Mystical Journey

Boom!!

There was the sound of the palm hitting a body of flesh from inside the ground.

A black shadow was thrown out of the ground, and crashed hard into some shrubs nearby.

Second Brother hurriedly chased it, and some bees darted inside for a luck, but all they saw was a dead black wolf rapidly freezing into ice, its body a mess of flesh and blood.

"It's that kid's Black Wolf!" Second Brother snorted coldly. "Is he trying to lead us away? He must be nearby! I'm sure of it!"

"Didn't you say you could find him?!" said Boss angrily as he landed. "Why is it a black wolf instead?"

"Even I can only determine his general location over here, don't you think I want to find as soon as possible as well?" said Second Brother coldly.

"If you have any more tricks up your sleeve, take them out now! Otherwise that punk will secretly get away!" said Ron impatiently.

Barlow narrowed his eyes, and then pulled out a black sphere. With the white sphere in one hand and the black one in the other, he put them both on his palms and then abruptly smashed them together.

"I'm going all out this time, damn it!"

He said fiercely, watching as the two spheres collided with each other. They did not crash loudly, and instead fused together rapidly.

The red dot on them also instantly became a lot clearer.

"Here! Found him!"

"Let's go!"

The two of them leaped into the air, and flew straight toward the marker on the sphere.

**********

Garen slowly opened the third page of the secret scroll, and imprinted the contents on it into his brain.

The fourth page, the fifth... The sixth!

This was the last page, and the blue electric pillar that rose from it was not like the others. It was only as tall as a pen, intricate, with a faint blue-golden color, but without any arches of electricity. There was just a deep shade of blue that moved slowly, almost like a liquid, as though it was just a crystal pillar that was filled with a spinning blue-golden liquid.

"This is the Inherited Power?" Garen had never seen Inherited-Level Origin Power before, so he could not be sure whether this was that legendary Inherited Origin or not.

With a hiss, a line of words appeared underneath the delicate little blue-golden pillar.

'Learn the Secret Method, and thou shalt absorb the Origin.'

The words were made of some special and strange letters, and Garen recognized them. These were Ancient Motherese, a language used in the past on the Mother Planet, and it was somewhat different from the universal language used these days. Still, there were only minor differences in the syntax and morphology, he could still interpret the general gist of the contents. It was basically the difference between simplified and traditional Chinese writing(1).

Closing his eyes, Garen started to recall the entire secret method that he had just memorized.

"Secret Method Magic Light Fist: Possesses unimaginably great power. Nobody knows where this power came from, and nobody knows why there was this change reminiscent of a scientific chemical reaction, but this secret method had saved me from many a tight spot and granted me victory from the jaws of defeat. My heir, if you wish to absorb my Inherited Origin, you must first learn this secret method so that you may attain a basic level of self-defense capability. Otherwise, even if you do absorb the Origin Power, and subsequently enter the Inherited Level, you will still face some problems even more troublesome than regular Inherited Levels—Message from: Karim Giles."

There was this message at the end of the secret method. Clearly, the Inheritor had believed that once his heir learned the Magic Light Fist, they would be equipped with the basic power to defend themselves. That was how much faith they had in their secret method.

Garen continued to read the contents from his memory.

'There are only three grades to the Magic Light Fist, namely Sunlight, Moonlight, and Starlight, going from the bottom to the top. Starlight is the highest level of completion, and at that point, the speed of your fists would be terrifying. They will be everywhere, cover everything, and the explosive power will also be tremendous. But at the same time, you will need more energy to reach a higher level secret method.'

This was followed by detailed explanations of the training contents for all three grades.

Garen flipped his hands so that his palms faced skyward, and then he opened his mouth, spitting out a scarlet glow that began to spin slowly in front of him, slowly absorbing specks of faint white light.

The white light gathered between his palms in front of him, and slowly formed a white whirlpool.

The whirlpool started by spinning extremely slowly, its color extremely faint, but as time passed by, it began to spin at faster speeds, faster and faster, and it also began to gradually shrink in size...

Time flowed past, second by second. Garen's eyes were slightly closed, as the whirlpool of white light in front of him slowly shrank from the size of a human head to that of a fist.

"Why is the process so simple?" Garen sensed that he had already broken past several of the challenges and roadblocks detailed in the Magic Light Fist secret method. The scroll kept saying how hard it was, how he had to carefully absorb the solar energy around him carefully, and gather them into a Sun Whirlpool, how it would take at least a dozen hours to complete. And that included several other challenges of middling difficulty.

But he had already successfully formed the Sun Whirlpool after just a couple of minutes.

The extreme difficulties described in the secret method were as simple as eating or drinking to him.

Garen suddenly remembered that book of Reflective Mastery that Senior Sister Rainy had given him.

He had destroyed that book completely after memorizing it, but he could only use Reflective Mastery after he reached the Resonance Level. Only then could he properly showcase the power of his Water Mirror grade, and not now.

"In that case, what's the reason behind this process?" Confusion flashed past Garen's heart.

When he sensed it carefully, he realized that his control over his own body far surpassed that of others, and this should be the true key to grasping the Sunlight Whirlpool日光漩涡 quickly. From the past few worlds, Garen realized that he had always been training the way to control his own body. Secret techniques were by nature a form of self-control, and that was his advantage over the Energy Machinists in this world.

Garen had simply learned too many secret techniques, be it the peak-level Living Secret Techniques or the regular ones like the Golden Statue Technique or the Black Water True Technique, or even the Nine-Headed Dragon Queen Nadia's Ominous Space Path. These secret techniques were all different, significantly widening Garen's horizons, to the extent that no one in the world could compare to him. If it were not for the different laws of physics in each world, if Garen could use his power from before directly, he would have long since reached a terrifying level of power.

But even so, Garen was absolutely powerful when it came to the level of control required by such high-difficulty challenges, when it came to the extremely precise and high level of control needed. That was because he had just experienced too much, in the field of secret techniques, his experience was nowhere near what the Energy Machinists, with their emphasis on the scientific modification of living creatures at their very core, could match.

"Secret techniques function by primarily uncovering your own potential, and secondly by modifying your genes and blood vessels. Energy Machinists place blood vessel modification first, and training secret techniques second. The two of them have fundamentally different bases.

By then, Garen understood.

The Sun Whirlpool in front of him spun faster and faster, and shrank further the more it span. It had practically become a solid white sphere.

All of a sudden, the center of the whirlpool was condensed to an extreme, and there was a faint of gold across it.

The first rays of Sunlight had finally been formed and condensed.

This was the key to the first grade of the Magic Light Fist, Sunlight. The power of the sun was the easiest wavelength to absorb and condense into a high-density energy that could be added to his own attacks.

This destructive power also came with extremely high levels of high-energy radiation, more than a hundred times more concentrated than average radiation levels.

"Next, merge this ray of sunlight into your own body, and form an extremely powerful radiation-based attack element." Garen took a deep breath, this was the last challenge. He needed to form a fixed transport pathway inside his body, and when he used it, the power of the Sunlight would instantly explode down this pathway, creating a reflexive yet destructive attack.

This was the power of the secret scroll's secret method.

And only by truly learning this secret method, by slowly strengthening one pathway, would your nerves be strong enough to handle the absorption of the Inherited Origin.

"Let's start." Fierce determination flashed across Garen's eyes, and he slowly absorbed a bit of the ray of condensed Sunlight. Together with the scarlet glow Origin from the Scarlet Snow Technique, he sucked them both into his mouth.

The Scarlet Snow Technique's scarlet glow gradually wrapped around and protected that ray of Sunlight, and they slowly went down into his throat and into his gut, where they began to seep into the other parts of his body.

Diffusing out of the gut, the Sunlight was led by the scarlet glow as it slowly gathered in Garen's nerve pathways. This was the first secret method in this world to involve the nerve pathways.

As soon as the ray of Sunlight entered his nerve pathways, they very naturally headed towards his liver to gather there.

Garen frowned slightly. He could feel a scalding heat gather rapidly around his liver, but rather than entering it, the heat just circled around it.

"The first ray, complete."

He opened his eyes, and looked at the whirlpool of white light in front of him again.

Soon, the second ray of Sunlight was condensed and formed, and the process was repeated. Once more, Garen used the scarlet glow to lead it into his body, and again, the Sunlight quickly gathered in the same place upon entering.

As time passed, the rays of Sunlight were slowly pulled into Garen's body, and gathered in his liver.

To others, this was an extremely difficult task that required a lot of time and energy to get the proportions of control just right. But to Garen, it was just a very normal, bordering on simple, control exercise.

He had studied secret techniques for several hundred years, and his control power had reached the Water Mirror grade, so naturally he would not stumble at a challenge like this.

But as he gathered more Sunlight, the Sunlight around his liver increased, and the energy he gathered grew more concentrated. Garen could even feel that burning heat from outside, emanating through his stomach.

His liver was practically a shining beacon of gold now, and the concentration of this energy was so high, even Garen was feeling slightly shocked.

As the hundredth ray of Sunlight entered, the intensity of the energy inside his body had already surpassed Level Five, and was approaching the New Moon Level.

If such a collection of power were to accidentally explode inside his body, it would result in more than just a grievous injury, it would end up in instant and utter death!

But this was still far from the requirements of the Sunlight grade, that needed a full 999 rays of Sunlight to be gathered before the Sunlight grade could be reached.

A hundred rays of Sunlight already had the power of the New Moon Level, Garen did not even dare to imagine what kind of power 999 rays would have.

All he knew was that this Sunlight power was enough to make even his Soul Seed feel vaguely threatened. Evidently, the fundamental change in its power had already reached extremely terrifying heights, such that it could even influence the Soul Seed with the pure soul attribute.

As he gathered more and more Sunlight, even if controlling it was not hard for Garen, he still began to grow more careful. If this ever exploded, it would be impossible for him to survive, and even his Soul Seed might get damaged. If he died this time, reincarnating would not be that easy anymore.

And as the gathered Sunlight grew, the Sunlight around his liver also gradually formed an unstable sphere, as though it was a real sun, dazzling and emitting a shocking heat.

Garen also grew more cautious, this unstable sun sphere would explode in an instant if he was not careful. If it did explode, forget him, it was highly likely that everything within a hundred meter radius would just vanish into smoke.

"Three hundred rays."

There was a sheen of sweat on the tip of Garen's nose, but he did not dare to wipe it. The gathering of three hundred rays of Sunlight had an explosive power equivalent to a Half-Moon Level Energy Machinist, and this was a level way beyond him. The scarlet glow was practically useless now, it was far too different in level compared to the Sunlight energy, and it could not cover the Sunlight sphere at all. Now, the Sunlight sphere was continuing to absorb and condense more energy by instinct alone. It followed a special absorption rhythm and structure in accordance with the contents recorded on the Magic Light Fist, so this structure would naturally absorb more Sunlight.

Psst psst.

The surface of the earth and rocks around Garen was beginning to glow slightly red. The intense high-energy radiation had evaporated the water out of the surrounding soil and stone, forming faint white fumes that made the whole cave look white and fuzzy.

************

On the surface.

Amidst the white mist, on the surface above the cave that Garen had dug, two black shadows had stopped in mid-air, and landed slowly.

"This is the place?" Boss Ron looked around him, but could not find any traces of Garen.

"It's definitely here." Second Brother Barlow frowned, and began to observe the black-and-white sphere in his hand. The red dot shown on it was right here, but because of the massive interference and the signal itself that seemed to be very weak, the red dot had spread over a large range.

"It's here, but I can't say exactly where about," said Second Brother Barlow softly.