Chapter 233 - Changing Methods and Myriad Paths
The loophole did not last nearly as long as Su Bai had hoped.
Several days after completing his eighth major body transformation, he was circulating the Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture when he noticed something strange.
There was no resistance anymore.
Su Bai frowned and circulated the method again.
The result remained the same.
The violent clashes that had once threatened to tear apart his meridians were gone, and the harmful Qi deviation he had been using to trigger Reversal had almost completely disappeared.
Su Bai remained silent for a long moment, then his expression darkened.
His meridians had adapted.
The repeated conflicts had forced the pathways inside his body to change little by little. Routes that had once rejected the foreign circulation had widened, shifted, or connected with nearby branches until the Calamity-Reversal War Body Scripture could pass through without fighting against his original method.
Normally, this would have been an enormous blessing.
Su Bai was not pleased.
The dangerous conflict had been helping his body cultivation.
Now that the two methods could coexist peacefully, one of his easiest sources of reversed tempering had disappeared.
For perhaps the first time, Su Bai found himself annoyed that his body was adapting too well.
The ancient saber noticed his expression.
"What happened?"
"My meridians stopped trying to cripple me."
The saber remained silent for several breaths.
"And this displeases you?"
"Currently, yes."
The saber decided not to ask anything else.
Su Bai examined the changes more carefully.
His meridians had not merely become tougher. Their arrangement had already begun changing around the two cultivation methods, creating small connecting channels where none had existed before.
It was useful. Unfortunately, usefulness had ruined his loophole.
Su Bai could still temper himself using Ashen-Blood Miasma and the spiritual pressure of the ancient weapons, but without the constant backlash from incompatible circulation, the improvement would be considerably slower.
He considered the problem for a while. Then his spiritual sense entered the Crystalline Tree Spirit Root again.
The Dao-Devouring Blank Stele was embedded quietly within it.
Several cultivation methods remained inscribed across its surface.
Su Bai’s gaze moved among them before settling upon another.
Ancient Star Furnace Scripture.
Unlike the War-Ghost Iron Body Scripture, this method focused primarily on Qi cultivation. It treated the Dantian and meridians as parts of a spiritual furnace, drawing external Qi inward before repeatedly compressing and refining it through a sequence of circulating routes.
Its original owner had clearly valued refinement efficiency and density.
The method was powerful. It was also currently incompatible with Su Bai.
That made it attractive.
Su Bai began cultivating it.
The reaction was immediate.
The Ancient Star Furnace Scripture attempted to pull his Qi through meridian routes completely different from those used by the Binary Void-Sun Supreme Method.
The newly adapted pathways handled part of the conflict. Several deeper routes still collided violently.
Su Bai felt spiritual pressure surge through his meridians as incompatible circulations fought for control.
His eyes brightened.
’There it was.’
The familiar harmful backlash returned.
Reversal responded almost immediately.
The Qi deviation that should have disrupted his foundation transformed into beneficial reinforcement, while Macro-Taiji Circulation handled the physical strain produced by the violent circulation.
Su Bai calmly continued.
The ancient weapons nearby had already learned not to interfere when he began doing something that looked obviously dangerous.
After several complete cycles, Su Bai reached the point where the Dao-Devouring Blank Stele finally reacted.
The original Ancient Star Furnace Scripture remained untouched.
A second inscription slowly appeared beside it.
Su Bai watched until the final characters stabilized.
Myriad-Void Star Furnace Scripture.
He read through the transformed method carefully.
Its original principle of refining Qi through furnace-like circulation remained, but the new version no longer depended upon a single fixed route. Instead, it used Su Bai’s Infinite Dantian and Gateway Qi Reservoirs as multiple points of circulation, allowing gathered Qi to be refined through several interconnected paths before ultimately returning to the Black-Ice Golden Core.
It was useful. But after comparing it against the Binary Void-Sun Supreme Method, Su Bai still shook his head.
His primary method remained superior.
The Myriad-Void Star Furnace Scripture refined Qi efficiently, but Binary Void-Sun strengthened far more than his Qi alone.
Su Bai had no intention of replacing it.
That did not mean the experiment had been wasted.
For several days, cultivating the new scripture once again created the meridian conflict he wanted.
But then again, his body quickly adapted.
The conflict disappeared.
So Su Bai changed methods again.
The next foreign cultivation route tore open entirely different pathways.
Reversal turned the resulting harmful spiritual backlash into another benefit.
The Blank Stele observed. The method changed. His meridians adapted again.
Su Bai repeated the process.
What had begun as an experiment gradually became something much stranger.
...
An entire month passed.
Su Bai traveled throughout Inner Area Layer One while continuously rotating between cultivation methods.
The artifact spirits followed him from one ruined region to another.
Wherever Su Bai remained for too long, the surrounding Ashen-Blood Miasma thinned rapidly.
Supply zones that had once been covered beneath black-red haze gradually revealed broken walls, collapsed structures, old battle marks, and debris that had not been clearly visible for countless years.
The ancient weapons could only watch.
The miasma that generations of cultivators had feared was disappearing into one human.
The saber had stopped commenting on it.
The hammer had stopped asking questions.
Even the younger artifact spirits had learned that when Su Bai sat down with the Petrified Calamity-Magnet nearby, the safest response was simply to wait for the surrounding region to become cleaner.
By the end of the month, the miasma throughout much of Layer One had disappeared.
Su Bai did not remain there.
He moved directly into Layer Two.
He did not approach the deeper regions where he had previously encountered the Returnees.
He followed the outer boundary again, remaining near the barrier while continuing his cultivation.
The artifact spirits stayed close.
They had witnessed his progress for more than a month now, yet even they were beginning to find it difficult to understand what was happening inside his body.
Every time Su Bai’s meridians adapted to one cultivation method, he changed to another.
The Blank Stele contained no shortage of possibilities.
The Ten Thousand Rivers Returning to Origin Sutra, the Moon-Devouring Yin Scripture, the Great Sun Burning Meridian Canon, the Nine Abyss Heavy Qi Scripture, and the cultivation methods inherited from the later remnant souls were all tested one after another.
Every new method tried to force Qi through different routes. Every conflict pressured his meridians in another way.
Reversal prevented the harmful spiritual backlash from ruining him, while the Dao-Devouring Blank Stele gradually produced versions adapted to his constitution.
Some offered useful principles. Others were clearly inferior to the Binary Void-Sun Supreme Method even after modification.
Su Bai did not care.
He had never needed them to replace his main method.
He needed the conflict.
Unfortunately, even that eventually stopped working.
One day, Su Bai began circulating another newly adapted method and waited for the familiar resistance.
"..."
Nothing happened.
He changed to another.
The Qi flowed smoothly.
Su Bai tried a third cultivation route that had once caused severe deviation.
His meridians accepted it without hesitation.
He slowly opened his eyes. Something had changed again.
Su Bai examined his internal circulation with spiritual sense.
For several moments, he did not understand what he was seeing.
The meridians inside his body no longer resembled the network he remembered.
New branches had spread between the original channels.
Some connected pathways that normally had no direct relationship with each other. Others divided into smaller routes before merging again farther away.
Even stranger, several channels seemed almost dormant until Su Bai circulated a method that required them.
The moment he changed cultivation routes, those pathways adjusted.
Qi redirected itself naturally.
A method that should have demanded an impossible circulation simply caused the network to open another route.
Su Bai remained silent.
Normal cultivators possessed established meridian pathways, and cultivation methods had to work within those limitations.
His no longer did.
Repeated damage, Reversal, adaptation, and the forced circulation of completely different cultivation systems had transformed the entire network.
It had become something far more adaptable than an ordinary meridian network, responding to whatever circulation Su Bai imposed upon it and adjusting its pathways accordingly.
Whenever a cultivation method demanded a path, the network adjusted itself to provide one.
The realization slowly settled in Su Bai’s mind.
His body no longer possessed one fixed cultivation route. The entire meridian structure had become the route.
A name surfaced naturally within his thoughts.
Myriad-Path Meridian Web.
Su Bai inspected it again.
The name felt appropriate.
His expression, however, became complicated.
This was undoubtedly an extraordinary transformation.
It also meant his loophole had finally repaired itself completely.
Cultivating another incompatible method would no longer tear at his meridians the way it had before.
The Myriad-Path Meridian Web would simply adapt.
Su Bai sighed.
He had somehow trained his body until it became too difficult to damage incorrectly.
The hammer floated nearby.
"Why do you look disappointed?"
"My meridians became better."
The hammer was quiet for a while.
"I still do not understand you."
Su Bai ignored it and tested the new network further.
That was when he discovered the real advantage.
He activated the Binary Void-Sun Supreme Method.
The surrounding Ashen-Blood Miasma surged toward him.
Previously, Qi had entered through established circulation routes before passing through the nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs and Infinite Dantian.
Now the Myriad-Path Meridian Web reacted across his entire body.
Countless pathways opened together. His entire body seemed to breathe.
The Petrified Calamity-Magnet pulled the surrounding miasma inward, and the transformed meridian network accepted it from every available pathway before directing it toward his reservoirs and Dantian.
The speed increased sharply.
Su Bai’s eyes widened.
The artifact spirits also noticed.
Black-red miasma throughout the surrounding ruins began moving toward him from every direction.
The bow slowly descended. The saber’s spiritual fluctuation shifted. The hammer remained completely still.
For the first time, the sight of Su Bai cultivating seemed to make the ancient weapons uncomfortable for an entirely different reason.
The human before them was no longer simply absorbing the miasma around himself.
The surrounding region was being emptied.
Su Bai finally understood what the Myriad-Path Meridian Web had become.
A normal cultivator circulated Qi through meridians.
His meridians could now reorganize themselves around the circulation.
If one route became overloaded, the Qi could divide into several others.
If a method required another pathway, the network could create or awaken one.
More importantly, the bottleneck imposed by fixed meridian channels had weakened dramatically.
Su Bai’s absorption speed had risen again.
The loophole was gone, but he found it difficult to complain again.
...
Another two weeks passed.
Su Bai continued moving along the boundary of Layer Two.
Ancient ruins that had been hidden behind the black-red haze gradually emerged again, revealing sections of the old battlefield that had remained obscured for thousands of years.
The artifact spirits followed silently.
They had once feared what the miasma represented.
Now they were watching someone consume it faster than the Sanctuary could restore it.
Su Bai barely paid attention to their reactions.
His Black-Ice Golden Core had been growing denser every day.
The Myriad-Path Meridian Web increased the amount of energy he could draw into his body at once, while the Binary Void-Sun Supreme Method continued refining everything into Qi suitable for his own foundation.
The nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs continuously received and redistributed the incoming flow.
The Infinite Dantian never filled.
All that remained was compression.
Day after day, Su Bai forced more refined Qi into the Black-Ice Golden Core.
Its structure became denser. Smaller changes accumulated until the pressure within it finally reached another threshold.
Su Bai sat near the remains of an ancient boundary structure when the entire whole-body Golden Core system suddenly trembled.
Macro-Taiji Circulation accelerated.
The Black-Ice Golden Core compressed again.
The change spread outward through every part of his body before settling into a new balance.
Su Bai slowly opened his eyes.
His aura had deepened once more.
Golden Core Ninth Stage.
The surrounding ancient weapons immediately noticed.
The saber drifted closer, studying him for several moments.
Less than two months earlier, Su Bai had barely survived against the Returnees.
Now his Qi cultivation had risen another stage, his body had undergone eight major transformations, and even his meridians had turned into something none of them recognized.
Su Bai stood and looked toward the deeper parts of Layer Two.
He was still not satisfied.
Golden Core Ninth Stage was close to the conventional peak.
His body cultivation had also approached the final stages recorded for ordinary body cultivators.
Yet Su Bai already knew himself well enough to understand one thing.
Whenever the normal path approached its end, something unreasonable usually waited beyond it.
His gaze remained on the black-red miasma farther inside the Sanctuary.
There was still plenty left.
Su Bai picked up the Petrified Calamity-Magnet and started walking deeper.