With each failure, he would summarize his experiences before attempting to comprehend the mysteries anew. Once he grasped what he believed to be the most promising method, he would try again with full confidence. Yet, the black gourd before him remained unmoved, its terrifying power effortlessly incinerating any force he sent within. Failure after failure, thousands of attempts—even Dongbo Xueying’s unshakable composure began to fray.
He had tried countless approaches, even abandoning methodical reasoning in favor of wild, unfocused comprehension—grasping whatever came to mind, hoping sheer randomness might stumble upon the answer. In three months, he had devised over two thousand techniques, yet all of them failed without exception.
“Haah…”
Dongbo Xueying exhaled deeply, the breath obliterating a distant mountain peak in its path. A violent tempest swirled around him, though fortunately, he had long since cleared the surrounding hundred thousand miles of any human presence—relocating any inhabitants through the Void Path to avoid disturbance.
His mood slightly calmer, he turned and retreated into his bamboo hut.
Seated cross-legged inside, he poured himself a cup of rare fruit wine, sipping slowly until his mind settled completely.
“This can’t continue,” Dongbo Xueying murmured. “After thousands of failures, even if I spend the remaining two years persisting like this, I’ll likely still fail.”
“Perhaps my approach has been wrong all along.”
He closed his eyes.
Within his consciousness, countless glowing characters flickered, forming a complete method.
“Each character is infinitely profound. To fully comprehend even one would take an eternity. To grasp them all would far exceed five years,” he mused silently. “That’s why I instinctively dismissed this path—I feared time was too short. So I only skimmed the surface of each character, trying to understand the method as a whole by piecing together their collective meaning.”
His awareness lingered on the shimmering characters. “Maybe… I should focus on just one.”
“The first character.”
All his consciousness converged upon the initial symbol of the method.
It pulsed with light, its fluctuations profound and inscrutable.
Dongbo Xueying immersed himself in its mysteries, unraveling every nuance of its undulations until, gradually, a new technique took shape in his mind.
“Could it be that fully comprehending a single character yields an entire method?” He opened his eyes in surprise. Yet, mastering just one had taken three whole months. At this rate, with less than two years left, he might only decipher seven more.
“Let’s test it.”
With a wave of his hand, the black gourd reappeared on the bamboo table.
Focusing his will, a single white character—crafted from Taihao Force—flew forth. Unlike the countless symbols he had conjured before, this one was far larger and more intricate.
Yet, as it entered the gourd, it too was silently annihilated by the terrifying power within.
“Another failure?” He frowned.
“No other choice. Press on.”
Closing his eyes, he stowed the gourd and turned his attention to the second character.
It shimmered with its own esoteric fluctuations.
Diligently, he deciphered it.
As he progressed, he noticed similarities to the first character—being of the same lineage, comprehension came faster. In just a month, he had fully grasped it.
“Did I misinterpret the first one?”
Now that he had mastered two, doubts arose about his initial understanding. Adjusting his approach, he refined the technique into a new form.
“Hum.”
The revised method produced another white character, but it too met destruction within the gourd.
…
Having failed on the first path, Dongbo Xueying now committed wholly to the second—there was no alternative.
The third character took twenty days. Again, he found flaws in his prior deductions and revised the method. Failure.
The fourth: fifteen days.
Fifth: twelve.
Sixth: eleven.
Seventh: ten.
Eighth: ten.
…
Each time, he refined his understanding, and though every attempt ended in failure, an inexplicable intuition told him he was nearing the truth. Unlike the first three years—where he had devised thousands of distinct, flawed methods—now he was honing a single technique, correcting its imperfections step by step.
…
Thick snow blanketed the mountain range, burying the peak where Dongbo Xueying secluded himself in cultivation.
Pushing open the bamboo door, he scattered the piled snow.
Trudging through the deep drifts, his footprints sinking heavily, he reached the cliffside and sat cross-legged atop the soft snow, closing his eyes to resume his meditation. By now, deciphering the Voidwalker’s method had become second nature. He often shifted locations—sometimes by the lakeshore below, other times perched on the thick branches of an ancient tree—but most often, he returned to either the bamboo hut or this cliff.
“The fifty-first character…”
His consciousness fixated on the golden symbols flickering in his mind.
This time, it took only eight days to fully grasp it. He made a slight adjustment to the method.
“This should be it.”
With a wave, the black gourd materialized atop the snow. Taihao Force surged forth, condensing into a single character—white at first, but as an invisible ripple coursed through it, the symbol shifted to pale gold, then solidified into radiant gold.
A golden character hovered before him.
Dongbo Xueying’s heart raced. This was unprecedented. A surge of anticipation gripped him—this time, it might truly work.
“Whoosh.”
The golden symbol seeped into the gourd.
*Hummm—*
Like a key turning in a lock, the gourd’s internal formations activated. A formless power awakened, wrapping around and controlling the scorching “fireball” within—a sphere whose true size rivaled a sun, its flames capable of annihilating all in their path. Yet, the gourd’s formations birthed a “void force” that encased the fireball completely, rendering its fury harmless.
“So… heavy.”
The sheer weight of the fireball pressed upon Dongbo Xueying’s very soul, his heart trembling under the strain. It was like a child struggling to lift a stone lock—far beyond his current capacity.
The gap between their levels was immense.
Controlling it was exhausting.
Yet, he sensed that if he pushed himself to the limit, he could harness a sliver of the fireball’s power—the absolute maximum his soul could endure. Even that sliver would likely obliterate him instantly.
“Congratulations, congratulations!”
A child in a red bellyband materialized atop the gourd, clapping joyfully. “I was getting worried! If you’d failed, I’d have had to wait who knows how many cosmic eras for the next promising candidate!”
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