hapter 54: Attracting Attention, Half of the twelve primary meridians
Compared to the Great Spirit Arena in Stark City, the one in Iron Wall City was not as noisy; instead, it was permeated with a murderous aura.
Much like Iron Wall City itself, it was steady and solemn.
Walking inside, Su Yuntao took out his Copper Spirit Fight Badge to register. The staff member in charge of registration was not the beautiful woman commonly seen in other Spirit Arenas, but a stern middle-aged man. He wore ordinary clothes, yet his posture was as upright as a pine tree, his face calm and unruffled, and his every move carried the aura of a soldier on the battlefield.
A gruesome scar on his left cheek added a touch of ferocity to his appearance.
"Title?" he asked, his tone concise and sharp.
"Lone Wolf," Su Yuntao replied truthfully.
The man nodded and gestured for Su Yuntao to pay the registration fee. Su Yuntao took out a bag of gold coins from his robe. The man caught it, weighed it in his hand without opening it to count, and casually tossed it into the counter.
"Registration complete. Go wait in the back area."
Su Yuntao nodded in response. Just as he turned around, a slow voice came from behind him.
"You have intense Battle Intent. Join the army; it's the most suitable place for you and a Holy Land for battle."
Su Yuntao turned back in surprise, only to see the middle-aged man looking at him with calm eyes, as if the words hadn't come from him.
Tang Shan, standing aside, was also somewhat surprised.
"No need," Su Yuntao politely declined. "I do enjoy fighting, but I don't like war. The army is more about war than fighting."
After speaking, he and Tang Shan walked toward the waiting area together.
Faced with the refusal, the middle-aged man didn't get angry. Instead, he murmured with a hint of regret, "Such intense Battle Intent. With proper training, he might become another battlefield killing machine in the future. A pity, a pity. Why do none of you like war and instead choose simple fighting?"
Before his voice faded, the phantom of a long blade that seemed capable of slaughtering the world flickered behind him, vanishing in an instant.
Reaching the waiting area, the two waited quietly for the Spirit Fight to begin. Tang Shan looked at Su Yuntao with a strange expression and asked, "Big brother, don't you think your luck has been a bit off lately?"
Su Yuntao looked puzzled. "Luck? There's nothing wrong with it."
Tang Shan nodded seriously and agreed, "Yeah, no problem," but secretly complained in his heart: That man just now was clearly powerful, and you ran into him the moment you entered the Spirit Arena. You call that no problem?
Not long after, it was Su Yuntao's turn to take the stage. His opponent was an ordinary two-ring Spirit Grandmaster, whom he dispatched effortlessly before calmly leaving the stage. When he released his Spirit, that thousand-year spirit ring made its first appearance in Iron Wall City, instantly causing quite a stir.
In a seat in the stands, a man looked at the thousand-year spirit ring beneath Su Yuntao's feet, a flash of surprise in his eyes as he whispered to himself, "Such a Genius. I wonder if the First Prince would be interested. I must go back and report this."
Tang Shan watched several of Su Yuntao's Spirit Fights. Seeing him crush his opponents without any obstacles, he went over to greet him and then left the Spirit Arena.
Su Yuntao was going to Cultivate in the Spirit Arena, and Tang Shan naturally didn't want to fall behind; he also needed to seize the time to improve his strength.
After wandering around the city for a while, Tang Shan easily found a blacksmith shop. After all, this was a heavy military town. In case of an emergency where weapon transport couldn't keep up, repairing damaged equipment to return it to the battlefield was a necessary option.
After paying a gold coin, Tang Shan rented a forging room, bought some raw materials, and locked himself inside, preparing for a closed-door forging session.
At the moment of Martial Soul Possession, spirit power fluctuations radiated from his body. Accompanied by the crisp sound of bones, Tang Shan's body expanded rapidly, his muscle lines becoming more defined, containing terrifying power.
He didn't rush to start. Instead, he first quietly felt the spirit power consumption within his body after activating his Spirit, carefully calculating the difference from before. After a long while, Tang Shan reached a conclusion: It seems my cultivation direction hasn't deviated overall. Developing the body through National Martial Arts indeed has a great promotional effect on the Fusion of the Body Martial Soul and the body; the spirit power consumption after activating the Spirit has significantly decreased. At this Fusion speed, even without resources like 'Huo Gua' or the Bloodline of a certain Golden Dragon King, as long as I reach Huajin Perfection and then Breakthrough to three rings, I should basically meet the requirements for the Body Martial Soul's Secondary Awakening—that is, the complete Fusion of the Spirit and the body. This process will take about three years.
Having made his cultivation plan, Tang Shan picked up a piece of iron and pulled the bellows. The flames burned fiercely, emitting a terrifying heat wave that instantly raised the temperature of the forging room by several degrees.
The grayish-black raw material gradually turned glowing red and began to soften slowly.
Tang Shan took out his forging hammer from his spirit tool and weighed it in his hand, unable to help but frown: My physical fitness has improved again recently. This hammer is already a bit awkward to use. I'll have to forge a heavier, more suitable one in a while.
He gripped the handle with his right hand and slowly raised the hammer high, while his left hand used tongs to fix the glowing red material. Then, his power suddenly exploded as he struck down forcefully! The power transmitted layer by layer from his left leg, left hip, waist, and right shoulder, finally converging in his right hand. Bulging muscles full of explosive power stood out on his body, and his whole being radiated a vigorous Life Qi.
"Clang!" The hammer struck down violently with a massive sound, and the intense recoil sent the hammer flying high again. Tang Shan's body followed the momentum into a large arc, like a fully drawn bow, perfectly absorbing the recoil before striking down again.
"The core of the Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer Method lies in the exertion technique. With some understanding of power application, it's not difficult to imitate."
Feeling the recoil become a part of his own power to assist in forging, Tang Shan remained calm.
This was, after all, a Self-Created Soul Skill centered on power exertion, not something containing profound spirit power flow or rule application like Ring Explosion or the Clear Sky Nine Absolutes.
Outwardly, his hammer technique differed quite a bit from the Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer Method, but the core was identical. The reason he couldn't yet stack up to eighty-one strikes was purely because his current physical fitness hadn't met the standard. If his physical fitness were strong enough, let alone eighty-one strikes, with his exquisite control over power, it wouldn't be impossible to stack them until the limit of his physical capacity.
Rolling blood and Qi surged through his body, providing a continuous stream of power; spirit power also flowed through his Meridians, nourishing every part of his body and relieving muscle fatigue.
The power was perfectly absorbed and then struck down again. Thirty strikes, thirty-one strikes... Tang Shan felt his control over the power in his hands and continued to swing the hammer methodically.
"Clang! Clang!" Under the overwhelming shadows of the hammer, the volume of the raw material shrank rapidly, soon reducing to half its original size.
Achieving the effect of Hundred Refinements in just a few dozen strikes was already quite good.
In a flash of thought, the purple spirit ring beneath Tang Shan's feet suddenly glowed brightly. The muscles in his waist and calves expanded rapidly, and the dark blue veins on his forearms bulged. The speed of the entire movement accelerated instantly, the hammer turning into a blur in ordinary eyes, as if striking every part of the raw material simultaneously.
"Ding!" A crisp metallic ring sounded, as if capturing a special rhythm. Even though the power applied was immense, every time the hammer hit the metal, it produced a crisp vibration instead of the previous dull boom.
"Crack!" At a certain moment, cracks appeared on the raw material, and it shattered completely on the forging table.
Tang Shan stopped, his eyes slightly closed, quietly savoring the special feeling of resonating with the metal just now: Is this the method for further purifying metal?
He seemed to have found the direction for further progress in his forging skills. Unfortunately, he had been using the Disorder Splitting Wind Hammer Method just now; even though he knew how much force to use and which part to strike, the power had long since become uncontrollable, ultimately causing the material to shatter.
Tang Shan was not discouraged by this failure. He believed that since he could enter that state once, he could definitely do it again.
Feeling the slight weakness in his blood and Qi, Tang Shan sat cross-legged on the ground, took out Spirit Beast meat from his Storage Ring, and swallowed it. His stomach churned like a millstone, grinding and digesting it, then converting it into blood and Qi to replenish his consumption.
Just then, a warm current surged through his body, and a new meridian was discovered.
"Another meridian has been discovered. Let me see... this is the sixth meridian. According to the circulation order, it should be the Small Intestine Meridian."
Feeling the spirit power flow along the complex Meridians, Tang Shan was very joyful. This meant his cultivation speed would further increase.
He closed his eyes, his mind settling down, drawing the omnipresent spirit power from the world into his body, then wrapping it in his own spirit power to refine and convert it into part of his cultivation.
Some time ago, driven by the circulation of blood and Qi, Tang Shan's spirit power had already "found its own way out," successively opening six of the human twelve primary meridians: the Lung Meridian of Hand-Taiyin, the Large Intestine Meridian of Hand-Yangming, the Stomach Meridian of Foot-Yangming, the Spleen Meridian of Foot-Taiyin, the Heart Meridian of Hand-Shaoyin, and the newly discovered Small Intestine Meridian of Hand-Taiyang.
A full six Meridians—though not comparable to the twelve primary meridians and eight extraordinary meridians covered by the Mysterious Heaven Skill, it was still considered a top-tier cultivation method on the Douluo Continent.
The transparent spirit power flowed slowly through the Meridians, growing bit by bit, with both quality and quantity increasing at a very slow but steady pace. Suddenly, the spirit power reached a certain critical point, and the invisible peace was quietly broken. Tang Shan's aura fluctuated briefly, but it soon stabilized under the operation of the Cultivation Technique.
"Level nineteen." Tang Shan's eyes were full of joy when he opened them. Counting the time spent hunting Spirit Beasts and traveling, nearly a few months had passed, and he had finally reached level nineteen, only one level away from the level twenty required to absorb a second spirit ring.
"I need to contact Xue Qinghe as soon as possible," Tang Shan thought to himself. "After all, finding a Spirit Beast will take quite a while, and it's best to complete the body tempering for Anjin before absorbing the second spirit ring. Time is not exactly abundant."
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