Taking the heavy, yellow scroll to a secluded, empty alcove near a large window, Yoriichi sat down in lotus position.
He unfurled the parchment. Instead of merely reading the words, Yoriichi's crimson eyes narrowed, his Transparent World vision instinctively activating. He stared at the intricate diagrams of the human nervous system and meridian pathways drawn on the paper.
He didn't just memorize the text; he mentally simulated it.
He isolated the crimson sparks within his own liquid Dou Qi. Following the instructions of the scroll, he visualized forcing that pure fire energy through the specific pathways designated by the Blazing Yang method.
'Fascinating,' Yoriichi mused as hours melted away. 'The fire element acts like an expanding, volatile gas. This standard Qi Method dictates that the user must constantly widen their primary chest meridians to act as a heat-sink, preventing internal combustion. It relies on rapid, explosive bursts of circulation rather than a steady stream.'
For two entire days, Yoriichi did not leave the alcove. He did not eat, relying purely on the ambient worldly energy to sustain his physical vessel. He sat like a petrified statue, occasionally tracing a finger through the air as if drawing invisible anatomical lines.
He cross-referenced the Blazing Yang pathways with his own Sun Breathing. He found few the inefficiencies in his own makeshift internal routing, smoothing out the microscopic 'kinks' in his meridians that caused the extreme heat to bottleneck and damage his flesh.
By the dawn of the third day, Yoriichi rolled the crimson scroll back up, his understanding of fire-attribute circulation fundamentally elevated.
He immediately stood up, his joints popping satisfyingly, and walked back to the shelves. He returned the fire scroll and moved to the opposite end of the pavilion—the water-attribute section.
Here, he selected another Huang-Class, High-Level scroll titled The Sea Current Routing.
Returning to his spot, he repeated the grueling process.
This time, he isolated the azure sparks within his Dantian. The contrast was staggering.
'Water is the absolute inverse of fire,' Yoriichi realized, deeply engrossed in this text. 'Where fire demands wide, explosive pathways to vent pressure, water requires narrow, highly elastic meridians to maintain a constant, high-pressure flow. It does not burst; it erodes. It requires continuous, cyclical circulation, never truly stopping.'
He spent another two days utterly submerged in the mental simulation of the Sea Current Routing. He studied how the water Dou Qi was specifically channeled through the yin-heavy meridians near the kidneys and lower abdomen to cool the body and maintain absolute mental clarity.
For weeks, Yoriichi's time spent on physical, sweaty training in the courtyard dropped to zero. He was entirely consumed by deciphering the invisible, intricate flow of Dou Qi within the mortal vessel.
Some passing students sneered, whispering that the "Demon Swordsman" had lost his edge and turned into a cowardly bookworm. Yoriichi remained blissfully indifferent to their ignorance.
What they saw as passive reading was, in reality, a high-stakes, microscopic surgery being performed on his own soul and biology.
At one evening, Yoriichi finally lowered another scroll that he finished.
He closed his eyes, plunging his consciousness into his own Dantian. He initiated a test run.
Instead of forcing the fire and water to travel the exact same paths simultaneously—which had caused the micro-fractures in his sword and his arms—he implemented his newly synthesized theory.
He drew a breath.
Hssshhh...
Using his supreme, unparalleled muscular control and the Transparent World, he forcefully split the circulation of his milky-white liquid Dou Qi the moment it left his Dantian.
He routed the crimson, Yang-heavy sparks through the wide, heat-resistant pathways he had learned from the fire scrolls. Simultaneously, he routed the azure, Yin-heavy sparks through the narrow, high-pressure lower pathways from the water scrolls.
The two opposing elements traveled through his body on entirely separate, perfectly optimized highways.
Then, he brought them back together, merging them flawlessly at the exact point of exit—the palms of his hands.
There was no pain. There was no microscopic tearing. There was only a profound, breathtakingly smooth surge of unimaginable power.
Yoriichi opened his eyes, letting out a soft, misty sigh of absolute relief.
The grueling months of mental deciphering had not been useless. By understanding the foundational mechanics of the elements, he had successfully albeit temporary created a customized, hybrid meridian routing system specifically for his dual-attribute body. He had essentially rewritten his own biological software.
But there was an unexpected, highly beneficial side effect.
As he relaxed his grip on the specific elements and let his normal, milky-white Dou Qi resume its natural, resting circulation, Yoriichi noticed a distinct change in the atmosphere around him.
The ambient worldly energy of the Library Pavilion was drifting toward him at a noticeably faster pace.
'My Dou Qi absorption rate...' Yoriichi blinked in mild surprise, sensing the dense energy easily slipping into his pores. 'Because I have smoothed out the internal bottlenecks and optimized the primary pathways for both Yin and Yang, my body is acting as a more efficient vacuum. The resistance has dropped.'
His absorption rate had become a very little faster compared to previous. While it wasn't an explosive, heaven-defying leap, in the long, arduous marathon of cultivation, any permanent increase in efficiency was a highly beneficial advantage.
Yoriichi stood up, a rare, profound sense of deep satisfaction settling over his Dao heart.
He had not learned a flashy new Dou Skill, nor had he broken through to another star level. Yet, he knew with absolute certainty that the time he spent silently reading in the empty alcove had made him significantly more terrifying than any physical spar ever could.
He gently returned the method scroll to its designated, glowing shelf.