“That should be more than enough, I should think,” Han Sen said with a nod. He was still thinking about the fight he had just endured against that xenogeneic.
Han Sen thought his fighting power was decent at this point, but that xenogeneic had completely suppressed him in every way imaginable. Aside from the power gap between them, there were also important differences in the ways that the two of them fought.
Now that he thought about it some more, he realized he had been completely suppressed. He had lost in the most embarrassing way possible.
“It was just a doppelganger, and yet, it had such a scary amount of power. I wonder how strong its true self is, then?” Han Sen wondered to himself.
Exquisite and Li Keer looked at each other. They had played Han Sen perfectly, and now they could barely suppress their laughter.
Han Sen didn’t know that the doppelganger he battled was different from most other doppelgangers. It was kind of like a child of the true god xenogeneic. Although its power was indeed primitive class, the battle experience it possessed—and its skill and will—were top-notch. Han Sen was the only person who would struggle to defeat such a beast; even most deifieds would lose badly against this opponent.
“Let him lose a few more times against it. Let’s wear him down a bit,” Li Keer smiled and thought to herself.
Han Sen’s wounds recovered quickly. To aid his self-recovery power, Li Keer and Exquisite provided him with a geno fluid produced from xenogeneic genes. It was very good for healing one’s physical wounds. With the combination of those two powers, every speck of damage had disappeared within seven or eight hours.
Over the next few days, Han Sen went to the Jail Demon Hall to do battle against the xenogeneic. He came up with many different plans to bring the creature down, but every attempt was useless.
The longest Han Sen was able to last inside was two minutes. Once he was done, he had to teleport away. If he hadn’t, he would have been killed.
He would only be given a sliver of time to cast his knife airs. Even when he used Under the Sky, it seemed to do nothing to the xenogeneic. Not only did he fail to kill it, but he couldn’t inflict a single wound on his foe.
“It really is too strong.” Han Sen couldn’t help but compliment how frighteningly powerful his latest xenogeneic opponent really was. But despite his repeated defeats, he never thought about giving up. As soon as his body recovered, he went back to the Jail Demon Hall to fight. He was determined to find a way to kill it.
But every time he went there, he would leave disappointed. The xenogeneic was too strong to be predictable, and so Han Sen couldn’t figure out the creature’s patterns and use those to manipulate it, either.
The more Han Sen went, the more Li Keer and Exquisite started to worry. They had only wanted to get rid of some of Han Sen’s pride. They wanted to use that xenogeneic to wear down his resolve.
But if he kept going on like this, and he eventually broke down completely, they would have a destroyed silkworm on their hands.
Fortunately, they hadn’t sensed any sign that Han Sen was about to give up. Although he kept losing, after each failure, he would just start thinking about how he might defeat the beast the next time he did battle. His entire mind seemed devoted to coming up with ways to defeat the fiend. He never wasted brain power on thinking about anything else.
That made Exquisite and Li Keer feel a little safer with what they were doing. They just hoped that the time limit would pass soon. Then, Han Sen would have no choice but to give up. It wouldn’t destroy too much of his confidence, they predicted.
“No… that still won’t work.” Han Sen failed again. He dragged his body, which was riddled with slashes and puncture wounds, out of the Jail Demon Hall. He shook his head.
Exquisite and Li Keer weren’t there. Because Han Sen now spent his entire days either fighting or healing, they stopped hanging around after the first few days. It was dull. They would occasionally come back to feel how Han Sen felt during the fight, but not all of the time.
Also, due to the fact that Han Sen kept losing, they were only learning how to deal with failure. That didn’t help them much. Because there wasn’t much else for them to learn, they stopped focusing on his thoughts as much.
“It looks like taking down that xenogeneic won’t be easy. Hey wait, it’s almost time to meet up with Mister White! I need to go to the core area.” Han Sen thought about the Xuan Yellow Sutra, and he realized it was time for him to take a break from fighting.
When he saw Li Keer again, Han Sen mentioned his need to visit the core area again. Li Keer hastily agreed to his request.
She and Exquisite had grown worried about Han Sen’s constant fighting in the Jail Demon Hall. They were worried that being defeated endlessly might do too much damage to his confidence. Now that Han Sen had expressed a desire to go to the core area, they thought it was a best-case scenario.
Li Keer took Han Sen back to the oasis so he could enter the core area.
Of course, Gu Qingcheng was there at the place they were supposed to meet. When he saw Gu Qingcheng there, Han Sen couldn’t wait to ask, “Okay, what did you learn? Did you receive news from Mister White?”
“This is what Mister White asked me to give you.” Gu Qingcheng passed a notebook to Han Sen, alongside the original version of the Xuan Yellow Sutra.
Han Sen accepted them and put away the Xuan Yellow Sutra. He opened up the notebook to have a look. The pages were filled with an elegant script, which had clearly been written by hand. The notebook had a hundred pages, and almost all of them contained notes. There were only two or three pages that were empty. Clearly, Mister White had put a lot of effort into this.
“Mister White really is so nice.” There weren’t many people who were as kind as Mister White, Han Sen decided. He was the sort of person who did impressive things and achieved a lot. He was no common man.
Instead of leaving the core area, Han Sen remained there to read Mister White’s notebook. He didn’t want Li Keer and Exquisite looking over his shoulder as he studied, metaphorically speaking.
The content of the notebook was a detailed analysis of the Xuan Yellow Sutra. It also had notes on the problems it might cause and the aftermath of using it.
As Han Sen read through the content of the notebook, he learned a great deal. And not just about the Xuan Yellow Sutra, either. He began to understand the Dongxuan Sutra and the Blood-Pulse Sutra to a higher level.
“Mister White is a real grandmaster. Compared to him, I am just a peasant with some good luck and a bit of motivation,” Han Sen murmured, shaking his head as he closed the notebook.
Actually, Han Sen’s compliment wasn’t strictly accurate. Everyone’s path to study was different. Mister White had focused on acquiring knowledge. He knew so much, which put him on a higher plane than Han Sen when it came to intellectual pursuits. But then again, Han Sen wasn’t the sort of person who focused on amassing huge amounts of knowledge, so it wasn’t strange that Mister White outmatched him in that area. Comparing the two men in such a singular way wasn’t very fair.
Han Sen memorized everything that was written in the notebook, but he didn’t want to destroy it. After all, Mister White put in the time and effort to write it all out by hand.
“Take this back to Planet Eclipse and ask Zero to hide it.” Han Sen gave the notebook to Gu Qingcheng so she could take it back.
After Gu Qingcheng left, Han Sen tried to digest the content of the notebook. The more he thought about it, the more shaken he felt. Based on what Mister White had described, if Han Sen finished practicing the Xuan Yellow Sutra, it would become a very scary power.
“Is it really possible to reverse Blood-Pulse?” Han Sen was shocked. If what Mister White told him about the Xuan Yellow Sutra was accurate, it was terrifying.
