My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting

With the unification of the Nine Flames now settled, Li Yuan decided to linger awhile.0

Firstly, he wanted to cement the new Khagan system and oversee the between the Nine Flames and the people of Cloudpeak Province.1

Secondly, he wanted to create a new martial art tailored to the Nine Flames.0

Li Yuan suspected that children conceived beside the Everflame might be born as Ice Folk. The evidence was that outsiders, male or female, who married into a tribe produced offspring of the Nine Flames. Bloodline mattered, but he believed the Everflame played a larger role. He theorized the sacred flame altered the fetus in the womb, bestowing power upon it.1

If he was right, ordinary folk from the Cloudpeak Province could migrate here, pass their pregnancies beside the sacred fire, and their newborns would likewise become Ice Folk.0

Once that experiment was underway, Li Yuan planned a quiet trip to The Bladeseekers in Gemhill County. It was about time to harvest another batch ofseedsand, if luck allowed, rescue a promising junior or two, just as he had saved Xu Sheng and Xu Lan.3

By now, it was already August.0

Li Yuan sat hunched before the fire, hair loose, eyes intent, a hide draped over his shoulders. With a frost-hardened branch, he scratched lines in the dirt, then rubbed them out and began again.0

He excelled at vibrational force, at folding destructive explosiveness into calm stillness, even shaping blade qi into a fourth rank domain. But the Ice Folk could neither learn nor use such finesse. Their power was blunt, direct.1

At first, he sketched elaborate forms, but every pattern felt too clever. Like General Zhang Fei of the Three Kingdoms trying to embroider silk, the Ice Folk and delicacy simply didn't mix.0

Li Yuan tried a different approach.0

"Unstoppable momentum. Razor instinct. Pure speed and strength. Nothing fancy…"0

Head bowed, he drew and erased, drew and erased, while the firelight gilded him in living gold, like a sun god planning how to teach giants to fight.0

Because everyone held him in awe, no one dared come close except Snow, who occasionally darted over.0

Li Yuan tossed his stick aside, leaned back, and gazed into the flames. Thought flickered in his eyes, then suddenly they blazed with insight.1

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Several days later.0

Li Yuan led Snow, Suljagar, Blacktooth, Jen'gal Rong, and the ever-loyal Shen'dai Nar, along with the wolf pup Finn, to a desolate mountain just beyond the permafrost, not far from the township of Splinterholt.0

Suljagar was an ardent supporter of the Khagan. Blacktooth, Rong, and Nar were sworn loyalists too.0

Li Yuan planned to use them to test out the new martial arts he developed.1

Finn, the lone survivor of the five direwolf pups, had grown to knee-height. No longer a playful puppy, only a sharp, wary ferocity gleamed in his eyes as he watched the lesson unfold.1

"Ignite and explode," Li Yuan said calmly.0

He pointed to the sun overhead. "Sunlight floods the world. Every ray comes from the Sun's own vast power. Your strike must do the same. Flare out like the Sun itself, force laid bare and overwhelming. No piercing tricks, no hidden strength. Just a frontal, world-shattering explosion."0

Instead of the golden Khagan Axe, he hefted an ordinary axe brought from the nearby townships of Splinterbolt, Eightlinks, and Fallenwood.1

"Watch closely." Li Yuan raised the weapon and swung at a shoulder-high boulder beside him.0

BOOM!The rock detonated, shattered into fist-sized fragments that hissed through the air like arrows before clattering far down the slope.0

Snow gazed up at Li Yuan, adoration in her eyes. Everything her husband did was magnificent.1

Blackfang, Rong, and Nar, though, simply blinked. Smashing a rock, so what? Any of them could crush a bigger one with a single slap. But then—0

Snap, snap, snap! Crackle, crackle, crackle! Pop, pop, pop!0

A chorus of small explosions rang out, rippling around them.0

The group looked around. Every tree and boulder the flying shrapnel had touched was dented or caved in.0

Only then did they grasp how outrageous that single blow had been.0

Li Yuan glanced at Suljagar. "I just used about the same raw force you can muster."0

Suljagar frowned, lifted his own axe, and tried. The stone split but only crumbled, without that devastating, outward blast. Puzzled, he lowered the weapon.0

"It's a matter ofcontinuity of force," Li Yuan explained. "As you swing, every thread of power stacks together. From the push of your feet and legs, through the coil of your waist and spine, to the drive of your arms… Add the torque of the swing itself. Then channel everything into a single, explosive release!0

"But in that entire chain, the single most important thing is to rouse the Yang energy sealed within you.0

"Let your feet, legs, waist, spine, arms, and the swing flow together like glacial melts pouring into a great river of ice. The instant the edge lands, all the power within you erupts along the blade."0

He opened his hands. "Grip at the very end of the haft. The longer the handle, the bigger the blast. But the real key is waking theYang."1

Suljagar frowned. "Khagan, how do we wake it?"0

"Anger," Li Yuan said.1

"Anger…" Suljagar echoed, clearly remembering moments of fury he had never tried to harness.0

Li Yuan's mind flicked back to the first time he visited the Deathless Tomb, when Snow, imagining him slain, had exploded with strength and carried him away. Rage had sped her blood; racing blood had drawn her dormant Yang together.0

"Picture whatever enrages you most," he told them. "Fix that feeling, then pull on it. That's all."0

He demonstrated once more.0

The strike was equal parts mindset and coordinated force.0

Suljagar, Blacktooth and Rong, Nar, and Snow all began drilling at once.0

Almost at once the weakest, Rong, split a boulder. But her next try fizzled. By the end of the day, she had two successes; Snow, Blacktooth, and Nar managed one each, while the mortified Suljagar failed to trigger a single blast.0

"I can't fuse everything in that last heartbeat," he admitted with a rueful grin.0

Li Yuan clapped his shoulder. "Don't be discouraged. The weaker you are, the easier it is to climb with martial arts. After that, it's just hard work."1

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A month later.0

Rong had reached minor mastery, achieving two or three true explosions out of every ten swings.0

Suljagar had only a handful to his name, but each success thrilled him with its power.0

Watching them, Li Yuan felt hazy notions in his mind begin to sharpen. He compared the differences between Yang energy versus shadow blood, two completely different forms of power.0

Shadow blood behaved almost like a living organism. The ancestral seal was its brain, the blood its body and fangs. Each type of shadow blood forged different powers because eachbrainwas different. Trying to make it wield a completely new power was always painful, and the ancestral seal was the reason.0

His own talent for destructive vibration, after all, came from an ancestral seal that was savage in the extreme, steeped in the flavor of annihilation.0

Someone else might pick up fragments of his style, but they could never unleash the Tranquil Sea Blade.0

Their ancestral seal and shadow blood simply weren't fierce enough; their blade could never hold an ocean, let alone evoke true blade qi.0

Yang energy was different. It contained no mind. It was just a light, restless power that drifted through flesh and blood. Because it lacked abrain, emotion could stir it directly; no special visualization is required.0

A sudden thought struck Li Yuan.0

"If everything in the world is built from Yin and Yang, doesn't shadow blood contain them as well? Yang is light, diffuse, and rooted in the body. Yin is heavy, condensed, and rooted in the soul. Shadow blood might be a fusion of the two—or more precisely, a warped fusion, with the introduction of the ancestral seal skewing the balance."2

The creator practiced true cultivation; the followers merely siphoned a sliver of that power, so the higher they climbed, the more defects appeared. It was like Gu Xuejian's split personality, a flaw born of spiritual conflict.0

"Why would anyone design such a malicious martial cultivation technique" Squinting, Li Yuan felt as though he'd pushed into the fog of this world and glimpsed a deeper, darker layer. He shook the notion away. For now, those were only guesses.2

He turned back to refining his new martial arts for the people of the Nine Flames.0

Using himself, fifth, and sixth rank warriors as models, Li Yuan devised a training stance that coordinated power through the whole body. Because it relied on Yang energy, his system didn't shortcut the process, but he pressed on and wrote a complete system.0

It comprised 11 forms in all, six basic training forms, four combat moves, and one ultimate killing move. Each form included variations and follow-ups, laid out openly so future warriors could add their own.0

Next came the name. Remembering that these tundra folk called themselves the Nine Flames, he titled the manual plainly—0

Nine Suns Martial Arts.2

Li Yuan avoided lofty words likescriptureorcanon. The art was still raw with room to grow. If one day it defeated the world's greatest masters, then renaming it the Nine Suns Divine Art could wait.0

With Snow's help, he copied the first 10 forms eight times and sent a copy to each of the eight other tribe chieftains.0

The remaining ultimate killing move remained secret, reserved for the Khagan alone.0

After finishing his work, Li Yuan stretched, feeling as though he had just raised a towering building on bare ground. The foundation was finally in place.0

Yet another idea immediately struck him. Could explosive force and his own vibrational force be fused into a single blade stroke?0

In theory, yes. Explosive force ran on Yang energy; vibrational force ran on shadow blood. If the two could be braided together, the result might be terrifying.0

Fresh from completing the Nine Suns Martial Arts, he plunged back into training like a man possessed.0