Martial Immortality: Starting with the Spirit Beast Scroll

By the time Zhao Lin returned to his residence carrying the fish basket, the sky had already grown dark.

The evening breeze was blowing and the moonlight felt cool, but his heart burned with an unusual fire.

He hurried across the courtyard, entered the main hall, and shut the doors and windows. He placed the fish basket on the ground and squatted beside it, watching.

The three Pipa Catfish had all regained consciousness. After floundering for a moment, they quickly fell still.

If not for the occasional opening and closing of their gills, they would have looked dead at first glance.

Zhao Lin was slightly surprised. ’This kind of fish really knows how to survive,’ he thought. ’It knows struggling is useless, so it conserves its energy to prolong its life.’

"Which one should I choose?"

Zhao Lin opened the lid of the fish basket, his gaze sweeping back and forth over the three Pipa Catfish.

He had absorbed over a dozen Essence Souls before, but this was the first time he had multiple options. However, he quickly came up with a solution.

"Why don’t all three of you come out!"

The Pipa Catfish were ugly and poisonous, so Zhao Lin didn’t want any physical contact with them. He threw a few punches at the fish basket from a distance.

A moment later, three Essence Souls drifted out of the fish basket, each one coalescing in the air.

Zhao Lin narrowed his eyes to get a better look. He saw that the Essence Soul in the middle had clear lines and a complete shape, and he couldn’t help but nod.

"You’re the one!"

He took a step forward and gently inhaled...

The Essence Soul entered his body, transforming into countless points of silver light and bringing Zhao Lin an unprecedented experience.

Previous Essence Souls had either enhanced a specific ability or generated elemental True Qi, all of which had resulted in radical transformations of his body.

This time, however, it was like a gentle, continuous rain, nourishing everything without a sound. His body underwent an imperceptible change, from the outside in.

Various sensations arose within him—cold, heat, soreness, pain, numbness, itching, swelling... but none were particularly intense.

A peculiar energy flowed back and forth through his flesh.

By the time the sky was completely dark, the absorption of the Essence Soul was complete.

Zhao Lin moved his body a few times. He felt that every part of him was different from before, but he couldn’t say exactly what had changed.

"I should probably draw some blood and see the effect!"

The first thing Zhao Lin thought of was to test his self-healing ability, but he ran into a small problem.

Ever since he began training his skin and bones, he had been cultivating his physical body. Tempered through the Blood Realm, Primordial Realm, and Innate Realm, his body was now as solid as if it were cast from bronze and forged from iron.

There were no sharp objects in the room. Making himself bleed wasn’t going to be so easy.

Of course, he could definitely injure himself with brute force, but he wasn’t yet sure how good his self-healing ability was.

’What if I use too much force and end up with a serious injury that won’t heal?’

Zhao Lin pondered for a moment, running through his martial techniques in his mind.

His Ice Attribute skills had a freezing effect, which would make it hard to see the results. His Thunder Attribute skills were too overwhelming; he might knock himself out...

In the end, he chose the Sky-splitting Slash.

The edge of his palm was sharp, and it would be easier to control the damage.

Zhao Lin took off his outer robe, leaving him in just his underclothes.

He pulled over a chair, propped his leg on it, furrowed his brow, and gritted his teeth. He struck his own thigh three times with the edge of his hand...

The first strike wasn’t powerful, leaving only a red mark on his leg.

With the second strike, he increased his force, breaking the skin and drawing blood.

For the third strike, he added another thirty percent more force. The flesh split open, and blood gushed out!

HISS...

Zhao Lin sucked in a breath, ignoring the pain, his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the three wounds.

In less than two breaths’ time, the red mark from the first strike had vanished.

After five breaths, the wound from the second strike closed completely!

As for the third wound, which had been extremely deep, the bleeding had already stopped, and it was healing rapidly.

Witnessing this miraculous change, Zhao Lin’s pupils contracted, and his breathing grew heavy.

After about thirty breaths, all traces of the first two strikes were gone, and only a faint scar remained from the third wound.

Without close inspection, it was almost impossible to spot!

"This self-healing ability is even stronger than I expected!"

Greatly satisfied, Zhao Lin swung his arm forcefully.

"Calm down, calm down. You’re a man in his thirties. Why are you acting like you’ve never seen the world?"

Zhao Lin muttered to himself, but he couldn’t suppress the look of joy on his face.

He paced around the room for a while, and his mood gradually calmed. ’I still need to test if this self-healing ability is beneficial for cultivation,’ he thought. ’It’s too early to celebrate.’

With that thought, he sat down cross-legged and began to practice the breathing and circulation technique of the Chenghua Sect.

...

Four hours later, Zhao Lin rose to his feet with a smile on his lips and a newfound sense of composure in his eyes.

He had just been cultivating nonstop, intentionally pushing himself aggressively without any regard for his body.

In less than two hours, his meridians were already beginning to strain under the pressure.

But he ignored it and continued to cultivate at full power.

By the three-hour mark, his meridians began to show minute signs of damage, and he felt a tearing sensation around his acupoints.

But in an instant, an invisible yet perceptible energy swept over the damaged areas, immediately restoring them to their original state.

He tested this three times with the same result, and Zhao Lin was finally able to relax.

"It seems my deduction was correct! This self-healing ability really can speed up my cultivation!"

’Of course, this doesn’t mean I can cultivate endlessly. Even though the damage heals, my body still gets tired, and my ability to refine Spiritual Qi gradually decreases.’

But the good far outweighed the bad. Zhao Lin was extremely satisfied with this Essence Soul.

With this, all nine slots of the Spirit Beast Scroll were filled: Strength, Hearing, Smell, Wind, Ice, Thunder, Fire, Earth, and Self-healing.

"My abilities are set now. From now on, I can only upgrade the Essence Souls."

Zhao Lin muttered to himself with some emotion. He suddenly remembered that he had been so busy testing the Essence Soul’s ability that he had forgotten to check the Spirit Beast Scroll. He quickly looked into his mind.

The sight that met his eyes left him utterly dumbfounded.

The Spirit Beast Scroll had turned gray!

The Pipa Catfish had appeared in the ninth slot, but the entire Spirit Beast Scroll was a bleak, dark gray, devoid of any vitality, as if it had fallen into a deep slumber.

’How could this be?’

’Did the Spirit Beast Scroll complete its mission now that I’ve collected nine Essence Souls? Is it ready to retire?’

Zhao Lin’s heart tightened, followed by a wave of disappointment.

The Spirit Beast Scroll had always been his greatest support, the reason he had come this far.

Although its advantages weren’t as pronounced in the world of cultivation as they once were, it was still indispensable.

He had been planning to find even more powerful Demon Beasts to continue evolving his abilities.

’Wait, could this have something to do with Spirit Stones?’

Zhao Lin suddenly recalled the strange reaction from the Spirit Beast Scroll the last time he held a Spirit Stone while observing the stationed cultivator.

’Perhaps the Spirit Beast Scroll is just dormant and needs Spirit Stones to be "activated" again?’

Unfortunately, he had no Spirit Stones on hand to find out for sure.

"So be it. It was my fate to have it, and perhaps it is my fortune to lose it. If our fated connection has truly ended, then I’ll let it go."

After all, Zhao Lin had lived two lives and was worldly-wise. After a long period of reflection, he slowly came to accept this outcome.

Besides, his intuition told him the Spirit Beast Scroll was still "alive." It just needed the right catalyst to be restored.