When one reaches the perfect state of the Zhou Tian realm, with 54 meridians, they gain an extra 4,320 cycles of power, which is over 800,000 jin of strength!
However, the royal family has the "Eastern Huang Classic," which allows them to open 62 meridians with the Da Yu's first meridian-opening technique. This means they can gain about 600,000 jin of strength. But this isn’t Li Hao’s limit.
The Taiyin meridian is equivalent to ten meridians, giving him about 2,480 cycles, which is close to 500,000 jin!
Moreover, the meridian-opening techniques Li Hao practices are not limited to just the Dragon River Divine Meridian. The Nine Turns Star Technique is also a meridian-opening method, along with three mid-level techniques and several lower-level ones.
The lower-level techniques only open the easiest meridians, which are already covered by the mid-level techniques, so they are ineffective. However, the combination of the Nine Turns Star Technique and the three mid-level techniques allowed Li Hao to open meridians that the Dragon River Divine Meridian did not touch. Now, he has opened 69 types of meridians!
This number has already surpassed that of the royal family's "Eastern Huang Classic"!
Li Hao was not satisfied with this. Now, he planned to use his physical body to comprehend and develop the fourth layer of the "Taichu" technique, aiming to break through to the Tongyou Body!
"The first layer gathers the powers of heaven and earth, the second layer involves the stars, the third layer deals with the subtle meridians of the human body, and for the fourth layer, I hope to open the Sun Meridian, merging the Yin and Yang meridians!"
Li Hao's thoughts were not just wild ideas. With his understanding at the fifth stage of the physical path, he was already half a master in body refining.
What is a master? It is someone who can create their own martial arts and establish their own sect!
Li Hao didn’t know how to practice the fourth layer of the original "Taichu" text, nor did he need to know. The Li family had not been able to gather all the teachings for many years, and most of them had likely been lost to history.
Since that was the case, he would write a new chapter for this top-tier body refining technique!
Let the pearl no longer gather dust!
A few days later, by the Black Water Demon Lake, Li Hao sat outside on a fishing platform. Suddenly, he felt a surge of understanding. His blood energy surged, his bones trembled beneath his skin, and the energy within his 69 major meridians flowed back and forth. Finally, a powerful force surged to the top of his head, as if it would explode his brain!
This was an extremely dangerous act, but Li Hao had long mastered his physical body. He could even fold his ears to seal them, and every bone in his body was as flexible as fingers, able to exert force!
With a loud bang, his brain seemed to shake, and a painful swelling sensation hit him.
Li Hao gritted his teeth and endured until that force suddenly burst forth, finding a gap to escape, and then returned through another opening, forming a cycle!
Li Hao’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
Finally, it worked!
The Taiyin meridian is a wandering meridian that appears in any part of the body at different times, making it hard to grasp, hence it is called the subtle meridian, meaning it is elusive and hard to find.
But the Sun Meridian is fixed, located in the brain.
However, compared to the Taiyin meridian, the Sun Meridian is even more dangerous. No one dares to try it; if one fails to open it, they could end up mentally disabled or even die from an explosion of the skull!
Though one meridian is equivalent to ten, very few would take such a huge risk just to gain the power of ten meridians.
Because almost everyone who tried has failed.
Only some martial arts madmen or extraordinary geniuses would continue such reckless actions!
At this moment, as the Sun Meridian opened, Li Hao felt the subtle meridian seemed to find an anchor point, no longer drifting but gradually approaching the Sun Meridian and intertwining with it.
"Yin and Yang merging, I shall call the fourth layer, the Flawless Body!"
Li Hao opened his panel, and to his surprise, the fourth layer of the Taichu technique actually appeared, named Flawless Body, Small Success!
Li Hao immediately activated the Yin and Yang meridians, repeatedly circulating the energy inside him, becoming more skilled with each cycle.
Soon, under the entanglement of Yin and Yang, a special vortex of power began to form.
Through that vortex, Li Hao seemed to faintly see a golden light within his brain.
He wanted to reach out to it, but it felt incredibly distant, almost unreachable.
"Legend says there are a total of 108 major meridians in the human body. If I could open them all... perhaps I could touch that golden light," Li Hao thought, feeling a sense of clarity.
This was the understanding brought by the physical path. His rich training memories gave him an extraordinary comprehension of his own body.
Body refining is not simple, nor is it as the old folks say, lacking in future prospects. On the contrary, Li Hao felt that the body refining techniques in the Listening Rain Tower were not advanced enough. Even the Qianjiao Sacred Body, which was on the sixth floor, could only be practiced to the Soul Continuation stage at the fourth layer!
Other techniques, however, could reach the peak directly.
Body refiners are overlooked for many reasons. Besides the difficulty of practice, Li Hao also believed the lack of techniques was a reason.
The body refining techniques recorded by the Li family are so few, let alone those from other places!
Li Hao looked at the panel. The Flawless Body, which was previously at Small Success, had now reached Great Success!
The merging of the Yin and Yang meridians seemed to connect all the major meridians in his body, allowing him to instantly gather and coordinate the energy from all of them, as if a dragon's spine had risen within him!
Li Hao tried it out and suddenly swung his fist.
With a whoosh, the punch created a wind like a tiger's roar, causing the water surface several meters ahead to dip slightly while sending up waves with a diameter of seven or eight meters!
If this punch hit solidly, it would be like a cannonball hitting the water, creating a massive splash!
Li Hao was momentarily stunned, his eyes filled with shock.
Through the detailed sensation of his body, he understood just how terrifying the power of that punch was.
With the energy of all his major meridians condensed, his strength had doubled!
To put it into perspective, right now, with the Yin and Yang meridians combined, along with the 69 opened major meridians, it was equivalent to 89 major meridians.
Each major meridian has 248 cycles, so his total strength had already reached 4.5 million jin!
With this double explosion, it was close to 9 million jin!!
This was almost reaching ten million jin of divine strength. Even a true dragon in the Zhou Tian realm wouldn’t possess such fierce power.
Even royal geniuses, who master top-tier luck and meridian-opening techniques, only have about 2 million jin of strength. Unless they also activate two major meridians, if they only have one, they wouldn’t have the ability to instantly condense the energy of all major meridians and double their strength!
"No wonder that Uncle Jiu is so terrifying. The merging of two meridians can instantly double one's strength; that’s truly frightening."
Li Hao's eyes sparkled with a strange light. He couldn't imagine how powerful he would be if he opened all 108 meridians!
To know, an ordinary Zhou Tian realm only has about 20,000 jin of strength.
Though this is the lower limit, the absolute minimum, 90% of Zhou Tian realm experts at the tenth level have at least over 100,000 jin of strength, but compared to Li Hao, there is still a huge gap.
"With my current strength, I could easily crush those elite Zhou Tian realm tenth-level warriors from the Yuan Character Camp!"
Li Hao thought to himself.
The elites of the Yuan Character Camp, even at the tenth level, only have about 500,000 jin of strength, making them no different from children in front of him.
Royal geniuses have four times the strength of the Yuan Character Camp warriors, while he has four times the strength of the royal geniuses!
Li Hao withdrew his fist and took a moment to catch his breath.
Having just unleashed the double power of Yin and Yang, he felt quite drained and couldn’t use it constantly. However, in a crucial battle, it would be enough to deliver a fatal blow!
Once his body relaxed and recovered, Li Hao looked toward the demon lake but didn’t see the second master. He mentioned he would go look for the old dragon of the lake, but it was unclear where he had gone.
This demon lake stretches for thousands of miles, and with its deep waters, a demon dragon hiding within is indeed hard to detect.
At that moment, a faint movement caught his attention.
Li Hao's ears perked up, and he quickly turned to look. Among the withered yellow leaves, a snow-white figure was moving, seemingly hiding.
He swiftly flew over to the figure and found it was a small white fox, about the size of a newborn puppy.
Upon closer inspection, the little fox didn’t have any demonic aura, looking like an ordinary wild fox.
"Little thing, what are you doing here? Where are your parents?"
Li Hao bent down and picked up the little fox from the leaves.
The little fox had a hint of orange-red on its ears, suggesting it was a mix between a white fox and a red fox. When Li Hao picked it up, it immediately pushed with its little paws, struggling to escape.
Li Hao placed it in his hands and looked around, but he didn’t see any sign of a big fox. Could this little one have sneaked out of its den?
Seeing this, Li Hao set it back down, waiting for its parents to come find it.
The little fox struggled to crawl through the leaves, being too small and moving slowly, not agile at all.
Li Hao chuckled and didn’t think much of it, returning to the lake to continue fishing.
Not long after, a figure flew back—it was Li Mu Xiu.
When Li Hao saw him empty-handed, he knew the search for the dragon had failed. Over the past six months, the old man had searched countless times, but clearly, the dragon was extremely cautious and cunning. After all, to reach the level that Li Mu Xiu was interested in, it must have at least a few thousand years of life.
"Hmph."
Seeing Li Hao’s cheerful expression, Li Mu Xiu snorted coldly and waved his sleeve, saying, "What about you? Empty-handed?"
"I caught a small one, a Tongli realm fish demon," Li Hao said with a grin.
Li Mu Xiu rolled his eyes, getting even angrier.
As the sun began to set, Li Mu Xiu hurriedly caught a Tongli realm fish demon to avoid returning empty-handed, and then took Li Hao back to Qingzhou City.
Before leaving, Li Hao noticed that the little fox had crawled a bit farther away and still hadn’t been found by the big fox. He asked the old man to help look for it. In the end, the old man searched around and only found a pool of blood and some white fur. From the scene, it seemed the big fox had been eaten by some beast.
Such things happen often in the wild. Li Hao sighed and found the little fox, who was still cluelessly crawling around, and took it back to Qingzhou City.
From then on, a touch of snow-white appeared among the withered yellow leaves in the Mountain River Courtyard.
(End of chapter)