The Six Immortals

 A breakthrough

 

Later, Bi Fan sat on top of the Chimera’s back as the Chimera led him through the forest. Bi Fan couldn’t help enjoying the leisurely ride, feeling incredibly pleased with his position.

As the Chimera led him through the forest, Bi Fan came across several demons, but none of them were strong enough to attract Bi Fan’s attention.

The demons they came across were only ordinary; none of them were in the ‘brave’ layer, let alone any higher. Fighting with such opponents wasn’t going to bear him any results.

Unfortunately for Bi Fan, in this part of the devil’s territory, the number of demons that were in the ‘brave’ layer, or higher, was very low.

The Chimera made its way through the forest in a very smooth fashion, meaning that Bi Fan could concentrate on meditating and practicing while he rode the Chimera’s back. He needed to make every minute count.

Bi Fan’s strength had been growing stronger and stronger, but he wasn’t satisfied yet. On the contrary, he was becoming more assiduous towards it with every passing day.

He knew that he had started very late in life as compared to his competition, and hence needed to snatch every second and utilize it for practice.

Moreover, just recently, the Silhouette figure of Yan Yu Si had popped into Bi Fan’s head, and he couldn’t help, but wonder what she was up to.

Yan Yu Si was in charge of the Xuannv palace, and her strength was nothing short of tyrannical.

Bi Fan wanted his strength to transcend that of Yan Yu Si, so that his name could also be taken alongside a genius martial artist like her.

Bi Fan was willing to make any and all kinds of sacrifices to become a successful martial artist.

Recently, Bi Fan’s inner energy had already broken into the ‘brave’ layer and his physical strength was on a rise as well.

Once he breaks through to the next layer, his fighting capacity would see a massive rise. So much so that even if he ran into a whole group of ‘rising sun’ disciples, he need not worry about the consequences of the encounter.

Sometime later, Bi Fan asked the Chimera to stop, and asked him to guard Bi Fan.

Bi Fan settled against a tree and started to practice.

This time, Bi Fan decided to take a Dan pellet to help him make the breakthrough.

The Dan pellet was a very strong one, and as he swallowed it, a huge amount of aura surged throughout his body.

Holding such huge amounts of untamed aura inside one’s body can be very painful and Bi Fan clenched his teeth, as he tried to subdue the pain. He started practicing Quinyang longevity burst to absorb the aura that the Dan pellet was providing.

Quinyang longevity burst was a very low level method to absorb aura, so, the absorption rate was very slow and the he couldn’t utilize the entire Dan pellet.

Unfortunately, even though he was in the ‘spiritual intelligence’ layer, he couldn’t refine aura at the speed which he should be able to.

Even though he had only ingested a ‘brave’ layer Dan pellet, it took him about an hour to assimilate its aura.

In fact, he couldn’t harvest all of it, and almost half of the pellet went waste. Bi Fan could feel its effects, a significant rise in his inner energy, but not enough to break through to the next layer.

Bi Fan had sufficient Dan pellets to break through to the next layer, and since he needed his inner energy to breakthrough to the ‘brave’ layer, it only made sense to take a ‘brave’ layer Dan.

Once he was done absorbing the pellet, he decided to wait a while before ingesting another one.

Bi Fan started practicing his martial arts, and continued to practice till he had depleted all of his inner energy.

With the Chimera standing guard, watching his back, Bi Fan wasn’t worried about being harassed by demons or other humans and could easily continue his practice in peace.

After consuming up all his inner energy, Bi Fan started to restore it, and continued the process till his inner energy was fully restored.

He repeated this process several times, to maintain a form of purity, meaning, without taking Dan pellets. If one took too many Dan pellets to increase strength and break through to the next layer, it often ends up causing a heterogeneous mixture of inner energy inside a person, which tends to effect the future growth very negatively.

Bi Fan decided that it was time to take a second ‘brave’ layer Dan pellet. He ingested the pellet and began refining the aura.

This time, the refining happened at a much faster rate and he was able to harvest a significantly higher percentage of the pellet.

Bi Fan was not rushing into things, and he continued to practice as it was a necessity to have a strong base.

In the two days that passed, Bi Fan had already consumed about eight ‘brave’ layer Dan pellets. It takes time to process so many pellets and on top of that Bi Fan needed to practice as well, in order to maintain a pure energy structure in his body, so he only took the pellets to support his practice instead of using them as an alternate.

In these last two days, Bi Fan had accumulated enough inner energy to make the breakthrough and bottleneck to the next layer.

Bi Fan was preparing himself for the final practice, ready to make the breakthrough to the next layer.

“Chimera, no matter what happens; make sure that I shall not be disturbed.” Bi Fan issued very clear and strict orders.

A backlash is very dangerous. Once a person is on the verge of breaking into the ‘brave’ layer, they must be extremely careful. When the strength is higher, so is the risk; and when such is the case, a person shall not be disturbed. In fact, most people would never opt to do such a thing inside the wild due to the fear of a backlash.

Bi Fan was awfully bold, in fact, if he told people that he tried to break through the bottle neck to next layer inside the devil’s territory, then most people would simply refuse to believe him.

The Marten was also standing close to Bi Fan, guarding him.

With everything set and prepared for the final practice, Bi Fan started the practice for the breakthrough.

Quinyang longevity burst’s speed depends on the energy that surges out of the pubic region, and Bi Fan was careful that he didn’t lose his concentration in doing so.

Currents of energy charged through his body in a steady flow as he prepared to make the breakthrough. Things were going very smoothly, and it was only a matter of time before he would bottleneck to the next layer.

However, when a practitioner hits the bottleneck, the body suffers a huge amount of pain and the person in question must show a great amount of restrain to continue practicing through it.

It requires a great amount of will power, courage and a lot of strength to make such a breakthrough and even then, the task isn’t an easy one.

Bi Fan could tolerate the pain, so he tossed all these thoughts aside and concentrated solely on his practice.

He had been practicing nonstop for three and half hours and mid-way, several demons had tried to approach him, but the Chimera chased them all away.

The Chimera was strong enough to reside in the ‘spiritual intelligence’ layer, and was considered a hegemon, an absolute feudal chief, so ordinary demons wouldn’t dare to come anywhere near it.

“Boom!” his inner energy finally cleared the final checkpoint, bottle-necking to the next layer.

 

 A breakthrough

(Mustang: Hey guy, this is the third release of this week. The Queue for Sponsored chapters is now open for this weekend. I’ll be releasing more chapters on the weekend depending on my schedule and the queue status.)

“Boom!” his inner energy finally cleared the final checkpoint, bottlenecking to the next layer.

Torrential currents rampaged throughout his body as his inner energy expanded exponentially.

Bi Fan was really excited: “I have finally reached the ‘brave’ layer, and soon I’ll be in the ‘spiritual intelligence’ layer. Then I’ll be able to practice the free burst techniques and my strength will rise much faster”.

“AAAAA!!!!” Bi Fan stood up and roared, as sweat carelessly dripped down from his body, to the ground beneath him.

The Chimera and the Marten rushed to Bi Fan’s side. Their faces were reflecting the pleasure they were feeling after watching Bi Fan succeed.

The Chimera had already decided to follow Bi Fan, so it was also in his best interests if Bi Fan’s strength increased.

Bi Fan considered the Marten to be a family member, so he was glad to see the Marten rejoicing in his success.

“Come, let’s keep going forward!” With the increase in strength, his confidence was also increasing. In fact, even his temperament had also seen a drastic change; he had become much calmer by nature now.

Bi Fan jumped up to take his place on the Chimera’s back and the Marten too, hopped up on top of the Chimera’s back, who then started moving forward in long strides.

Bi Fan hadn’t set a specific target or even a time frame.

Bi Fan didn’t care if his stay in the devil’s territory exceeded a month, as Bi Fan had entered the devil’s territory to gain experience, so if he felt that the devil’s territory didn’t suffice his needs anymore, he would naturally want to exit the region.

Nevertheless, Bi Fan needed to spend at least a month inside the Devil’s territory, a term over which he had no control.

Bi Fan had just broken into the next layer, but now he needed to find some opponents so he could gain some stability.

Along the way, they encountered several beasts. Bi Fan and the Chimera killed as many as they could get their hands on, regardless of the beast’s strength. The Carcasses of their victims were then incorporated into the Tian Yuan ring.

Bi Fan now had a total of five Yin Yang pouches; however, the space was still finite in some terms.

Anyway, now, with the Chimera as his new companion, Bi Fan couldn’t sell off these carcasses in the open market. These carcasses were going to be used for satisfying the Chimera’s massive appetite, in fact, several more would be needed for that purpose.

Since, they were collecting food for the Chimera; he in particular, was putting a lot of effort. But whenever animals saw the Chimera looking to make a meal out of them, they quickly made themselves scarce.

Anyway, Bi Fan was only looking for a strong enemy, so he didn’t care much if the Chimera’s violent appearance sacred the weak ones away.

The Chimera on the other hand was awfully carefree while roaming around in the wild.

On the way, they even encountered a small group of humans, who instantaneously bent down to the ground in surrender, awfully terrified of the Chimera.

The moment they had seen a teenager sitting on top of the Chimera, their shocked faces had reflected several different emotions simultaneously, including those of envy and admiration.

Bi Fan decided that he won’t harm these boys. These youngsters belonged to some other school, and after all said and done, he didn’t need any more enemies.

The youngsters were terrified by the pace at which the Chimera gusted pasted them.

It took them a long time to recover, mentally, from the encounter and they continued to discuss it for a long time.

“What kind of a demon was that? He was so strong and so fast! I could barely move….”

“That was a Chimera. A Chimera is a very powerful and ferocious demon, I have no idea how that human managed to subdue one. He’s one lucky guy.”

“If that guy managed to subdue such an enormous beast then he is definitely very strong as well.”

“That’s probably true, but I don’t know which school he belongs to. Xuan Wu Ji topped the Jiu Yu list, is it possible that he is more powerful than Xuan Wu Ji?”

“Highly unlikely, after all, Xuan Wu Ji topped that list several years ago, and this person seemed a little too young to compete with the likes of such a genius.”

“If you give him a few years, then it might be possible someday. I mean that Chimera of his, can grow into a very big and powerful beast, and if his strength advances into the ‘transformation’ layer, then it might be possible that he could actually break into the ‘emerging from the womb’ category someday.”

… …

Bi Fan didn’t hear their discussion, in fact, by the time they started discussing this, Bi Fan’s company had already wandered far away from them, owing to the Chimera’s speed.

No one knew how the devil’s territory came to be, although there were several legends that spoke about the same. Some say, that some sort of a disagreement was settled here, and that this area was ground zero of an ancient battle.

Numerous spirits prevailed here, so much so, that for thousands of years, no one even dared to venture anywhere close to this region. Then slowly, over the years, tall, towering trees started growing, animals started living here, and gradually turned into beasts, goblins, and other forms of evil demons, and this is how the devil’s territory became what it is today.

However, in the present day, there is no written record, making all such legends and folklores nothing more than myths, and completely untraceable.

No spirits were ever reported in the devil’s territory. Although, one thing was certain, the amount of aura inside the devil’s territory far exceeded the aura that lingered in the world outside.

No one knew the reason, but if humans stayed inside the devil’s territory for long periods of time, then sometimes, they would go berserk, as if they had been possessed. Even the demons that were present inside the devil’s territory were far more violent in nature than the ones present outside, but never acted like they had been possessed by evil spirits.

It is for this reason that humans never stayed inside the devil’s territory for too long a time frame and so the devil’s territory had been cordoned off by a unanimous vote.

Do evil spirits and ghosts really exist?

Several people suspected that they do, but no one had ever been able to prove it.

Bi Fan had heard a lot of rumors related to the devil’s territory, but he had laughed them off.

For a long time now, people had fancied the idea of the devil’s territory being an ancient battlefield, but no one had any proof or clues to support the argument.

Attempting to get to the bottom of this argument was only going to waste time and cause grief, and hence wasn’t worth it.

Bi Fan knew that he is only a man, and men have their own consciousness, and Bi Fan’s consciousness kept telling him to increase his strength.

Even if there was an ancient treasure trove hidden in this region, Bi Fan was practical enough to know that it would be more beneficial to train and upgrade his strength than going on a wild goose chase.

“Wooooo!” the Chimera had just hunted down a wild tiger and issued a roar out of excitement.

Recently, the Chimera had become more and more active; it appeared that tagging along with Bi Fan had proved out to be a good choice. Unlike the past, he was no longer just eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating; he was no longer leading a monotonous life.

A Chimera is born to fight, they like the excitement, and they really like to fight.

The only complaint that the Chimera could register, was that every time they encountered a strong opponent, Bi Fan would rush out ahead to fight it, which meant that the Chimera couldn’t enjoy himself to the optimal limit.

Suddenly, there seemed to be a massive surge of oppressive energy coming from the deepest abyss of the devil’s territory, like evil forces were leaking from within.

Bi Fan was thankful that his heart was still beating after that shocking moment, and even the Chimera was, visibly, shivering with fear.

“What was that?” Bi Fan asked, shocked.

This incident, it seemed wasn’t limited to their surroundings, and other demons and disciples in the devil’s territory had also sensed this sudden surge of energy.

People, animals, and demons alike, were curious. And once the spirits had calmed down, everyone wanted to find out where this sudden surge of energy had originated from.