Chapter 56 - 48: Myriad Spells at a Glance, The Spell-Stealing Eye

Chapter 56: Chapter 48: Myriad Spells at a Glance, The Spell-Stealing Eye

[Cyan Lotus Flower Pupil (Cyan Lotus Pupil): Proficient 1/3000]

[Effect: Cyan lotuses bloom in the eyes. When activated, the user can observe the surroundings without any blind spots. Temporarily memorize witnessed Techniques. One glance encompasses myriad methods.]

[Current Experience Points: 2412]

"Temporarily memorize witnessed Techniques?" Lu Chen wondered.

He looked at the Skill Effects of the Proficient Level Cyan Lotus Flower Pupil. After a moment of thought, he extracted only one word—steal!

That’s right, steal.

"Your Technique is very useful, but in the next second, it will be mine!" he thought.

However, using the word "steal" to explain the Skill Effect of this Six-Petaled Cyan Lotus did not sound very pleasant. Therefore, Lu Chen gave this new Skill Effect a better-sounding name: Technique Theft.

Technique Theft. This was Lu Chen’s Description for the Skill of the Six-Petaled Cyan Lotus.

Aside from unlocking this new "Technique Theft" Effect, the visual acuity of the Cyan Lotus Pupil itself had also been significantly enhanced after the Skill upgrade. This would undoubtedly be a great help for Lu Chen when he analyzed the Seven Kills Sword Array later.

"But merely upgrading the Cyan Lotus Pupil is not enough. After all, this is only the first floor of the Sword Pavilion, and I’ve already encountered such powerful opponents," he reasoned to himself.

"Even though more than half of the fifth floor of the Sword Pavilion was sliced off, it visually seems to have retained the path to the third floor. The opponents on the third floor will definitely be far more formidable than those on the first. Conservatively speaking, they will possess Power at or above the Foundation Establishment Stage.

"And even if I learn the Sword Array on the first floor, my Power won’t actually improve in the short term due to the special nature of Sword Arrays requiring more than one person to execute.

"Therefore, if I want to clear this Dungeon, my current Cultivation is... still a bit too low."

With this in mind, Lu Chen looked at his Cultivation, which he hadn’t touched for some time.

[Name: Lu Chen (Cyan Cloud Sect Inner Sect Disciple)]

[Cultivation: Qi Cultivation Seventh Level (7700/30000)]

[Current Experience Points: 2412]

"I’ll first raise my Cultivation to the Qi Cultivation Eighth Level. Later, when I return to reality, I’ll go collect the Cultivation resources that Old Chen gave me," he decided.

"With those resources as a cover, I can completely cultivate the Cyan Lotus Flower Pupil to Breaking Realm and raise my Cultivation to the Peak of Qi Cultivation in a short amount of time without worrying about arousing suspicion.

"After all, the others don’t know that I just recently learned the Cyan Lotus Flower Pupil. They will only assume I’ve been cultivating this Pupil Skill for a long time. Coupled with the Cultivation resources Old Chen provided, my rapid increase in Cultivation within such a short time will undoubtedly be easy to explain."

Even while inside the Dungeon, the ever-cautious Lu Chen had already made ample preparations for how to explain his rapid Cultivation progress once he went back out!

Taking one step, looking ten steps ahead, and anticipating a hundred steps... this was Lu Chen’s path of prudence!

[You have consumed 300 Experience Points. Cultivation has been raised to the ’Qi Cultivation Eighth Level’...]

[Name: Lu Chen (Cyan Cloud Sect Inner Sect Disciple)]

[Cultivation: Qi Cultivation Eighth Level (8000/30000)]

[Current Experience Points: 2112]

"I’ll save the remaining Experience Points for now. First, I’ll strive to cultivate the Cyan Lotus Flower Pupil to Breaking Realm during this Dungeon run," he thought. "After all, to achieve Heavenly Dao Foundation Establishment, I still need to cultivate three similar Divine Techniques..."

With everything prepared, Lu Chen pushed open the doors to the Sword Pavilion once again and saw the Seven Sword Demons wandering about on the first floor.

Unsurprisingly, the moment the Seven Sword Demons spotted him, they directly launched their attacks.

In response, Lu Chen calmly raised his Ink Flood Dragon Sword.

"Come. Let me experience your skills once more."

The Seven Sword Demons wasted no words on Lu Chen, attacking in their Sword Array formation once again.

Try it? Then die trying!

Three minutes later.

"The Seven Kills Sword Array appears ordinary, but it conceals profound mysteries. It’s truly worthy of being the Sword Array that has carried the legacy of Sword Concealment Peak for a thousand years. It really is hard to grasp its essence after just one or two attempts..."

After a moment of contemplation, Lu Chen raised his head. He gazed at the blood-red longsword slowly descending upon him—or rather, the Seven Kills Sword Map hovering above the blood-red longsword.

His Cyan Lotus Pupils, which bore six petals, began to spin continuously. Numerous profound patterns subsequently materialized upon each petal. If one looked closely, they would discover that the patterns gradually manifesting on the Cyan Lotus Petals were exactly the same as the Sword Array map above the heads of the Seven Sword Demons!

Lu Chen... was stealing the Sword Array!

BOOM!

As the Giant Sword crashed into the ground, Lu Chen’s figure was once again submerged in the violent killing intent, completely vanishing.

The second Sword Pavilion challenge, failed!

Summarize mistakes after failure, and remember the pain amidst death.

Resurrecting for the second time, Lu Chen still wasn’t in a rush to initiate the challenge. Instead, he calmly recalled the Seven Kills Sword Array from moments ago.

In principle, the essence of the Seven Kills Sword Array was not a Technique. Lu Chen shouldn’t have been able to Copy it using the Six-Petaled Cyan Lotus Pupil. In reality, however, the Copying ability of the Six-Petaled Cyan Lotus was far more powerful than he had imagined.

This was because its principle of Copying was to first clarify the opponent’s Spiritual Power circulation trajectory, and then reproduce those specific Spiritual Power patterns onto its petals at a one-to-one ratio. Finally, as long as the user of the Pupil Skill channeled their own Spiritual Power into the Cyan Lotus Pupil, they could execute the previously Copied special Technique a single time.

Seeing the Spiritual Power patterns, Copying the Spiritual Power patterns, and utilizing the Spiritual Power patterns. It was the unification of these three steps that achieved the so-called "Technique Theft" Effect of the Six-Petaled Cyan Lotus.

Therefore, although Lu Chen couldn’t single-handedly execute the Seven Kills Sword Array, he could still see its patterns, Copy them, and actively study them.

However, despite the immense power of the Six-Petaled Cyan Lotus Pupil’s Technique Theft, it couldn’t steal just any Technique pattern. If the Technique executed by the opponent required too much Spiritual Power or needed specific conditions to be met, the Technique Lu Chen stole would be stuck at the "clarifying" and "Copying" steps, rendering him unable to directly execute it.

But even if he couldn’t execute them, the Six-Petaled Cyan Lotus remained an outstanding auxiliary ability. It could drastically reduce the difficulty of Lu Chen learning new Techniques.

In short, as long as he watched a Technique in its entirety just once, he would be able to memorize seventy to eighty percent of it. And if he witnessed it multiple times... apologies, but that Technique would soon become his own!

At the entrance of the Sword Pavilion, Lu Chen paused momentarily after spending a long time studying the stolen Seven Kills Sword Array.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to continue learning. Rather, Sword Arrays were different from other Techniques and Divine Techniques. A complete Sword Array encompassed many variations. Lu Chen had to witness all of the Sword Array’s variations before he could learn the true Seven Kills Sword Array.

"I’ll try a few more times and strive to make them display more of the Sword Array’s variations to enrich my library of knowledge," he thought.

With that decided, Lu Chen stood up and once again pushed open the doors to the Sword Pavilion.

The Technique thief had arrived to steal some Techniques!

The second challenge against the Seven Sword Demons, failed!

The third challenge against the Seven Sword Demons, failed!

The third time, the fourth time...

After dying fifty consecutive times, Lu Chen finally recorded all the Sword Array patterns, as well as all of their formation changes.

The reason it took so many attempts wasn’t because the Seven Kills Sword Array had over fifty variations. Rather, the Sword Array formations that the Seven Sword Demons sometimes executed were ones Lu Chen had already seen, holding no value for recording. He needed to start over and force them to reveal something new.

Repeating this process over and over, by the time the fortieth challenge began, Lu Chen found that he could no longer coerce the Seven Sword Demons into displaying any new formation variations.

However, because the Skill icon for the Seven Kills Sword Array still hadn’t appeared in his mind, Lu Chen understood that he was perhaps still lacking a crucial element. So, he deliberately challenged them ten more times.

Fortunately, after this fiftieth attempt, he finally acquired the Sword Array Skill he had been longing for.

[Special Skill: Seven Kills Sword Array (Cannot be upgraded)]

[Effect: Seven people can form a special Sword Array to gather and distribute their respective killing intent, as well as share the damage taken from attacks.]

"If it weren’t for the Six-Petaled Cyan Lotus acting as an eye for Technique Theft, I probably would have needed hundreds of attempts to learn this Seven Kills Sword Array, wouldn’t I?"

Lu Chen chuckled softly and then pushed open the doors to the Sword Pavilion once again. This time, his face was brimming with confidence.

"What you know, I now know too. But what you don’t know, I still know! With this, how can you possibly fight me?" he thought.

When Lu Chen entered the first floor of the Sword Pavilion again, the Seven Sword Demons swarmed him yet again, exactly like the previous fifty times.

Only this time, in a rare move, Lu Chen chose not to draw his sword. Instead, he took long strides in a specific direction.

And the location he was heading toward was shockingly one of the Array nodes of the Seven Kills Sword Array!

What he intended to do was self-evident.

This time, he wasn’t trying to shatter the fortress of the Seven Kills Sword Array from the front; rather, he was preparing to plunge directly into its interior.

After all, no matter how sturdy a fortress was, it couldn’t withstand destruction from the inside!

Lu Chen walked over to that special node and directly severed the connection between the Sword Demon at that position and the other Sword Demons. Looking at the panic-stricken Sword Demon in front of him, which seemed completely at a loss for what to do, Lu Chen smiled faintly.

"I’ve learned everything I need to learn. It’s time for the attackers and defenders... to swap roles."

[Author’s Note: Due to universally known reasons, Pang Hu’s typing efficiency has been greatly reduced today, so this second update is a bit late. This won’t happen starting next week; there will be double updates at six o’clock.]

[As always, begging for continued reading, monthly tickets, and favorites!]