Chapter 171: Everything Changes, but the Core Remains the Same

“How do you know I didn’t exist? Remember, those three outsiders also recognized you by the Wandering Light Sword. Thirty thousand years have passed, so many things have been buried in history.”

Chen Xiyi very calmly argued against Lin Feng’s words.

He thought that there really was no record of him in history, after all, he was just an outsider, a Player who came to this world using the Cycle Function.

He had suddenly broken into this world, into this history.

After hearing this, Lin Feng felt it made sense, but something still felt off.

“Then why didn’t you become The Immortal?” Lin Feng asked calmly.

“Oh, probably because this thing has flaws, so I gave it to you. Besides, how do you know I could have succeeded? What if I died halfway? And this Ascension Ritual has already been influenced by the concept of the sword. How do you know if anyone else besides you can use it?”

Chen Xiyi immediately started making things up.

This made Lin Feng think there was some logic to it.

“Alright, take your time eating. I have things to do. You can study the Ascension Ritual slowly and complete it soon to turn it into a Sword Art.” After saying that, Chen Xiyi stood up and went back into the Miaojiang Five Immortals Cave.

Inside the Five Immortals Cave were all the legacies of the entire Miaojiang and the Five Immortals Sect, roughly divided into four types: medicine, poison, gu, and martial arts.

The four supported each other, but the learners were different. There were very few medical practitioners, basically not many people. At most, some might refer to it a bit when studying poison. Then came gu. In recent years, usually only the Miao women in the Five Immortals Sect practiced it, and even then only those who never married.

Lastly, poison and martial arts were tied for first. Most of the techniques practiced in the Five Immortals Sect were poison skills and some gu skills, with the rest being sword techniques that didn’t quite fit in.

But in Chen Xiyi’s eyes, this seemed like missing the main point. Medicine, poison, and gu were the core of the Five Immortals Sect and were inseparable. Martial arts was actually a derivative of the first three.

Many people practiced martial arts without learning medicine, but this was just practicing by following instructions without understanding. How strong could they become? At best, they might reach the level of the creator, but they could never surpass the creator.

With the same technique, if you didn’t know why you practiced it that way and just followed the book, your martial arts would improve, but what about later? Switch to another book?

But if you knew why it was practiced that way, after mastering that martial art, you could innovate and become even better than the original creator.

As for the idea that you could create the strongest martial art by studying all the martial arts in the world, it wasn’t impossible. But without advanced medical knowledge, you couldn’t tell if the martial art would cause harm or what medicines you needed to assist it. Otherwise, you might just practice hard and then suddenly die.

Chen Xiyi was starting from the beginning. In the past half year, he had looked at many sword moves. Most sword moves actually required specific tonics or ointments to assist. Otherwise, practicing every day wouldn’t make you a peerless expert; it would make you a peerless cripple.

For those sects, it didn’t matter if the sword moves leaked out. If you didn’t have the corresponding maintenance and conditioning methods, rigidly copying them was just a way to get yourself killed.

The martial arts of the Five Immortals Sect were the same, or even worse.

Because all the martial arts were related to poison and gu. One careless move and it wasn’t about ruining your practice; you could die directly.

Chen Xiyi opened a medical book and just glanced at it briefly, memorizing all the content firmly in his mind.

With his previous knowledge as a foundation, it only took him a few minutes to fully understand the content of this medical book.

“Compared to the knowledge related to Qi Refiners, it’s still lacking a lot, but it’s good because it’s a different system.”

The Five Immortals Sect actually had quite a few medical books. Perhaps the sect’s predecessors had been badly affected by the poison techniques, so they collected many medical books to improve their medical skills and thus refine the poison techniques.

Otherwise, these systematic poison techniques couldn’t just have appeared out of thin air.

There must have been ancestors who slowly figured things out, summarized, and compiled them, eventually turning them into complete poison techniques.

“The overall numbers are roughly: medical books more than poison scriptures, and poison scriptures more than gu manuals. As for martial arts, there are relatively few. The entire Five Immortals Sect seems to have only about a hundred, and most seem to connect to each other.”

Even though there were only about a hundred martial arts, how many people could master one to the extreme?

Moreover, most of the hundred or so martial arts actually came from the same lineage. For example, the initial external training art called Five Poisons Body, when practiced to the top, only enhanced the body and provided some toxicity and poison resistance. With various resources, it could be mastered in about a year. Of course, without resources, don’t practice it—it could kill you.

After mastering that, you could switch to Seven Emotions Poison Body. If Five Poisons Body was the skin, then Seven Emotions Poison Body was the flesh and blood. At that stage, your Internal Energy, blood, and muscles would be full of poison, making you almost a poison person. But that required ten years plus resources.

And these were just prerequisites. Later, there were also Six Desires Poison Body for training meridians and bones, and Greed Hatred Delusion Poison Body for training internal organs, etc.

And this was just external martial arts that could be boosted with external forces and resources. If you didn’t have corresponding abilities like Lin Feng, truly mastering all the external martial arts of the Five Immortals Sect would take at least three hundred years.

Moreover, this was just external training; practicing it was extremely painful. Not to mention that the Five Immortals Sect’s external training required gu and poison cooperation, needing more willpower than other sects’ external training.

As a major sect with a complete legacy, the Five Immortals Sect naturally had all types of martial arts—not just external training, but also fist, foot, weapons, Internal Force, movement techniques, etc.

Even though there were only about a hundred books, basically all the ones kept in the Five Immortals Cave were originals.

As for the martial arts available for disciples to practice, of course they were copied and placed in the sect’s Library Repository. Not every disciple could come to the Five Immortals Cave to learn martial arts; ordinary disciples weren’t even qualified to enter.

Moreover, the Library Repository also held many third-rate martial arts circulated in the Jianghu. Those martial arts weren’t qualified to be collected in the Five Immortals Cave.

These hundred or so martial arts books were the core inheritance of the Five Immortals Sect.

But Chen Xiyi didn’t look at these martial arts manuals immediately, first because he couldn’t understand them.

The characters were characters, the words were words, but when put together, the meaning required specialized knowledge to understand. Otherwise, if he just practiced by blindly following the instructions, what was the point of learning?

…

Knock knock knock~

“Old Chen, Mei Niang has something to ask of you.”

Lin Feng knocked on the cabinet in the cave to make noise, indicating his arrival, before he spoke.

“Mei Niang? Which one? I don’t know her.” Hearing this, Chen Xiyi instinctively asked back; he didn’t know any Mei Niang.

Lin Feng had black lines on his face. “The leader of the Five Immortals Sect, the one who was tied up like a caterpillar before.”

“Oh, her. What does she want?” Chen Xiyi remembered—it was Mei Yu. Why did she become Mei Niang?

“Nothing much. She just wants to ask if you could give some guidance to a few new couples in the sect. After all, you seem to be above Xiantian.” Lin Feng said casually.

“So she asked you to persuade me? But how did you get involved with her? Did you get Peach Blossom Destiny again?” Chen Xiyi couldn’t help but ask back, only then noticing that Lin Feng’s way of referring to Mei Yu was a bit unusual.

“There was a bit of an accident, just an accident.” Lin Feng said sheepishly.

“Tsk, I haven’t been watching you for just a few days, and you can’t control yourself. Forget it, what do you think about this matter?” Chen Xiyi asked in return.

“I asked Mei Niang to plant a Heart-Linking Gu in me. If I get Peach Blossom Destiny again, the gu will eat my internal organs, ensuring I won’t repeat the mistake.” After explaining his determination, Lin Feng continued, “You decide this yourself. It’s fine whether you go or not.”

“I didn’t expect you to be so harsh, actually finding yourself a Miao woman, and the leader of the Five Immortals Sect at that. But I guess this Heart-Linking Gu probably won’t be able to eat up your Peach Blossom Luck.” Chen Xiyi teased; he hadn’t expected this.

It seemed because he realized Chen Xiyi was too busy to watch him, he encountered Mei Yu due to Peach Blossom Destiny, then came to his senses and resolutely asked Mei Yu to plant the life-and-death Heart-Linking Gu in him. This move directly raised Mei Yu’s affection to undying loyalty.

By doing this, Lin Feng was not only suppressing his completely unreasonable Peach Blossom Luck but also resisting his future foolish self. You want me to have Peach Blossom Luck everywhere and a harem? I simply won’t.

“I won’t go. You go on my behalf. I don’t have much to teach anyway. They can’t learn the Strange Gates Escaping Arts, so it’s better if you share your sword insights with them.” After thinking a moment, Chen Xiyi felt it was better to forget it. He was now following the Qi Refiner system. These people had no Primordial Spirit, and this world had no Qi Mechanism. Even if he explained, it would be useless.

“Alright, that’s settled then. There’s one more thing: I can’t understand the Ascension Ritual.” Lin Feng said.

“Can’t understand? Oh, I forgot about that. How did the future you understand it back then?” Chen Xiyi couldn’t help but ponder.

“Maybe you translated it?” Lin Feng thought, since you understood it, who else would translate it if not you?

“Probably not. Didn’t your Mei Niang say anything?” Chen Xiyi didn’t think so.

“She did say something. According to her, it was brought by the ancient Miaojiang ancestors. We could trace its origins, but since you’re here, why would I take the long way around? What I need isn’t the original Ascension Ritual; I need my own perfected Sword Art.” Lin Feng’s words were reasonable.

“That makes some sense. I can translate it for you, but you need to understand that the origin of the Ascension Ritual likely holds what you need. And if I translate it for you, you might end up on a different, unpredictable path.”

Chen Xiyi still reminded him.

“I know, don’t worry Old Chen. With you here, what do I have to fear?” Lin Feng wasn’t worried at all.

“So I’m your nanny now, huh? I realize your Mei Niang is really something. She tied you down, making me feel too embarrassed to break with the entire Five Immortals Sect and Miaojiang. That’s a huge profit for her.”

Chen Xiyi teased. Meanwhile, a figure beside him picked up a brush and wrote swiftly on paper. A few minutes later, the translation of the Ascension Ritual was done.

“That skill of yours is really convenient. So many figures helping you work. What’s it called?” Lin Feng took the translated text handed to him by the figure and couldn’t help asking.

“Innate Gang Qi. Nice name, right?” Chen Xiyi didn’t hide it; it was just a name.

“???”

“You call this Innate Gang Qi?”

“Calling it a clone technique would be more fitting than Innate Gang Qi.”

Lin Feng was speechless. He remembered some sect had a martial art with that name, but theirs was a technique that could only be practiced after reaching Xiantian. Even after mastering it, it was just about releasing Internal Energy as gang qi. Yours directly turns into people—that’s way too absurd.

“A name is just a label. If you want to call this thing a clone technique, that’s fine. You could even call it Spiral Flash Super Round Dance Howl Three Style or Armstrong Cyclonic Jet Armstrong Cannon.”

Chen Xiyi indicated that Innate Gang Qi was just a name he came up with on a whim, without much meaning. He might change the name again after upgrading it.