I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 781: The Blood Sacrifice Method

Once enrollment was over and the academy’s various affairs were finally on track, Jie Ming returned to a state of deep research.

The laboratory was silent, only the low hum of the energy cycle echoing slowly through the broad hall.

Jie Ming leaned back in the high-backed chair behind his alchemy bench, the index finger of his right hand tapping unconsciously at the edge of the metal benchtop.

Tap, tap, tap…

The rhythm was steady, but it felt somewhat drawn out.

His mind was not on the row of data waiting to be analyzed in front of him. It was immersed in something else.

Lines of golden text unfolded slowly from the depths of his spiritual sea.

That was the content of the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art.

He had been studying this immortal-level technique for over a century.

In that century he had put the greater part of his energy into this one text.

And now the first step, Dharma Form Dissolution, could finally be said to be within reach.

How to take apart a five-hundred-kilometer true body into the most basic streams of Dao resonance particles, how information was preserved between the particles, how to build a new cycle system once inside his inner world…

He had run those theoretical models through his spiritual sea countless times.

Judged on the deductions alone, the success rate was approaching a hundred percent.

Under normal circumstances he ought by now to be starting his first genuine dissolution experiment.

And yet…

Jie Ming slowly closed his eyes, and the scenes of failure after failure over these past days surfaced in his mind.

He had lost count of how many times it had happened. Every time he tried to break a small piece of his true body’s tissue down into particles, the spiritual power that ought to have flowed smoothly would abruptly congeal at some point.

Then the whole structure would fall into disorder and finally collapse completely.

The failures had long since piled up past the point where he could be bothered to count them.

If he had failed only occasionally, he could have put it down to insufficient practice.

But he had failed continuously for several years now… and Jie Ming had to face reality.

Jie Ming sighed lightly. “It is not a technique problem. It is aptitude.”

He had finally said it out loud.

To cultivate the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art, his aptitude was not enough.

At that thought he could not help pinching the bridge of his nose.

Those operational steps recorded in the jade slip were described so casually.

Things like “the spiritual power flows naturally,” “simply decompose it along the grain,” “as water finds its channel”…

He had thought it looked quite simple back then, and only found out once he actually began.

Simple?

Simple, my foot!

He understood every one of those steps, could follow each one, and yet in actual practice everything about it was awkward.

It was like a person with ordinary musical sense being handed a piano piece written specifically for someone with perfect pitch.

He knew every note, and still could not play them smoothly in sequence.

At that thought, Jie Ming actually felt a certain relief.

He had always known perfectly well that in both the wizard system and the cultivation system, his own talent could only be called decent.

Enough to qualify as a “genius,” but by no means at the very top.

The genuine monsters were people like Senior Sister Viola or Mentor Clark, the sort who could bulldoze straight through on native aptitude alone.

Whereas he… had mostly built up his advantage step by step on the cross-system knowledge of the Great Dao Book Pavilion.

Which was why today he had finally run into a technique he could not cultivate because his aptitude fell short.

“Thinking it over… that is actually normal enough.” Jie Ming rubbed the space between his brows.

Under normal circumstances, a cultivator capable of practicing the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art would be at the Dao Integration Realm at minimum.

And anyone who had cultivated all the way to Dao Integration had been through layer upon layer of filtering.

Spiritual roots, comprehension, fortuitous opportunity, temperament… who knew how many hundreds of millions of cultivators had been eliminated.

Those who remained were, without exception, geniuses of one in ten thousand.

And even if someone of slightly poorer aptitude occasionally slipped through, the fact that he possessed a complete inner world meant he was either backed by a top-level sect or had come into some heaven-defying stroke of fortune.

Spiritual treasures of heaven and earth for raising aptitude were no problem at all to people like that.

Only he himself… had essentially exploited a loophole in the cultivation system.

He did indeed possess an inner world, and he possessed all kinds of techniques for raising bodily aptitude.

But those methods… leaned almost entirely toward altering aptitude within the wizard system.

At that thought, Jie Ming finally opened his eyes.

A light screen unfolded slowly above the desk, and he listed out every workable option he currently had.

First, abandon the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art and look for an alternative.

It would be a pity to waste this century of effort, but it was not unacceptable.

Second, keep grinding at it.

If aptitude was insufficient, then wear the problem down with time.

There was no deadline in any case, and in theory, given infinite time, he would succeed eventually.

As for the third… that was to solve the problem at the root: raise his own spiritual aptitude.

Jie Ming barely hesitated before his gaze settled on the third.

“This one.”

Aptitude, in any system whatsoever, is foundation.

Raising it would not only solve the problem of the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art, but would pay endless dividends in cultivating higher realms later.

And besides…

Jie Ming suddenly smiled.

In fact he had considered this many years ago.

After selling the aptitude enhancement technique for a large sum of military merits, Jie Ming had already had this in mind.

The earlier aptitude enhancement technique had little effect on high-level wizards, and could only be sold to small and mid-sized families for a steady trickle of income.

But what if… he could develop a technique that noticeably raised the aptitude of even a sixth-level wizard, or an eighth-level one?

The price on that would be an entirely different matter.

Thinking of all those high-level wizards willing to pay any price at all for an increase in strength, the corner of Jie Ming’s mouth lifted slightly.

That would probably not count as making money so much as robbery!

In fact, he had prepared the research subject for the technology long ago.

It was simply that at the time his alchemy had still been at the stage of producing living tissue, and the moment had not come.

But now… his alchemy had genuinely stepped into life transmutation.

Every condition was ripe.

“A little earlier than I expected, but starting now is fine too!”

Jie Ming slowly closed his eyes and sank his consciousness into his spiritual sea.

The familiar Great Dao Book Pavilion still stood quietly there.

The white jade tower was plain and solemn, countless jade slips turning slowly around it like stars circling the moon.

As a single thought of his fell, a streak of dark red light shot abruptly out of the pavilion’s deepest recess, passed through row upon row of shelves, and came to rest steadily in his palm.

The light dispersed, and a battered ancient volume lay quietly there.

At the center of the cover, three crimson characters met his eye:

The Blood Sacrifice Method.

The script was exceedingly savage, less written than carved into the cover stroke by stroke with a sharp instrument.

Jie Ming opened to the first page.

The content was blunt and crude, with almost no ornament to it:

For those of insufficient aptitude.

Sacrifice one’s own blood kin.

Seize the origin of their bloodline.

Strengthen one’s own aptitude.

The closer the blood relation.

The stronger the effect.

It was fair to say this Blood Sacrifice Method was as standard a piece of demonic-path heresy as anything could be.

And yet Jie Ming felt not the slightest resistance to it.

Not because he approved of the technique, but because the direction of his thinking had, from the very start, been entirely different from that of whoever created it. Alchemy could already accomplish life transmutation.

And cloning… was merely the most basic, simplest application of life transmutation.

Jie Ming stroked the book, a trace of a smile slowly lifting the corner of his mouth as an old idea surfaced in his mind again.

Under the Blood Sacrifice Method, the closer the blood relation between kin, the stronger the effect.

In that case… what blood relation could possibly be closer to himself than “himself”?