nownovels Chapter 10 Cultivating Divine Arts
Chapter 10 Cultivating Divine Arts
Chu Yuan looked up.
It was a stone wall made of green jade, about ten feet square, smooth as a mirror, and covered with countless small characters.
The handwriting varied in size, some neat and orderly, others messy and illegible, clearly indicating that it was not written by the same person.
Regardless of the font, every stroke is deeply embedded in the jade, as if it were carved by some special force.
Chu Yuan's gaze fell on the very top of the stone wall, where three large characters were clearly written: "Divine Dao Technique".
His gaze continued downwards, but when he saw the second line of text...
The inscription read: "This is a record made by disciple Chen Chong from memory. Future practitioners should be cautious in their practice."
Feng Luan stood beside him, noticed his expression, sighed softly, and slowly said, "Fellow Daoist must have some doubts, so let me explain them to you."
"The Divine Arts were discovered by Ancestor Gong in the second year after our War God Temple suffered a traitor. After that, rumors about the Divine Arts spread like wildfire, attracting many who coveted them. Not long after, the fourth-level cultivation nation, Tiangang Kingdom, visited and, after a secret meeting with Ancestor Gong, took away the original Divine Arts. Three days after the people of Tiangang Kingdom left, Ancestor Gong went on a pilgrimage and never returned."
Feng Luan paused, her gaze falling on the jade wall, her tone tinged with emotion.
"This divine technique is the most bizarre spell I have ever seen in my life. Anyone who sees it can only comprehend it, but cannot express it in words, as if there is an invisible force blocking it. Countless cultivators of my War God Temple throughout the ages have tried to copy it, but all have failed in the end."
Yang Sen continued, "Only Ancestor Chen Chong accomplished this. He was of ordinary talent, the worst among Ancestor Gong's disciples, yet he did something no one else could—carve out the divine technique—based on his memories. After finishing, Ancestor Chen Chong died. Before his death, he warned his descendants that this technique was a great supernatural power, and his lifespan was insufficient; he could only complete one-tenth of it. He urged future generations to be extremely cautious in their cultivation."
Chu Yuan stared at the line of text, remaining silent.
Otherwise, the Temple of War would probably not have lent him this technique so easily, since after watching it, he could not teach it to others and could only cultivate it himself.
Feng Luan seemed to see through his thoughts and shook her head slightly: "Actually, Ancestor Chen Chong is overthinking it. How can the art of the divine path be so easily comprehended? In the thousands of years of our War God Temple, only a mere thirty people have been able to understand the meaning carved on this stone wall. And of these thirty people, only half have ultimately succeeded in forming their Nascent Soul."
She looked at Chu Yuan, her tone serious: "As for the divine arts circulating in other sects of the Fire Burning Kingdom, they are all fake. Very few can truly understand their mysteries."
Chu Yuan nodded, understanding dawning on his mind.
"Thank you both for telling me. I will remember it."
Feng Luan and Yang Sen exchanged a glance, then turned and walked outside.
"Fellow Daoist, you may meditate here. We will wait outside. However..."
As Feng Luan walked to the door, she suddenly turned around, her gaze sweeping over the stone doors on both sides of the passage.
"The sealed area of the Water Mirror Sect must not be trespassed by fellow Daoists."
Chu Yuan nodded: "Don't worry."
The footsteps faded into the distance, leaving only Chu Yuan in the stone mansion.
He turned around and faced the jade wall again.
Taking a deep breath, Chu Yuan turned his gaze to the densely packed characters and began to read them word by word.
At first, everything seemed normal.
Although the text was obscure and difficult to understand, and full of contradictions, it was still legible and comprehensible.
But as he looked at it, his brows gradually furrowed.
This divine technique is no ordinary cultivation method.
It doesn't discuss the circulation of meridians or magical powers; it's more like a jumbled collection of random thoughts, with sentences jumping from one topic to another, inverted order, and illogical.
In some places, it is even self-contradictory.
Chu Yuan became more and more confused as he looked at it.
He read through all the writing on the stone wall, which took him about the time it takes for two incense sticks to burn.
After reading it, he closed his eyes and went through the words in his mind again, trying to figure out the connection between them.
However, there was nothing there.
Those words seemed like a bunch of meaningless symbols, and could not be strung together into a complete set of techniques.
Chu Yuan opened his eyes, sighed inwardly, and looked at the stone wall again.
But at that moment, his pupils suddenly contracted.
"wrong!"
The moment he looked at the stone wall, the characters he had just memorized vanished from his mind.
It was as if it had never existed, completely clean, without leaving a trace.
Chu Yuan stared at the words on the stone wall. He was extremely familiar with these words; he had just memorized them all. But now, in the blink of an eye, it was as if his memory had been damaged, and they had all vanished. He could even recall that he had memorized these things before, but he couldn't remember the specific content of the words at all.
This divine magic is indeed strange.
This forceful erasure of memories is something that cannot be countered by ordinary means.
When he read the original novel, he didn't have a deep impression of this part, but now that he has experienced it firsthand, he understands its profound meaning.
Chu Yuan took a deep breath, suppressed his distracting thoughts, and turned his gaze back to the stone wall.
This time, he didn't rush to memorize it, but looked at it again and again, repeatedly, with his eyes glued to it.
The first time, it took two incense sticks.
The second time, it took one and a half sticks of incense.
The third time, it only took the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.
Chu Yuan's eyes moved faster and faster as his gaze swept across the stone wall, the characters flashing past him like flowing water.
Half an incense stick, three times for one incense stick, five times for half an incense stick... His speed kept increasing.
Time passed slowly, and Chu Yuan lost count of how many times he had watched it.
His eyes were bloodshot, and waves of throbbing pain came from deep within his eye sockets, as if countless fine needles were pricking him.
But he didn't stop, nor could he stop.
Because he vaguely sensed that although he couldn't remember the words, his understanding of the divine arts deepened with each reading.
That understanding didn't come from memory, but from something deeper, as if it were engraved in my bones and fused into my soul.
After an unknown amount of time, Chu Yuan's eyes closed without him realizing it.
But the stone wall still seemed to be there before his eyes, and the words flickered in front of him again and again, faster and faster, until they turned into a blurry light and shadow that could no longer be distinguished.
A sharp pain shot through his eyes, and Chu Yuan felt something warm flowing down from the corner of his eye.
In that instant, he suddenly opened his eyes.
His eyes were bloodshot, and his face looked ferocious, but his eyes were surprisingly bright, as if two flames were burning deep in his pupils.
In that instant, Chu Yuan clearly saw the writing on the jade wall in front of him slowly disappear.
A white figure suddenly appeared in the stone wall.
The figure's face was blurry, and his features were indistinct. All that could be seen was that he was dressed in white, standing with his hands behind his back, and exuding an indescribable aura.