The manual took him three days to read.
He did not stay in the chamber. After spending nearly an hour in the underwater chamber, he had surfaced, collected the ring and manual, and left the valley before dark.
He had left the sword on the pedestal for now. It was simply too large and heavy for him to carry back through the narrow rock passage and the outer courtyard of the clan without attracting immediate attention.
He returned to his room in the outer courtyard and spent the following three nights reading the manual by lamplight.
It was called the War God Art.
Whoever had written it was long dead. The manual did not name its author, but the style was ancient, the kind of writing that used constructions and symbols no one in the current cultivation society was familiar with anymore. The ideas inside, however, were clear and very, very aggressive.
The War God Art was not a gentle cultivation technique.
It did not speak of balance or harmony or the peaceful gathering of Qi like most cultivation techniques. It spoke of battle as a state of being, combat as a crucible, killing intent as a form of energy that could be gathered and refined just like Qi itself.
Its ten stages described a progression from basic battle awareness all the way to what it called the Eternal War Sovereign, a state of being where the practitioner had absorbed the Dao of War so completely that their very presence altered the flow of conflict around them.
Lin Feng read all of it and then read it again multiple times. The technique was perfectly suited to him as it fitted seamlessly with his way of life and battle style. He was already growing through combat and slaughter via the devouring lotus.
Adding a cultivation method that specifically refined killing intent and battle experience into cultivation Qi meant the two systems would reinforce each other.
Every fight would yield double returns: devouring Qi for his cultivation base, and refining killing intent for the War God Art's progression.
The synergy was not a coincidence, he felt. The ancient master who had left these items behind had possessed a Devouring Bloodline as well. That was the only explanation to this meaningful connection when there was supposed to be none. He had created or found a technique that matched his own nature. And somehow, this cave had waited centuries for someone like Lin Feng to find it.
To his surprise, he discovered that the ring was a storage ring. One with a large space at that. Now he regretted not confirming at that moment and placing the greatsword into it. He only figured that out on the second day, when he made contact with its inner surface during meditation and felt a very large spatial pocket respond to his Qi.
Inside, he found a bountiful collection of resources left by the ancient master. But unfortunately, over ninety percent of the resources disintegrated to dust when he brought them out. Only a few resources turned out to be usable.
A handful of Body Tempering Pills and Qi Condensing Pills in jade vials. These Qi Condensing Pills were needed to breakthrough to the next realm after the Body Tempering Realm. There were also two small pouches of low-grade spirit herbs, a spatial pouch filled to the brim with low and mid grade Spirit Stones, and a sealed gourd that had a strong smell. Even through its stopper, it smelled of something powerfully medicinal and enticing at the same time.
When he popped the stopper opened, he discovered that the gourd also had spatial properties as it was filled with an unbelievably large quantity of wine. He catalogued everything carefully.
The Body Tempering Pills and Spirit Stones were immediately useful. The spirit herbs he would need to research on their effects before using them. The gourd he would leave sealed until he understood if its content was okay to consume.
On the fourth day, he went back to the valley for the sword.
The Yin-Yang Fiend Greatsword as it name was, was even more impressive up close. The black half of the blade had an edge that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. The white half had a surface so bright it was almost uncomfortable to look at directly.
The dividing line between the two ran straight as a ruled mark, and when Lin Feng pressed his Qi lightly into the blade, he felt the two sides respond with distinct, opposing energies.
The black side pulled inward. Dense, cold, and hungry. It reminded him of the Yin petals on his lotus.
The white side pushed outward. Hot, bright, and aggressive. Reminding him of the Yang petals.
He understood immediately. The sword had been made for a cultivator with a Yin-Yang Devouring Bloodline. He was the rightful user and probably the only one in this world that could unleash its capabilities. Though, whether he was worthy of it yet was a different question.
He went back and carried the sword out of the valley, wrapped in a rough cloth he had cut from an old cloak. Getting it through the passage was a careful, sideways process that took longer than the actual swim. He stored it in the ring once outside, which solved the problem of concealment nicely. For easy carry-around without attracting attention.
Looking unadorned, the ring hid in plain sight as a simple grey band on his right hand finger. No one in the clan gave it a second look.
---
Lin Feng began practicing the War God Art that night.
The first stage called Battle Awakening, required the practitioner to enter a specific meditative state and bring up the feeling of combat in their mind. Not the fear of it or the excitement of it, but the clarity of it, that sharp, focused awareness that good fighters found in the middle of a fight when everything unnecessary fell away and only the next movement mattered.
He had felt that clarity many times in his past life. He knew what it felt like. He knew how to reach it. He reached for it now in stillness rather than in motion.
It took about an hour. Then it was there. That particular quality of attention, clean and absolute, the state where the world narrowed down to a single point and the body stopped hesitating to even make the slightest twitch of the tendon or muscle.
He held it and fed Qi into it, watching it strengthen and stabilize.
By dawn, the first stage of the War God Art had taken root. He had reached mid-level Initial Understanding of proficiency. One could only advance to the next stage of a technique after completing Initial Understanding at the very least.
But Lin Feng was determined to clear every proficiency level before advancing to the next stage of the War God Art.
According to common knowledge, there were learning proficiency levels for Cultivation and Battle techniques. For every stage of any technique it was divided into three levels: Initial Understanding, Mastery Understanding, and Intent Understanding.
And each proficiency level was also divided into different sub-levels of Early, Mid, Late, Peak.
It wasn't a small thing comprehending such a high level technique to mid-level Initial Understanding proficiency in one night. One stage of one technique out of ten.
But Lin Feng understood, from his past life and from every night he had spent in these hills, that everything large began with something small. Endurance was built one session at a time. Strength was built one repetition at a time.
He put out the lamp and lay down on his mat. Sleep came quickly, the way it always did for people who had genuinely tired themselves out.