Training

The following days, Gaofeng's activities revolved around comprehending his divine techniques and abilities to greater mastery. Some of his techniques were more difficult to cultivate than others, however, so he chose to mainly focus on three abilities for now. The ones he chose was Shimmer, Yin-Yang Dragon Fist, as well as the Heaven Destroying staff. When it came to both Bloodbath as well as the Heaven Devouring Vine, these were abilities which required large amounts of resources to be cultivated to great success, and thus Gaofeng decided to hold off on cultivate them for the time being.

After continuously focusing on Shimmer for the last days, he finally achieved a breakthrough from the initial threshold of the ability to minor mastery of the first stage of the technique. Shimmer was divided into a total of 10 stages which needed to be cultivated one after the other. Additionally, each stage could be divided into multiple levels of mastery. There was the initial threshold, then minor mastery, followed by mastery, great mastery, and perfection. After reaching perfection, he could aim to achieve the next stage. Each stage brought with it an enormous qualitative change, while the changes within each stage was more like a quantitative change.

When Gaofeng achieved minor mastery, he was meditating under the Divine Enlightenment tree. The exact spot he was sitting in was bathed with bright sunlight, and so it was the perfect place for Gaofeng to cultivate a divine ability which focused on comprehending the light and heat given off by stars. At the point he finally broke through, he felt that the sunlight was heating up to the point of nearly burning his skin, however Gaofeng didn't feel any kind of pain. Instead, he felt refreshed as if having just had a nice swim after working under the scorching sun the entire day. He was continuously absorbing the spiritual energy the sun was giving off. During this process, he felt that his atoms, which had already been baptized by Shimmer during his rebirth, had improved their property of energy conduction.

The greatest change, however, was that he felt heat gathering in his dantian area. Utilizing his powerful soul, Gaofeng was able to view the changes taking place within himself. What was happening exactly, was that the sunlight he had absorbed gathered together to form a small nucleus in the free space of his dantian. This small nucleus grew bit by bit until it had created a small star inside his body. The star could be said to be a secondary dantian that stored the energy necessary to utilize Shimmer, and when re-considering the cultivation technique of Shimmer, Gaofeng realized that each new stage of Shimmer would create an additional star-nucleus, with the total being ten stars at the peak of the technique. Having such a storage of additional power was surely a great boon, and Gaofeng was elated at this surprising change.

When Gaofeng once again utilized the Divine Myriad Changes to see whether or not he should forge ahead, he realized that there was still danger connected to breaking through, however this danger was significantly less than it had been previously. Seeing this change, he knew that he was walking the correct path in choosing to mainly focus on his divine techniques for the moment. When Gaofeng once again considered the different techniques and abilities at his disposal, he realized that Bloodbath was actually the ability which would help him the most, as it focused on strengthening the body and blood, which increased regeneration. What he required to level up Bloodbath, however, was exactly that: a bloodbath. He couldn't exactly simply kill his fellow disciples of the 10th peak, but he knew of one place in the Holy Temple which might help him with the cultivation of Bloodbath. The place he was thinking about was a forbidden region in the Holy Temple, the 10th valley. Eons ago, the Holy Temple was called the 10 valleys, 10 peaks Holy Temple, however they had changed the name to 9 valleys, 10 peaks due to a horrible incident taking place in the 10th valley.

The peaks and the valleys of the Holy Temple were quite different. On the peaks there were temples with certain cultivation talent, and the number of people could vary between just a handful to thousands, however the valleys were more like a fiefdom with great amounts of resources, as well as grand cities and populations in the millions. There were naturally elders posted in the different valleys, and the monks living on the peaks could take up work or do quests given out by the Temple to gain contribution points. These contribution points could be traded for valuable resources, weapons, and everything else these young cultivators needed. The 10th valley used to be the valley with the greatest amount of resources, and it also had the largest population, nearing 30 million at its peak. However, long ago, a rising star called Yao Mo had a dispute with an elder of the 10th valley over a valuable object, the exact nature of which was never shared in any of the information Gaofeng had.

Their dispute had soon turned violent, and shockingly the young disciple was able to utilize a forbidden technique to easily kill the elder. At this point, however, the disciple was already receiving the backlash of his forbidden technique, and due to some unknown factors the disciple turned into a demon, as if having been summoned from the infernal realms. In this state, however, the disciple was no longer a man, and his rationality had vanished. There was no description of the exact unfolding of events, but the result was clear: The entirety of the population in the 10th valley had been slayed, leaving behind an ocean of blood. The ocean of blood had then turned from a normal pool of blood into a kind of demonic spiritual liquid due to the potent blood shed from the great amount and quality of the cultivators killed in the valley. It was also said that yin-specters manifested from the death-aura which at this point permeated the entire valley, making it a deadly undertaking to explore the valley.

After this incident, the Holy Temple had reassured the rest of the world that they had slain the demon, however Gaofeng was skeptical to the validity of this claim as there was no real proof of the demon ever being slayed. No matter the case, even the Temple Master at that time wasn't able to cleanse the valley and remove the blood, and thus it was simply locked down and turned into a great taboo within the Holy Temple. If Gaofeng could gain access to the ocean of blood, he knew that Bloodbath could improve drastically, even to the point of Gaofeng was likely to achieve the third or fourth stage of the technique. However, getting to the blood ocean with his current strength, which included going past the barriers of the Holy Temple in addition to surviving the Yin Specters, seemed… unfathomably difficult.