Author's note: Third episode is sponsored by Daniel L. again! Damn Daniel, back at it again with the generosity! -Mochi

Host's note: As usual, I'm not the author. I'm rehosting this story on RRL with author's permission.

Sprawling the scrolls and books onto his table, Jin Xia immediately sat down and began to look through each of them. In total, Jin Xia had selected 4 martial skills. They were:

[Night Moon Palm], Low-grade attack based; a palm blast charged with the essence of the moon, boldly crashing into the horizon.

[Six Sun Finger], Low-grade attack based; creates 12 small hovering balls of intense light around oneself from the sun’s energy, when all twelve sun spheres are achieved one would able to execute a devastating attack that could melt the earth

[Shadow Sword Basic Arts], Non-grade; emphasis on the idea of a sword play which is so quick, that one would only be able to see the ‘shadow’ left behind by the sword movement, may also utilise the dark areas to enhance the sword attacks’ effectiveness.

[Bright Light Spear Basic Arts], Non-grade; emphasis on the idea of a bold spear play which fears no darkness and evil, reigning above all in beaming conviction.

As for why Jin Xia had picked a spear and a sword technique set respectively, there was not much of a defining reason. It was simply that the current Jin Xia’s body was highly suitable to practice these two specific weapon arts.

Although Jin Xia was well-versed in all kinds of weapons and artifacts when he was a deity, he did not have his deity form now. Thus, he made sure to only select weapons that his current mortal body could use.

After reading over the manuals, Jin Xia placed the books down and sank into a meditative state.

He entered his soul domain and began to divide his consciousness into seven different compartments.

In each soul’s compartment, Jin Xia would place a bit of his consciousness there and focus on one of the low-level techniques he had decided to learn.

Along the way, Jin Xia decided to renovate the techniques themselves and greatly improve them so that they would be more effective for Jin Xia to use in the future.

Because of Jin Xia’s powerful soul, he was able to utilise a little trick he had learned once regarding souls, back when he was a high immortal, allowing him to effectively cut down on the time spent mastering certain skillsets.

As such, several hours quickly passed by with Jin Xia sitting quietly in his bedroom, his eyes closed and fully lost in a trance.

“Huuu…”

After a moment longer, Jin Xia slowly opened his eyes as he let out a soft breath.

He had finished improving and grasping the ‘new’ skills he had, after re-merging the several soul pieces back into one again.

Since all the techniques were relatively low-leveled, it was extremely easy for Jin Xia to understand their essence within a few simple glances.

Thus, he was able to quickly master all the skills under an hour, with the rest of the hours spent improvising the methods themselves to their peak.

After he had completed this, the seven techniques had transformed into almost something completely different. While a small trace of its original roots remained, the overall moves and strength of the martial arts had taken a leap through grades.

Jin Xia estimated that the grades of his skills at this moment should at least be around Jade-grade, with the exception of the [Rising Over Heaven] which could even be said to infinitely near the Soul-grade level…

With such a vast difference from its predecessors, Jin Xia promptly decided to rename some of the skills in honor of their evolution:

Thus, he changed…

[Night Moon Palm] to [Half Moon Palm], Jade-grade; conjures up an illusion of a great half-moon devastating the world.

[Six Sun Finger] to [Twelve Sun Finger], Jade-grade; forms twelve large condensed form of golden floating light balls around oneself, capable of mass destruction and dispersion of high temperature flames upon contact.

[Shadow Sword Basic Arts] to [Eclipse Sword Arts], Jade-grade; merges sword with one’s shadow to launch hidden attacks, a dark environment is the absolute domain of the shadow sword, at peak power it could conjure an illusion of eclipsing darkness.

[Bright Light Spear Basic Arts] to[Seven Luminous Spear Arts], Jade-grade; blinding light which overshadows all beneath one’s feet, seven tyrannical pillars of lights that bring judgement to evil.

[Lightning Fist] to [Thunderous Dream Fist], Jaded-grade; a fist which comes and goes like a ephemeral dream, without realizing without grasping, only woken up after a thunderous impact.

Only the names of [Firefly Evasion], Jade-grade, and [Rising Over Heaven], Quasi Soul-grade, remained the same.

Since the skills were not very powerful to begin with, they were much easier to make adjustments compared to more high level techniques.

And given Jin Xia’s previous identity as a martial arts-obsessed deity, if he was unable to bring a few low level martial arts grade up by a few levels, then that would actually be considered the strange part!

Now that Jin Xia had a set of means to sustain his battle prowess, he was feeling a bit more assured. Even if his current methods were only of Jade-grade, they could already be considered pinnacle level techniques within the Great Azure Country.

Although he could barge right through into the Emperor Realm and start learning a few of the more powerful skills from his memories, Jin Xia did want to rush his advancement towards this realm yet.

The Emperor realm in the world of WuDang was practically a whole different plane, in terms of power and ability.

Not only would a strong Emperor-level practitioner be able to resist the flow of natural law and be able to briefly walk on air, the cultivator would possess the strength to easily lay waste to a Greater-ranked city.

But to be able to reach this realm was a different story. The requirements and methods were also much different than the usual trainings.

This is because when one transitions into the Emperor realm, one would have to assimilate the elemental energy within their Mortal Domain.

To more precise, one would have to absorb a least one type of elemental energy.

In this world, there are countless forms of elemental energy ranging from fire to thunder to darkness. and more.

Once a peak Xing Profound expert absorbs a great quantity of one of these elements, their Dantian and Qi would go through a fusion, fully grasping the element’s characteristics.

Once this is achieved, the cultivator would have the ability to incorporate their element into their Qi and physical attacks, giving them an incredible boost in power.

And to do this, there are naturally many different methods with varying effectiveness. There are two well known methods.

For the first method, one could find a spot where a certain elemental energy is abundant and absorb it along with the World Qi into one’s Dantian. Absorbing the elemental from rare herbs and objects with certain elemental energy is fine as well.

While this is a steady and sure way to assimilate an elemental energy and break into the Emperor realm, the time it takes to achieve it is naturally exceedingly long.

The other method is to find an elemental beast and absorb its nuclear core, or energy core. And if the elemental beast is strong enough and possesses a mountainous amount of a certain elemental energy within its core, then simply absorbing it would instantly help a peak cultivator break into the Emperor realm and be in possession of that said element.

Of course, this is also taking in the fact that the cultivator has a great enough comprehension ability to understand the principles of the element they wish to assimilate.

Otherwise, simply by relying on brute force is useless. Even if successfully absorbed, that cultivator would only be a weak Emperor-level expert compared to others.

While they would have the characteristics of the elements, it did not mean they had grasped the “essence” of it. But if the latter process is achieved, one can expect to move on to the next big realm, though that is separate topic altogether…

Also, naturally, this second method was much harder. Not only was it hard to come by a powerful elemental beast, it was even more difficult to defeat one, much less kill it and take its core.

“The surrounding of Tian City is mostly forests and a few paved roads for travel…there should be no Elemental beasts or animals of similar strength around here.” Jin Xia sighed.

In WuDang, there are countless monsters known as Savage Beasts. These differ from the regular beasts such as a tigers, and are famed for their bloodthirsty nature and great strength. The prerequisite to be differentiate a Savage Beast is its aura. These beasts would all possess, at minimum, the strength and aura of a Wudan realm practitioner.

Moreover, they seemed to possess no conscious, with their only agenda being to spread death everywhere they go, thus most people do not feel any qualms of killing such animals.

And above them is what are known as Elemental Beasts, which are those that have the natural ability to call forth elemental energy. They are much stronger than normal beasts of the same level.

All beasts can be categorized according to the cultivation ranking, but a key point is that as beasts, they are groomed by nature for battle and hunting.

Thus, if a beast at the same cultivation level fought against a normal cultivator with the same level, it would actually be the beast that would hold an advantage.

This was why many cultivators would not go out of their way to hunt beasts of the same cultivation or above, even for training purposes sometimes.

Only the truly strong practitioners would be able to do that.

Host's note: Got in contact with the author. He doesn't want a donation button in general for now. As for the next chapters, the author is planning on wrapping up the rest of the first book/volume before brainstorming on the next one. So, I'm guessing that he wants to finish up the last few chapters of the book before resuming updates.