Devour: Can you also draw entries from clone projection worlds?

After descending from Mount Hua, you did not return to Yunzhuang, but instead headed south to Lingnan.

Lingnan is shrouded in miasma and teeming with poisonous insects, making it the place that martial arts practitioners in the Central Plains least want to go, but it is also the place that desperate criminals and evil masters like to hide.

This place is far from the reach of the emperor, beyond the jurisdiction of the government, and where upright people are unwilling to come, making it the perfect place for you to "hunt".

In just half a month, you found more than a dozen targets.

Mountain bandit leaders, womanizers, and rogue cultivators—these people have mediocre martial arts skills and just the right amount of internal energy to target.

Absorbing one grants about ten years' worth of pure internal energy; absorbing two grants twenty years; absorbing ten grants a hundred years, not to mention the additional internal energy gained. This is suitable for those with weaker cultivation levels.

In just half a month, the power of the Northern Darkness within your body has increased by nearly two hundred years. At this rate, you will gain three to four thousand years of internal energy in a year.

But you're not satisfied; you want more, you want it faster.

You found a secluded cave in the mountains of Lingnan, sat cross-legged, and began to deduce a brand new technique, expanding the absorption range of the Beiming Divine Art from "contact" to "range".

The Beiming Divine Skill originally required physical contact to absorb internal energy, which was very inconvenient in actual combat.

You have to touch the other person first in order to absorb their internal energy. If the other person doesn't let you touch them, you won't be able to absorb it.

But what if we could expand the absorption range of the Northern Darkness Divine Art to several feet around it?

No contact is needed; as long as you enter your "domain," the internal energy will be automatically absorbed by you.

This may sound like a fantasy, but with the support of terms like "all things return to one," "harmony between man and nature," and "boundless freedom," it's not impossible.

Close your eyes and release your Northern Darkness Inner Force to form a spherical domain with a diameter of one zhang.

The primordial energy within the domain began to stir, as if being disturbed by an invisible hand.

You try to "compress" the primordial energy within the domain, making it dense, like a liquid.

Then you guide the Northern Darkness internal energy to circulate within this domain, and with each cycle, the domain expands by one inch.

This process is extremely slow and extremely difficult.

The characteristic of Beiming internal energy is "absorption," not "release."

It's already difficult enough to make it go out into the open, let alone to make it form a stable domain. That's even more difficult.

You sat in the cave for ten days and ten nights without eating, drinking, or sleeping.

On the morning of the eleventh day, you opened your eyes.

The domain has been established.

It is three zhang in diameter and spherical.

You have complete control over the primordial energy within this domain, and you can sense anyone or anything that enters it.

If someone is circulating internal energy within this area, you can guide their internal energy into your own body through the resonance of the area, without any physical contact.

You stood up and walked out of the cave, then found a few bandits in the mountains of Lingnan to test your skills.

As the domain expanded, within a radius of three zhang, the internal energy of those mountain bandits surged into your body like water being pumped out.

In the blink of an eye, the bandits collapsed to the ground, their inner strength completely gone. You nodded in satisfaction and withdrew your domain.

The new exercise is even more effective than you expected.

No contact or fighting is required; as long as the other party circulates their internal energy within your domain, you can absorb it.

This means you can silently absorb internal energy in crowded places without attracting anyone's attention.

In the days that followed, you began your frenzied "hunt".

Every day, you will go to different places, seek different goals, and absorb different internal energy.

Traveling during the day, "hunting" at night, and meditating in the inn late at night.

When you've exhausted the evil people of Lingnan, go to Jiangnan; when you've exhausted the evil people of Jiangnan, go to the Central Plains; when you've exhausted the evil people of the Central Plains, go to the borderlands.

Over the course of a year, you absorbed the internal energy of nearly two hundred people, increasing your total internal energy by more than six thousand years.

But that's not all; you want ten thousand years. At least ten thousand years.

Only in this way will you have enough confidence to face enemies many times stronger than the top masters in the world of Tian Long Ba Bu after you return to the main world.

In the second year, you intensified your "hunting" efforts, absorbing two or even three people a day. Of course, this required people with ten years of refined internal energy cultivation.

Your total internal energy begins to grow at an astonishing rate, from six thousand to seven thousand, and from seven thousand to eight thousand.

By the end of the second year, your total internal energy had exceeded ten thousand years.

Ten thousand years—a level of skill that ordinary people would need to cultivate for ten thousand years to achieve—and you only took two years.

The Northern Darkness Divine Art is terrifying beyond belief.

At the end of the year, you returned to the shores of Taihu Lake and drew the next year's entry under the osmanthus tree.

[Year Two Complete, Entry Extraction in Progress... Detected that the host has absorbed over five thousand years of internal energy within a year, with the total internal energy exceeding ten thousand years... Congratulations to the host for obtaining the purple entry, "All Streams Return to Their Source."]

[Effect: All absorbed internal energy is completely integrated, without distinction of nature or source.]

When using any martial art, internal energy automatically transforms into the form most suitable for that martial art, increasing its effectiveness threefold and reducing its consumption by 90%.

As a side effect, it greatly enhances the ability to perceive and manipulate the primordial energy of heaven and earth, allowing one to draw upon the power of heaven and earth from a wider range.

[Quality: Purple Epic. The "All Laws Reach One" school has been automatically merged into this entry.]

Looking at this word, the corners of your mouth turned up, and you couldn't suppress it.

This is purple! Another purple epic-level entry?!

"All streams converge," meaning all internal energies are completely integrated and indistinguishable. This means you will no longer have to worry about the different natures of the internal energies you absorb causing them to conflict with each other.

Regardless of whether you absorb the Nine Yin Internal Force, the Northern Darkness Internal Force, the Toad Stance Internal Force, or any other random internal force, once it enters your body, it will be automatically fused into the purest Northern Darkness Internal Force.

Moreover, the side effect is a significant enhancement in the ability to perceive and manipulate the primordial energy of heaven and earth, allowing one to draw upon the power of heaven and earth from a wider range.

By aligning with the unity of heaven and man, your domain can expand from three zhang to ten zhang, and the efficiency of absorbing internal energy will at least double.

Ten thousand years of internal energy is just the beginning; you can become even stronger.

[System notification: Current keyword statistics: 40 white, 7 green, 2 blue, 5 purple. The five keywords are: All streams converge, the Northern Sea returns to the ocean, all things return to one, boundless freedom, and harmony between heaven and man.]

Next, you set off from Taihu Lake and head towards Jiangnan. This time, you are not going to "hunt," but to find someone—Huang Shang.

While you were hunting, or rather, cultivating, you overheard some fragmented information from someone, which mentioned Huang Shang, and even described it in great detail.

Huang Shang was the author of the Nine Yin Manual. He was a civil official who read through the Taoist canon and comprehended martial arts on his own, eventually writing the Nine Yin Manual. He is one of the most mysterious figures in Jin Yong's martial arts world.

No one knows where he went in the end, nor does anyone know how strong he really was.

But you know, if this person were still alive, he would definitely be an extremely terrifying being.

A civil official, with no martial arts background, could comprehend the world's most advanced martial arts simply by reading the Daoist canon. Such talent transcends the description of "genius"; it's "monstrous."