"The heavens dictate the elements, binding mortals to a single thread. But the man who truly rises, shatters the firmament, creates his own path, and reigns supreme over all beneath the sky."
Yoriichi stood entirely frozen in the dim, forgotten corner of the Dou Ji Pavilion.
For a full minute, he did not blink. He barely breathed. The arrogant, blood-red calligraphy scrawled across the rotting black parchment seemed to echo in the cavernous silence of the hall. The words vibrated with a primordial, defiant energy that resonated directly within his soul. It was a magnetic pull of pure, unadulterated willpower.
It felt as though he were standing on the edge of a colossal cliff, looking down into an abyss that was staring right back at him.
Finally, with a slow, deliberate exhalation, his breathing rhythm reasserted itself, grounding his mind and shattering the hypnotic, heavy trance the poem had cast over him.
He blinked, the crimson of his eyes sharpening in the dim light. He looked closely at the dark parchment resting in his calloused palm.
Intrigued by the sheer gravity of the poem, Yoriichi instinctively braced himself. He pushed a tiny, needle-thin fraction of his Dou Qi toward the scroll to test the spiritual barrier, fully expecting a high-tier Mother-Son Bamboo seal, or perhaps an even more ancient, lethal trap left behind by the Xiao Clan's forefathers.
There was nothing.
No violent rebound. No shimmer of defensive energy. No piercing alarm.
He frowned slightly, the stoic mask of his face breaking into an expression of profound confusion. He focused his mind, passively activating the ultimate visual prowess of his past life: the Transparent World.
His crimson eyes pierced through the surface of reality, looking down to a microscopic, structural level into the very fibers of the scroll. The realization that followed hit him like a physical blow to the chest.
'It is completely defenseless as I thought,' Yoriichi thought, his eyes widening slightly as he mapped the topography of the ancient paper.
'There is absolutely no Dou Qi injected into this parchment. There is no spiritual lock binding it. There is not even the faintest whisper of an elemental aura or a soul imprint. It is just... ordinary, decaying parchment and dried, flaking ink.'
A brilliant, chilling logic unfolded in his mind. This was the ultimate, most flawless hiding place imaginable.
In the Dou Qi Continent, high-level experts relied almost exclusively on their Soul Power—their spiritual perception—to scan for treasures, hidden enemies, and rare techniques.
If an elite expert like a Dou Zun or even a legendary Dou Sheng were to sweep this entire Pavilion with their vast spiritual sense, this scroll would register as a complete void.
It would feel like nothing more than dead wood, dust, and spiderwebs. They would completely ignore it, passing over it a thousand times without a second glance.
It required physical sight—the microscopic, structural vision of the Transparent World—to see the incredibly dense, overlapping, complex grooves carved into the paper. The creator hadn't used Dou Qi to write this; they had used sheer, crushing physical intent, pressing the ink into the parchment with a physical force so precise it formed a microscopic labyrinth.
And it required a foundation of absolute, terrifying neutrality to trigger the physical, gravitational resonance he had just felt.
'A trap for the arrogant spiritual masters, and a ghost to the rest of the world,' Yoriichi mused, his respect for the unknown author skyrocketing into the stratosphere.
Without any further hesitation, his large fingers gently broke the rotting, brittle leather string tying the parchment together. He carefully, almost reverently, began to unroll the long, heavy scroll.
At the very top, written in the same bold, commanding, and almost violent strokes as the poem, the original name of the Qi Method revealed itself.
It did not boast of fierce animals like the Raging Rhino Flame, nor did it use mystical, flowery language like the Azure Drop Mantra. It was a title that demanded absolute, unquestionable supremacy.
[Battle Through the Heavens]
Yoriichi stared at the title. The words were clear, the meaning brutally understandable.
To name a cultivation technique Battle Through the Heavens required a level of audacity and raw, world-ending power that bordered on utter madness. Whoever this ancestor of the Xiao Clan was, he was not a mere mortal cultivator bound by the rules of the Dou Qi Continent.
He must have been a living legend—a supreme entity who had looked up at the vast, oppressive sky, recognized the laws of the world, and decided they were merely obstacles meant to be severed by his own two hands.
Lowering his gaze, Yoriichi began to read the actual method detailed below the title.
As his crimson eyes darted across the ancient, faded text, his initial curiosity rapidly morphed into profound, world-shattering shock. This was not a traditional Qi Method. It didn't instruct the reader on how to simply pull Fire or Water Dou Qi from the surrounding atmosphere and funnel it safely into the Dantian.
It was a masterful, terrifying, and insanely detailed thesis on human anatomy.
The text dove to a shockingly deep level regarding the internal structure of the human body. It detailed the five major viscera, the hidden meridian nodes that most cultivators didn't even know existed, the exact tensile limits of cellular endurance, and the true capacity of the human heart to act as an energetic engine.
"The mortal vessel is a cage," the ancient text read, the words practically bleeding arrogance.
"To practice a single element is to accept the limitations of that cage. Fire eventually burns the liver. Water eventually drowns the heart. Wind shreds the lungs over time. Earth petrifies the blood. A single element inevitably creates a biological imbalance that halts cultivation before the realm of the Divine. The human body is meant to be a universe, not a singular rock."
Yoriichi's breath hitched. His Transparent World vision allowed him to instantly map the described anatomical theories onto his own internal biology. He realized, with a thrill of martial excitement that made his blood run hot, that the author was absolutely, undeniably correct.
This ancestor had understood the body the same way Yoriichi did—as a complex, interconnected machine of flesh and blood, not just a magical vessel for Dou Qi.
Then came the core concept of the Battle Through the Heavens method. And it was pure, unadulterated heresy.
"To shatter the firmament, one must not borrow the world's fragmented power. One must synthesize it. The practitioner must understand the anatomy of the heavens within themselves. To create this supreme Qi, one must absorb Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, and Lightning... simultaneously. By mastering the perfect anatomical flow, these clashing, violently opposing elements must be ground together within the crucible of the Dantian, forging a new, absolute energy. The Origin."
Yoriichi stopped reading, his hands involuntarily tightening around the edges of the parchment. A cold sweat broke out across his brow, matting his dark red hair to his forehead.
Use all types of elements? Simultaneously?
In his past life, he had easily commanded the different physical forms of breathing—shifting from the fluidity of water to the speed of lightning with a mere twist of his sword. But this was fundamentally different. This wasn't swinging a sword differently; this was pulling raw, violently opposing magical energies into the human body at the exact same time.