The Sword Fang shimmered faintly at Jing Qian's fingertip, like a glimmering cold star.
Yet within that starlight was the power of ten White Fang Life Essence infusions.
Even the spot where he chose to strike carried great precision.
When he activated the Worldly Insight, the seamless Snow Maiden Dharma Image was mysteriously unraveled.
Within it, he saw the dense flow of Azure Wing Life Essence, coursing through her body in intricate pathways like veins and arteries stretched across the figure.
An overwhelming intuition surged into his mind, compelling him to regard these circulation nodes as the true points of attack.
This was the blessing of the Worldly Insight in combat.
When Jing Qian pressed the Sword Fang onto the node at the back of the Snow Maiden's neck, a miracle occurred!
Boom!
The once-solid and flawless Dharma Image, its structure destabilized, suddenly ruptured!
From within it, Ao Li, the Snow Maiden's true form, was exposed for the very first time.
Seizing the moment, Jing Qian's arm lashed out like a dragon spear, stabbing fiercely into the back of her neck.
With a twist of his Sword Fang, he locked her down, completely slaying her in a single strike.
At once, a surge of pure azure smoke tinged faintly with blue light flooded toward him.
Jing Qian had finally collected his first rent payment from the Snow Maiden!
The soul of a cultivator who had once attained Dragon Elephant Great Accomplishment was naturally profound in essence and dense in spiritual power.
That single wisp of azure-blue smoke was worth the spoils of at least three White Fang sea demons!
One Snow Maiden soul could easily grant Jing Qian more than four opportunities to Life-Casting!
This first wisp was nothing more than the first stone tumbling from the cliffside before the avalanche.
Without hesitation, Jing Qian once again slipped into the dimensional void and launched another attack.
This time, he burst out from her right side, hugging close to her form, and drove his strike into her lower back.
Another explosion, the Dharma Image tore apart once more, and Jing Qian smoothly plunged his Sword Fang into Ao Li's true body a second time.
An even greater surge of smoke rushed forth, which he inhaled greedily.
A flood of pleasure coursed through him, leaving his body and mind completely elated.
Every harvest within the Stele of Fate space was intoxicating; it left him wanting more.
And this second stream of essence immediately condensed into a brand-new Opportunity to Life-Casting.
He withdrew from the space, picked up a second prepared sword embryo, and with full force of his spiritual power, bit savagely into it.
A new Sword Fang Pattern was instantly condensed.
Then, the divine effect of the Opportunity to Life-Casting activated his two Life Patterns, shattered and reformed, merging into something stronger.
The inscription on the Fate Stele shifted before his eyes:
[Sword Fang (Azure Wing 3/10)]
The little tiger-fang sword he summoned now bore a faint streak of azure across its flawless white jade body.
Its spiritual aura had grown noticeably sharper!
Jing Qian's strength surged once again, and he turned back to assault the Snow Maiden.
Within this Stele space, the soul remnants possessed no true consciousness, only instinct.
Compared to their living selves, their power was a mere shadow.
The Snow Maiden's soul, struck again and again from behind, did not attempt to anticipate or strengthen her defenses in advance.
She remained locked in a state of passive resistance, allowing Jing Qian's every ambush to succeed.
The third strike, the fourth, the fifth…
Jing Qian was like a devil hidden in the shadows every time he emerged; his strike left his enemy gravely wounded.
He showed not the slightest mercy, treating Ao Li like nothing more than a fish on the chopping block, slicing her apart stroke by stroke with his Sword Fang.
Wave after wave of powerful essence surged toward him. He sat cross-legged, absorbing and digesting it with all his might.
Before long, his Life Essence power advanced again, and he successfully condensed his nineteenth White Fang Life Essence.
At the same time, a priceless fragment of memory flooded into Jing Qian's consciousness.
In his Sea of Consciousness, the golden glow of his Worldly Insight Pattern flickered once, pulling that memory in like a whale swallowing water.
The knowledge within was broken down, unraveled, and seamlessly absorbed.
In an instant, Jing Qian felt as though he had taken a technique of Yuan Drawing from its beginner's stage, through comprehension, and all the way to full mastery.
Ao Li, a cultivator of the Fate Island's secret arts, had cultivated the Scroll of a Hundred Ghostly Processions, condensing the Snow Maiden Dharma Image. Her core Pattern was a Blue-Blood–rank Frostfall Pattern, aligned with the Mountain-Sea path.
The paired Yuan Drawing technique, known as the Lotus Planting Art, was perfectly matched to this lineage of Life Pattern.
This was no ordinary art; its rank was high, a secret legacy from the great powers behind Fate Island, designed specifically for Mountain-Sea Life Pattern to generate Life Essence power.
Though Ao Li cultivated it diligently for many years, she only succeeded after stepping into the Dragon Elephant Realm.
With this art, and aided by her Frostfall Pattern, she planted a snow lotus within her Sea of Consciousness, producing one Azure Wing Life Essence per day. This gave her unfathomable support in her cultivation!
Yet now, all of her painstakingly accumulated insight, every bit of her experience with the Lotus Planting Art, became Jing Qian's nourishment absorbed into him completely.
For Jing Qian, this secret art meshed perfectly with his own Sumeru and Tidal Wave Life Pattern, serving as a vital supplement to his Life Essence cultivation.
By planting lotuses in the void through Sumeru, the results would surely surpass Ao Li's Frostfall!
Unable to resist, Jing Qian cast aside all other thoughts and began to focus solely on practicing this newly learned Lotus Planting Art.
The method flowed naturally with his will. Using his spiritual power, he condensed a small seed of white jade and cast it toward his Sumeru Pattern.
From the memory he absorbed, he knew that once this strange lotus seed was bound to the aura of a Pattern, it could serve as an anchor to draw upon the world's essence and sprout into a miraculous lotus.
Yet just as Jing Qian thought success was within his grasp, the Sumeru Pattern suddenly moved.
That strange Pattern, which suppressed his entire Sea of Consciousness, surged forward and shattered the white jade lotus seed in a single strike.
As if still unsatisfied, it surged again, crashing violently into Jing Qian's consciousness.
He felt as though he'd been clubbed over the head, his mind ringing with pain for a long moment.
Then, from the Sumeru Pattern itself, a peculiar intent radiated straight into his perception.
"Cough… ptooey!"
What the?
Jing Qian froze.
Did it just spit on me?
Am I being bullied… by my own Pattern?
The unexpected situation left his attempt at the Lotus Planting Art a complete failure.
And soon, he realized why his cultivation was simply too shallow, his spiritual power insufficient. The lotus seed he'd forged, infused with only a single White Fang Life Essence, was far beneath the lofty standards of his exalted golden Sumeru Pattern.
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