Chapter Seventy-Four: Sorting the Spoils

Chapter Seventy-Four: Sorting the Spoils

During this period, Xia Zheng intensified his training, focusing on organizing and analyzing the various gains he had amassed recently. Up to now, he had only practiced the “Divine Forging Technique” and “Soul Refinement Art” passed down by Shen Hua. However, both were rather foundational, and he had already thoroughly mastered them, so they could no longer offer much aid. Thus, he was compelled to turn his attention to the additional rewards he had acquired.

First among these was the “Divine Path” mental cultivation method he had chanced upon in the ancient cultivator’s abode. There was no written record of it; instead, a segment of memory containing the method had been directly imprinted into his mind by pure happenstance.

Xia Zheng spent a day and a night transcribing and sketching all the contents of the “Divine Path” from his memory, amounting to about three thousand words. The teachings were divided into four main sections: the Introduction, Advanced, Mastery, and a separate Visualization chapter.

The Introduction described the process of refining and purifying one’s mental power after the initial stage, making it ever more pure. This phase required opening the “Sea of Consciousness,” also known as the “Divine Sea of Awareness.”

Divine Awareness was an immensely potent force—a highly refined and pure form of mental power. In the early stages of cultivation, Xia Zheng had only awakened a single strand of Divine Awareness, yet even this granted him unimaginable might, enough to inflict serious harm on even an A-class psychic.

Once the Sea of Consciousness was opened, all mental power outside the Divine Awareness could be refined and purified, then stored within the Sea. Thereafter, every mental assault from him would undergo a qualitative transformation.

In this stage, the Introduction to “Divine Path” provided three specialized techniques for Divine Awareness, along with one visualization diagram.

The first technique was “Thunder of Divine Awareness,” or simply “Divine Thunder.” It enabled the practitioner to condense Divine Awareness into a bolt of lightning, instantly striking any target with the power of thunder. However, it consumed far more energy than his usual attacks and could not be used in quick succession; there had to be a ten-minute interval between uses.

The second skill was “Eye of Divine Awareness,” or “Divine Eye” for short. Upon awakening his Divine Awareness, Xia Zheng naturally developed a vertical eye between his brows, through which his Divine Awareness could emerge. However, this skill was not strictly about the physical eye; activating Divine Eye allowed him a high probability of seeing through illusions, disorienting arrays, disguise techniques, and other deceptions. In “Divine Path,” it was also called the “Eye of Truth.” This technique had no cooldown and could be maintained continuously, unless the practitioner’s Divine Awareness was depleted.

The third technique was “Power of Divine Thought,” a unique force born of Divine Awareness. It allowed Xia Zheng to create a force of attraction or repulsion between himself and a target. When attraction was active, he could rapidly close the distance; with repulsion, he could quickly push himself away. The range depended on the intensity of his Divine Thought and could extend up to one hundred meters. There was a five-second gap between consecutive uses, but it was highly taxing on Divine Awareness.

The visualization diagram provided a high-level mental assault. By simulating the patterns in the diagram, the practitioner could manifest them in reality, akin to Xia Zheng’s innate psychic abilities. Yet whereas his ability was a natural gift, the “Visualization Diagram: Making Thought Real” was a skill requiring intensive training to faithfully reproduce the depicted forms.

This diagram was peculiar—a two-dimensional drawing with a naked-eye three-dimensional effect. It was the first plate in the “Visualization Diagram” series, titled “Descent”: a meteor hurtling through the sky, bringing death to its target.

Upon mastering this, one could expend a great deal of Divine Awareness to summon a massive boulder to crush an opponent. Xia Zheng could not yet ascertain the precise effect, but he doubted it would be as simple as dropping a rock. Manifesting the visualization required a casting time; according to the manual, the talented could complete it in ten breaths, the average in thirty, and those exceeding sixty breaths were unsuited to this training.

Calculating a “breath” as roughly a second, the skill would require at least ten seconds to fully invoke, and only the most adept could achieve this.

“I wonder how many seconds I would need if I combine my innate psychic abilities with the visualization?” Xia Zheng was eager to try, but unfortunately, there was nowhere suitable for such training in the current base of the Heavenblade Team.

Chu Yan had already used harvested antimagic ore to forge a level-four training chamber, primarily for Xia Zheng’s benefit. Aside from him, only a handful like Chu Yan qualified to use it. Even so, Xia Zheng needed to exercise caution to avoid damaging the chamber.

The Advanced section of the manual described the cultivation of a “Spirit Embryo” within the Sea of Consciousness, which, if fully formed, would grant the practitioner a second life. The Mastery section detailed the complete evolution of the Spirit Embryo into a second self, capable of “spiritual wandering”—existing independently from the main body, provided all memories were copied over.

As for these latter two chapters, Xia Zheng refrained from delving too deeply. He knew the folly of greed and the virtue of mastery, so he compiled all his “Divine Path” notes into a slim booklet, inscribed the title “Divine Path” on its cover, and kept it close in a specially tailored inner pocket.

Menghu had once mentioned that ancient cultivators all possessed a wondrous spatial pouch called a “Heaven-Earth Bag”—a magical container capable of holding vast quantities without regard to size or weight, and easily portable. Sadly, the craft of making them had long been lost, perhaps due to the disappearance of the requisite materials.

After organizing the “Divine Path,” Xia Zheng next took out the items he had seized from Wadsworth, Tyron, and Valentin, and also sorted through the memories he had absorbed concerning the Hoffman family.

From the memories of Tyron and Valentin, Xia Zheng gained a rough understanding of the current state of the Hoffmans.

They were an old aristocratic house in gradual decline. Once founding figures of the Federation, they had withered after more than two centuries, with talent all but exhausted. Now, only Ray and his son Lyan remained as elites; the rest of the branches lacked the strength to revive the family. The father and son could do no more than maintain a vestige of the family’s former glory, powerless to restore its fortunes.

The Dick branch enjoyed high status solely due to the family head Philip’s favoritism. The notion that they might inherit the family leadership was nonsense, as Philip had no intention of relinquishing control before his death. The internal strife was even more vicious and bloody than that of the Shentu clan.

News reports had revealed that Xia Zheng’s killing of Dick and his followers had, by accident, united the Hoffmans for once—a twist of fate that left him marveling at destiny’s caprice.

“Ray is not a psychic. At present, there are three A-class individuals in the family, but their true strength is not even equal to Valentin and Tyron, who weren’t even direct descendants, so they pose little threat. Lyan, however, must not be underestimated. Once hailed as a family prodigy, he was banished to the military by Philip for his arrogance and defiance. He’s only a year or two older than me, and half a year ago had already reached B-class. It’s said he is still undergoing secret trials—of all, he is the greatest threat.” Xia Zheng wrote down the names of those in the Hoffman family warranting his attention, circling Ray and Lyan, and then circling Lyan once more, resolving to have the Foundation gather intelligence on him.

He then transcribed a skill he had acquired from Tyron’s memory: the Hoffmans’ unique “Shadow Step,” a technique for “shrinking the ground to a footstep,” which Xia Zheng admired greatly.

Yet he needed to modify the skill, lest its use betray the fact that he had seized it by killing members of the Hoffman family. He thus studied the cultivation method of Shadow Step in depth.

“So, Shadow Step isn’t an innate ability but a technique for channeling force. The creator of this skill was truly a genius.” After careful examination, Xia Zheng realized its similarities to the “Force of Divine Thought” from “Divine Path.” But while Divine Thought could alternate freely between attraction and repulsion, Shadow Step employed pure repulsion, transforming it into an unconventional burst of power, enabling an instant leap.

For ordinary psychics, mastering Shadow Step required compressing their strength to the limit, then releasing it by contorting muscles and meridians in a peculiar manner. The best could master it within a year; most would need two or three.

Even among those who succeeded, results varied greatly. Some could only “step” ten meters, the more skilled could reach twenty or fifty, and the truly outstanding managed a hundred meters.

Xia Zheng experimented and found that this method of force exertion did not suit him; it easily resulted in muscle and meridian injury, and mastering it in just a few days was unrealistic. He therefore adopted a new approach: using his already refined strand of Divine Awareness to train the “repulsion” aspect of Divine Thought, thereby achieving an effect equivalent to Shadow Step.

In this case, the target of repulsion was not a specific object, but the air in any direction around him—treating the air itself as the object to repel, generating the necessary force and mimicking the muscular exertion of Shadow Step.

He soon entered the level-four training chamber, putting theory into practice by focusing on honing the repulsive force of Divine Thought.

An hour later, he sat on the floor, bruised and battered, reflecting and summarizing his results. His mental energy was completely depleted and needed replenishing. Fortunately, he had several energy pills on hand to quickly restore his strength.

“Repulsion truly is hard to control. Too little force, and it won’t move the body; too much, and I’m thrown off balance, constantly falling. There’s a threshold here—it’ll take extensive training to find the proper equilibrium.” With this in mind, Xia Zheng gritted his teeth and resumed his training.