This blood pool struck Ian Song as peculiar—not only did it lack the usual metallic tang of blood, it actually gave off a faint fragrance. Even more remarkable, the pool brimmed with boundless vitality.
Retracting his gaze, Ian Song began searching the cave.
He soon discovered a long, narrow jade box. With a quick grab, it landed in his hand.
Opening the jade box, he found a beast-skin scroll lying inside.
After reading the beast-skin scroll, Ian Song understood where this blood pool came from.
This pool was called the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool, and the liquid within it was Heaven-Earth Essence Blood—created by a nameless strange man.
This strange man was born with a blocked middle dantian and could not become a cultivator.
Still, he firmly believed he could become a cultivator, so he traveled far and wide searching for a solution.
Decades passed. Though he had wandered the world, he never found an answer, and now he was old—unable to walk any farther.
Just as he was about to give up hope, he obtained the ancient Heavenly Art Compendium.
The Heavenly Art Compendium wasn’t some so-called divine martial manual—it was an exceptionally unique secret text, explaining the mysteries of heaven-and-earth laws and how to exploit them.
After painstakingly studying the Heavenly Art Compendium, the strange man devised a method—not only could it open his blocked middle dantian, it could even restore his youth, remaking his body in miraculous ways.
So he spent three years gathering materials.
Then he found this place and built the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool, collecting Heaven-Earth Essence Blood.
All living things possess essence-energy. When they die, that essence returns to heaven and earth, drawn back by the world itself.
A faint 'pop!' sounded inside his body—only Ian Song could hear it. He quickly focused his mind on his chest’s Tan Zhong Acupoint and discovered it had been unblocked. The Heaven-Earth Essence Blood had entered and started remodeling it.
Each living being’s essence-energy is limited. After death, it leaves the body and is absorbed by heaven and earth—but this absorption takes time.
The genius of the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool lay in snatching up that essence-energy before heaven and earth could claim it.
Ian Song jumped out of the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool, got dressed, and found himself in a dilemma.
In other words, to condense this pool required seizing the essence-energy from the deaths of tens of millions of people.
No wonder that strange man never lived to see the blood pool fully formed—he died before it was complete.
Unwilling to let a lifetime of work go to waste, he set up formations in the cave before dying, to keep animals out and prevent them from stealing the essence blood.
He also forged ten array tokens and scattered them across the world. If a destined person carrying a token happened to appear outside the cave just as the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool finished forming, the cave’s array would draw them inside.
A thought occurred to Ian Song, and his gaze landed on Quinn Ba’s corpse. Sure enough, he found a token—neither gold nor iron—hidden in the man’s robes.
Holding the token, Ian Song was full of mixed feelings. This guy’s luck was just ridiculous—good thing he’d followed him down here, or else this fortune would’ve gone entirely to Quinn.
Now that he knew the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool was a treasure, Ian Song didn’t hesitate.
He stripped off his clothes and lay down in the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool.
The moment he lay down, he felt the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood surge toward him as if it were alive.
It began remodeling and strengthening his body, while also rushing toward his middle dantian.
With a thought, Ian Song guided the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood to converge in his lower dantian instead.
The dantian was the seat of true essence, but as the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood entered, his true essence stayed unchanged. Instead, his lower dantian began expanding under the nourishment, and its walls thickened rapidly.
Actually, the dantian is quite fragile. If something goes wrong during cultivation, it can easily shatter.
Likewise, a strong external force can also break the dantian.
For example, to cripple someone’s cultivation, you just need to break their dantian.
But now, with his dantian walls thickened, even if Ian Song’s cultivation goes awry in the future and his true essence riots, it won’t be easy to destroy his dantian. Likewise, it won’t be so easily broken by outside force.
"Pop!"
He heard a faint sound inside his body—only Ian Song could hear it. He quickly focused his mind on his chest’s Tan Zhong Acupoint and discovered it had been unblocked. The Heaven-Earth Essence Blood had entered and started remodeling it.
The Heaven-Earth Essence Blood in this pool had accumulated over countless years—far more than the strange man ever imagined. So even after remodeling Ian Song’s body and both dantians, more than half still remained, but his body couldn’t absorb any more.
Ian Song jumped out of the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool, dressed, and began to feel troubled.
According to the beast-skin scroll, Heaven-Earth Essence Blood cannot leave the pool—once removed, it disperses back into ordinary world-essence and is absorbed by heaven and earth.
Now that he’d broken the cave’s formations, the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood’s fragrance would surely attract animals once he left.
Suddenly, an idea struck him—he began using Clairvoyant Vision to examine the Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool.
After scanning it, a smile crept onto his lips. With a thought, his bronze flying sword shot out.
He drove the sword around the pool, slicing away all the surrounding rock.
"Collect!"
With a wave of his hand, Ian Song swept the whole Heaven-Earth Essence Blood Pool—rock and all—into his Storage Ring.
"The dead deserve respect; the body should rest in peace!"
Ian Song glanced at Quinn Ba’s corpse, picked it up, and flew down toward the bottom of the abyss.
Reaching the valley floor, Ian Song dug a grave and buried him, then rode his flying sword back up the abyss.
You could say this was all thanks to Quinn Ba’s luck—or, more accurately, Ian Song had stolen it for himself.
After lingering atop the cliff for a moment, Ian Song sped off toward the Qi army camp.
The next day, Victor Zhao led the army in a counterattack against the Qin forces. With Quinn Ba dead and the Qin army lacking its luck blessing, the whole force quickly collapsed under Wolf Cavalry charges and explosive bombardment.
Victor Zhao seized the opportunity and pursued the enemy for thirty miles.
In this battle, the Qin army lost more than half its hundred thousand troops. The remaining fifty thousand couldn’t withstand the Qi army and had to retreat from Zhao territory.
But Yan’s territory still hadn’t been reclaimed, so Ian Song ordered Victor Zhao to march on Yan. He also called up fifty thousand reinforcements from home to join Victor, making a force of 130,000—more than enough to recover Yan’s lost land.
A month later, all Yan territory was back in Qi’s hands. Qin had sent 130,000 troops for this campaign, but didn’t gain a single city—instead, they lost over eighty thousand men. Truly, trying to steal a chicken, they only lost the rice.
After this battle, Qi Kingdom’s dominance over the continent was fully established.