Her internal energy was increasing slowly, and over the next year or two, leisurely cultivation wouldn't amount to much. She needed to decide on a course of action: burning life, martial techniques, poisons, or simply running away...
She didn't possess the same deep affection for this country as the natives did. It wasn't her homeland, and she had no relatives here. With no strings attached, she couldn't bring herself to sacrifice her life for the nation. If she truly couldn't win, her priority was survival.
Lin Yue raised her hand.
"The Senior may command whatever she requires!"
After taking a sip of tea, Lin Yue finally spoke three words in a flat tone.
"The Scripture Pavilion."
Subsequently, Lin Yue followed him to the county town's government scripture repository. She browsed through several bookshelves, finding techniques for lightness like Swallow-Like Lightness, the Turtle Breathing Technique, the Sitting-Walking Scripture, and the Flowing Water Sword. There were internal cultivation techniques, martial arts, and even medicinal bath prescriptions.
These books were in pristine condition, as if they were brand new; they were likely part of a private collection.
The sandalwood room was locked away as a rule; when questioned, the reply was always that they possessed nothing. Some books were hoarded so effectively that they had gone extinct in the outside world.
Failing to find the legendary Life-Burning Divine Art, she traveled to the prefecture capital. At the foot of a table in their scripture pavilion, she found a copy. After looking it over, she saw it had many side effects. Constant emptiness was the norm, accompanied by back pain, blurred vision, and general physical weakness. Sacrificing too much life would easily damage one's foundation and lead to the exhaustion of blood and qi.
A ten-year sacrifice for one year of bitter cultivation was a low conversion rate for an ordinary person.
She tucked it into a stack of other techniques to smuggle it out. After visiting several nearby prefecture capitals, she managed to obtain two life-burning techniques. The side effects were similar, with conversion rates of ten-to-one and five-to-one.
The cultivation gained from life-burning techniques was substantial and extremely pure, equivalent to a genius's dedicated practice. If one spent ten years of life for one year of cultivation, starting at age ten, even a talentless person could grow into a master after a few years of sacrifice. However, by that time, the person would have aged into someone in their sixties, looking like they were ready for the grave.
Initially, these techniques were created for the purpose of revenge and had been popular for a time. Later, they were banned by major powers for disrupting the order of the martial world. Nowadays, even if people possessed them, they didn't dare show them for fear of being eliminated as practitioners of heretical paths.
She picked up the five-to-one manual and began to circulate the technique during meditation. Within moments, Lin Yue's brow furrowed and her face turned pale. The true qi being circulated was rapidly draining her vitality, spreading a sense of weakness and exhaustion from her core outward. This was followed by a deep-seated panic and helplessness.
She had never experienced this sensation of waiting for death before, where she was powerless to do anything.
Lin Yue stopped and activated her Rejuvenation Technique. A Master Realm martial artist had a lifespan of two hundred years, so sacrificing five years was nothing. After a while, the sense of weakness diminished by more than half; she estimated the feeling was only so intense because her body wasn't used to the initial extraction of her lifespan.
Her lost vitality was slowly recovering, and the aura within her body showed a noticeable, albeit small, increase. Breaking through to the Master Realm had automatically cleared the acupoints throughout her body and opened her middle dantian, providing a vessel for nearly a hundred years of majestic internal energy. There wasn't much true qi in her meridians currently, so after an hour of breath regulation, Lin Yue began to grind again.
She ground through the process four times, sacrificing twenty years of her life. Lin Yue was drenched in sweat, her face as pale as an opium addict's. Although she hadn't physically aged—her vitality was being continuously replenished—the feeling of decline during the extraction process was very real through her body's feedback.
After ten days of medicinal supplementation, she would grind once more, and then every five days thereafter. Twenty days later, the sense of weakness had diminished significantly; her body was gradually adapting to the change.
She continued burning her life in this manner. Her rapidly ballooning power caused her meridians to feel slightly distended, so Lin Yue began using medicinal baths to cleanse her tendons and marrow.
The thick green liquid burned and stung until her skin turned red. The powerful medicinal force seeped through her pores, causing an unbearable pain throughout her body as if she were being pricked by needles. She gritted her teeth and forced her body to relax, circulating her cultivation technique to lead the medicinal force through the Great Circulatory Cycle of her meridians.
After about four hours, most of the medicinal liquid had been absorbed. The color was now light green and slightly blackened, and it had a pungent smell. After reaching the Master Realm, her sense of smell had become exceptionally sharp. Lin Yue had to wash herself several times before the nauseating scent faded.
She continued grinding until August of the following year. She had gained approximately sixty years of cultivation, but at the cost of over three hundred years of her lifespan. The consequence was that Lin Yue felt lethargic all day long, unable to summon the energy for anything.
A Mid-Stage Master came to visit and spar with her. Lin Yue suppressed her cultivation to fight him, but she was defeated within a few moves.
The court sent information regarding the Masters of both nations. It ranged from newly ascended Masters to the Peak Master Realm, involving various martial paths such as blades, spears, swords, and staves, as well as poison doctors and poison-wasp masters. The enemy had twenty-four, one more than Xuan Kong had previously mentioned, while their side had twenty.
The young man she had only met once, but heard someone mention frequently, was also on the list: Sikong Jianqing. It was a rare surname; his name alone was twice as long as Li Le's. He was a sword master who had been in the Master Realm for fifty years, a Mid-Stage Master just like Li Le.
The female spear master from the Martial Arts Convention was also included. She had been in the Master Realm for forty-five years and had recently entered the Mid-Stage.
Lin Yue was classified as a pugilist. She had supposedly been in the Master Realm for thirty years—though in reality, it was only one—her cultivation was at the Early-Stage, and her combat record was nearly non-existent.
The newly ascended pugilist circled in red was the opponent the court had selected for her. He practiced hard fist techniques and had entered the Master Realm twenty-seven years ago. A battlefield wouldn't guarantee matching opponents, but besides him, there were several other options.
There was no information on Xuan Kong. Flipping to the final page, she saw a portrait of an old man with a deep gaze. He was in the Grandmaster Realm, one hundred and seventy years old, a sword master who could face ten thousand alone. Not even a Master could withstand a single strike from him; his strength was unfathomable...
Lin Yue stared blankly for a while before returning to burning her life.
With nearly a year having passed, news of the impending war had spread throughout the country. The court was dispatching troops everywhere to Youzhou, and the situation in Great Qian was volatile, with a sense of urgency hanging in the air.
Lin Yue occasionally went out for a walk. There were few people on the streets. Shopkeepers and old women stared blankly at the road, and children no longer played. Everyone's faces were filled with sorrow, and the price of grain had risen more than tenfold.
According to Xie Rang, the court was conscripting soldiers nationwide. While Great Qian had over a million households on paper, the reality was different; the three hundred thousand troops sent to the battlefield were already the limit. Meanwhile, Great Ling's army reached three hundred and forty thousand with twenty-four Masters. Great Qian currently had twenty, and three small neighboring countries with populations of several hundred thousand each were showing signs of defecting at the last minute...
After hearing this, Lin Yue lost all interest in wandering the streets. She went back and directly ground out three years of cultivation, studying medicine during her breaks.
The three children who went treasure hunting returned. The mountains had many traps, and some people had died, but there really was a treasure. They brought her something: a seemingly ordinary jade pendant.
They said the mountain contained a tomb. In the center of the tomb chamber sat an exquisite jade coffin. They had seen a woman in red lying inside, looking as beautiful as a celestial and as if she were merely sleeping. But the moment the jade coffin was opened, the woman in red dissipated like smoke, leaving only a jade pendant tied to her waist.
As soon as Lin Yue heard this, she knew there was something inside the pendant. She observed the three of them secretly. Their eyes were all equally clear and devoid of anything unusual; could it be they hadn't been possessed?
Lin Yue didn't take it but had them place the pendant on the table. She found someone to try and melt it, but after seven days and nights, the pendant remained unchanged; it was no ordinary item. Next, she soaked it in dog blood for seven days and nights, but no bubbles appeared. She was afraid of actually breaking it if she smashed it, so she exposed it to the sun for a month and then found a monk to recite Buddhist scriptures over it for another month.
Having received the incense offerings, Lin Yue lit three sticks of incense before the Buddha and bowed three times. Only after seeing the Buddha "watching" her did she dare to take it in her hand. It was cold and smooth, with a unique mixed scent of incense and dog blood.
She dripped a drop of blood from her fingertip onto it. After waiting for half an hour, the blood remained; it hadn't been absorbed. Lin Yue smeared the drop of blood over the jade pendant and wrapped it in her own true qi, rubbing it back and forth a hundred times, but she never felt any connection. Could it be she wasn't the destined owner of the pendant?
After hesitating for a long time, Lin Yue glanced at the Buddha and pressed the jade pendant to her forehead. Closing her eyes, she felt a chill, and the scene before her eyes changed. She saw mountains and rivers traced in golden lines; it turned out to be a Mountain and Sea Map.
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