Chapter Seventy-Nine: Narrow Escape from Death

Suddenly, Hu San felt a jolt in his mind, as if he were entering the purple space within his chest once more. His consciousness instantly appeared in another cramped space. This space was semicircular, about the size of a bundle, and inside were ten crystal-clear, watery jade stones. There was also a green-bound book, surrounded by talisman papers for drawing charms; most were blank, but three shimmered with spiritual light, clearly completed products.

“Could this be the legendary storage space? Is this kid actually wealthy?” Hu San grinned excitedly. With a thought, he tried to draw the items out, and with a flash of light, several objects appeared before him.

“It really is!” He casually flipped through them, picking up the green-bound book. On its cover were bold characters: Watercloud Manual. It seemed his earlier guess was right.

He skimmed the contents and found the principles profound, yet fundamentally adhering to the ways of a martial artist. If he possessed a spiritual root, cultivation should pose no difficulty.

Biting his lip with excitement, Hu San examined the talismans, though he didn’t recognize their function. He toyed with the peculiar jade stones, then returned everything to the storage jade.

“My inner breath can actually activate this storage jade. That confirms my suspicion—my cultivation in the Green Wood Scripture is clearly the foundational method of a shaman.”

“But why am I so powerless against Chen Hai? Could there be a problem with my cultivation?” Hu San scratched his head, sorting through his recent gains, only to find himself more bewildered the deeper he delved.

“And this storage jade—unless Chen Hai’s talent was exceptionally high and his sect granted him special rewards, it must be a common item, nothing rare. Judging by everything, the latter seems more likely.”

“With these items, at least I can glimpse a thread of the path to immortality.”

“As for the Watercloud Manual, I must try cultivating it. Though my foundation is the shaman’s heart method, I have nowhere to find a shaman. The Watercloud Manual seems much more reliable.”

Having decided, Hu San put away the storage jade, slung the Ice Shuttle Sword, and burned Chen Hai’s corpse to ashes before leaving, ordering the area to be declared forbidden, with no one allowed to enter.

It must be said that Hu San’s suspicions were correct. In the world of cultivators, storage jades were not precious at all; they were common goods. However, they were not called storage jades, but void stones, essentials for any cultivator venturing out.

As for the ten jade stones, they were universally used by cultivators, shamans, and nearly all practitioners, containing abundant elemental energy. They were called essence stones, divided into pure and mixed varieties. According to type, utility, and energy content, both kinds could be graded into upper, middle, and lower quality. Within the same grade, their prices were about equal.

Regardless of whether it was pure or mixed essence stones, all cultivators required them. They served as both currency and energy, supporting the entire cultivation world. What Hu San had acquired were merely ten lower-grade pure water attribute essence stones.

Within the secret chamber, Hu San opened the Watercloud Manual, devoting all his attention to exploring the ways of cultivation within.

Much as he’d sensed before, although the Watercloud Manual claimed to be the method of immortals, it was still rooted in meridians and acupoints.

As the saying goes, all things return to their origin. With Hu San’s current martial knowledge, he could comprehend the cultivation methods of the Watercloud Manual and roughly understand its operational principles.

He flipped through the entire book countless times, until he could recite every sentence clearly and grasp its general meaning. Only then did Hu San prepare to begin cultivating the Watercloud Manual.

It was not excessive caution, but the importance of this manual—it was nearly the entry-level method of immortals, demanding the utmost prudence.

Hu San did not start right away. He left the chamber, walked around the mountain to adjust his mental state to perfection, then feasted to replenish his inner warmth, and finally began experimenting with the Watercloud Manual.

He calmed himself, sat quietly, focused his mind, and followed the book’s instructions, gradually attuning himself to the heavens and earth. Each breath felt like a cloud dragon exhaling water, constantly sensing the presence of water element energy in the world.

After a while, Hu San felt a sudden movement at the Baihui point atop his head, a surge of refreshing coolness.

Yet, this coolness came and went swiftly.

Before he could rejoice, the sensation was almost gone.

In his anxiety, Hu San disregarded whether his inner warmth could transform into coolness and simply urged it with his mind.

To his delight, the nearly vanished coolness suddenly condensed, and he noticed his inner warmth rapidly dissipating.

The warmth truly could convert into coolness, though the efficiency was rather low.

With the support of his inner warmth, Hu San quickly generated more of this cool sensation.

When the coolness reached a certain quantity, it swiftly traveled down the Ren and Du meridians, finally settling in his dantian, then spiraling upward through the chest’s Tan Zhong point, the soles’ Yongquan point, and finally converging at the head’s Taiyang point, seemingly completing a full cycle.

In that instant, Hu San felt his inner warmth draining at a furious rate; within moments, all the warmth from his meal was exhausted.

Then, a faint, cool current began to circulate through his meridians.

But before he could reflect, this current clashed violently with the wood element inner breath already present—like natural enemies, they battled fiercely upon meeting.

His wood element inner breath had reached the seventh level’s peak; though its quality was inferior, its quantity vastly exceeded the newcomer.

The cool water element magic, though of far higher quality—true immortal power compared to the half-baked wood element inner breath—was scant in quantity. It was soon overwhelmed and trapped, unable to break free.

At this moment, Hu San’s meridians twisted like earthworms under sunlight. Even with his formidable body, blood blossoms burst across his skin.

These two energies were his life’s very foundation. Their reckless struggle inflicted not only physical wounds but also soul-deep trauma.

Had his constitution not been extraordinary, surpassing mortal limits, his death would have come as soon as the conflict began.

Yet, even so, Hu San could not endure for long. From the outside, his body began to bizarrely swell and shrink, like an unstable bomb, ready to explode at any moment.

And if one observed internally, they would see his insides in total chaos: blood vessels ruptured, blood flowing backward, meridians tangled—all a battlefield for these two energies.

If this continued, Hu San would either die in an explosive collapse, or one energy would annihilate the other, leaving him gravely weakened and unable to advance further.

The path of cultivation demands caution at every step. Hu San’s actions were a reckless defiance of all norms.

What Chen Hai had told him about cultivation was merely to broaden his horizons—he would never speak of its hidden dangers.

Hu San was unaware that, though the world offered myriad paths of cultivation—hundreds, perhaps thousands—they all ultimately pursued three kinds of power, each advancing by breaking through the great dragon within the human body, striving for continuous evolution.

These three powers represented the shamans of the present, the immortals of the past, and the imperial cultivators of the future. Though their manifestations varied, all aimed to pierce the great dragon.

Yet, despite sharing ultimate goals and effects, these three powers could never be mixed. If combined, no matter how powerful one’s cultivation, it would rapidly decay.

That Hu San had not died was not due to the strength of his body alone; among martial artists, he was robust, but among cultivators, even pure-body shamans or immortals outmatched him.

His survival owed to the fact that, although the Green Wood Scripture was a foundational method left by shamans, it did not produce genuine shamanic power—unlike the true magic of immortals at the law-gathering stage.

In other words, the two opposing forces in Hu San’s meridians were actually an imitation of present power and a genuine version of past power, allowing him to survive—for now.

Yet, barring some unforeseen event, their collision would eventually kill him utterly, beyond the help of even the highest immortals.

At this critical moment, Hu San suddenly felt a tremor near the Tan Zhong point in his chest. The mysterious purple space there flashed in his mind.

Desperate, Hu San had no time to think. With a thought, he drew the water element magic rooted in his dantian into the purple space.

Instantly, the purple space surged; his mind thundered, and he saw, where once was only emptiness, a crescent pool had appeared.

Within the pool, spiritual light shimmered—it was none other than the water element magic he had cultivated.

Before he could react, the pool’s water flowed from the purple space, returning to his meridians.

What astonished Hu San was that, the wood element inner breath—once a mortal enemy of the pool’s water—no longer reacted violently.

It was as if a world separated them; both energies coexisted peacefully in the same meridian, gently circulating, as if unaware of each other’s presence.

The wood element inner breath still centered on the dantian, flowing steadily, while the water element magic now centered on the pool in the purple space, reconstructing a new circuit.