Chapter 124 - A Self-Created Cultivation Technique, A Baby Girl Is Born - Part 3

March arrived.

Hundred Lotus Manor was in full bloom. The new distillery was completed; the Red Ant Guild had delivered the goods Li Yuan ordered; and 300 fearless troops arranged by Tie Sha had arrived to patrol the watchtowers around the estate.

The fortress Li Yuan envisioned was finally beginning to take shape.

Life at Hundred Lotus Manor bustled with activity, each person immersed in their own tasks.

Xiao Sheng and Niu Niu still hadn’t cultivated shadow blood, but Nian Nian had reached ninth rank. The two children were so disappointed that they stopped playing with her for a while.

Nian Nian herself was too busy to patch things up. Tang Qiu had her constantly at his side, teaching her puppet-craft theory and letting her gain hands-on experience by helping build the estate’s puppet defense system.

After his senior brother’s death, Zhou Jia went to pay his respects just once. Following that, he spent most of his days near the new distillery, either standing guard or sunbathing.

All he wanted was to do something useful for Li Yuan—the final hope of the Fallen Moon School. That alone was enough for him.

Meanwhile, those older folk who had accompanied Xue Ning from Beam Dragon Mountain moved into the distillery complex, making themselves at home in the adjoining side rooms.

Yan Yu’s and Xue Ning’s bellies finally started to show; both now had a faint roundness beneath their robes.

In between, there were minor domestic happenings.

Sometimes, Yan Yu would have troubling dreams. She’d find herself in a gloomy house, where a pale white silhouette stood facing away from her at the window. No matter how many times she called, the figure never turned around. Oddly, despite the eerie setting, she felt no fear, as if the dream harbored no malice toward her.

Li Yuan, on the other hand, kept searching through possible trade channels tied to Xue Ning’s wine business in hopes of finding a life chronicle.

Unsurprisingly, Li Yuan turned up nothing. Even after asking Tie Sha for leads on a ghost market and venturing there himself, he still found no trace of it. More than that, it turned out such a thing had never shown up before and likely never would. life chronicle techniques simply weren’t bought or sold in any normal marketplace.

Resigned, Li Yuan turned his attention to the forty books he’d spent 400 taels of gold on. Most were worthless, little more than a money pit. Some might have hidden value, though it wasn’t obvious at a glance.

Right now, Li Yuan was holding what appeared to be a diary. Its entries read like the scribbles of a powerful cultivator, someone possibly of sixth rank or higher. The text included casual boasts like, “So-and-so was only sixth rank; I killed him in one strike.”

Usually, Li Yuan would have dismissed it as ridiculous, but since it came through the Red Ant Guild, he suspected at least some authenticity.

Over a few entries, the author of the diary discussed the life chronicle, jotting down theories and musings—

"Sometimes I wonder...where did the first life chronicle even come from? Someone had to create it, right? So how did that person do it?"

"Perhaps our ancestors, in the face of unimaginable perils, learned to create new cultivation techniques. But we who live now have grown used to relying on what they left behind. Because it’s convenient, or because even those with little talent can follow it, we’ve forgotten how to create anything ourselves."

"

I’ve hit another bottleneck. My founder’s art has become etched into my bones. It’s all I see, awake or asleep. Yet it’s not mine. I didn’t forge it; the original creator did. Everyone envies me, but they don’t know my frustration. If I could do it all again, I wouldn’t learn these established techniques at all. I’d make my own! If the founder could write a chronicle, why can’t I?"

"I’ve gathered a few unranked cultivation manuals and even had doctors prepare herbal tonics. The founder who created the life chronicle didn’t have any technique to start with, right? He must’ve begun with something unranked. Genius move, if I do say so myself!"

"I’ve discovered a clue! The key is to compress the blood, refine it, use one’s own cultivation to catalyze it, and apply external stimuli to spark a transformation..."

"It failed. I’ve already traveled too far down someone else’s path. My own training is useless here. Ah, forget it. Better just to increase my cultivation realm the tried-and-true way and stop dreaming of creation

."

Li Yuan set the diary aside and gazed off into the distance, silent for a long while. “It seems I can’t buy what I need. Well then...maybe I should try making my own.”

His first step? Collecting as many unranked cultivation techniques as possible. He approached Tie Sha with this unusual request, insisting on quantity over quality. Although Tie Sha had no idea what Li Yuan planned, he complied.

Such unranked techniques weren’t prized by anyone, yet they weren’t exactly common. Most were obscure family secrets passed down through generations. People rarely used them. Who would practice a technique that never even reached entry rank? Nonetheless, they were still family heirlooms of sorts.

Tie Sha organized a discreet project under the pretext of compiling basic training manuals for miscellaneous tasks, promising to return the documents once they were copied and studied.

The deputy sect master, Yu Chaojin, also pitched in after Tie Sha told him this was the request of the Blood Blade Patriarch.

Before long, Li Yuan had a whole collection of unranked techniques. Many were transcribed copies, but since accuracy wasn’t as critical compared to ranked cultivation techniques, that didn’t matter too much. This was also why the Blood Blade Sect was able to gather them quickly in large numbers.

Among the many unranked techniques Li Yuan had gathered were titles, such as Three-Part Fist, Centipede Kicks, Willow-Fluff Sword Technique, Rapid Chain Spear, Nine Serpent Strikes of the Snow Mountain, Yin-Sealing Reversal Grip, Tortoise Shell Guard, Ear-Sealing Technique, Lightning Eyes, Headbutt Breaks the Southern Wall, Burning Wood Finger, Little Lion’s Roar, and Sand-Shot Technique among others.

Li Yuan dove right into training. Although he was already at the seventh rank, he practiced these low rank techniques in reverse, progressing at a phenomenal pace—sometimes mastering a single one in mere days. In a few cases, he could read through the technique, try it a few times, and already see the familiar progress indicator flickering in his mind.

Yet he refused to use his stat points to force immediate breakthroughs. Instead, he kept training the hard way.

Each day had twelve hours of daylight; subtracting time spent with his wives, taking three daily meals, and conducting patrol with the white finches, he still managed to devote nearly eight hours purely to cultivation. Every half hour, he switched to a different technique, effectively training 16 unranked techniques in rotation. He’d chosen them carefully to cover every part of his body—arms, legs, head, chest, back, even his throat.

Pushing himself to the limit, Li Yuan poured his sweat into daily practice, telling himself over and over that the world was growing ever more dangerous. He had to get stronger, enough to protect the people he cared about and to survive what lay ahead.

“If I can’t buy it, I’ll create it myself!”

Day after day, month after month, he threw himself into these unranked techniques, never taking shortcuts. His cultivation soared as he reversed-engineered each technique.

Two months later, all sixteen were at an Advanced level, every one stuck at that critical plateau awaiting enlightenment. Checking his status window readout, he saw (39/40) for each, along with 1,859 unallocated stat points. He immediately invested 32 of those points, using two points per technique.

In a flash, insight from 16 simultaneous breakthroughs crashed into his mind. Their progress all jumped to (1/80). Li Yuan felt a wave of revelation sweep through him, as though he’d tasted honey but couldn’t fully describe its sweetness.

He pressed on with his daily regimen, eight hours of training, no rest. Two more months slid by.

By early August, in the stifling summer heat, Li Yuan stood shirtless beneath the scorching sun, practicing tirelessly. His gaze flicked to the (79/80) markers in each skill’s display and noted 2,296 stat points.

“Time to break through!”

Instantly, he spent another 16 points, triggering another surge of insight as the essence of each technique rippled through his mind—like a flurry of masterful instructions echoing again and again. He imagined that if there truly had been a founder who originally invented these arts, they might have followed a path just like his.

All 16 techniques rose to (1/160), prompting Li Yuan to grit his teeth with determination.

𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

“Keep going!”

He trained on, from spring to summer and then into autumn, rain or shine.

Meanwhile, both of his wives’ bellies grew bigger with each passing day.

By October, he saw that most of the techniques had progressed to around (80/160). With both wives close to giving birth, he decided to halt his physical practice for a bit—and poured a final wave of points into the techniques.

A total of 1,280 stat points vanished in a heartbeat, maxing out all sixteen unranked martial cultivation techniques.

A flood of recollections and epiphanies whirled through his mind, layer upon layer, culminating in a near-explosive sensation inside his body. Glancing at his status window, Li Yuan noticed a new entry in his techniques list.

NEW! Unnamed Cultivation Technique

- Rank 9

(1/100)

Inside him, a fresh drop of shadow blood formed, very much like the Return-Willow Technique had once manifested.

“I did it... I actually did it!”

He was about to shout with joy when a cry rang out from Yan Yu’s birthing room.

“She’s here! She’s here!”

Alarmed and excited, Li Yuan rushed to be at his wife’s side.

“It’s a baby girl!” the midwife called.

Li Yuan burst through the door and hurried to the bedside, only for the entire room to fall abruptly silent. The midwife stood, stunned, holding the newborn child. The baby girl’s eyes were pure white; she was blind.

She wailed for a moment, but then abruptly twisted her head toward the doorway, tiny arms stretching out as though reaching for someone. She seemed to want to be cradled by a person who wasn’t there.

Yet, clearly, no one was standing in that spot.