"Ah, that hurts, I'm dying of pain... Eh? Could it be... I, I'm still alive? This... where is this place?"
Ding Hao did not know how much time had passed. An indescribable pain that felt as if he was being burned by hot flames and bitten by tens and thousands of ants brought Ding Hao slightly back into consciousness. He wanted to move instinctively, but his body felt as stiff as cast iron and he could not move at all. He subconsciously opened his eyes slowly.
All he could see was a patch of milky white light. He could not see anything else.
He seemed to be enveloped in a soft liquid.
This feeling was like when he was enveloped by amniotic fluid in his mother's womb as a baby.
However, he felt waves of immense pain radiating from all parts of his body. Ding Hao floated in and out of consciousness and felt slightly disorientated.
His eyelids felt as if they had been sewn together. He had to put in an immense effort to even crack open his eyes slightly. He could vaguely see a blurred, white and soft patch of liquid before his eyes that enveloped him within.
"Holy shit, this milky white liquid...I'm not submerged in semen, am I?" Ding Hao felt extremely painful and could only think positively of his current dilemma like Ah Q.
Just then, suddenly, something bizarre happened-
For some unknown reason, Ding Hao could clearly "see", despite being in such an extremely drowsy state, the shadow of a pair of old and simple swords. They were like a pair of water dragons swimming in the milky white liquid that surrounded him.
What was even odder was that the swords were just shadows and were not even tangible. Yet, they seemed to be alive. They were real, and yet not. They were near, yet far. They circled him, vibrating incessantly. They were like two picky customers who were picking and assessing something.
"Deities? Monsters?" Ding Hao was shocked.
It was then when suddenly, the shadow of the pair of ancient swords seemed to have reached an agreement.
The swords sang brightly like dragons roaring.
The two shadows shot towards him. They sang happily like water dragons returning to see after being trapped on the beach for millions and millions of years. They easily entered Ding Hao's body and turned into two warm currents before disappeared completely.
Then, Ding Hao started to hallucinate.
He could suddenly hear the sounds of two people bickering.
The sounds of two voices squabbling and chattering incessantly felt distant and filled with the vicissitudes of life. They were close but unclear. It was an odd feeling. Ding Hao could only ascertain that the two were quarreling, but could not clearly hear what they were arguing about. He did not even clearly hear a complete word through it all.
Quickly, waves of indescribable, immense pain radiated from all parts of his body.
Ding Hao felt as if he had been submerged in a solution of sulfuric acid. It was worse than death. It felt as if the milky white liquid that enveloped him was the most corrosive liquid under the sun. It was about to melt every part of him completely.
This process was slow, but also extremely painful. It was not something that humans could endure.
"I, I can't die. I have to find Ding Ke'er. I have to find my sister... I must find her."
The unbeatable strong desire to survive, and the smile of his sister, Ding Ke'er, were like a lamp of eternal light in the boundless darkness of the ocean. The lamp released a faint light, allowing Ding Hao to miraculously endure the pain.
He did not fall unconscious. He gritted his teeth and bore the endless pain that impacted him in waves.
Time passed slowly, like a crawling snail that had sunk into a swamp.
He did not know how much time had passed.
The pain was excruciating, and finally, a change happened.
There was a sudden moment in time when Ding Hao suddenly felt the pain begin to abate. At the same time, an indescribable, curious new power appeared in his body. It filled his limbs, his bones and even and his every cell. It made him feel warm and comfortable as if he were floating in the clouds.
An hour later, Ding Hao regained control over his body suddenly without any warning.
"I... I can move?"
Ding Hao opened his eyes abruptly and stood up, using his hands to support him.
He quickly got into a defensive position and looked around him, quickly making sure of his surroundings.
He seemed to be in an extremely ancient cave.
Spotted green-grey walls surrounded him. The texture of the wall was natural and was dry and rough. There was no trace of any man-made carvings. However, in the middle of the cave, was an old and simple stone table and two stone chairs. They were all covered in dust and it was evident that they had not been used in centuries.
There were vertical and horizontal lines on the table that were definitely not natural. It was likely that they had been carved on the table.
However, the lines were strange and illogical. They seemed to be meaningful, and yet, was also like mindless graffiti. Ding Hao stared at it for some time and felt dizzy. He did not know what the lines were for but knew that they were extraordinary.
Ding Hao guessed that someone must have lived here a long time ago.
But the place had been abandoned for at least a few hundred years.
The cave was empty and a path that was about 10 meters long led to the outside.
The sound of wind howling could be heard from the cave entrance, and rolling black mist could vaguely be seen. However, they seemed to be stopped by a strange force as the pungent black mist could not enter the cave at all.
Ding Hao was standing on a sunken square about three meters in width and one meter in depth.
At first glance, the depression on the ground was like a grave that has been specially dug out. The incision was extremely smooth and the shape was very regular. If not for there not being a trace of man-made excavation, one would find it extremely hard to believe that the pit had formed naturally.
The white milky substance that enveloped Ding Hao earlier was the liquid in the pit.
However, the color of the liquid had already turned from a milky white to a faint black.
However, it still exuded a very strange fragrance, but the amount of liquid had reduced significantly from before. It could previously envelop Ding Hao's body but only reached his ankles now.
Ding Hao jumped lightly out of the stone pit.
"What exactly happened? The pair of shadow swords. And that liquid that had turned from a milky white to a faint black color... Also, my body. Those life-threatening wounds that I had sustained when I knocked into the cliff as I fell from it have all healed? And... It seems like something else has changed?"
Ding Hao waved his fist and a long-lost feeling of power filled his body.
"I've not only recovered from the serious injuries. The power within my body seems to be several times stronger than before. A strange change has happened to my body..."
Ding Hao felt that something must have changed in his body.
Previously, when he was slipping in and out of consciousness, he had seen the shadow of a pair of ancient, simple and sturdy swords entering his body. But it was impossible for him to figure out what was different right now. It was really strange!
His clothes were in tatters.
However, he had not lost the rusty iron sword. It was still tied behind him.
Ding Hao looked extremely pathetic right now.
Forcing himself to calm down, Ding Hao began to carefully examine the cave.
Remembering the martial arts novels he had read in his previous life, he found that as long as the hero fell under a cliff, he would meet something or someone extraordinary. Ding Hao always thought himself lucky, and today's scenario really resembled what he read. Therefore, he probably might find some weapons or secret swordsmanship books here. However, there was nothing but a set of stone table and chairs. He almost wanted to turn the entire place inside out to find the treasures he expected. "I guess one has to be practical all the time. Too much greed is bad for you. I should feel lucky that I didn't get killed. And, the faint black liquid in the dent saved my life! It might be something. Only it's a shame that I can't take them." Ding Hao heaved a sigh and stopped searching. There was no water or food in the cave. It was time to go home. He walked through the tunnel and reached the entrance of the cave. It was a bottoml
Ding Hao pushed open the door and slowly walked in. At that time— Swoosh! Swoosh! Two shadows in the dark emerged without any warning behind the wooden door from both sides with forceful winds. They came fiercely and directly at the back of Ding Hao's head. They were two long black sticks. On the other ends of the long sticks were two sneering youths. They were Zhao Xingcheng's entourage last night. The black long sticks were hard like iron rods. They were wielding them against the back of Ding Hao's head with the force that could kill him. At that crucial moment, Ding Hao saw that by the door of the opposite thatch hut, the confident Zhao Xingcheng was sneering at him maliciously. Then, Ding Hao smiled too. At the next moment, Zhao Xingcheng's sneering turned into doubt, surprise, disbelief... and finally into shock. He saw it with his own eyes that the ambush he carefully set up did not work at all
Ding Hao's eyebrows twitched furiously. At that moment, he could not suppress the sense of extreme danger that crept up on him. Was this faint red light the so-called 'Dark Force'? "According to the memories I've absorbed, the human martial artists in in this world are able to control a supernatural force known as the Dark Force, and use this Dark Force to refine their 12 meridians and 108 acupoints… "The faint red light that appeared from his body earlier was probably the manifestation of the dark force. However, Song Jiannan's strength is just average. He probably would not even be able to last a second against a first aperture martial disciple so I've got nothing to be afraid of." Ding Hao thought quickly and soon figured out their individual strengths. "Little scum, today, I shall take your life," Song Jiannan said as his eyes sparked with killing desire. He had arrived like an esteemed emperor, not expect
At that moment, a ray of golden morning sun shone through the mountains and the fog, casting Ding Hao in its golden glow. This highlighted the lines of his muscles, his tall body and the sculpted features of his handsome face. He looked like a perfect piece of work sculpted by a master sect master. "Phew..." Ding Hao breathed out a breath of murky air and felt his whole body relax. He had not expected his comprehension ability to be so astounding. He had been able to mimic Song Jiannan's swordsmanship technique just after watching Song Jiannan display it. Not only that, he had managed to grasp this swordsmanship technique's nuance and essence in after just practicing three times. Ding Hao reckoned that although that encounter at the cave cliff stone cave had caused his body to undergo extraordinary changes, Song Jiannan was far too weak and his swordsmanship technique of a lower level, which was why he managed to mimic it so easily. If he
It was rumored that extreme experts, who dominated their races, could move mountains and defeat millions of soldiers with a single strike like gods. Even lower level martial artists could become terrifyingly powerful by practicing magic skills. However, Ding Hao was of a low social status and not very bright, so he knew very little about cultivation. He only vagely remembered that martial artists were ranked from the lowest Apprentice Realm to Artist Realm, then Master, Grandmaster, and Genius Grandmaster. He could not remember what came after that. Generally speaking, the first step of cultivation was exercising one's physical strength to the extreme. Then, one could cultivate Qi manipulating magic skills by stimulating a "Magic Qi Seed" inside their dantian. An amorphous magic Qi would arise in the body and enter into the meridians. Unfortunately, Ding Hao had no instructions on how to stimulate his Magic Qi Seed. This was currently his
As for basic magic skills manuals that were peddled in the black market, mysterious remaining copies of original texts or those of high quality aside, as long as they were ordinary copies recorded manually, there would ordinarily not be any reason to suspect that they were fake. It was one of the unwritten rules of the trade. The Qi Guiding Formula was a method of the lowest level for practicing mystical skills. It was not even considered as mainstream but just an ordinary skill. As such, it could not be classified as either of the four major ranks - Divine, Heavenly, Earth or Human. Naturally, there was no risk of counterfeit copies of it existing in the market. Even if it were so, its price was also not cheap for ordinary folk. Ding Hao browsed through it once, and paid 500 taels of silver to buy the manual after discerning that there was nothing wrong with it. With this Qi Guiding Formula manual, coupled with his otherworldly understanding capability,
"Qi, Qi is an incredible thing. The strength given off by the limitations of the physical body is an invisible force. It can crack steles of stones, move mountains and seas. It can defy the heavens and change fates; it can prolong life and make things appear out of nothingness... This incredible Qi, it attacks the 12 main meridians of the human body in order, and refine the acupoints. In that way, supreme power is produced and this is the foundation of a martial artist..." Ding Hao quickly became immersed in the contents of the book. So the humans on the Land of Infinity all had 12 meridians in their body. And within each meridian, there were nine main acupoints. Once martial artists activated the seed of Qi and grasped Qi, they could then use it to refine their physical body. The Qi would rush through their meridians and refined their acupoints. This was the most basic way of cultivation. The Martial Arts system had been perfected according to the evolut
Under the silvery white moonlight, a group of red sword light twinkled in and out of existence. They rolled back and forth, and the sword whistled. It was free and casual. Ding Hao's movement grew from slow to fast and then slowed down from rapid to extremely slow. He was immersed in a mysterious state. Four hours passed in the blink of an eye and the moon hung in the middle of the sky. Ding Hao's movement was so slow that it could not slow down any further. It was like the slow-motion in films but had a certain charm to it. If someone had been staring at the trajectory of the rusted sword by the side, they would definitely feel exhausted, dizzy and faint within moments. The power of the sword had far exceeded that of regular sword skills. What was even rarer was that Ding Hao did not sweat as profusely as before. Instead, he only had a few drops of fine, crystal clear sweat. "Whoosh!" Ding Hao kept his rusty sword an