26 The True Essence of Blood Path

The sun rises in the sky on a sunny day, still bearing a bit of the lingering chill of late winter, but life is already returning to Longhua Shan Mountain, with birds singing joyfully in the skies and trees blooming again, forming forests full of animals that have now emerged from their hibernations and need to find food.

Amidst the beautiful and untouched wilderness lies a clan that stands like a beacon of human civilization, exuding the fervor and prosperity that humans are experiencing in this golden age of humanity.

The streets are filled with pedestrians and passersby who walk cheerfully, as well as vendors trying to make a living selling their products. Some of them have broad smiles on their faces for their success, while others wear expressions of worry, unsure if they'll manage to provide for their families until the end of the month.

In the midst of the clan, oblivious the chaos and excitement of the streets, stands a mansion of azure color, built using marble and an ancient Chinese structure that would make anyone from Earth think they are looking into the past. However, for the people of the Gu world, it's the more common sight of how a mansion should appear.

This mansion belongs to the Chen family, who are now enjoying a rare moment of leisure with the entire family gathered to enjoy each other's company and catch up on affairs, as the four men of the family are all very busy and usually cannot afford to spend time simply relaxing and resting, but today is an exception.

"...so in the end, after Ren Zu placed the bodies of his children into the Derivation Gu, Humanity became what it is today!" Chen Wei finishes reading Legends of Ren Zu. This isn't his first read, nor will it be his last, as during this period in the Gu world, he has been reading this book as if it were the holy bible.

"Although I've understood many of the depths of the story, I still haven't felt my Human Path attainment increase even a bit." This thought, along with the fact that despite numerous attempts, Chen Wei has never even heard of Human Path Gu, led him to believe that Heaven's Will had placed some sort of restriction on this path and would only allow certain chosen ones to cultivate it, much like Shen Shang, the Gu immortal of the Eastern Sea.

"Sweetie, you should enjoy this moment with your family rather than reading this children's book." A woman in her early forties, but not looking her age due to her beautiful, wrinkle-free face, wearing a purple traditional Chinese dress , which along with her demeanor, makes her appear as an elegant and beautiful empress of ancient China.

"Ah... all right, mother, I've finished reading this anyway." The woman Chen Wei addresses is, of course, his mother, Ci Ling, who has a surprising origin for her current position.

The woman in front of him, whom he calls mother, resembling an empress in beauty and elegance, actually comes from a mortal family with no talent for cultivation. They were only considered members of the He An Clan because of a marriage between a Gu master and her family that happened three generations ago.

Despite this humble origin, Ci Ling still awakened an exceptional Grade B talent, which made her the target of pursuit by all the major families of the clan who wanted a talented woman with no political affiliations with other factions for them to marry their heirs.

In the end, the winner of this competition was the old fox called Chen Wang, who promptly married Chen Wei's mother and father and ordered them to have at least three heirs, who became Chen Ming, Chen Wei, and Chen Hua.

"Hahaha, let the boy be; he loves reading these stories since he was a child. Do you remember how he almost cried when he finished the book for the first time?" Chen Wang, who usually acts like a magnanimous ruler who never lets other people know what's on his mind or what his plans are, is now teasing Chen Wei like any common grandfather would, not acting at all like the feared, most powerful elder of the clan.

His mother smiles elegantly and modestly at Chen Wang's joke, but Chen Wei knows she didn't find it funny at all by the way she's acting and by the fact that she hates both his grandfather and father, with her showing genuine love and concern only for her children.

But this is to be expected, as in all the political conflict in the clan to know who Ci Ling would marry, the last person whose opinion was asked was her, and after already being married, Chen Wei doubts that his father cared about her emotions or consent before impregnating her, and it's not like his father is the most faithful man in the world either.

Chen Wei himself is fully aware of the difficulty of resisting this temptation because it's one thing to say that engaging in carnal desires instead of cultivation is something only a fool would do and that lust would lead a Gu master to perdition, so it shouldn't be practiced.

Another thing is to refuse several of the most beautiful women you've ever seen in your life offering themselves to you to take their bodies and make them your concubines who can be used in any way you want to satisfy your sexual desires.

Of course, Chen Wei had strong enough willpower to resist this temptation, which compared to his goals is nothing, but he no longer has a judgmental opinion of those young masters who lose themselves in lust and sexual pleasure, although for Chen Wei, this is a pathetic end for someone of great talent like these young masters.

"I've told both of you that this book is deeper than a mere children's story." Although revealing this seems stupid since it's a big secret in the Gu world with the Legends of Ren Zu being the greatest inheritance of the Human Path, he simply gave an excuse to his grandfather to stop bothering him while he's reading Legends of Ren Zu instead of cultivating.

"Yes, yes, I love it when big brother reads Legends of Ren Zu to me before bedtime." Chen Hua, who was playing with a bloody creature, comes running with it in her hand as if it were a harmless cat before being stopped by Chen Liang.

"What did I tell you about not mistreating the bloody creature if you want to keep it as a pet?" Chen Hua releases the bloody creature on the ground with a sad expression, but the bloody creature, after touching the ground, runs to Chen Wei with a desperate look like a dog who found its owner whom it hasn't seen for months.

The bloody creature climbs onto Chen Wei's lap and looks at him with pleading eyes, never wanting to be with the innocent-looking girl again, which to the bloody creature looks like a demon straight from the deepest layer of hell.

"It's all right, I'm here." Chen Wei strokes the bloody creature, which has a fat, round body with a large mouth full of fangs and sharp teeth, as well as four claws capable of causing deep cuts on a person's body.

And with all these body parts of the creature made for killing and attacking, you wonder why the bloody creature didn't attack Chen Hua instead of running to Chen Wei's lap as soon as it had the chance and is now in his lap like a docile puppy instead of trying to attack him.

Well, the reason for that is that this bloody creature is no longer the first version of it created using blood from various creatures and the effect of another Gu in an archaic and experimental way.

But this bloody creature was created using a disposable Gu that Chen Wei recently created after an inspiration while experimenting with people. This new Gu created by him was called the Blood Creature Gu, and it's a rank 1 Gu that can create only one bloody creature.

This bloody creature, as it was created using a Gu, is totally loyal to Chen Wei and by his orders cannot harm anyone in his family, and not even the servants of the Chen family if they don't attack him first, so he is basically in a position where he can do nothing against the abuses of the little girl, even though he has the strength of a Peak stage rank 1.

And as he was created from a rank 1 Gu, his strength will never be able to reach rank 2, so even if he could consume blood to go from the stage where his strength was comparable to a rank 1 initial stage to now being comparable to a Peak stage rank 1, even if he drank all the blood in the He An clan, he still wouldn't reach rank two.

Besides, he cannot reproduce using blood like the bloody creature created by Chen Wei in his experiments, which Chen Wei theorizes will only be possible to solve in rank 3 or rank 4.

"Ah, creating a totally new creature in a path that has never existed before... such talent." Chen Wang mutters, looking at the bloody creature in Chen Wei's lap while having complicated feelings, as he is happy with his grandson's incredible talent but as a proud person, he feels a certain melancholy seeing how untalented he is compared to Chen Wei.

But as Chen Wei looks at the bloody creature, he feels no pride with this great achievement since he himself does not see it as anything compared to the Desolate Beasts that exist in this world and are the weakest of the Immortal Beasts.

But even an Immemorial Desolate Beast that has strength comparable to rank 8 which is unimaginable and incomprehensible to the current Chen Wei, is still a bit lower than Chen Wei's goal in this life before he reaches the immortal realm of rank 6.

"Verdant Great Sun, Desolate Ancient Moon, Northern Dark Ice Soul, Boundless Forest Samsara, Blazing Glory Lightning Brilliance, Myriad Gold Wondrous Essence, Great Strength True Martial, Carefree Wisdom Heart, Fake Earth Central Origin, Cosmic Great Derivation, the ten children of Ren Zu..." Chen Wei mutters while looking at the creature in his hand, knowing that it is only the first step towards his ultimate goal of creating an artificial Extreme Physique of Blood path!

"It has been shown as possible with the creation of the Pure Dream Reality Seeker in the novel by an Immortal of rank 8 who wasn't even a Dream Path immortal." Chen Wei thinks deeply; he would never dare to say these thoughts aloud as these are secrets that, if he can, he will take to the grave.

"Do you still remember how excited you got when you discovered, for some reason, the names of the last two?" Chen Wang speaks beside him while taking the bloody creature from Chen Wei's hands to evaluate if it has had any changes in the meantime.

'By the names of the Extreme Physique and by the legends of Ren Zu, it becomes easy to guess which path they belong to, and these paths coincidentally align with at least one Venerable of the novel!' This thought certainty only increased in his mind after reading and rereading the Legends of Ren Zu several times, with the only Venerable without a compatible physique being the Great Dream who would create an artificial Extreme Physique as seen in the novel.

But what got him more excited than all of this is that towards the end of the Legends of Ren Zu, there are many situations related to blood and rivers and seas full of blood, as well as beasts bathed in blood that pursued Ren Zu.

But even this doesn't compare to something that gave him great inspiration one of those days while he was reading the Legends of Ren Zu; in fact, this inspiration reignited the flame within him that motivated him to create an artificial Extreme Physique of the Blood Path.

This was a detail that he believes no one ever noticed, but he, as the creator of the Blood Path, managed to see a bit of its depth that basically declared blood as the essence of life, which was one of the things necessary to create humans, as well as one of the foundations that allow the life of all living beings.

He came to a conclusion: if Soul Path is a failed attempt to create Killing Path, then Blood Path could be a failed attempt to create Vitality Path!!