Demon Immortal-Chapter 101: Duncan's Transformation
Duncan jumped through the bush and swung his sword in a vicious manner.
The demonic beast that was fleeing from him let out a mournful cry and died, as Duncan's sword cut into its body with ease. Hot blood splashed across Duncan's face as he calmly wiped it away.
Grabbing the bleeding beast's body, Duncan lifted it above his head and drank its blood hungrily. When his hunger was satiated, Duncan produced a gourd made of wines from his bag and collected the remaining blood nonchalantly.
It had been ten days since he had been left in the wilderness by his senior brother.
During these ten days, Duncan had gone through an earth-shattering transformation both physically and mentally. He no longer shied away from fights. Rather, he welcomed them with gusto.
Even if he could feel that the demonic beast in front of him was stronger than he was, Duncan readily engaged in a fight against the beast these days. Sometimes he would eke out a victory, sometimes he would have to flee with his tail tucked behind.
Regardless, he never shied away from a fight.
Duncan had a few goals these days. If the demonic beast he came across was stronger than him, he would fight until he wounded it and then flee from it. If the beast was weaker, then he would hunt them down and kill them no matter where they tried to flee.
With these two creeds in mind, Duncan's time in this wilderness became a constant slew of battles. There would rarely be any time from battling one beast to another. By the time he was done with one beast, he would have wandered into the territory of another beast and it would also attack him.
Duncan never cared about doing things discreetly. He never hid and found an appropriate time to assassinate a demonic beast. He preferred to engage them head-on and fight it out with them.
With such an attitude, Duncan almost lost his life multiple times in these ten days.
To anyone else, such a reckless manner of cultivating would be a huge danger. But, to Duncan, this was the ideal way to cultivate his <Slaughter Demon Sutra>.
By putting his life on the line and battling non-stop he had made tremendous progress in the past ten days. Every time he had been forced into a corner, he somehow found himself breaking through and escaping his predicament one after the other.
His cultivation has been on the rise continuously for the past ten days. He was close to reaching the seventh level of the Qi Gathering realm by now. The seventh level of the Qi Gathering realm is also called as Advanced Qi Gathering stage. Form being a novice in cultivation to reaching the Advanced Qi Gathering stage, Duncan has spent at most 20 days in total.
This showed how suited this cultivation technique was to cultivate in such a manner.
It was not just that. Duncan's increase in cultivation was just one of the effects of his arduous training regimen. Along with his cultivation realm, his martial techniques have also reached a new level in these ten days.
Constant fighting had seen his <Absolute Cut Sword Arts> increase in proficiency to a tremendous degree. These days, any casual slash from Duncan had the profundity of <Absolute Cut Sword Arts> in them.
Not just his sword art, the <Wind Chasing Steps> movement technique Duncan had cultivated had also reached a near-perfection proficiency due to his constant run-ins with powerful demonic beasts.
Every time he came across a powerful demonic beast, Duncan would clash with them for a while and suffer various injuries in a bid to injure it. The moment he injured it, Duncan would try to escape from the beast's clutches with all his strength.
After being injured by a weaker opponent, the demonic beasts weren't willing to let him run that easily. So, they would chase after him for a long time. Thus, his desperate bid to escape them made Duncan use <Wind Chasing Steps> to the ultimate level he could.
Several times, he had comprehended a bit of the essence of the martial arts technique while escaping and increased his speed tremendously to shake off the demonic beasts.
Thus, Duncan's proficiency in using the <Wind Chasing Steps> had almost reached the perfection stage. Currently, there was a thin film that was stopping him from reaching his full potential with this technique.
Duncan was beginning to feel these last few days that he was close to opening the door that was holding him at bay when it came to completely mastering this martial art and achieving perfection in it.
During these days, Duncan also intuitively realized that any martial arts had the potential to become a very strong technique. As long as one grasped the basic truth in which the martial art operated, one could further develop the technique by exploring that truth deeply.
For example, his <Slaughter Demon Sutra> is made to thrive in slaughter. It was where the full effect of his cultivation technique showed its might. Without engaging in slaughter, it is impossible to cultivate this technique.
Likewise, his <Absolute Cut Sword Arts> acted on the principle that a sword could cut absolutely everything. As long as the sword was sharp, it cut through anything in this world.
But, these days, Duncan began to realize that the sword mentioned in the booklet is not a physical sword or a treasured weapon. The sword was a metaphor. It actually referred to a kind of mindset. As long as a person understood this and explored this, their strength would increase tremendously.
Likewise, the cut mentioned wasn't just a sword cut. It was also a concept. As long as the user understood this concept, they could increase the power of their strikes multiple times, regardless of what weapon they held in their hands.
Unfortunately, Duncan has only been able to glimpse into these secrets from far away. Those concepts were cloudy in his mind. He didn't entirely understand the meaning behind them. While he knew what they represented, he wasn't able to understand them even a single bit.
Right now, he hasn't even scratched the surface with his techniques. He was like an outsider standing in the distance and looking enviously at the drunken reverie that was happening some distance away.
Only when he joined this drunken reverie would he be able to see, feel, and understand the reverie in an intimate manner. Standing at a distance and knowing that a reverie is happening was of little help to gain true understanding.
However, even knowing these things has increased Duncan's power considerably. Just being an outsider who knows about the reverie was enough to boost his strength to a whole new level.
Duncan could only imagine how ferocious his strength would become once he understood these things.
However, Duncan's improvements didn't just end there.
As an added bonus, Duncan's constant battles have honed his instincts to a ridiculous degree. Being constantly hunted or chasing after prey had made his danger sense to be developed to a high degree. Duncan could perceive even a falling leaf 100 meters behind him with his eyes closed.
Such terrifying battle awareness was no joke. For someone like Duncan, who was relatively weak in the grand scheme of things, to have such great instincts was almost demonic in nature. Such instincts can never be obtained easily. They can only be cultivated through countless battles. That is why those with great battle instincts will always be powerful seniors.
And with each difficult battle, his instincts were only improving constantly.
Not just the instinct, Duncan's eyesight, his hearing, his sense of smell, his body control, qi control, and every other aspect that would differentiate him from a typical cultivator were also improving at a tremendous rate.
These things are the factors that differentiate ordinary cultivators from powerful cultivators. As they say, a flower that was grown in a glass garden can never be as tenacious as a flower that blooms in the wild. While Duncan might not know this, these formative experiences will one day help him out of troubling situations.
Moreover, battling different demonic beasts came with its own perk. No two demonic beasts were similar in nature. Ever since they gained sentience and are able to cultivate, demonic beasts will differ from each other.
Whether it be personality, combat style, cunningness, or any other factor that allowed them to survive in the wild, these demonic beasts would have gone through different experiences and would have grown accordingly.
By battling against a variety of them, Duncan also began to learn to adapt his combat style accordingly. While he wasn't a great strategist, Duncan learned to adapt according to the needs of the battle midway through the fights.
If he realized that a particular demonic beast had a high physical resistance, he would try to find its weak spot and target it. If he realized that a particular demonic speed excelled in speed, he would try to outlast its endurance and kill it afterward.
Likewise, Duncan's battle tactics also began to evolve constantly through battles and he began to have an instinctive knowledge as to what to do in battle and when to do it. He began to hone his ability to capitalize on the openings and learned to identify feints from weakness after suffering a few times.
Having gone through a grueling tempering experience, Duncan's body also started to show the effects of such experiences physically. Duncan's body was no longer without any blemish. There were scars all over his body from half-healed wounds.
His clothes were in tatters and his temperament had gone through a drastic change. Earlier, there was a bit of naivety and inexperience radiating from Duncan's body. But, these days, a bloodthirsty aura seemed to permeate his body constantly.
Having been through numerous near-death encounters, Duncan's mentality also began to change. No longer was he struck with fear and rooted in his spot while facing powerful demonic beasts. These days, he was able to calm down and face their imposing presence without flinching much.
Such a steady mind can't be obtained by cultivating in the sect. One needs to go through a tempering of thousand battles to achieve it. While Duncan hadn't gone through thousand battles, his mindset was slowly moving toward that realm.
Above all, the biggest change to Duncan wasn't something that others could see physically or perceive upon seeing him. Only the most observant people would notice that almost subdued fire burning deep in Duncan's eyes and heart.
The biggest benefit Duncan obtained from these ten days was a kind of confidence in himself. It could be only noticed in his subtle gestures like the way his eyes always stared straight, his shoulders stood relaxed and high, and his walk became steady and measured in a mysterious way.
This confidence he began to have in him also gave birth to a kind of unflinching will that had a root in his desire to become a powerful cultivator.
*****
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