NOVEL NEXT Chapter 81: Legacy
In the quiet apprentice room, Chen Ku was unexpectedly surprised as he lay on the kang.
Blood Memory Inheritance?
It sounded rather high-end and somewhat surprising. Until now, aside from the Transformation Diagram, he had not come into contact with other matters that transcended the ordinary realm.
One's thoughts, in conventional thinking, should be transmitted via the soul or the mind, right? Yet it could actually be inherited through one's bloodline.
Chen Ku admitted feeling a bit ignorant, but this only made him more curious. What could be contained within the Blood Memory Inheritance of the Qilin Blood?
After that transformation was activated, with a flash of blood on the Transformation Diagram, Chen Ku suddenly realized that many images and pieces of information had appeared in his mind.
It seemed to be a wild land with a cave. Inside the cave, a huge colorful Strange Beast stood, about three and a half meters tall, with the horns of a deer, the head of a goat, hooves like those of a wolf, and a mane like a lion's. It was draped in colorful scale armor and emitted wisps of flame and clouds of smoke.
Is this the Qilin? Chen Ku's mind trembled slightly.
But before he had the chance to closely observe this mythological beast known from ancient stories—
HISSS!
In the memory, on one side of the Qilin, a Divine Blade suddenly appeared. It pierced the heavens, tore the cave asunder, and struck the Qilin, sending sparks flying.
What followed in the memory was a cataclysmic battle. The colorful-armored Strange Beast, spewing fire and smoke, constantly dodged within the cave, baring its fangs and brandishing its claws, roaring like a dragon or a tiger.
Every Qilin claw strike possessed the power to shake the earth and move mountains, causing the cave to collapse and stones to fly. Simultaneously, it could also spout flames and steam from its mouth, burning the skies and freezing the earth.
ROAR!!
The sound shook the cave.
However, in the end, a heroic man, resembling a deity, struck with his blade, and Qilin Blood rained down upon the land. In an instant, the entire cave and the forested land burst forth with vitality. The Qilin Blood had also splashed onto the deity-like man, bathing his entire body in blood that burned like fire, causing him to scream in agony instantly.
Seizing this opportunity, the Qilin dragged its bleeding, wounded body into the depths of the cave.
Just as I thought the protagonist of this Blood Memory Inheritance was the Qilin...
Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly saw the deity-like man, bathed in Qilin Blood, charging out of the cave with his blade. He appeared possessed, running wildly in the fields before finally collapsing on the great prairie.
And then… there was a gap in the memory. The next scene that emerged in Chen Ku's mind was an immensely majestic city and a massive pass. The city wall alone was over three hundred meters tall. Those weren't city walls; they were clearly mountains surrounding and forming that colossal pass!
At the same time, a mountain descended from the sky, crashing towards the city gates. The image zoomed in—inside the city, there was a flurry of soldiers and banners, appearing to be ten large armies. As the giant mountain descended, it seemed poised to completely entrap the hundreds of thousands of soldiers within the massive city.
That was when Chen Ku once again saw the heroic man who had bathed in Qilin Blood. He leaped up, stood atop the massive city gate tower, and lifted his hands…
With a thunderous BOOM, dust and soil filled the space between heaven and earth, spreading a gust of wind for tens of li. It was that heroic man, lifting a mountain nearly a kilometer high with his bare hands, supporting it in midair and leaving enough space beneath for the city's inhabitants to escape through the gate.
Strength to uproot mountains?!
Chen Ku's mind was once again shaken. Although he knew that the world's Martial Practitioners who cultivated to the extreme became inhuman, like gods or saints, he was still overwhelmed by the martial prowess of the terrifying man in his memories—the one who had bled the Qilin and supported a kilometer-high mountain with his bare hands.
Could this be…
He had already guessed the identity of this mountain-lifting heroic man: The ancestor of the Xu Family, the one with Qilin Blood?
He then looked at the name of the pass, three large characters: Martial Prison Pass.
A troop bearing the 'Yang' royal banner was the first to escape from the city gates.
The Daji Dynasty's most contested military stronghold, also known as the world's foremost formidable pass, Martial Prison Pass… and the Yang family flag… The current Ji Dynasty's Imperial Family bears the Yang surname… Could these memories be historical events from when the Grand Ancestor of the Daji Dynasty fought for domination of the world?
Another gap appeared in the memories. The next scene showed that mighty warrior leading over ten thousand troops, carrying chests full of treasure into an Underground Palace. Chen Ku could see that the mighty warrior held a map. It seemed to be the construction layout map of the Underground Palace, a maze of winding paths, with many areas marked as dangerous.
At last, after glancing at the map, the mighty warrior threw it into a brazier. Not far away lay many slain people, fully ten thousand of them. This seemed to signify that from then on, besides the mighty warrior, no one else in the world would know the correct routes within the Underground Palace.
Alright, now I know too, Chen Ku thought, looking at the exceedingly clear map of the Underground Palace within the Blood Memory Inheritance. Because it was a memory inheritance, it was as if it were imprinted directly onto his mind.
It seemed the mighty warrior had deliberately used his Qilin Blood for the 'Bloodline Inheritance,' leaving certain secrets within his own Qilin bloodline for his descendants. Unfortunately, as the memories flickered incessantly, Chen Ku saw that in later memories, the descendants of the mighty warrior were continuously pursued and hunted down by the world.
At first, some were able to awaken the Blood Memory Inheritance within their blood. Later, with the successive assassinations of the family's formidable masters, only Xu Family Head Xu Ao remained. He was eventually killed in the streets by Counselor Sui You, who used a pellet drum to control a Blood Gu, causing Xu Ao's body to explode. Xu Ao's cultivation was at the Fourth Realm, Meridian-Opening.
His descendants couldn't even awaken the memory of the Underground Palace map, let alone the World-Surpassing Martial Arts inherited in their bloodline from their mighty warrior ancestor. All that remained was the memory of a Palm Seal technique, awakenable only at the most superficial level of the bloodline.
Chen Ku also saw this Palm Seal in the memories. It was from a scene where Xu Family Head Xu Ao was instructing his son, speaking of the origin and inheritance of this Palm Seal:
"Our Xu Family's Ultimate Skill, 'Mountain-Lifting Palm,' consists of fourteen moves in total. Just by technique alone, it's already at the Absolute Skill Level of martial arts. Once mastered, the palm strike is powerful like a mountain. When the Palm Seal is delivered, it presses down oppressively, and the opponent feels as insignificant as if a great mountain were bearing down on them.
"It is only regrettable that our descendants' bloodlines have withered and thinned; we can only awaken the first four moves of 'Mountain-Lifting Palm' from the Blood Memory Inheritance. Furthermore, we cannot awaken the matching mental methods and internal cultivation techniques. Otherwise, how could we have fallen into such a weakened state today?
"Our ancestor's fourteen stances of 'Mountain-Lifting Palm' each had specialized mental methods and internal cultivation techniques to match. If one could collect them all, it would form a 'Divine Skill of the Martial Path' that could surpass the Fourteen Realms of the Martial Path. Its original name wasn't 'Mountain-Lifting Palm,' but rather 'Sky-Shaking Earth-Shattering Divine Technique.' The 'Mountain-Lifting Palm' is merely the set of moves from that Divine Skill."
In Chen Ku's mind, the memory of these four Palm Seals now existed. Without matching internal cultivation methods, one could only rely on pure realm skill to activate them. The four Palm Seals corresponded to four Realms; without attaining the required Realm, one could not execute them.
The first stance: Mountain Roar Tsunami Seal, a Palm Seal of the Inner Qi Realm. One strike unleashes the might of mountains calling and seas roaring.
The second stance: Mountain Pressing Egg Seal, a Palm Seal of the Mystic Barrier Realm. One strike gives the opponent the sense of an egg being crushed by a mountain.
The third stance: Mountain Collapse Earth Split Seal, a Palm Seal of the Jade Skin Realm. It is infused with the concept of mountains collapsing and the earth splitting apart.
The fourth stance: One Breath Moves Mountains and Rivers Seal, a Palm Seal of the Meridian-Opening Realm. One strike concentrates all of one's power and intent to a single point, moving mountains and rivers.
Although there were only four Palm Seals, each contained hundreds of variations. The Palm Seal was the mother seal, from which various Palm Techniques evolved.
How profound, how deep, what a marvel these four Palm Seals are! And this is without any internal cultivation methods, just the Palm Seal moves themselves. Yet, they can already match Master Yang's Furious Ape Mighty Staff and be classified as 'Absolute Skill Level' martial arts… Chen Ku sighed.
I never imagined that just by wandering the streets and handing a staff to Master Yang, I could obtain such a precious Blood Memory Inheritance from the Xu Family's Qilin Blood.
Chen Ku analyzed: I am different from the Xu Family in some aspects. They possess bloodlines and need to awaken the inherited memories within them. I, on the other hand, have become part of the memories… It's like becoming a book that can be directly opened and read.
But there's also a similarity: the gaps in memory. It's like a book missing many pages and content. When the bloodline isn't pure, when it's damaged or diluted, information and memories are also deleted. Therefore, the information I've received from this part of the Gu Insect Qilin Blood is limited to this much.
A map of safe routes in an Underground Palace supposedly hiding a world-shaking treasure, plus four Absolute Skill Level Palm Seals.
Chen Ku opened his eyes, a contemplative look on his face. It's also possible that because I didn't get enough blood, my information is incomplete. So, I only know that there is an Underground Palace and the routes inside it, but not where this Underground Palace is actually located.
The rest of the Xu Family's Qilin Blood must have all fallen into the hands of Lord County Magistrate Shangguan Yun by now.
I wonder how much of the Blood Memory Inheritance Shangguan Yun can obtain from the Xu Family's Qilin Blood without my transformation methods?