Having purchased the Pine Grain Wind Sword from the Hundred Arms Pavilion, along with the pre-ordered Willow Leaf Talisman Blades and silver needles, the two lost all interest in further browsing and returned directly to the carriage.

Su Chuxue remained silent, making no further effort to conceal the worry etched in her eyes.

It wasn't until Zong Shou returned to the carriage that she suddenly spoke, "Young Master, that Zong Yu has always been cunning. What he says is always half-true, half-false; you shouldn't pay it any mind. The Sovereign has merely lost contact temporarily; perishing is absolutely impossible. With his capability, how many people in this world could possibly overcome him?"

Zong Shou inwardly mused: if what Zong Yu said truly didn't warrant attention, why did Chuxue look so distressed earlier?

Even if his father—whom he had never met and held no memory of—had not truly perished, the circumstances were likely dire to the extreme. If Zong Yu lacked significant assurance, how would he dare take such a massive risk, utterly disregarding the consequences, to assassinate him, the heir apparent?

A chill settled deep in his heart, yet Zong Shou displayed not a flicker of it externally. With a gentle smile, he stepped into the carriage.

But once seated, his expression was entirely overcome by a bitter, self-mocking smile.

What was he to do now? Judging by Zong Yu’s demeanor, he was clearly holding all the cards. It was highly probable that the moment Zong Shou stepped foot out of this Ancient Spirit Collection, the attack would commence.

Although he was still unaware of Zong Yu’s ultimate trump card, the man himself, coupled with those two servants, presented an already formidable challenge.

Must he perish on his very first foray into this era? He still didn't grasp the intricacies of his own situation, nor did he know if there was any hope of returning. Yet, even an ant clings to life; why should a human be any different?

His gaze slowly turned icy. Zong Shou flipped his right hand, bringing several silver needles and a piece of azure crystal into his grasp.

The needles were prepared for his own use—acupuncture, combined with Daoyin techniques, could further enhance the strengthening of his body. The latter, taken from his own pouch, was a beast crystal harvested from a second-tier Azure-Faced Wolf, currently valued at ten thousand silver ingots, or one hundred liang of gold, in the market.

However, if Zong Shou chose, both these items could be repurposed to address the imminent crisis. But taking this step meant there was truly no turning back, no possibility of halting once started. If he failed to reach the pinnacle, only hell awaited him.

After a moment of silent contemplation, Zong Shou let out a cold laugh. To still hesitate and waver at this juncture showed his nature was far too weak! Before entering the Ancient Spirit Collection, he already knew he had no other recourse; why the lingering indecision?

Lighting the lamp inside the carriage, he scorched the steel needles briefly. Then, disregarding Chuxue waiting outside, Zong Shou gripped a needle in his right hand, his arm steady as a vise, and accurately inserted the inch-long steel needles one by one into his body.

A total of forty needles pierced various acupoints along his meridians. He sat in concentration, eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to the pain.

Within the Cloud Realm, there were numerous races. Consequently, the meridian points varied among individuals. Even siblings born of the same parents possessed slight differences. Only the vital acupoints and the Nine Wheel Meridians of the body were broadly similar. As a half-demon whose two meridians ran in parallel, Zong Shou had to be extra cautious.

These needles were for the Golden Needle Meridian Mapping Technique he learned in his previous life, derived from acupuncture, a method even more precious than top-tier martial secret arts! Ordinary cultivators knew only the route of a single wheel meridian and the precise location of a few common points, an understanding that only slightly improved with the advancement of medicine in later eras. But in his past life, Zong Shou used this very technique to accurately locate every single nexus point within an entire wheel meridian! The speed of his cultivation and the accumulation of true essence were incomparable to ordinary martial cultivators.

After inserting the needles, Zong Shou channeled his inner energy, guiding it through his body like flowing lead and mercury, observing his entire system internally. Within half an ke (a short period), his face was already ashen, his forehead covered in a dense layer of fine sweat. The effort seemed even more taxing than practicing his sword techniques once.

“The Body Wheel has Nine Meridians; first cultivate the Fetal Meridian to strengthen the foundation and secure the origin. Mapping sixteen acupoints for each of the two parallel wheel meridians is not bad. However, searching the entire body for the Wind Spirit Odd Points yielded only five locations. Never mind, five it is—” After all, his Qi Sea had only just opened, and his true essence was insufficient for a complete measurement of his entire body. Locating the majority relied on his past life’s experience, which was enough to satisfy him. With future cultivation success, he would naturally master that wheel meridian completely.

What concerned him most was finding the Wind Spirit Odd Points; five in total, no more, no less. There was no pleasant surprise, nor any deep disappointment.

Moving his hands again, with the same steadiness and accuracy, he pulled out the steel needles one by one, drawing thin lines of blood, unaffected by the physical exhaustion. Zong Shou immediately grasped several thumb-sized pieces of azure crystal—beast crystals from the second-tier Azure-Faced Wolf.

Without hesitation, he let out a sharp shout from his mouth: "Swallow Origin!"

At that instant, Zong Shou’s left hand acted like a magnet. Surrounding spiritual energy, even the nearby dust, was drawn in. Two fine, yet violent streams of vital essence began flowing down his arm, plunging directly into his Qi Sea. They circulated around the periphery, being tamed step by step, while being scoured by the surrounding blood and qi, acting like a sieve to wash away internal impurities.

His left hand once again took up the needles, inserting twenty-seven of them densely below his abdomen. After repeating this circulation process more than a dozen times, until the refinement reached its limit, he guided the essence into the wheel meridians. Simultaneously, Zong Shou expelled a puff of bloody mist.

The moment this forcibly absorbed vital essence from the beast crystals entered his body, it forcibly expanded his newly opened Qi Sea by a full twofold! To high-level martial cultivators, this essence was negligible, but to him at his current stage, the quantity was enormous.

The Qi Sea could not store it all, causing it to surge and impact every surrounding corner. Zong Shou strained, guiding the majority of the essence—like a tidal flood—forcefully into the two thick meridian entrances at the very bottom of the Qi Sea.

A crisp cracking sound echoed again in his ears, and a sweetness flooded his throat. Intense pain racked his body, as if countless high-speed drills were simultaneously piercing him, his consciousness nearly slipping into a coma.

He couldn't say how long it took, but Zong Shou gradually regained his senses. Looking internally at his lower abdomen, the scene was one of devastation, ravaged by the errant essence, riddled with countless lesions.

The only small comfort was that a segment of the meridian passage below the Qi Sea had clearly been broken through, and wisps of inner breath flowed within it. Under his perception, eight new, small points of light had appeared in his body, distributed along the two parallel wheel meridians, opposing each other. The cost was this segment of the meridian being riddled with holes, and the pain in his abdomen had hardly subsided.

Fortunately, the majority of that vital essence had been consumed, and the remainder he was gradually bringing under control.

Zong Shou gave a self-mocking laugh. Normal people cultivated sequentially, opening wheel meridians step-by-step to strengthen their inner breath. But with his dual-meridian constitution, any true essence circulating within him would split and conflict, causing unbearable pain, making normal completion impossible. Aside from specialized martial arts or elixirs capable of transforming bloodlines, the only method was the one he just employed: disregarding the process and using a near-barbaric force to blast the pathways open!

His Qi Sea and Fetal Wheel had now reached their limit. Pushing further would lead to unpredictable consequences. He would need at least four days to recover before attempting another breakthrough.

However, the preceding agony was merely the beginning. Besides the nine main meridians, the human body possessed numerous Jingwai Qixue (extraordinary points outside the main channels). The five Wind Spirit Odd Points he had recently mapped were Zong Shou’s current objective. At this moment, for him, the importance of these five odd points far outweighed even the main flow of the Body Wheel Meridians.