Cade injected a little blood qi into the Book of Life, watching the pages fill with Master Lao Ren’s elegant Chthonic script. He could now read everything pertaining to the early stage and even some of the information related to the middle stage, though many details were still difficult to decipher. Focusing on the late stage was even harder—the runes blurred, giving him serious eye strain. Sadly, there was no way to get a glimpse into the next realm. He’d need to at least advance to the peak of the early stage, and likely break into the middle stage, before a part of it would reveal itself.
He was long used to these limitations, so he paid them no mind. Instead, Cade went through everything he could access twice, absorbing each word. The diagrams for circulating blood qi were far more complex than those in the Blood Transformation realm, which became painfully obvious when he dove into the most basic minor technique of Flesh Fortification: appearance transformation.
He opened his ring and took out a mirror: a square plate of steel polished to perfection. He had made the purchase some time ago after discovering this technique, knowing he’d soon find himself in need of it.
Cade started with the simplest diagram: the adjustment of skin color. He was very pale, and no amount of sun exposure seemed to change that. Adding a healthy tan would go a long way toward making him appear more human, especially since he was heading into a desert. His blood qi swirled in complex patterns under his skin, darkening its pigmentation as shown in the Book. He observed with no small amount of amazement as the shade of his skin began to change, eventually turning into a dark brown.
Hmm, this might be too much. Better to aim for something in the middle; the less conspicuous, the better. He finally settled on a healthy, golden tan, which made him appear full of vitality—a quality he ironically had in abundance, though it didn't necessarily reflect in his appearance. After checking himself in the mirror, Cade was sure of one thing: nobody would mistake him for a vampire anymore.
Teeth were next. The Asura had both upper and lower fangs, and in their retracted form, they were a quarter of an inch too long. He forced blood qi into each tooth, and as its concentration rose, the bone turned malleable. It didn’t take him long to mold them into perfectly average canines.
Next came the nails, which was even easier. He first changed them into a blunt human shape while lowering their thickness, then adjusted their color from black to a light pink. After several more tries, he realized he could now change their shape with barely a thought, swapping between Asura and human nails in the span of a single breath.
His ears were the hardest to correct. It took him a long while, but he eventually managed to form a pair of human ears. They weren’t perfect, but with his long hair, they’d do. Finally, Cade took on the toughest challenge: the eyes. He was a little concerned, as there was a small chance of going blind. However, it turned out to be fairly easy. His blood-red irises changed into a deep blue, their pupils adjusting into a round shape. Neither of the changes seemed to affect his vision. Cade even began to wonder if his manifestation of multiple atavisms made it easier for him to perform these basic shapeshifting acts.
The last detail was probably the most important: mimicking spiritual qi fluctuations. All he had to do was enter his realm of consciousness, recall the representation of his voracious heart, and then set up a circulating pattern of blood qi around it according to the diagram. The heart began to release a small part of the spiritual qi it absorbed in steady waves characteristic of an early stage Skeletal Reinforcement body refiner. As an equivalent to the qi cultivators’ Foundation Establishment realm, it was a perfect disguise for someone who had to rely on his physical attributes and couldn’t use spiritual qi arts.
With his appearance and aura now taken care of, it was time to dig into the first major technique: Blood Wings. It required the blood of a flying spirit beast to work. His voracious heart would use this blood to replicate the natural laws that allowed the creature to take flight. The whole technique was quite ingenious; with the help of the creature’s innate laws, one could project what was essentially an ethereal set of wings made of blood qi, generating the necessary thrust and lift without needing motion, balancing, or worrying about wind currents.
Cade’s initial concern was whether he’d be able to upgrade the wings if he ever encountered a faster flying creature. It turned out to not be a problem, as the blood wasn’t making any sweeping changes to his body. Rather, his voracious heart was doing the initial replication—preserving the information in two small bumps in the middle of his back, where streams of blood qi would pass through before erupting into wings mirroring those of the spirit beast from which the blood was sourced. This art had only one downside: it used a lot of blood qi. His heart would essentially be bending natural laws to his will through a projected set of wings without the accompanying physicality, a process that required a lot of energy. It was still more efficient than spiritual qi flight, which was even less effective. Only True Core cultivators had enough energy to fly longer distances, all thanks to their golden core and its huge qi reservoir.
The Asura spent the next half a day practicing the diagrams required to project the wings in his realm of consciousness. He wanted to be prepared for when he obtained an adequate blood sample. All he required was one tiny drop. It would provide his voracious heart with all the laws it needed, which were completely preserved even in the tiniest speck of the creature’s blood.
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Finally, he turned his attention to the Asura War Form—a powerful blood art, available in its most basic, single-blooded form upon reaching the peak of the early stage of Flesh Fortification. The first rank of this art was focused on defense and required the blood of a scaled beast—the tougher the creature, the better. The same logic applied to its dual-blooded form, available at the peak of the middle stage. This one was less of a requirement and more of a recommendation. The Book suggested the blood of a fast and agile beast, whether it had scales or not. The triple-blooded version was available at the great circle, and while most of its details were obscured, from what he could decipher, it appeared to benefit the War Form’s physical strength the most. The middle stage of Flesh Fortification didn’t contain any other blood arts; in order to find out more about techniques from the late stage, he needed to raise his cultivation first.
Once he was done with the Book of Life, Cade turned his mind to the two abilities he had once triggered by accident. One was a blood-churning aura that had greatly limited Gorgo’s ability to think and act, and the other was a red, glowing mist that seeped from his pores. Fortunately, Cade had managed to break out of his stupor in time, and Gorgo hadn't been affected by the mist, but his friend did say it gave him a very threatening, panic-inducing feeling.
For now, he wanted to focus on the aura alone, as he had no idea how the mist might affect his speeder. He was currently flying far above the ground, and the last thing he wanted was for something to break down. The whole line of Arrow speeders worked by pushing energy into refined repulsion ore and were unlikely to fall—even if all power was suddenly cut off—but considering the sense of danger Gorgo felt, Cade chose to postpone working on the mist until he was on solid ground.
He spent some time recalling how he felt that night above Chi Chi’s pagoda and eventually came to the conclusion that this blood-affecting aura was released by his voracious heart. How or why it was capable of doing so, he couldn’t tell. It certainly wasn’t mentioned in the Book of Life, so what else could it be if not the work of his prismatic spherules? Yet, he instinctively felt the aura was controlled by his heart. He dove into his realm of consciousness, reaching out with his mind to see if he could establish a stronger connection. He attempted to direct various emotions into the heart, focusing on fear and anger, but that did nothing. He tried forcing it into various rhythms but couldn’t replicate the particular drumming from his memory.
Eventually, after a whole day of fruitless attempts, Cade lost his nerve and ended up screaming at the top of his lungs into the clouds, forcing out all the accumulated irritation until nothing was left. He was mad at himself for not being able to find a solution.
And it was at that moment that his heart suddenly awakened, releasing a particular thump.
It passed through all the spherules, unexpectedly pushing them into action. All two thousand tiny spheres activated instantly, releasing a strange energy field that spread in all directions. Cade immediately focused, trying to understand what had just happened. He was now able to recall this singular thump occurring on two occasions: the first when he interrogated Veronica in the cave, and the second above the pagoda. His initial instinct wasn’t entirely wrong; while his voracious heart wasn’t creating an aura by itself, it commanded the spherules to release a strange type of qi, something he had never heard or read about before. His excitement rose quickly, all the irritation now a distant memory. The realization that he was trying to force out a potentially dangerous energy while flying miles above the ground escaped him in his elation.
Thump.
All the spherules acted as one, pushing out another wave of qi.
Thump.
Again, the same wave, produced in the exact same way. He began releasing wave after wave, the process now as easy as breathing.
Cade’s entire face lit up. Regardless of how useful this new discovery turned out to be, he was already beaming. He had made the spherules work! They could be guided, commanded through his voracious heart. This was amazing news. In addition, it was something that belonged only to him; nobody else could replicate it. This also meant no one would be able to easily understand how it worked, granting him a definitive edge. Once he was on the ground, he would need to conduct further testing, but for now, he was quite proud of himself. Since “blood-churning aura” didn’t exactly flow off the tongue, and the ability wasn’t an aura but a single outward pulse released at short intervals, he decided to name it the ‘disabling pulse’ for the time being.
Very content with his progress and finally able to relax a little, Cade brought out the map to get a sense of where he was. After an incense stick of time, he finally narrowed down his current location. He was just over two days away from Tower Oasis, the elven city built around the Tower of Arts. Apparently, the tower was built long before the Exodus, though it wasn’t quite as ancient as the Sword Dao Monastery. Since this was a cultivator city, there would undoubtedly be many fascinating artifacts available. He was hoping to purchase the blood of a powerful flying spirit beast to manifest his wings. Regrettably, many types of blood were important to alchemists, especially those from creatures with rare bloodlines. That would no doubt affect the price.
As his trusty speeder devoured thousands of miles, the landscape continued to change, and the temperature gradually rose. Over the next couple of days, the vegetation became much denser and the humidity soared as the climate turned tropical. After witnessing gigantic palm trees for the first time, Cade was in awe. Some of them stretched hundreds of feet into the sky, their massive trunks wider than many buildings in Kettle, with canopies so broad they could cover a full market square.
Judging from the map, the Desert of a Thousand Lakes was now only a few hundred miles away, and with it, Tower Oasis and his final destination—the Sword Dao Monastery.
