Chapter 969: Happy Cultivation (III)

“It might be an incredible notion in your eyes, but to some powerhouses that cannot break through to the heights of the Human King and the like, discovering another path in a newly born world may bring them that opportunity,” Zhang An explained. “That would give them reason enough to betray New Martial. There would be no reason to do so otherwise. New Martial is too strong and the price that needs to be paid for betrayal is too high!”

“Then who could it have been?” Inspiration struck Li Hao. “Can it have been the Sword Sovereign?”

Damn, this kid!

Director General Wang and the others wanted to roll their eyes.

So you immediately start insulting the man after finding out that he’s not your direct ancestor, huh?

“The Sword Sovereign was so strong and the world was given to him...” Li Hao said seriously.

“You, too, know that it was given to the Sword Sovereign, so why go to all of this trouble?” remarked the Black Armor. “There’s no purpose in any of this, he can have this world with one word. Do you think the Human King would refuse him if he said he wanted to use this world to manifest a second dao?”

“......” Li Hao blinked, that was true.

“And everyone would support the Sword Sovereign if he wanted to manifest a second dao universe. There is no need to make things so complicated. He’d be shutting the barn doors well after the horses got out. You’ve got some imagination to think of this possibility!”

“Then... can a sealed off minor world really materialize a second dao universe?” Li Hao scratched his head sheepishly.

“Not necessarily, there’s no precedent. Perhaps someone just wanted to give it a try using something that wasn’t theirs,” Zhang An said coldly. “In my view, whoever was behind this just wanted to test the waters. They didn’t necessarily want all of this to play out. No one could be certain of the outcome, or others would’ve tried it long ago.”

They would have to have a minor world to experiment with in the first place!

Well, that eliminated the Sword Sovereign from the list of possibilities. Based on what these guys were saying, the man could do all of this with one word.

Forget it, Li Hao couldn’t be bothered to guess who was behind it all. He was so weak that even if he happened upon the truth, he’d just be killed for his knowledge.

As for why he’d suspected the Sword Sovereign, he simply felt that the man possessed both the strength and opportunity to accomplish the events that had happened so long ago. But upon further thought, it really would be too much of a hassle to do all of that. This world was his to begin with, to go down this path would mean his fake ancestor was a complete idiot.

“Then I’ll focus on strengthening my supernatural locks first,” Li Hao changed the topic. “I’ll materialize however many I can, then summon a batch of special attribute supernaturals. That should help me locate even more...”

“You can try, but you have to be fast to prevent trouble from developing,” nodded the Black Armor. “Since we’re certain that the consciousness of the world is officially gathering and that the world has slipped out of the main world’s control, every second counts now!”

Li Hao nodded and looked back at his people. “Seniors, I’ll have to trouble you to help me in this matter. We need to gather a group of special attribute supernaturals as soon as possible, as well as martial masters of every aura. Each of them might represent a different kind of supernatural lock that we hadn’t discovered before.”

They nodded back at him, quite interested in the matter. These were the types of problems they liked to deal with!

“Arf arf arf!” The dog that’d been ignored all this time suddenly barked. Li Hao blinked, what was it saying?

𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

“That’s right too.” A surprised Black Armor inclined his head. “Since new humans have dao meridians, then new monster spirits should as well! The same should go for new plant spirits, but now that we have new monster spirits... Do we have the same for plant spirits?”

“Arf arf arf!”

“You want to access your dao meridians as well?” Zhang An asked hesitantly. “I don’t know how to do that, what are you telling me for?”

“Arf arf arf arf!”

“You want Li Hao to open them for you?” the Black Armor burst out laughing. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

“Arf!”

“You’re a beast spirit, yet cannot communicate through mental ripples.” Zhang An repressed an eye roll. “Do you really not know how to, or are you pretending? Do your own communication!”

“......” Li Hao stared, confounded by their conversation. “You want to clear your dao meridians? Do you have any? And the senior is right. Everyone can utilize mental ripples, why can’t you? Why do you only know how to bark?”

“Arf arf!” Panther responded innocently.

“It says that it doesn’t know how to use mental strength, it only knows the aura!” murmured the Black Armor. “It cannot convert the ripples of the aura into language. The monster spirits of the new age are also different.”

“Bullshit!” Li Hao dismissed. “The mountain lord of Sky Roc Mountain is a modern monster spirit,

they

know how to communicate through mental ripples! This dog is trying to fool us again!”

“Arf arf arf!” Panther was immensely aggrieved.

“It says that those monster spirits are just modern monster spirits that do not cultivate modern martial dao.” The Black Armor had no choice but to translate for them again. “The dog cultivates martial dao, those guys cultivate the ancient dao. It trains the aura, those guys train their bodies and blood qi. Everyone is different.”

Li Hao looked skeptically at the Black Armor. Was there that much information in a few barks?

Zhang An couldn’t be bothered to explain himself.

Yes, there’s that much information in those barks. Do you think I’m bored enough to say so much to you otherwise?

Li Hao stroked his chin and considered Panther. Fair enough, the dog might be the only modern monster spirit who cultivated the aura!

Whether it was the lord of Sky Roc Mountain or the snake of the Kui Mountains, none of them seemed to know the aura. They followed the ancient monster spirit dao and focused on the body and blood qi. Some of them grasped mental strength if they were stronger, but none of them seemed to know the aura!

This meant that the dog might really have supernatural locks—dao meridians!

Since humans had them, would monster spirits? There weren’t only humans alive in this world, there were millions of other species. If dogs possessed dao meridians, what about pigs? If they did, how about cats? Sheep?

If all species had them... was he supposed to draw diagrams of all of them??

Li Hao gulped with fear. This was a massive undertaking that he might not complete for the rest of his life!

Also, if humans, monster spirits, and all living things had them, how about dead ones? Such as... a sword, a blade, a spear... Could these weapons cultivate on their own? Did they possess dao meridians?

The possibilities grew more frightening the more he thought about them! Cultivation was such a vast and marvelous world!

......

On this day in the mines, Li Hao, the Black Armor, Director General Wang, Yuan Shuo, and a dog began building a model of the human body. As opposed to a regular model, it was an exceedingly special one that reflected the universe within the body.

The Black Armor even had Li Hao describe the Hao Cosmos so he could create a miniaturized version. Li Hao wondered if the ancient was tricking information out of him, but spoke of what he knew nonetheless in order to create a more perfect model.

As for cultivation, the young man temporarily set it aside. This was a kind of cultivation as well—it helped Li Hao have a more direct and deeper understanding of the human body.

......

It was as if another world inside the mine. A giant similar to Li Hao hovered in the air. It was transparent and so accurate down to the detail that his private parts were also modeled.

“Can we uh, leave that out of the model?” Li Hao asked glumly.

“The human body must be replicated exactly, so no, unless you lack that in reality!” the Black Armor answered calmly.

“......” Li Hao rolled his eyes.

“This is a male model, we’ll have to build a female one later on,” chuckled Yuan Shuo. “This will facilitate a comparison between males and females—there might actually be some differences. The elderly and children also need to be looked into!”

Li Hao flicked a glance at his teacher. Did his teacher really want that for research purposes, or was it his true nature as an old lecher coming to the fore?

Zhang An couldn’t be bothered with them. He had high expectations for tasks like these and laid down very strict requirements. “The human body is the most complex. I am not familiar with modern humans, and next we’ll need to use a special method to compress the Hao Cosmos within. But the dao meridians are difficult to copy...”

He’d given this deep thought—what could replace the dao meridians?

“Does it have to be something similar to the dao meridians?” asked Li Hao.

“It has to, for accuracy’s sake!”

“We can substitute them with supernatural characters,” the young man offered. “But we’ll need a lot of people to help with that. Everyone can coalesce different characters to imitate real dao meridians!”

“This works!” nodded the Black Armor! “Then we’ll stabilize a portion of space to hold the characters...”

The group outside grew busy again. Whether it was the Black Armor, Yuan Shuo, or Director General Wang, they observed him from day to night. The young man was quite dejected by the attention from a group of old men. It was so keen that they were almost counting the number of hairs on his body!

That was pretty much the level of detail they were achieving as they built a transparent human body model that looked exactly the same as Li Hao, both inside and out.

The young man continued to absorb energy and Water of Life during this time. The eleven plant spirits in the ruins supplied only him with Water of Life. He consumed an astronomical sum everyday. With how vast the mine was, it didn’t matter how much energy he absorbed.

Not only that, but he continuously extracted energy from the Hao Cosmos to fortify his body so that it wouldn’t collapse from the weight of all the supernatural locks he was materializing.

Li Hao unknowingly grew stronger, yet he didn’t realize it since he was absorbed in building the human model and perfecting it. Additionally, he retraced his supernatural characters during this time—assembling, rebuilding, reassembling, and breaking them apart...

He tried everything that entered his mind, heedless of danger. It wasn’t like he’d die from his experimentation!

......

As Li Hao made different attempts in martial dao, the world outside shifted slightly. All sorts of energy seemed to be more active beneath the heavens. It was only energy before, but now it seemed particularly lively.