The goatee stared intently at Hooked Nose, only withdrawing his gaze after Hooked Nose nodded with a grim face.
"Get ready, we’re leaving the Southern County of Divine Land."
"Aren’t we just leaving Nanwu County?"
"Heh, naive. Other than the regular people investing normally, the rest are all leaving. You really think the People of Divine Land are so easy to deal with now? That they’ll reason with you about everything?"
Wen Yan watched as Zhang Laoxi—who just now said it wasn’t a good idea to practice the Scorching Sun Fist at night—looked like he was on steroids, practicing the Scorching Sun Fist several times over.
He roughly understood now—if you have Scorching Sun’s power, it seems like the time you practice doesn’t matter much.
Only people without the power of Scorching Sun, wanting to practice the Scorching Sun Fist, would get much better results during the day, and the effect is best at noon when the Yang Energy is most abundant.
He could feel the Yang Energy surging inside him, now naturally overflowing. He finally understood why, at Fuyu Mountain, only the external skills part of this boxing technique is still used.
This boxing technique and the Guiding Technique both originate from Scorching Sun—they exist by relying on it.
This is the correct way to use abilities: turn them into tools, pave the way forward, and transform them into real hard power of your own.
Once you have real power, you can use it to develop even more techniques in all aspects.
You can tell just by the names—professional abilities, in these so-called secret manuals that Zhang Laoxi gave him, are all called Divine Skills.
A few days ago, in the books recommended by Zhang Laoxi and the director, there was a core idea: cultivating character and cultivating fate. This is regarded as the true foundation, the main body.
And Divine Skills are never considered as the foundation or the main body.
He’d talked with Zhang Laoxi before. Whether it’s regular Taoists, Taoist priests who received the Impart Teaching, or martial artists who practice martial arts, only a few—or maybe a very few—have innate Divine Skills.
Decades ago, in the era of the Last Dharma, martial arts experts could basically go toe-to-toe with someone armed with a gun within seven steps.
They might not be faster than a bullet, but they were faster than the person holding the gun—able to predict moves the instant the opponent’s hand or body moved.
The moment a gunman got caught in close range, life and death would be decided.
After the end of the Last Dharma began a few decades ago and the revival picked up pace ten years ago, in recent years, the strongest ones have gone further and further down the road of becoming not quite human.
All kinds of demons, ghosts, and monsters have also started appearing with increasing frequency.
Wen Yan watched Zhang Laoxi practicing—he seemed a bit absent-minded. A few years ago, when Wen Yan was eighteen, he helped move a coffin and relocate a grave. He met a Taoist there.
It was two or three in the morning, digging the grave in the mountains. He even saw ghost lights atop the grave. Back then, that Taoist told him to believe in science and explained that ghost lights were actually phosphorescent fire. The grave relocation was because of road construction. Doing it in the dead of night was for peace and fewer people—so they wouldn’t get caught doing a secret earth burial...
If there were snakes in the tomb, you couldn’t kill them because that snake was a national class two—if you killed it, you’d end up getting fed and housed by the authorities. You had to obey the law. It wasn’t because the snake in the grave was called an earth dragon, and killing it would be unlucky and bring disasters to your descendants.
The Taoist wasn’t there to exorcise little ghosts or prevent corpses from coming back to life. He was purely there to calm people down. Even feng shui was presented as scientific—choosing a spot that wouldn’t have landslides or be washed away by the rain, good drainage and all that.
That experience and that Taoist who always talked about believing in science made a huge impression on young Wen Yan. It even reminded him his childhood dream was to be a scientist.
It was because of that experience that, when he later saw a job post at Virtue City Funeral House with good pay, he didn’t hesitate to apply, not caring at all about the taboos of the place.
But who knew, after coming to Virtue City Funeral House, his mind would be shaken all over again...
He took a light breath. Compared to back then, he felt he’d gotten used to the way things are now.
Thinking back, that Taoist must have been bullshitting him, right? Still, you had to hand it to him—every question he gave a perfectly reasonable answer.
Wen Yan lost himself in these random thoughts while Zhang Laoxi got more and more energized practicing.
With his eyes opened by himself, practicing the Scorching Sun Fist and combining it with the Guiding Technique, he could even see traces of evil and death qi being flushed out by the Yang Energy from his body.
The insides of his knees, where he sometimes felt a dull ache, started feeling warm, and his cultivation, which had been stuck for the past two years, actually started progressing.
He wasn’t even focusing on the Scorching Sun Fist, but now, with plenty of Yang Energy blessing him, practicing the guiding methods a few more times had a huge positive effect on him.
If he were to go fight that Copper Armored Corpse from inside Fuyu Mountain right now, he was confident he could win.
And this was just from being blessed by Scorching Sun only once.
He was simply borrowing the blessing, using the Scorching Sun Fist to temper himself, and that alone brought such benefits.
After his seventh round of practice, when he sensed the blessed Yang Energy almost used up and started tapping into his own reserves, he stopped right away.
He turned to Wen Yan, his eyes shining.
He was starting to think that some parts of Fuyu Mountain’s ancient records weren’t just boasting hot air.
At least in the era of the Thirteenth Ancestor, there was no exaggeration. Those over-the-top descriptions were probably factual.
Both of them finished their training. Wen Yan wasn’t sleepy or too tired, but he still listened to advice and stopped.
The two of them sat on the rooftop terrace on the third floor, drinking tea and enjoying the night breeze.
Wen Yan didn’t plan to head back to the Water Ghost Domain the next day. He had to wait for Feng Yao to set things up on that end first.