Lu Qingshan watched the mysterious expert close his eyes and simply stand there for a while. His dread only increased the longer he stayed. After a brief moment of hesitation, he immediately ran backwards, his steps silent over the soil.

  But it was too late. The man turned and stared directly into Lu Qingshan's eyes.

  With a flicker, the man disappeared. Lu Qingshan's senses screamed at him to jump to the left. Behind him splashed a dark withering energy that blackened the soil.

  He swung a fist at the man who had just appeared right beside him. It struck only air, and the man’s profile flickered away again. Lu Qingshan swerved to the left again and narrowly avoided another blast of withering energy that crumbled a tree to dust.

  He continued to run. From time to time, the man would send blasts of energy his way, occasionally landing a blow on Lu Qingshan’s back. The pain seized his mind but he dared not stop. Lu Qingshan kept running with only a small portion of his energy devoted to counterattacking the man back.

  None of his techniques would allow him to survive a direct hit from the man’s attacks. In this way Lu Qingshan scurried away like a rat, ducking and dodging and getting grazed. They had run deep into the mountains and forests when he noticed something off about the man.

  He wasn’t pursuing him as fiercely as in the beginning. It was faint, but the man was definitely getting tired.

  Lu Qingshan’s mind spun quickly. He, too, would tire, and it did him no good to run forever. He had to fight back with all his might.

  The game of cat and mouse continued until his breaths became ragged and his steps slightly off-balance. It was all a facade — even now, Deer Traverses the Forest worked to keep him stable. But the man didn't know that. All he'd see was an annoying gnat that was ever so close to being squished.

  Contempt and frustration caused mistakes. Lu Qingshan bided his time for the perfect moment. He pretended to stumble — then the man appeared directly in front of him.

  Inside his body a river surged to life. Lu Qingshan’s internal energy exploded in a fury, merging with his Crimson Claw, Crane Wings, Viper Strike, Tiger Fist, and Deer Steps. His mouth opened wide, and an ear splitting Tiger Roar stunned his enemy for a single moment. That was all he needed to allow his blow to connect.

  The sound of breaking glass jolted the man awake, but it was too late. A gaping wound tore through his robe and revealed bony flesh and gray ribs.

  But it didn’t seem to damage him much. The man was still coming, and this time he looked mad. Though his speed had definitely slowed down enough for Lu Qingshan to escape the range of his attacks.

  A furious glare met Lu Qingshan’s eyes as he hurtled away from the location. He stopped only once he reached a good distance away. After a brief wait, it appeared as if the mysterious expert had stopped chasing him, but he had a feeling the man would not stop for long. The means employed by that man were beyond his current understanding. Healing from those wounds might be as easy as eating and drinking.

  Lu Qingshan knew he had only one way out of this. Kill the man, or die trying. But how to accomplish this was something he needed to figure out quickly immediately.

  He assumed the mysterious expert had ways to heal himself and track him down. That meant Lu Qingshan needed to take the initiative instead. He had the means, he assured himself. After all, that was a lot of damage from just one blow. It would've killed anyone else instantly.

  Tiger Stalks Prey and Deer Traverses the Forest merged together to silently bring him in a path back towards the mysterious expert. As Lu Qingshan expected, his enemy was currently sitting cross-legged, clasping something in his hands and closing his eyes.

  It was a head. A human head bundled in intestines was withering away — its vitality somehow being drained by the expert — and the gaping wound in his chest was slowly mending. Lu Qingshan shuddered, but the same martial fury burst forwards once again.

  A roaring river accompanied a falcon's cry as he launched himself at his enemy. The man, shocked, lifted his hands to try and block. But his body was instead lifted up and mangled by Lu Qingshan’s all-out blow.

  Yet this was still not enough to kill him. Before the man could lift his hand, Lu Qingshan’s knee descended and crumpled their spine. He tore into him with every ounce of strength he had but the man was still wriggling around. Though Lu Qingshan never stopped attacking, they somehow managed to slip out of his grasp.

  A few more flickers and his enemy was far away, clutching his wounds. Lu Qingshan lunged to close the gap. Even still, the man always maintained a few steps of distance between them.

  Lu Qingshan chased him even deeper into the mountains, where not even the Seven Mysteries Gate had ventured into. It took him longer and longer to track his target with all the foliage in his way. He almost lost the mysterious expert by the time they reached an expansive lake.

  As soon as Lu Qingshan saw this beautiful scene, he became deathly wary of any methods his target had in place. Even though the man had fallen onto his knees, gasping for air mere breaths away, Lu Qingshan stopped and stared. His caution proved well founded when the man suddenly stood up.

  A dark energy was clinging to the dozens of wounds on the expert’s body. His bleeding had stopped. The man made a few motions and the scene in the lake immediately warped.

  Lu Qingshan saw green transform into brown, then gray. The water turned black and pulpy, and the birds melted away into puddles of blood. This restriction was far more powerful than the last.

  The energy produced by the phenomenon flowed back into the man in front of him and started to rapidly heal his wounds. At the moment of intense concentration, when they were least expecting an attack, Lu Qingshan struck.

  Crane Wings flapped, and a set of monster teeth flew out. The mysterious expert couldn’t defend himself in time. Each tooth pierced a vital.

  The man fell backwards in a shower of blood. Lu Qingshan produced more teeth and continued burying them into their body. He didn’t stop until all his stock was depleted, and then he went to grab nearby stones.

  Though they had stopped breathing, Lu Qingshan was not taking any chances here. He riddled the man with a few more holes courtesy of all the rocks in the area before he began tearing sharp pieces of bark off trees. His caution was rewarded yet again when the man tried to crawl away.

  Lu Qingshan leaped into motion. His final strike descended like a bear’s paw, clad in red energy, right onto his enemy’s head. Pulverized bone fragments spilled out onto the decaying grass.

  A shrill wailing sounded in his ears and he felt his blood freeze. Lu Qingshan used the momentum generated by his attack and hurled himself back out of the lake clearing. His hand was bleeding. His legs too. Drops of blood ran down his nose, eyes, and ears.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Lu Qingshan coughed. Out came more blood. He sat down by a tree, hacking away as a small puddle formed beneath him. But with every minute that passed, his bleeding slowed. His strength began to return.

  When enough time had passed, his suppressed blood energy surged back through his body like a river. That had been close.

  Lu Qingshan’s sight came back first. Then came his awareness over his surroundings. He returned to the clearing and saw the mysterious expert lie motionless on the grass. The man was probably dead this time, and the corpse didn’t respond to the things being thrown at it.

  He needed a way to get the body out of the clearing without stepping inside. Lu Qingshan didn’t think it likely for him to break this phenomenon the same way he did for the one in the Scripture Pavilion. The scale of this restriction was much larger.

  He took out the long piece of rope he carried and tied a hoop onto it from his past life. Lu Qingshan took some time to judge the trajectory before successfully tossing it over the body. A yank pulled the corpse back towards him.

  Lu Qingshan delivered another blow to its head, crushing it completely. Then he got to searching.

  Nested in the robe’s pockets were two small booklets and a small piece of jade resembling the one Yan Xi had taken back from him when acquiring the Great Ape Breathing Method. He furrowed his brow and put it away. The first book, with no named author, recorded miscellaneous thoughts about a path of power he’d never seen before. It described cultivation — Immortal Cultivation, not martial arts. The second was a personal journal.

  He shuffled through the first booklet. Apparently, the beginning of immortal cultivation was called Embryonic Breathing, and its six stages were as follows: Spiritual Awakening, Mind Purification, Radiant Lake, Heart Clarity, Jade Cleansing, and Mystic Membrane. Judging by the information, the cultivator he had just killed was a Radiant Lake stage expert.

  The next realm of immortal cultivation was called Qi Refinement. Unlike the six stages of Embryonic Breathing, the book didn't go into detail about what this realm entailed. It only spoke with the utmost respect for them and encouraged its readers to strive for this goal.

  Lu Qingshan’s mind couldn't help but compare martial arts to immortal cultivation. Currently, he knew about the first four stages of Mortal Shedding, but was the rest of the world as ignorant as him? Was there a path ahead for martial artists to attain an equivalent level of power? He didn't know.

  He only knew that the beginning realm of martial arts was called Mortal Shedding due to the stone slab. None of the historical records he’d read had ever mentioned Mortal Shedding before. That was a fundamental difference in knowledge. Perhaps the other cities in this kingdom had clues, but not here.

  For now, Lu Qingshan pushed those stray thoughts aside and continued reading. A person had the chance to be born with spirit roots. Only with spirit roots could one begin walking the path of immortality. But even spirit roots had their differences, and there were many who could never reach the upper stages due to their untalented spirit roots. The most common type were five element spirit roots, that were extremely slow to cultivate unless one was able to find spiritual treasures and defy their fate.

  This cultivator, called Yuan Feng in the second journal, was initially unlikely to even reach the Radiant Lake stage. Rejected after failing to pass the tests for a local immortal sect — the Red Lake Sect — at sixteen years old, the boy had wandered off. But he'd somehow managed to find a random cave deep in the middle of the sect's territory.

  Passing safely through what he called "an endless barrage of earth-shattering attacks," Yuan Feng eventually discovered a corpse within. Buried with them was a small manual containing techniques that allowed anyone to attain immortality. Except, they took a far more sinister undertone. Soaking in the blood of hundreds of mortals just to reach Radiant Lake...it sickened Lu Qingshan. Were all cultivators like this?

  His mind wandered. There was something odd about this person's situation. How did such a lowly formation manage to escape the Red Lake Sect's notice? How powerful was a Qi Refinement realm immortal cultivator? He didn't know the upper limits of their strength, and clearly neither did Yuan Feng.

  Lu Qingshan closely inspected each important event written in the journal. What had seemed random to Yuan Feng was filled with suspicious coincidences under a scrutinizing eye. A simple boy managing to stumble into a restriction, evade all its attacks, as a weak mortal made no sense.

  It seemed wrong. Like there was a hand guiding him to enter that cave and secure the inheritance with ease. Then there were the hundreds of people he'd killed in the same territory as the sect. The Red Lake Sect seemed to have no desire to uncover what was going on.

  The man believed himself highly intelligent, having fooled the Red Lake Sect about his deeds as a lone cultivator working for them in the occasional mission. But Lu Qingshan was not so easily convinced. The little things Yuan Feng received over the years, the Red Lake Sect should've known if they did manage their territory as described in the journal. Thus, he would never trust the Red Lake Sect's benevolent appearance until he had the chance to investigate.

  There was no mention as to why Yuan Feng had come to destroy the Seven Mysteries Gate. Perhaps the man had thought this whole trip beneath his notice. He definitely didn't expect to die here at the hands of some mortal.

  Lu Qingshan flipped to the end of the diary. At least the demonic cultivator had written down a map of important points during his journey here. The Red Lake Sect was really, really far away. Yuan Feng had passed through multiple kingdoms to reach the current Bright Flame Kingdom.

  These two journals gave Lu Qingshan a heightened understanding of the world, but he knew he was still missing a lot of information. For example, the two little jades. He'd spent some time rolling them around in his fingers while reading. Perhaps he could ask Yan Xi for more details.

  He also wondered if he could try his hand at Qi Cultivation. The first booklet said that the first stage of cultivation required one to come into contact with their spirit root and awaken it. He didn't know if he had one, but he could try, before he managed to find a spirit root sensing stone like the journals had mentioned.

  As a lone demonic cultivator with low talent, Yuan Feng did not have an easy way to store the manuals he had. It had to be on his body. Lu Qingshan unraveled the man's corpse this time in his second search, peeling apart everything he could from his clothes to his flesh. As he expected of a demonic cultivator said to "have no principles, using fellow men as their food," the cultivation manual was sewed inside the man's skin near his stomach.

  Lu Qingshan unfolded the pages. He recoiled at the bloody words.

  In the throes of passion, tear out their heart to awaken the spirit. Slaughter nine relatives to purify the mind. Bathe in a hundred men's blood to illuminate the lake. Imbibe the most vigorous of thoughts to attain inner clarity.

  With only these four lines, Lu Qingshan could already picture the bloodlust. What this demonic path required was not his way. To betray one's lover, their family, and resort to wanton massacres...he didn't even want to think about what imbibing thoughts meant.

  Consume the viscera of strongmen to cleanse one's body. Perform the rites of oblivion to condense the membrane.

  Right, so that was cannibalism. He ignored the sixth line and blinked at the seventh. It chilled him to the bone.

  Extinguish a city to refine true qi and attain longevity.

  Lu Qingshan breathed out slowly. The booklet offered power, but he refused to take it. Not to mention the inhumanity, these techniques weren't even guaranteed to succeed. Most martial artists knew that improper training had long-term debilitating effects on their foundation. It was why sects were so important. At the very minimum, he needed to understand more of the world before he made such a choice. The manual might end up locking him into a dead-end.

  After taking one last look at the corpse, he decided it was better safe than sorry. He gathered a bundle of dry wood and sticks, swaddled the body with the demonic cultivation manual, and lit it all aflame. His thoughts swirled while it burned. Martial arts, immortal and demonic cultivation, world history, sect conflicts, his own relationship with the Seven Mysteries Gate. He wasn't sure how to handle it all.

  The fire had died out, but Lu Qingshan did not yet have a clear answer. What he did know was that he had to continue his martial arts practice. Strength was the sole factor in determining his life or death.

  He returned to his house to retrieve the scrolls he came for in the first place. Along the way, he noted down important landmarks on his map leading back to the lake. The Seven Mysteries Gate could be deployed to try and break that demonic restriction later. Perhaps Yuan Feng had hidden something there.

  As he swept his eyes through his house one last time, he noticed something different. Some of the scrolls he hid stayed where they were, but others had been moved. The only person that should’ve come into contact with them was the demonic cultivator he slew. Why were these three scrolls shifted in particular?

  Lu Qingshan was surprised to discover that they were the ones he'd been reading before the sect was destroyed.