At the end of March, Su Yu officially entered seclusion. He made a public claim that he was going into seclusion to heal his injuries. After all, he had detonated 144 of his acupoints and injured himself gravely.

For any other person, even a genius, one would lose one's body after detonating 144 acupoints. But Su Yu was abnormal, so things were different for him. He also had heavenly source qi, which served as the best recovery material for him.

He had sustained his injuries on the 25th of March. By the 30th, he had recovered more than ten acupoints. On average, he was regaining around two acupoints per day. And the longer it went, the faster his recovery was. The more acupoints he regained, the faster he could regain the other acupoints.

According to his calculation, he would need around half a month to make full recovery. Some outsiders were also making their own calculations. Even if Su Yu was a freak, they believed he would need at least half a year or a year to recover. Any other person in this position would have no choice but to cultivate from scratch instead of merely regaining their acupoints.

***

Inside the cultivation room.

Su Yu constantly absorbed heavenly source qi and forged his body while recovering from his injuries. At the same time, he was also reading a large number of books regarding weaponsmithing.

During his match with Shan Xiong, he did not use his cultural weapon. That was mainly because his cultural weapon was too weak for his current strength. That was a pseudo-profound weapon. It could be easily destroyed in a fight against Shan Xiong.

Su Yu couldn't be bothered to find someone else to work on his weapon before the fight. For him, he didn't need a cultural weapon against Shan Xiong. In the field of weaponsmithing, the various lines and legacies had their own specialties.

Not everyone was the same. Currently, Su Yu was learning Great Ming's weaponsmithing. Zhao Li's weaponsmithing could be considered the traditional path, but some of the ideas in Great Ming's weaponsmithing books were completely novel and different from the mainstream path.

"Blood essence weaponsmithing!"

At the moment, he was reading an introductory book on weaponsmithing with blood essence. This was a bloody weaponsmithing method. In fact, this was what Hu Qi had done when she refined a Sunmoon not long ago.

It wasn't too popular in the Human Realm. But when Hu Qi used it, her target was a Sunmoon cultist. Thus, nobody protested. If she used it against any other person, she would be denounced by many people.

"Using the power of blood essence..."

Su Yu did not intend to try this method himself. He was merely reading about it to broaden his knowledge base. For the past few days, he had been in a calm state. Even reading felt much easier to him.

"I can try weaponsmithing in the Hundred Dao Pagoda from the first floor."

The five elemental characters had given him a great boost in weaponsmithing. These characters were excellent support characters. He believed that using the Soul Expanding Hammer alongside the five elemental characters would further boost his weaponsmithing skill.

As for the yang acupoint, Su Yu had no way of attempting to open it. He would think about it after making a full recovery. Of course, he did not mind getting some of the death row inmates to try it out for him. He had already located the yang acupoint. Thus, he could always get those death row inmates to try opening it.

As for whether they would die in their attempt, well, that was up to fate. He also took some time to read some other books, such as the Invincible notes. As of late, he had been focusing on the types of willpower texts he read.

He was trying to get spatial, invisibility, concealment, and disguise characters. Xu Bin from the Travelling Merchants Association had returned recently. Su Yu had asked him about the origin of his characters. He intended to purchase the same willpower texts and read them to get the same characters.

This was the main reason why cultural researchers were so strong. They simply had access to too many abilities. Their characters were too mysterious.

Warriors were not weak either, but most warriors did not have access to too many techniques. But Su Yu was someone with numerous techniques as well. He was able to transform into water, wind, and many other abilities. All these were the things warriors could do with only their acupoints.

However, such special techniques were very rare even among the myriad races. Thus, warriors were completely incomparable to cultural researchers in terms of variety. In short, he was focusing on healing, body forging, and reading. That had been his daily routine for a while.

Things seemed to be still peaceful out there. Perhaps the myriad races had yet to react since they had just received words about Zhou Polong. Su Yu couldn't care less about that. He had to first focus on himself.

He also heard that Shan Xiong's return trip to Great Zhou was filled with dangers. Even now, he was still on the road. But that was not a concern to Su Yu.

***

In the blink of an eye, April arrived.

1st of April.

Before the Hundred Dao Pagoda.

This time, Su Yu made the effort to hide his identity before arriving. He did not change his appearance, but he did wear a tiger mask.

One should never think that a mask would make him stand out. The people of Great Ming Cultural Research Academy enjoyed wearing all sorts of bizarre costumes so he did not look out of place at all with his mask. The same elder was in charge of guarding the pagoda.

Others might not notice Su Yu's arrival, but that wasn't the case for this elder since he had to register each entry. The moment Su Yu handed his honorary elder identification, the elder knew who this tiger mask was.

"Again?"

Elder Yun didn't know what to feel. The pagoda had only rested for about a month. Was this kid going to enter and squeeze the pagoda dry again?

"Cough." Su Yu looked somewhat awkward. What was up with that tone? He was entitled to three entries per month. He had only entered once during February. He didn't even visit in March. He had waited until April before doing so.

"Yeah." Su Yu answered, "Senior, I'll be starting from the first floor. Can I change my name?"

"Why bother? You can probably reach the 50th floor right now."

"It's not good to be too high-profile." Su Yu said, "Most of the high-profile people will end up miserable. Just look at the three names on the 99th and 100th floors. Two of them are dead while the third person is in trouble."

That made so much sense that the elder couldn't find a retort.

Elder Yun was left speechless for a long while before he found something to say, "After entering, insert your source qi and willpower to the wall on the first floor to change your name. What name do you intend to use?"

After thinking for a bit, Su Yu said, "Zhou Podao."

"..."

What fucking name was that? Speechless.

The Zhou family had several Zhou Po something in it. Why was this kid using the name Zhou Podao(Dao Breaker)? Whose dao was he breaking?

Niu Baidao(Hundred Dao)?

Zhu Tiandao(Heavenly Dao)?

Or someone else?

Was this kid trying to pretend to be a member of the Zhou Family? The old man was speechless. Too tired to say anything, he waved Su Yu into the pagoda. Why was this kid here challenging the pagoda instead of focusing on recovery? Well, this wasn't too bad since the kid probably wouldn't be able to squeeze the pagoda too dry in his current injured status.

***

Su Yu entered the pagoda happily.

Once again, he was met with the same wall.

He changed his name there. He told himself that it was very important to stay low-profile. Just look at those high-profile legends of the past. Almost all of them were dead. Of the three names on the 99th and 100th floors, Zhou Polong was the sole survivor. And his survival wouldn't be guaranteed for long.

But with this fake name of his, people would only suspect the Zhou Family when they saw it. Thus, any achievement this name made here would have nothing to do with him.

He entered the 1st floor. It was the same spacious room as before. With his previous experience, he wasted no time and revealed his five elemental characters and hammer. He swung his hammer wildly at the empty air, telling the pagoda that he was here to weaponsmith. The pagoda should assign him some weaponsmithing trials.

Sure enough, he was soon brought to the 2nd floor. A furnace appeared in the air. This was actually a traditional smithing method. Nowadays, no expert would use a furnace when weaponsmithing.

For this trial, he was required to forge a martial weapon instead of a cultural weapon. A martial weapon wasn't hard to forge. It only needed to be durable and sharp. It did not require too many attributes unless it was a custom-made weapon for an expert. Generally, regular martial weapons were mass-produced.

After all, the main users of these weapons were in the military. The simulated furnace in the pagoda greatly resembled the real thing. After gathering some random materials in the room, Su Yu started forging.

With his strength and his basic knowledge of weaponsmithing, this trial did not pose him too much trouble. After all, the second floor was only at the level of a fresh Mental Tempering Stage cultivator.

Su Yu completed the trial in the blink of an eye. The weapon he forged was pretty trashy, but that was mainly because the materials provided by the pagoda were pretty trashy as well. After he completed the weapon, the pagoda reviewed his result.

"Insufficient heat control. Completion of 3 minutes and 31 seconds. Completion time of 3 minutes and 58 seconds with 30 percent reduction in heat. With 20 percent increase in heat..."

Su Yu was surprised. So this was how it worked. The pagoda would give one direct advice for improvement. The pagoda would provide a detailed analysis of the mistakes made during the forging and tips for improvement. Since all the materials here were simulated, it didn't matter even if all the provided materials were wasted.

"Holy shit!"

This pagoda was incredible. No wonder the weaponsmiths of Great Ming were so good. They had a large number of earth-grade weaponsmiths. So it was because of this pagoda. But with such a guidance system in place, the people here were quite stiff and lacked creativity in their creations.

They had all been created from the same mold. For weaponsmithing and pillmaking, surprise discoveries were very common. Thus, people taught from the same mass-production template would find it hard to become a grandmaster in their field.

Of course, that was not a concern for Su Yu. He had never thought of becoming a grandmaster in weaponsmithing. If he could learn everything the pagoda had to offer, why should he care about that? If he could become an earth-grade weaponsmith, was there still a need to worry that there was no soul in his creations?