of talent and resources.

It was never meant for ordinary people or the lower class; it was for the peerless geniuses born of noble and extraordinary families.

Lacking either condition, this number one ancient Qi Cultivation Method wouldn’t bring a Cultivator any benefits. Instead, it would become a burden, making it even worse than a common Qi Cultivation Method.

’In other words, abilities can be acquired not only through accumulating cold energy in the body to induce evolution, but also obtained ahead of time through modification by ingesting a Cold Energy Monster.’

’You can even directly inherit the abilities of a Cold Energy Monster, turning them into your own.’

Qi Suian mulled over the Blood Sacrifice Chapter in his mind.

This was good news for Qi Suian. Since it showed there was more than one channel for acquisition, it meant that he could also perform modifications himself.

’So the question is, where do I find this so-called Blood Heart Worm King?’ Qi Suian had the introduction from the Blood Sacrifice Chapter, but most of it focused on the Blood Sacrifice ability itself.

There was little information about the Blood Heart Worm King, and what little there was focused on the Insect King Egg.

The author had clearly never imagined that anyone would be capable of eating a Blood Heart Worm King.

Have an elder catch one for you? That wasn’t the problem. The requirement was to eat it alive, not dead.

Even if you caught it, an ordinary person’s teeth couldn’t bite through it.

Of course, if one were willing to pay any price, it should still be possible.

However, that was just the beginning. A family with that kind of power would have no need to practice the Taiyin Refining Technique with these annotations; they could just use the bamboo slip version directly. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

But the Blood Sacrifice Chapter didn’t take this into account, obviously because the author didn’t care about such factors.

The annotations themselves were meant to remove the restrictions by shifting the cost onto others.

The great noble families could bear the cost themselves. If the cultivation method from the human skin annotations were to leak, the losses would far outweigh the gains for them.

’The human skin annotations probably never leaked out. They were likely taken to the grave, so no one knows about them.’

’Otherwise, it would have definitely caused a storm of blood.’

Qi Suian stopped thinking about the Blood Heart Worm King. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.

The planet was huge; how could he possibly know where to find one?

Another point was that the current concentration of cold energy wasn’t high enough to give birth to a high-level Cold Energy Monster like the Blood Heart Worm King anyway.

For now, Qi Suian could only focus on researching Qi Cultivation Methods and abilities.

Since the Blood Heart Worm King could induce Winter Humans to awaken their abilities early, Qi Suian planned to take this opportunity to conduct experiments.

He would use them to develop his own version of the Blood Sacrifice ability, and then use that as a foundation to further modify the Taiyin Refining Technique.

His standards weren’t high. This time, he didn’t need to multiply his dual attributes several times over like he did in the Polar Day World. He would be satisfied with a single point increase in each of his two attributes.

After all, improvement became progressively harder the further one went.

’If necessary, I could even do without the Blood Sacrifice ability. The situation with the Qi Cultivation Method would be more or less the same anyway.’

’It’s not like I absolutely have to stick with the Taiyin Refining Technique.’

The Taiyin Refining Technique was hailed as the most powerful Qi Cultivation Method, but it wasn’t suitable for Qi Suian.

What suits you is the best, not what is the strongest.

Blindly choosing would only screw himself over.

So, if he really couldn’t find a Blood Heart Worm King, Qi Suian had other options.

Qi Suian knew the difference between the Taiyin Refining Technique and other Qi Cultivation Methods—it was just a matter of strength.

He had the original text. It might not be possible to create a method surpassing the Taiyin Refining Technique using it as a template, but creating one that suited him and was equal in strength wasn’t out of the question.

As for the annotations? Qi Suian could give up on those too.

After all, the entire set of annotations was built upon the Blood Sacrifice Chapter. Since Qi Suian didn’t have the Blood Sacrifice ability, they were useless to him.

Having the annotations would indeed make him a tier stronger, perhaps, but that was the extent of it.

After all, the risks involved in gaining that extra tier were not small.

It required starting with murder, progressing to torture, and then conducting large-scale blood sacrifices.

You would definitely become a public enemy to the entire world.

But Qi Suian wasn’t afraid of that. He was already a public enemy, after all.

It just wasn’t suitable for him, so there was nothing more to consider.

"AI Brain, search through ancient texts and data for information on the Blood Heart Worm King. See if there are any surviving records," Qi Suian said.

If he found it, he would naturally choose the Taiyin Refining Technique plus the annotations. After all, every bit of strength counted.

Qi Suian relied on luck, but he also had to put in the effort himself.

[Searching...]

[Actually, you have another option. As one of the Beast Kings, King Zhen Ao might know the whereabouts of a fellow Beast King, the Blood Heart Worm King.]

Hearing the AI Brain’s reminder, Qi Suian’s expression immediately relaxed. For no other reason than the fact that what the AI Brain said made perfect sense.