Starting as dockworkers, they swept through Chongqing.

Chapter 105 The Great Sea Whale Guiding Technique, Observing the Stone Carvings

The dim light cast Xilun's tall silhouette on the wall.

He leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping unconsciously on the table, his mind constantly processing his understanding of the Extraordinary System.

From a frail, ordinary person, crossing the boundary between life and death to become a first-order baptist, this process is essentially a brutal transformation of the outermost layer of the human body.

The training focuses on the skin membrane, forging loose skin into a resilient vessel capable of bearing extraordinary power.

The transition from the baptized to the second-order "ripper" is a long and arduous ordeal that penetrates to the very core.

At this stage, the focus is no longer on superficial defense, but on the entire body's burning flesh and blood.

One must squeeze every fiber and every muscle in the body to its limit, breaking free from that invisible second shackle in extreme pain, in order to truly ascend to the lofty second-tier extraordinary ripper.

This process is by no means an idyllic meditation, but requires constantly tearing your own body apart, allowing muscle fibers to secrete more mysterious substances through repeated breakage and reconstruction.

Using this as a medium, they frantically absorbed the extraordinary characteristics that roamed between heaven and earth, constantly strengthening themselves, and finally forging that powerful physical body that was called the "Holy Body" by high-level extraordinary beings.

The "Great Ocean Whale Guiding Technique" that Xilun chose after careful consideration is an extraordinary breathing technique that is extremely suitable for his current situation in many aspects.

The booklet contains a breathtakingly vivid account of the origins of this guiding technique.

That was a tragic story that has been lost to the long river of time.

This guiding technique originated a thousand years ago.

At that time, a giant steel ship carrying countless treasures and powerful warriors was unfortunately caught in a raging underwater whirlpool while crossing forbidden waters.

The desperate search and rescue team included several highly skilled swimmers, some of whom even possessed supernatural abilities.

However, under the terrifying pressure of the deep sea, enough to crush steel, all skill and struggle seem so pale and powerless.

Ordinary people don't even have time to scream before they are instantly crushed into a blurry mass of flesh by that irresistible force, the sound of bones shattering barely audible in the deathly silence of the deep sea.

But miracles of life are often born from the deepest despair.

One of them, in a state of lucidity with his internal organs on the verge of rupture and his consciousness fading, did not die immediately even when he was caught in the center of the vortex that could crush everything.

Instead, during the endless fall, in the dark depths of the ocean trench, he witnessed a scene he would never forget.

He saw an ancient, massive whale that was thousands of feet long.

The colossal beast, as large as a mountain range, slept peacefully under the terrifying water pressure powerful enough to crush even the finest diamonds.

The enormous internal organs of the giant whale seem to contain the rhythm of the universe. Each extremely slow and deep breath it takes will cause a devastating undercurrent in the deadly deep sea, and even the surrounding seawater will be squeezed to create visible ripples.

As the person lay dying, their soul seemed to experience some kind of mysterious resonance.

In his desperate situation, he had an epiphany and, with amazing perseverance and will to survive, began to forcibly imitate the ancient rhythm of the whale's internal organs rising and falling and its breathing.

He frantically mobilized every last bit of vital energy in his body, vibrating it at an extremely strange frequency to resist the deadly pressure of the seawater.

Ultimately, he miraculously survived thanks to this borrowed immense power.

After returning to land, he seemed to have gone mad, constantly recalling and observing the posture of the giant whale that was engraved in the depths of his soul. He devoted his entire life to recording his observations of the giant whale into an obscure breathing technique.

The subsequent descriptions of this breathing technique in the booklet made Siren's heart race even faster.

Once this breathing technique is mastered, the practitioner's breathing will become extremely deep and long, like an undercurrent surging in the deep sea, continuous and unending.

The most noticeable change is that lung capacity will increase several times over, providing the body with a continuous and terrifying burst of power.

This breathing technique is divided into five levels.

With each advancement to the next level, the seemingly minor fluctuations in blood and qi can significantly improve one's physical attributes and dramatically refine the quality of one's strength.

Moreover, its greatest advantage is that it is extremely easy to get started, without requiring much precious extraordinary resources to accumulate, and it does not even require the cultivator to have any dazzling talent.

However, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

What's disheartening is that the process of practicing this breathing technique is extremely tedious, boring, and difficult, like trying to carve an iceberg with a needle.

The first level might only require a year of arduous practice to achieve.

But once you get to the second level, it takes two years of continuous polishing, day and night.

The third level will take four years.

The fourth level will take eight years.

And that elusive fifth level will take a full sixteen years!

It's important to understand that this is merely a transitional breathing technique applicable to the baptismal stage.

For those extraordinary individuals who are eager to gain power and seize resources in a short period of time, it is simply not worth investing so much time in such a desperate struggle.

Thirty-one years of youth is enough to turn a genius into a pile of bones.

Seeing this, Xilun was not discouraged. Instead, he let out a long breath of hot air that had been trapped in his chest.

His eyes gleamed in the dim light.

The breathing technique, with its seemingly despairing features, was practically a vessel tailor-made for him.

As for that outrageously long time cost —

A cold smile curled at the corner of Xilun's mouth.

Based on his comparisons and explorations over this period, he knew that the most amazing feature of the Crimson Editor he possessed was that it allowed him to completely ignore the constraints of the time law by endlessly "grinding" experience, thus steadily and efficiently improving his skill level.

As long as this skill can be displayed on the panel, he is not so afraid of this fatal flaw that is fatal to ordinary people.

The next morning, the fog over the Greywater River had not yet dissipated, and the air was filled with a strong smell of fish and coal smoke.

Helen, wearing a long grey-black trench coat, went to White Crow Wharf to meet with Mr. Wall.

Inside the wooden pavilion, the withered Mr. Wall was still slowly and methodically polishing his rusty harpoon, his movements containing a certain unsettling rhythm.

Nothing dramatic happened, and the high-risk escort mission that Xilun had anticipated did not materialize.

Wall simply raised his sharp, eagle-like eyes and glanced at him, his voice hoarse as he told him to rest well, consolidate his post-baptism state, and patiently await any work that might be assigned to him.

Xilun bowed slightly in agreement and was happy to comply.

After leaving the dock, he immediately returned to the hotel, locked himself in his room, and began to study the esoteric notes he had taken in his occult classes with great eagerness.

Time flies when you're focused.

As night fell, darkness once again enveloped this steel city shrouded in steam.

Siren arrived at the Iron Cross Fighting Club classroom right on time.

After finishing his focused study session with Daisy, he straightened his clothes and walked steadily to the front desk of the club's lobby on the first floor.

"Good evening, Miss." Siren stopped at the counter, his voice perfectly calm. "Have you heard anything about the application I submitted this morning regarding observing the Giant Whale Guiding Spell stone carving?"

The receptionist immediately recognized the young man with a unique aura. She quickly opened a thick register beside her, her slender fingers sliding across it as she carefully examined it.

"Hello, Mr. Celen." She looked up, gave a professional smile, and said, "The headquarters has already approved it; you can observe."

"Now, you may proceed to the second room on the left on the fourth floor. There, you will view the stone carvings under the supervision of a dedicated supervisor for one hour."

She paused, her tone becoming more serious: "The price is one pound. Please note that exceeding the time limit will result in extremely severe penalties."

Without the slightest hesitation, Siron took out a heavy, gleaming British pound coin from his pocket and gently pushed it over.

This is the wealth he earned with his life.

Taking a pass stamped with red wax from the receptionist, Xilun turned around and walked steadily up the spiral staircase covered with a scarlet carpet toward the mysterious fourth floor.

The fourth floor of the club seemed completely separated from the noisy and luxurious lobby below.

The air was filled with an ancient, musty smell, mixed with the scent of some kind of burnt preservative, which made people unconsciously slow down their breathing.

As soon as he stepped into the dimly lit corridor on the fourth floor, Xilun's body tensed up instinctively.

His keen senses instantly detected an extremely sharp gaze, as if it could pierce the skin, fixed intently on him from the depths of the shadows.

He stopped, his long, slender fingers subtly gripping the pepper box in his trench coat pocket, his sharp gaze sweeping across the corridor like a blade.

However, apart from the dim gas wall lamps and a few blurry oil paintings on the walls, he did not notice any suspicious figures.

Xilun let out a long breath, relaxing his tense muscles slightly.

This is a core area heavily guarded by the headquarters, so it's reasonable to expect that high-level extraordinary individuals would be secretly monitoring it.

He composed himself, stepped onto the heavy carpet, and arrived at the door of the second room on the left.

The pitch-black ironwood gate was devoid of any carvings, exuding only a cold and rejecting aura.

Xilun raised his hand and gently knocked on the door with his knuckles.

"Knock, knock."

The dull knocking echoed in the empty corridor.

A moment later, an extremely old sound, like two pieces of dry tree bark rubbing against each other, came from the crack in the door.

"Come in."

Xilun grasped the cold brass doorknob and slowly pushed the door open.

An even stronger sense of the passage of time wafted over.

There wasn't a single lamp lit in the room; it was pitch black all around, like an abyss that swallowed up light.

With the faint light filtering through the corridor, Xilun could barely make out an old man with a hunched back curled up in a dilapidated rocking chair near the door.

The old man was wearing a drab gray robe and holding a heavy book in his hands. He was looking down as if he were reading intently by some invisible light.

"Close the door." The old man didn't even lift his head, his voice still hoarse. "It's 8:09 now. You can leave here in an hour."

Xilun slammed the door shut, completely cutting off the last bit of light from the outside world.

His gaze passed over the old man and landed in the very center of the room.

There was a huge booth there, completely protected by a thick glass dome.

Through the glass, you can vaguely see a huge stone carving covered with intricate patterns lying quietly inside.

The stone carving was very large, about two or three meters long, and its entire surface had a depressing dark blue color.

Not only are there densely packed, strangely shaped special characters engraved on it, but also something resembling a mural is faintly visible in the darkness at the edges of the characters.

Siren walked silently to the glass dome.

Even through the thick bulletproof glass, he could still feel the grandeur and desolation emanating from the stone carving, as if it came from the depths of the ocean, and he was deeply shocked.

He stared at the blurry darkness for a while, then thought for a moment, turned to the figure in the corner and asked, "Excuse me, could you turn on the light?"

The old man turned a page of the book, the paper making a crisp rustling sound.

Please make yourself at home.

After saying that, he continued to look down at his book, as if everything around him was irrelevant.

Xilun felt a slight chill run down his spine.

He keenly noticed that the old man was able to read normally in a completely dark room without any light source.

This is definitely not something that ordinary people can do; the other person's eye structure must have undergone some kind of mutation, perhaps possessing some extraordinary ability similar to night vision.

Xilun snapped out of his thoughts, reached out and found the brass switch on the wall, and pressed it hard.

A soft "click" sounded.

The glaring incandescent lights on the roof instantly illuminated the entire room as bright as day.

This time, Xilun was finally able to see the stone carvings inside the glass case clearly.

He first turned his attention to the murals that occupied most of the stone carvings.

The lines of the mural are rough and primitive, and the content seems to be an extremely tiny human figure, suspended in the boundless deep black water.

Below the figure is a terrifyingly large fish that almost occupies the entire bottom of the stone carving.

Above the giant fish, there are even distorted depictions of the alternation of the sun and moon, as well as huge tidal whirlpools created by the rise and fall of the seawater with each breath.

The whole painting exudes a sense of desolation and oppression.

After carefully imprinting every detail of the mural into his mind, Xilunzi turned to look at the dense text.

He glanced at it once, and his temples throbbed with a sharp headache.

He simply couldn't understand these tadpole-like, twisted characters.

They are not arranged in an orderly manner like ordinary letters, but intertwined and overlapping, as if they were living creatures wriggling on the paper.

Despite his mental discomfort, Xilun tried to memorize the material by rote.

However, these mystical-looking characters have extremely complex structures that defy conventional memory logic, making them very difficult to solidify in the mind.

He immediately changed his strategy, took out his notebook and charcoal pencil from his pocket, and tried to take notes through the glass.

However, when he put pen to paper and wrote those characters, he was horrified to find that what he wrote on the paper, although similar in shape, had completely lost the spirit and vitality of the stone carving, and seemed to be far removed from the original meaning.

Xilun exhaled a breath of slightly hot, stale air, feeling dizzy and lightheaded, with faint blood vessels even appearing on his retina.