The wealth the Golden Crocodile Douluo had accumulated over the years was truly staggering. In order to take Chen Ming as his disciple, he practically "spilled gold" for nearly two full hours without pause.
There were ten-thousand-year Spirit Beast skeletons, the heart of a true dragon preserved through special methods to retain its vitality, ten-thousand-year medicinal herbs, ancient Spirit Master journals, meteorites fallen from beyond the heavens, and more.
Even with two soul tools on him, Chen Ming couldn't fit all the gifts the Golden Crocodile Douluo had given. In the end, he had to take an additional soul tool directly from him just to store everything.
Many of these items were things that simply could not be found anywhere else. Either they had long since been used up, or they were tightly monopolized by the great sects, never allowed to circulate outside. They were priceless treasures—so rare that even a powerhouse like the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, wealthy enough to rival an empire, would struggle to acquire them.
A large portion of these resources had originally been gathered by the Golden Crocodile Douluo in preparation for breaking through to the level of a Limit Douluo. The Spirit Hall itself had also helped him collect many of them. Without exception, each item was a treasure.
Yet after confirming that he could not break through, he neither passed these items on to others nor used them up. Instead, he kept them until now—and handed nearly half of his accumulated resources over to Chen Ming.
These materials alone were enough for Chen Ming to resume more than a dozen research projects that had previously been shelved due to lack of resources.
...
After being led on a tour through the Consecration Hall and paying respects outside the Douluo Hall, where generations of Titled Douluo were buried, Chen Ming was finally brought to the Spirit Hall's library.
The library of the Heaven Dou Emperial Academy had ten floors, symbolizing the ten ranks of Spirit Masters from Spirit Scholar to Titled Douluo. But the Spirit Hall had long since abandoned such symbolic gestures. In fact, it was no longer even a single "pavilion," but rather an entire complex of interconnected buildings.
From book storage to transcription, cataloging, recording, organization, and analysis…
Hundreds of trusted Spirit Masters maintained the full cycle of the entire archival system. Even the oldest among them wouldn't dare claim they had read every book housed here.
Rare manuscripts, personal journals, and even materials not originating from the Douluo Continent—along with documents that remained undecipherable—were all sealed away in the hidden corners of this vast archive.
The Douluo world was a peculiar place. What made it peculiar was the presence of many things that seemed to have come from other worlds. This phenomenon was especially common among Spirit Beasts. Creatures such as Evil Eye and Titan Giant Ape also existed on the Holy Demon Continent, making it difficult to determine which world they had originally come from.
Some of these foreign elements had long since assimilated into the Douluo world. Others, however, remained incompatible even after countless years. The Spirit Hall had collected quite a number of such strange artifacts.
As the Second Worship Elder, the Golden Crocodile Douluo held authority equal to that of the Pope and the Grand Worship Elder, Qian Daoliu. With that level of access, he brought Chen Ming directly into a well-preserved underground chamber.
There, the Golden Crocodile Douluo even revealed a "Sacred Artifact" to him—
It was an engraved artifact left behind by the Angel God ten thousand years ago, before departing from the Douluo Continent. The material used was the skull of a hundred-thousand-year Spirit Beast.
Within it were recorded the earliest methods of awakening a Martial Soul, as well as the foundational practices of Spirit Master cultivation. It detailed the ten ranks from Spirit Scholar to Titled Douluo, along with scattered fragments of information regarding the God Rank.
Thanks to the pile of analysis and translation notes stacked nearby, Chen Ming didn't take long to understand the meaning of these pictographs. But once he understood them, his mouth began to twitch incessantly, and he couldn't control his expression.
"No… no, no… you've got to be kidding me… It's been ten thousand years, and the basic cultivation method hasn't changed at all?"
The cultivation technique carved onto the skull was, in fact, the very same foundational method used by Spirit Masters across the Douluo Continent today. The only difference was that it lacked some annotations and finer details—resulting in an overall efficiency that was only about ninety percent of the version taught in beginner Spirit Master academies.
And yet—ten thousand years had passed, and all that had been added to the cultivation method were a few annotations?
Damn it. Back in the era of the Angel God, most humans were practically uneducated from the womb, which was why the foundational cultivation method had been simplified to such an extent that it required almost no thinking at all—so easy that even someone dull-witted could learn it.
But after ten thousand years, not a single person had tried to refine it? Not one had considered improving or optimizing it?
"That is why I said your modification of the cultivation method is a monumental contribution," Golden Crocodile Douluo said, his face faintly flushed.
In his eyes, Chen Ming was a monster who had begun revising cultivation methods at the age of six, right after awakening his Martial Soul. Compared to that, the fact that there had been virtually no progress in ten thousand years might have been even more shocking than a world turned upside down.
He himself had never thought there was anything wrong with it before. But after seeing the new-style methods, even he couldn't help but wonder if the predecessors of the Spirit Hall had been… a bit lacking in initiative.
Chen Ming fell silent, an uneasy feeling creeping into his mind. Still, in the end, that ominous premonition did not come to pass.
Although Spirit Masters often knew how to use things without understanding the underlying principles—relying too heavily on convenient Spirit Abilities and neglecting deeper research—the collection within the Spirit Hall's secret chamber was still quite impressive.
Low-level Spirit Masters simply didn't qualify to leave records here. What remained were either comprehensive compilations produced every few centuries by Spirit Hall, or the cultivation notes and personal journals of Spirit Saints, Spirit Douluo, and Titled Douluo.
At that level, even if their reasoning sometimes boiled down to "it works because I think it does," their accumulated experience still allowed them to extract useful patterns. What had been preserved here were precisely those distilled insights and speculative conclusions.
"Notes from a Titled Douluo with Eye Martial Souls, notes from a Titled Douluo with Heart Martial Souls, notes from a Titled Douluo with Bone Martial Souls... a Spirit Saint with Kidney Martial Souls... wait, how can a Spirit Saint leave one here?"
Chen Ming paused, then inhaled sharply. "Ah… internal and external kidneys linked together… I see, I see. This actually has reference value."
He set aside that rather unconventional set of notes alongside other records from Body Soul-type Titled Douluo, then began flipping through the materials left behind by dragon-type Spirit Masters.
("Internal kidneys" referred to the actual organs, while "external kidneys"… was a more polite term for something else entirely.)
"Blood Dragon Douluo's cultivation notes, Fire Dragon Douluo's, Mud Dragon Douluo's, Purple Dragon Douluo's…"
Then his hand paused.
"The Seven Apertures Exquisite Heart?" He pulled out the text, surprised. It was a secret technique from the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect—somehow acquired by Spirit Hall. Opening it, he found that only the first three layers were recorded, enough to train one's mind to handle three simultaneous processes.
After reading through it carefully, Chen Ming couldn't help but curl his lip in mild disdain.
Rather than true multitasking, it was more like conditioning the body through repeated training to form a kind of muscle memory—maintaining mechanical operations while a single-threaded mind rapidly switched back and forth between different tasks. Only one thread was truly active; the rest relied on inertia.
In essence, it merely simulated the appearance of multitasking. It was not the same as genuine multi-threaded cognition.
Without higher-level insights into spiritual power and methods to strengthen it, the upper limits of the Seven Aperture Exquisite Heart would ultimately remain quite limited. After all, it was just a technique of application, not a true method for increasing mental strength.
That said, such training could indeed improve reaction speed and enhance spiritual power to a certain degree.
Chen Ming grabbed some blank paper and a pen. After only a few minutes of thought, he constructed an entirely new multitasking method and began writing it down.
Curious, Golden Crocodile Douluo took a look—and was immediately stunned.
Not only had Chen Ming completed the originally three-layered technique into a full seven-layer system, he had also refined and expanded it, allowing not just multitasking but even layered, overlapping thought processes.
"How did you do this? The Seven Aperture Exquisite Heart is a secret technique of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect. The earlier layers are one thing, but even within the sect's history, only a handful of people have ever reached the later stages."
"I was born capable of true multitasking—genuine multi-threaded thinking," Chen Ming replied calmly. "So for me, this isn't difficult at all."
He wasn't lying. Thanks to his unique advantage, he had surpassed what Spirit Saints of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect could achieve after a century of training from the moment he was born.
As he spoke, he continued searching through the shelves—until, tucked away in a corner, he discovered something unexpected.
"Clear Sky… Explanation?" He blinked, pulling the text out. "Wait… this is a cultivation notes left behind by Tang Chen? How is this even here?"
...
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