344: Chapter 344 The Sacrifice Ran Away!

The long river of time was brutally accelerated within the Yuanmu Grotto-Heaven.

A century of time was but a fleeting moment of a few secluded meditations in the outside world.

On this enclosed land, however, it was enough for the bronze spears of the city-states to grow thick green rust.

The priest class completely monopolized absolute power.

Beneath the towering bluestone altar, the grim white bones of low-level slaves were piled high.

A distorted fanaticism for longevity gave birth to the cruelest of living human blood sacrifices.

The rulers, clad in magnificent feather robes, looked down upon all living beings from their high positions.

They branded the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled—those unable to work—as the abandoned children of the gods.

A-Gu was one of them.

He lay prone in the foul-smelling muddy water.

His legs were completely withered from the knees down, dragging limply behind him.

He could only rely on his calloused hands to crawl forward inch by inch.

The city's sewers were his only place of refuge.

By fighting for carrion from the mouths of wild dogs, he had somehow endured until the age of sixteen.

His face, hidden under disheveled hair, revealed a beast-like ferocity and resentment.

Two guards clad in beast-hide armor strode over.

A rough bronze spear shaft smashed down ruthlessly.

Bang!

A-Gu's back was torn open, and he was sent rolling twice through the muddy water by the blow.

Sewage flooded his nasal cavity, causing a violent fit of coughing.

He did not beg for mercy, only bit his lower lip hard.

"Take him away. The High Priest needs to gather ninety-nine intact corpses."

The guard roughly grabbed A-Gu's messy hair and dragged him toward the prisoner carriage.

The commoners along the way moved aside one after another, their eyes filled with numb indifference.

Night fell, and a torrential rain poured down.

The prisoner carriage transporting the sacrifices jolted violently on the muddy mountain path.

The wooden axle let out an overburdened crack.

Crack.

The carriage overturned, and the thick logs snapped outward.

Over a dozen bound slaves fell into the mud, letting out cries of despair.

A-Gu did not hesitate for a moment.

His hands clawed desperately at the gravel-filled mud as he crawled frantically toward the depths of the dark forest.

Sharp stones instantly sliced open the sides of his palms, and blood flowed, mixing with the rain.

"The sacrifice has escaped!"

The guard's exasperated roar came from behind.

The light of torches darted rapidly through the rainy night.

In his desperation, A-Gu crawled toward the peak cliff behind the city-state, which was regarded as a Forbidden Ground.

Ahead was a bottomless, pitch-black abyss.

Behind him were bronze spears that had closed to within ten paces.

"Cripple, you still want to run?"

The guard grinned hideously and raised his spear, thrusting it ruthlessly toward the center of A-Gu's back.

The violent killing intent cleanly sealed off all paths of retreat.

A-Gu's arms suddenly exerted force, propping up his broken body.

He rolled cleanly into the abyss.

The gale howled shrilly in his ears.

His downward momentum was brutally halted by a thick, mutated green vine.

The massive pulling force nearly tore his arm joints apart.

A-Gu slammed heavily onto a hidden cliff platform only about a zhang wide.

A large mouthful of metallic-tasting blood welled up in his throat.

Rain washed over the stone walls of the cliff.

As the mud washed away, ancient rock patterns slowly manifested under the illumination of the lightning.

A-Gu gasped for breath, his gaze fixed intently on those rock patterns.

[Concentrate the mind and regulate the breath, guard the apertures and return to the navel, draw in the pure and spiritual through the nose, and expel the turbid mud from the mouth.]

He was illiterate and understood nothing of Breathing Exercises.

But the sequence of Wither and Flourish circulation contained within those carvings carried an absolute Law that transcended species.

Every turn of the lines coincided with the rhythm of the world's breathing.

A-Gu's breathing involuntarily began to change, following the flow of those lines.

The first year.

A-Gu survived by eating mutated moss from the crevices of the cliff wall.

Thick blood scabs formed on his hands from the friction.

Day and night, he stared at those rock patterns, branding every carving deep into his mind.

The third year.

When the moss was all eaten, he tilted his head back to drink the dew dripping from the stone cracks.

He became so thin he was nothing but skin and bones.

Yet, a faint warmth began to emerge within his internal organs.

The fifth year.

A blizzard swept across the peak.

A-Gu was covered in frost, and even his heartbeat had nearly stopped.

He sat cross-legged stiffly, the rock patterns in his mind transforming into invisible blades.

They continuously hacked at his blocked Meridians.

The extreme cold outside instead forced the faint warmth within his body to circulate rapidly.

He survived, forcefully seizing a sliver of life from the jaws of death.

The seventh year.

A-Gu's five senses became extremely sharp.

He could hear the buzzing of an insect's wings a hundred zhang away.

He could smell the restless scent of thunder brewing deep within the clouds.

The tenth year.

A-Gu sat withered at the edge of the cliff, his entire being almost merging with the rock.

His withered, yellowed hair hung loosely over his shoulders.

The rise and fall of his chest was faint to the extreme.

One inhalation.

The free-floating Spiritual Qi from all directions was brutally pulled into his nasal cavity.

One exhalation.

The Impurities accumulated in his body for ten years turned into black mud and were rapidly expelled from his pores.

Bang!

The Dantian, which had been blocked for over a decade, was violently forced open by a surge of pure and Spiritual Qi.

Violent Spiritual Qi surged rapidly through his dried-up Meridians.

A tearing pain swept through his entire body.

A-Gu did not let out a single scream.

He gritted his teeth hard, letting that power rampage through his body.

The bones of his originally withered legs emitted dense popping sounds.

Vitality flooded into his broken flesh.

Shriveled muscles bulged rapidly.

His Meridians were torn apart again and again, only to be rapidly reorganized under the nourishment of the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi.

The first wisp of Qi Refinement Stage dharmic power in the Grotto-Heaven world boomed into existence within this lowliest of bodies.

A cyan airflow circulated rapidly on the surface of A-Gu's body.

It cleanly shattered the thick frost and dust covering him.

Above the nine heavens, amidst the clouds.

Gu Changsheng sat cross-legged within the thick pure Qi.

The Law of Time surrounding him circulated quietly.

At the exact moment A-Gu drew Qi into his body.

The Golden Core within his Dantian, woven with cyan and gold, suddenly erupted with a blindingly bright light.

Buzz.

A surge of golden Power Of Will, far exceeding any previous instance.

It was as thick as if it were material.

It crossed the barriers of space, soaring into the sky from that remote cliff below.

There was no fear in this Power Of Will.

There was no greed.

There was only the purest reverence and resonance of an enlightened one toward the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth.

The Power Of Will of path-opening.

This was the absolute qualitative change of a civilization crossing the threshold from the mundane to immortal cultivation.

It was the first cry of this world truly stepping toward the extraordinary.

This power cleanly crashed into Gu Changsheng's spiritual terrace.

There were no Impurities, and it required no refinement.

It transformed directly into the purest Law foundation, violently pouring into the depths of the Golden Core.

The profound time Dao Patterns on the surface of the Golden Core began to spread frantically.

The originally blurred carvings rapidly solidified under the washing of this Origin power.

Every line exuded a terrifying pressure capable of suppressing eternity.

The shackles of his cultivation were brutally pushed aside.

The sea of True Essence within his Dantian churned violently, kicking up monstrous waves.

His foundation took a solid step toward the Golden Core Middle Stage.

The Void Realm around Gu Changsheng distorted violently.

Laws rapidly flickered in and out of existence at his fingertips.

An illusory cyan lotus bloomed in his palm, withered in an instant, and regained vitality in a flash.

This was not a simple passage of time.

This was absolute control over the scale of time.

As long as he was within this Grotto-Heaven, he could strip a living being of a century of Lifespan with a single thought.

At the edge of the cliff.

A-Gu, who had sat withered for ten years, propped his hands against the ground.

His bones emitted a series of crisp pops like roasting beans.

Slowly, inch by inch, he stood upright.

Those crippled legs that had once dragged limply in the mud were now filled with explosive power.

He stepped firmly onto the hard rock.

A-Gu raised his head.

His disheveled hair was blown aside by the Astral Winds at the bottom of the cliff.

In those pitch-black eyes, the grey canopy above the nine heavens was reflected.

He suddenly clenched his fingers, and cyan dharmic power leaped rapidly at his fingertips.

Bang!

A-Gu smashed a punch ruthlessly into the hard rock wall beside him.

He did not use any Martial Skill, it was merely the instinctive discharge of first-level Qi Refining dharmic power.

The hard rock cleanly exploded into a deep pit the size of a washbasin.

Rock fragments splattered in all directions.

A-Gu stared blankly at his unharmed fist.

The humiliation, hatred, and resentment accumulated in his chest for ten years completely exploded at this moment.

He tilted his head back and let out a shrill, long howl.

The sound waves, carrying cyan dharmic power, brutally tore through the thick fog at the bottom of the cliff.

It soared straight into the clouds.

This howl was a death sentence issued to that distorted ruling class.

It also announced the birth of an immortal cultivator to this world.

Above the peak.

Several city-state guards responsible for patrolling the Forbidden Ground had blood leaking from their ears from the sudden sound waves.

They lay prone on the edge of the cliff in terror, peering downward.

In the gap where the thick fog had been torn open, a tall and straight figure was vaguely visible.

"There's a monster at the bottom of the cliff!"

The guards scrambled and fled toward the central city-state.

Bronze spears were scattered all over the ground.

They simply could not understand what that power, which had so easily shattered their courage, actually was.

A-Gu climbed steadily up the steep cliff wall.

Cyan dharmic power poured into his arms; every time he exerted force, he could gouge deep finger holes into the hard rock.

The cripple who could only crawl in the mud ten years ago was now completely dead.

He climbed onto the peak.

A-Gu stood in the biting cold wind, looking down at the massive central city in the distance.

On the towering bluestone altar, several figures of priests presiding over the blood sacrifice were vaguely visible.

A pungent fire burned within the bronze cauldron.

A-Gu tore off the remaining tattered strips of cloth from his body.

Revealing a well-defined, lean upper body filled with explosive power.

He did not immediately rush down the mountain for revenge.

Instead, his knees slammed heavily onto the hard, frozen ground.

He respectfully kowtowed three times toward the ancient rock patterns on the cliff wall.

His forehead was cut, and blood stained the rock red.

He did not know who the being that had left these carvings was.

But he was certain that it was the absolute deity who had granted him a new life.

After kowtowing, A-Gu stood up.

He strode with his brand-new legs toward the direction of the city-state.

With every step he took, the cyan dharmic power within him became more refined.

Killing intent fermented wildly within his chest.