Skin sewing

Bai Yun took out a bandage from his storage ring and tightened up the wound to stop it from bleeding. He could have dodged the attack if he had used his soul, but he chose to only use his qi to battle in order to acclimate himself.

He walked up to the wolf and cut its head to recover its demon core. The beasts in the first four steps of cultivation had a demon core in their body, that could be used by alchemists or weaponsmiths. There were many pills that required the wild strength inside a demon core as an ingredient, or it could be affixed onto a weapon to increase its strength.

After taking the demon core, Bai Yun put the body of the beast in his storage ring. The storage ring his father had given him was of a high quality and could store quite a few beasts. The beast's flesh could be used as food and its skin, bones, blood and other parts had many uses. The beasts that were killed during one's stay in the beast garden had to be sold to the clan. The resources and demon cores could be sold or kept. The prices one would get if the beasts and other resources inside were handed to the clan was only half of what one would get if sold outside, but for most people who would come to the beast garden, going outside to sell the beast's carcasses wasn't an option. And for most people only the medicines could be used freely, all other resources had to be sold anyway.

By now Bai Yun had completely spent all his qi. After resting for a while to recover his strength, stood up. He then left in search of more beasts.

For the next five days, Bai Yun spend his entire time battling all kinds of beasts. He battled beasts from leopards to snakes and even some variants. He was currently sitting on a tree eating a demonic deer he had killed. Sitting alone like this was dangerous, and sleeping alone was even more dangerous. His father had given him an artifact that would alert him of danger, but only if he was sleeping. But since his god sense had a sixth sense which was even more sensitive to danger, he never used it. His entire body was filled with cuts and bruises and he had lost so much blood that he was slightly pale. The only reason he could continue was due to all the demonic beast meat and blood that he had eaten.

But the last five days hadn't been without its benefits. His qi spiral had completely stabilized, and the traces of the second spiral was beginning to form. He was sure that he could form it in another week at most. And this was due to the Way of Harmony, an inferior technique would not be so effective.

But the most important fact was that he had finally managed to keep his old instincts in check. It was thanks to his god sense and by spilling more blood than his body could handle that he finally managed to do it so quickly. Even though he still hadn't reached a state where he was happy with his body's responses, at least he was no longer in danger of making a mistake.

Not only that, due to practising the Undying Body every time he got hurt and had to heal up, his skin had started to absorb some qi, and had begun to strengthen. Today he had finally reached the threshold of skin sewing, and could officially begin his cultivation in the body tempering path.

Of course, as a price for this, he looked more like a mummy than a human.

In the skin sewing stage, the cultivation was not broken up like the qi condensation stage. It was much simple. The point of skin sewing was to use the qi as a needle and carve mysterious patterns into the skin. The more patterns and the more area the pattern covered, the stronger a person would be. The human body could support up to ten patterns only. But most people wouldn't look at the number of patterns in skin sewing, as due to the difference in nature it could be wildly misleading.

Any person who had even one pattern could technically break through to the muscle tempering stage, but no one would do so. The biggest obstacle in the body tempering path was that only the muscles beneath a pattern could be tempered, thus covering as much of the skin as possible in mysterious patterns was essential. Even further down the lane, only the locations beneath the mysterious patterns could be tempered.

Most techniques would do their best to use up all ten patterns as well as cover as much of the area as possible. Even the technique Bai Yun used in his past life had ten patterns and covered over ninety nine percent of the area. Even all god level techniques but a top few could only do this much. The reason was that if two patterns touched then their power would be mixed, and thus a gap had to be left between all the patterns and all these gaps would be weaknesses. There was no way to eliminate this. Different cultivation techniques tried to hide these gaps in different parts of the body so that it would be difficult to notice and find out someone's weakness.

Even god level cultivation techniques had this weakness. The reason they were superior was that they would have more profound patterns which would end up making one stronger, and reduce the uncovered area as much as possible. It was also possible to create a resonance between patterns and allow a person to possess some extra powers.

This was the accepted norm for trillions of years until the God of Battle showed up. He came up with a crazy idea: what if instead of ten patterns, only a single pattern was used? Many people had tried this before, but since a pattern had to be completed in one go, and the larger a pattern was, the effort needed and the pain in carving it would go up explosively. It was impossible for anyone to complete a full body pattern in one go.

What the God of Battle did differently was to split up the single pattern into ten. He used the first nine mysterious patterns as a base, and used the tenth to tie them all together to make them into a single pattern. This meant that there would no longer be any weaknesses in the body. But by doing so the power during the first nine patterns would be much lower and one would also be not able to get any powers by resonance between the patterns. Also, each of these patterns were much harder to make than a pattern from any other technique.

The God of Battle was someone who dual cultivated in body and qi. In order to test his theory, he put off body cultivation and started on the qi path. He reached the immortal step in the qi path first and then even studied formations and other mysterious daos to a very high level before he created his technique and started his cultivation.

After the God of Battle succeed in his path many others tried this method. But the God of Battle's technique which he polished through his life was still considered the best. It was rumored that the God of Death created a better technique, but Bai Yun only managed to see the Undying Body in his life after his father exchanged the Way of Harmony for the Undying Body with the God of Battle after the Grand War began.

Bai Yun looked at a map he had gotten from his father. After he looked at it he quickly found what he was looking for. Near to where he was was a place called weed valley. Similar to demonic beasts there were also breed, variants and mutants among plants also. The valley was filled with a variant breed of weeds that were taller than a human. Walking through weeds as tall as bamboo was extremely dangerous.

But among these weeds some would mutate, and create strange fruits every now and then. These strange fruits would be of different kinds, and depending on the color would be of help to qi, body, soul even other cultivation paths. But since they were from weeds no matter how powerful the mutation, they could only be used by low level first realm cultivators.

But the greatest number of fruits there were the kind that could be used by demonic beats. Thus the place was filled with many demonic beasts. Not only were there many first circle beasts there, but there were also some second circle beasts there.

Most importantly due to the special property of the weeds all the senses including perception was limited in the valley. As a result, it was very common to be ambushed by people as well as demonic beasts there. And since it was extremely likely that no one could find one's body, or for there to be witnesses there, it was a common spot for murder. Thus not a lot of people would go to the valley unless they had a high cultivation or were in a large group. It was only due to the sixth sense of the god sense that could only be hindered by a god step powerhouse that he dared to go there.

Bai Yun got his bearings and started to move toward the weed valley. As he walked, he started swinging his sword. The sword was moving in a strange rhythm, as well as in weird and strange poses. Sometimes he would simply flick his wrist multiple times in an instance. Sometime they would come from strange positions, and take weird arcs. Some were simple thrusts and slashes. No one could see any sense in the movements.

Bai Yun was using Simple Sword and was trying to integrate the technique into his body. He was using shadow boxing techniques and fighting against an imaginary enemy. As a result for anyone who was looking at him, it would look strange. After all, he was the only person who would have the guts to practice a technique in the middle of the beast garden, while every else would be on the lookout for a sneak attack.

Currently, all three of Bai Yun's soul tendrils were at work. One was scouting all around him, one was focused on the Simple Sword and the last one was trying to feel the wind. Ever since his failure to comprehend the wind motion, Bai Yun had taken the issue to heart, and spend all the time on it. Even when fighting beats and traveling through the forest, he would always be using one tendril of soul to comprehend the wind. As a result, his understanding of the wind motion had gone up by a lot. By now he could trigger wind motion successfully about half the time he tried. But he was still unable to execute it properly or understand any of the intricacies involved.

As he walked through the forest, he reached the entrance to the weed valley. He had faced a few more beasts on the way. By now the only place of his which wasn't injured was his eyes. There were scratches even on his face. He looked like a walking mummy, fully covered in bandages.

He had run into a few people on the way. The weed valley was not too popular due to the high mortality rate, but it had more people than the forest in general. All the people he had met had stared at him in shock. He simply walked past them. He could hear people muttering behind him. He even heard a group deciding to leave the beast garden after meeting him.

As he neared the weed valley he stopped. He stood on a cliff and looked at the field of green below him. He was unable to see anything but the top of the weeds, and a few wiggles here and there, which he assumed were people or lifeforms. The field of green completely hid the danger inside.

"Oh my look. Even a dead person is here." Bai Yun heard someone say, followed by raucous laughter. Something about the laughter annoyed him, so he turned to look. Immediately his eyes turned into slits.

In front of him were Bai Shan and his posse.