Chapter Eight: The Breathing Technique of Vital Energy (×) The Grand Demonic Disintegration Method (✓)

Luo Zu had not anticipated such a commotion—the surge of blood energy far exceeded his estimated “thousand feet.” Unfortunately, he had chosen a desolate, uninhabited region, so the chances of a group of small humans climbing the mountains to offer him reverent worship were next to none.

Of course, Luo Zu never intended for the small humans to worship him; he was merely conducting an experiment, testing the wonders of the blood-breathing technique.

He wanted to see whether it could be applied to himself.

However, this particular outpouring of blood energy had perhaps been too forceful; nearly ninety percent of the blood in his body erupted forth.

As a result, his current appearance was withered and desiccated, skin stretched tight over bone, as though he were a mummified corpse that had lain atop the mountain for years.

“Well now, I’ve gone and overdone it,” Luo Zu muttered, his jaw clicking audibly as the spark of life within him gradually flickered out.

He had no time to recall the blood that had spilled from his body, forced instead to experience his own avatar’s slow demise.

His organs, deprived of blood, ceased to function; his brain, too, shut down. That he could still think at all was only because his spirit inhabited this form.

At last, after one minute and fifty-six seconds, Luo Zu declared his own death, failed to be rescued, at the tender age of seven hours and twenty-six minutes.

A life cut tragically short.

Luo Zu had not expected such an outcome, but, unwilling to accept it, he attempted a second trial.

Again he chose a remote, wild mountain, again brought his avatar’s body to the peak condition of a small human, and once more practiced the blood-breathing technique.

This time, he limited the eruption of blood energy, letting it rise only to a “hundred fathoms”—the thousand feet he’d originally envisioned.

The crimson mist shrouded the sky for more than three hundred meters.

Still, Luo Zu felt his avatar’s vitality nearly exhausted.

And once expelled, the blood could not be reclaimed; only through food and the breathing technique could it be replenished.

After this relatively successful trial, Luo Zu hastened to record all the data he had gathered.

He proceeded to further experiments, combining the small humans’ blood energy with martial techniques.

By causing the blood energy to erupt within, and suffusing the body’s surface with a strengthening crimson mist, he could reinforce bone, muscle, and skin, unleashing three to five times the usual strength, with destructive power far surpassing barehanded attacks.

Moreover, blood energy could coat weapons, extending their reach and lethality.

Now, instead of letting his energy erupt wildly for five hundred meters, Luo Zu gathered it into a single point, fashioning it into a blood-soaked, viscous sword a hundred feet long.

He then drove this sword with all his might into the mountaintop beneath his feet.

With a thunderous rumble, the blood sword sliced through rock and earth as easily as cutting tofu, and then exploded inside the mountain.

In an instant, the colossal peak—nearly a thousand feet tall—was neatly segmented by crimson lines, each cleft as smooth as a mirror’s surface.

The mountain collapsed, tumbling into the valleys below, raising clouds of dust as birds and beasts scattered in terror.

Luo Zu’s avatar closed its eyes, the last spark of life extinguished, leaving the desiccated corpse to rest among the ruins.

Yet even this result did not satisfy him, and his experiments continued.

Thus, in a single day, he repeated the process seven times.

Only after slaughtering one thousand and eight monstrous beasts with the combined power of the blood-breathing technique and martial skills did he finally halt his trials, recording every detail.

“A pity the method is so brutal and wild. It’s a fine way to perish together with an enemy, but as a path of cultivation... it’s hardly ideal,” Luo Zu concluded.

Even if it wasn’t a worthy technique, it might still serve as the foundation for a Demonic Self-Destruction Art...

In the primeval world, a desperate struggle was nothing to be ashamed of.

As for whether this approach had a future, Luo Zu could not yet say—his experience was limited, and he was still exploring his own path.

Another idea occurred to him: using the World Within the Jar and the Wheel of Creation to accelerate his own “time.”

He dared not attempt such a thing in the vast wilderness; though his lifespan was long, accelerating it a few times would soon use it up.

Cell division would hasten aging, and only inside the World Within the Jar could he safely accelerate his thoughts and cellular growth.

With this plan, Luo Zu resolved to possess his avatar in the World Within the Jar every night during rest.

“In a way, this counts as extending my life,” Luo Zu quipped.

It was a peculiar form of longevity—for it was the avatar’s cells that aged, not his true body, though his thoughts would be accelerated, and for him, so would time.

Yet after the first night’s attempt, Luo Zu’s mind felt unsettled upon leaving the World Within the Jar.

At first, he felt a void—a hollowing of the spirit—then, as his brain revived him, a wave of emptiness washed over him.

“I’ll need a solution for this,” Luo Zu said, pale-faced, after enduring the emptiness.

A few dozen more times, and he might truly be hollowed out.

It was not fatigue, but a strange blankness of the mind, a longing to merge with the world itself.

As Luo Zu entered and left the World Within the Jar repeatedly to accelerate his thoughts, ten years passed for the small humans.

A decade may not seem long, but in that time, three more tribes emerged, bringing their numbers to three thousand.

Their rate of proliferation was astonishing—each new generation, upon reaching adulthood, joined the wave of reproduction. Each produced one child per year, and so, within twenty short years, their population grew from two hundred to three thousand.

Throughout this process, Luo Zu did not intervene.

Still, so many people were but a drop in the ocean compared to the vast expanse within the World Within the Jar.

Luo Zu began to notice greater genetic differences emerging between the tribes.

Environment was truly shaping them.

Seeing these changes, Luo Zu refrained from interference, watching and accelerating his own thoughts while observing the humans.

Recently, he had also started capturing live creatures from his hunts and keeping them in enclosures.

He would take samples of their tissue and introduce them to the World Within the Jar.

In this way, he created a new batch of life from the primeval earth inside the Jar, though they were only the beasts he had encountered.

He included not only the docile animals he had selected but also the fierce and savage ones.

In total, he had introduced twenty-seven species. As for those terrifying monsters that could breathe fire or shoot wind-blades, he refrained from bringing them in, lest they cause unnecessary trouble or disrupt his experiments.

For the beasts he kept in caves, Luo Zu even convened a meeting for the entire settlement.

After much discussion, everyone agreed with Luo Zu’s proposal—the elderly and children of the community would be responsible for tending to the beasts.