Shallow Night. Qin Ming carried the dark-gold hammer and short sword, feet barely touching the ground, tearing through the timber at full speed.
Urgency bit at him. The city nobles had arrived. Once they entered the mountains, they'd strip every spiritual resource they found.
He couldn't let the Blood Bamboo Grove fall to someone else. It was the key to his Second New Life.
The night fog lifted. The forest stayed dim, but his eyes could pick out distant detail clearly.
"The grove won't be easy. There's danger."
Otherwise, Feng Yi'an and Shao Chengfeng would have gone in already. They'd died with the regret of not trying.
"I'm getting reckless."
Cold snow hit his skin. Melted down his neck. The chill steadied him.
He'd been racing like Old Liu — desperate to sprout wings and raid the grove.
"Steady." He slowed. Adjusted his breathing.
Second New Life. Even without a spiritual catalyst, his Golden Foundation would carry him through. No need to panic.
"A restless mind makes mistakes." He walked the deep snow, calm, deliberate, cold.
The grove was dangerous. Fu Entao had been a Second New Lifer, and the patrol had never dared move. That said enough.
---
Qin Ming moved through the timber in silence. He stopped at a cache and dug out the blade manual. Old leather, curled edges, heavy wear.
Thin book. Ancient feel. Wherever Fu Entao had found it, it had passed through many hands.
"Read the ancestors' work. Settle the mind." He sat in the snow.
Minutes later, he was gone — absorbed completely.
Without thinking, he rose. Manual in one hand, hammer in the other. He swung the heavy weapon like a blade. It should have been clumsy. In his grip, it flowed — light, natural, with a casual grace.
New Life required specific texts — meditation arts, qi circulation — to elevate strength, speed, resilience. Combat techniques were different: the application of those physical gifts. Efficiency. Killing power.
Qin Ming's body was exceptional — beyond Golden Foundation. But his combat technique was untrained. A collection of practical scraps. Some borrowed from his rough-and-tumble New Life exercises. Some learned from village hunters. Effective, but formless.
His real skill came from the mountains. Hunting in the night forest meant reacting to ambush — a heartbeat's delay meant death. His style was raw. No patterns. No fixed forms. Pure power, speed, and instinct.
That was why Fu Entao had found him so difficult. No set patterns to read. No trail to follow.
Now, reading the manual, Qin Ming fused his wild experience with structured technique. The blade forms flowed through him. One hand held the book, the other swung the hammer — shifting, evolving, each movement a conversation between the text and his own blood.
He committed fully. Power poured in. No blade light — but blade intent. Snow lifted from the ground in sheets. The hammer became lightning, splitting the forest's silence.
He swung at a thick tree. The trunk exploded.
The violence was absolute. Something in the dark — a mutant black tiger, four meters long — had been watching. It turned and ran.
"Still watching? Leave." A corpse-faced vulture circled overhead, twenty meters up. Reluctant to go.
The Throwing Blade form. The hammer left his hand. It became a black meteor.
Blood exploded in the air. Feathers rained. The vulture — wingspan of several meters, a fierce predator — shattered like porcelain. The hammer hit it with thousand-jin force. Scraps of flesh and feather cascaded.
In the distance, creatures that had been observing bolted. The two-legged beast was too savage. This territory was closed.
"Good blade work." Qin Ming retrieved the hammer and kept drilling.
The manual was a lamp in the fog. It took his scattered, wild techniques and forged them into something coherent. His combat power leaped.
He practiced every form cover to cover. Not total enlightenment — but a real, measurable gain.
"If Fu Entao had mastered this book fully, he'd have been a real problem." But if Fu Entao had fully understood it, he wouldn't have stopped at Second New Life.
The manual wasn't just blade work. It contained research on New Life methods. And it mentioned Heaven Light.
Heaven Light first appeared at the Third New Life — but it threaded through the entire New Life domain. Even after completion, the study of Heaven Light never stopped.
In an age without a sun, the name carried hope. People dreamed of light.
But the Heaven Light in the book wasn't the sky's lost radiance. It was a light inside the body — born of life's elevation.
After the Third New Life, a New Lifer's body produced it. Power surged — enough to fight dangerous mutants bare-handed.
Because with Heaven Light came Heaven Light Force — a special energy with extreme penetration and tearing power.
Without it, New Lifers would be too small, too fragile to fight giant beasts. Heaven Light Force tore through scale and flesh.
In the New Life domain, it could only coat the body's surface and extend a fraction beyond the fists and feet. It couldn't yet infuse weapons.
The manual had passed through many owners. Notes filled the margins — different hands, different eras.
One reader had written, almost in anguish: "If only I could cultivate the Tathagata Force!"
The book named several powerful Heaven Light Forces but gave no methods. Qin Ming's imagination fired.
Past a certain point, the manual exceeded his level. He couldn't use what came next.
But he found something practical. A technique called Blending With Dust — for self-preservation.
He read it. Cold sweat.
High-tier beings could see the strength of another creature's life force at a glance. Even in deep night, they perceived bio-fields — bright or dim, strong or weak.
A low-tier creature had no secrets.
And when a New Lifer or mutant produced Heaven Light, to a high-tier being, that light blazed like a bonfire in the darkness.
"I need to learn this. Now." He wiped his face. The mountains had just become more dangerous.
Fortunately, Blending With Dust was practical, not esoteric. Not a high-level cultivation text. A technique.
"Contemplate the void. Body like dead wood. Heart like cold ash. Mask the life force. Dim the spirit." He parsed the words. Understood. Entered the threshold.
He sat for a long time. Testing. Refining. The technique masked part of his vitality — made him read as ordinary. And the masking was controllable. With mastery, even Heaven Light from a Third New Life could be hidden.
He exhaled.
Then laughed at himself. His crisis instinct was overblown. A high-tier being passing through could read his vitality — sure. But would it care? He'd had one New Life. In their eyes, he was one of countless minor lifeforms in the mountains.
Then again — Redcloud City's leadership negotiated with deep-range beings on equal footing. They must possess the same perception.
"Don't gorge. Learn what I have. Master it. Lock it in." He rose, found a hidden spot, and reburied the manual.
Today's gains were massive. The blade forms, fused with his instincts, had raised his combat power significantly.
"If I fought Fu Entao and the others now, it would be much easier."
More importantly, the manual had opened his eyes to a world he'd never seen.
"Fu Entao was good for something after all. Gave me a fine book."
He walked out of the timber and toward the Blood Bamboo Grove.