Since he had decided to focus his cultivation on martial arts, Gu Feng began scouting out which types of martial arts to learn.
Martial arts are generally divided into four major categories: offensive, defensive, movement, and special.
The first three are very straightforward and correspond directly to their names, representing offense, defense, and speed respectively.
As for special martial arts, simply put, anything that does not belong to the first three categories can be considered a special martial art.
Special martial arts are all-inclusive, ranging from techniques that accelerate cultivation to ones with various bizarre and miraculous effects.
Movement martial arts are essential for escaping. As the saying goes, as long as your speed is fast enough, disaster will always be one step behind you. They had to be learned.
Defensive martial arts ensure that as long as the enemy cannot break your defense, you hold an inherent advantage of invincibility. They are great for saving your life and must also be learned.
Offensive martial arts: the best defense is offense. Still must be learned.
Special martial arts often possess miraculous effects. Once used in the right place, whether for escaping or killing enemies, the results are unexpectedly astonishing. They still had to be learned.
Consequently, Gu Feng fell into a dilemma over which type of martial art to focus on.
In the end, he simply couldn't be bothered to compare the pros and cons of the various martial arts.
Children make choices; adults want everything.
Having made up his mind, Gu Feng went to his father to ask for martial arts.
According to the family rules of the Gu Family, third-generation members of the Gu Family are not allowed to practice martial arts before breaking through to the fourth realm.
This is because the realm of cultivation is the foundation of everything.
Even if one cultivates martial arts to a relatively advanced level, it is extremely difficult to challenge opponents of a higher realm.
When a martial artist is at a lower realm, their progression is relatively fast, and wasting time practicing low-grade martial arts is undesirable.
It is far better to directly cultivate high-grade martial arts when one reaches a higher realm.
Moreover, as direct descendants of the Gu Family in Anshuang County, there was no need to worry too much about safety.
Therefore, it is best to raise one's realm as much as possible in the early stage, and practice martial arts later when progression slows down.
This is also the approach taken by most major families.
Only when a Gu Family member breaks through to the fourth realm can they apply to enter the Library Pavilion to copy and practice martial arts.
The Gu Family Library Pavilion has five floors. The first floor is mainly used to house various foundational knowledge and miscellaneous historical records, such as: *History of the Desolate Sea*, *Thirteen Kingdoms of the Desolate Sea*, *The Wandering Chronicles of Heavenly Venerable Han*, *Elementary Guide to Martial Dao*, *Postnatal Care of Sows*, and so on.
The second floor is mainly used to house Mortal Grade Low Tier martial arts and techniques for the family servants and bodyguards to practice.
Although these are only martial arts and techniques for the first three realms of a martial artist, for ordinary people, even exhausting all their family wealth might not guarantee they could afford them.
The third floor mainly houses the Gu Family's Mortal Grade Mid Tier martial arts. The martial arts on this floor are mainly for direct descendants of the Gu Family to practice and as rewards for servants who have made great contributions.
The fourth floor mainly contains the Gu Family's Yellow Grade martial arts and techniques, as well as important hidden records and other significant items.
The fourth floor is closed to outsiders and can only be accessed by a few direct descendants of the Gu Family who have obtained permission from Elder Gu.
The fifth floor is empty, and Gu Feng's grandfather often goes there to enter closed-door cultivation.
As for why he chose to enter closed-door cultivation in the Library Pavilion?
First, it allowed him to concurrently guard the Library Pavilion.
Second, the Library Pavilion is the safest place in the Gu Family, and cultivating here eliminates worries about interference from external enemies.
If one were to ask which building in the Gu Family is the most important, the Library Pavilion is undoubtedly the one.
The Library Pavilion houses almost all the books of the Gu Family.
These books include cultivation techniques and martial arts, as well as books completely unrelated to the martial dao.
Yet regardless of the type, every book represents the most vital heritage within a family.
Knowledge has no distinction of high or low, noble or base.
And the reason the Gu Family dared to concentrate all their books in one place and display them so prominently naturally stems from their own confidence and strength.
The Gu Family's Library Pavilion is furnished with a Yellow Grade High Tier formation.
Formations are profound knowledge that ordinary people in this world cannot touch.
Even the lowest-level Yellow Grade Low Tier formation can withstand the full-force attack of a Grade 7 expert.
Once martial dao cultivation reaches the Grade 7 True Qi Realm, one's strength undergoes a qualitative change.
Martial artists at this realm can already guide the spiritual qi of heaven and earth into their bodies, ultimately nurturing wisps of pure true qi within their Qi Sea and Dantian.
It is no exaggeration to say a True Qi Realm powerhouse can take on ten thousand single-handedly.
Even on a battlefield between two nations, without thousands of soldiers deploying a formation to encircle and annihilate them, capturing a True Qi Realm expert is out of the question.
The True Qi Realm can be considered stepping across the threshold of powerhouse status.
The heads of the other three great clans in Anshuang County possessed mere True Qi Realm cultivation themselves.
Furthermore, the formation set up by the Gu Family was a Yellow Grade High Tier formation, which was fully capable of resisting the full-force attack of a Ninth Grade True Qi Realm expert.
And this was under the condition that no one was actively operating the formation.
If someone were presiding over the formation, resisting the assault of several True Qi Realm experts would be effortless.
After finding his father, Gu Feng directly expressed his desire to practice martial arts.
At first, when Gu Feng's father learned that he wanted to practice multiple martial arts, he refused outright without a second thought.
Then Gu Feng persisted and pleaded for a while longer.
His father began to concisely and repeatedly explain the drawbacks of practicing martial arts prematurely.
Two hours later, Gu Feng finally managed to extricate himself from his father's lecture.
He had no choice but to resort to indirect methods, running over to his mother, Lin Huiyun, to sweet-talk her.
Gu Feng had been foolish since childhood; when had Lin Huiyun ever heard her son say such deeply filial and sweet words? She was moved to tears.
A woman's emotional nature instantly overwhelmed her reason, making her completely forget the fact that Gu Feng's current "third-grade" cultivation made him unsuited to practice martial arts prematurely.
She immediately demanded that Gu Hou bring out all the martial arts he possessed and let Gu Feng choose freely.
In the end, unable to win against his wife, Gu Hou had no choice but to pull his most prized movement martial art from his robes and toss it to Gu Feng.
This was a Mortal Grade High Tier movement martial art. Once this brat practiced it for a few days and realized he couldn't learn it at all, he would naturally give up. It would amount to nothing more than wasting a few days.
Gu Hou thought to himself inwardly, and before Gu Feng could say another word, he chased him out of the room.
Just like that, spring passed and autumn came, and another year went by.
Gu Feng, who was about to turn fifteen, had finally successfully undergone his first blood-refining a few days prior—it had taken him a full two years to refine his blood just once.
Yet the Blood-Changing Realm required at least seven blood-refinings before one was qualified to guide the spiritual qi of heaven and earth into the body and step into the seventh realm.
Lying on the bed, Gu Feng thought of this and could not help feeling a trace of despair.
Refining blood once every two years meant that seven times would take at least fourteen years.
Moreover, with each successive blood-refining in the Blood-Changing Realm, the difficulty of the next blood-refining would increase drastically.
The further along he got, the more the difficulty would rise geometrically.
If one factored in this escalating difficulty, it might take twenty years just to complete seven blood-refinings and meet the minimum requirement to advance to the True Qi Realm.
This was precisely why, although the Blood-Changing Realm allowed for a maximum of nine blood-refinings, most True Qi Realm experts in the world chose to advance after just seven.
For no other reason than that it was simply too difficult!
Gu Feng considered his own martial dao talent worthy of being called a genius; if he advanced after only seven blood-refinings, it would inevitably cause his foundation to fall short of other supreme prodigies.
Although he could find ways to make up for it later, the price he would have to pay then might be even greater.
If he spent thirty years, he should be able to complete nine blood-refinings.
Yet thirty years later, Gu Feng would be over forty years old.
If, after advancing to the True Qi Realm, his cultivation speed could fully recover.
Gu Feng naturally had the confidence to advance to the Ninth Grade Peak before the age of sixty.
Yet no one could guarantee that Gu Feng would be able to fully recover his previous rate of progression by then.
Even if he recovered most of his original cultivation speed by that time, he still lacked absolute confidence.
And if he failed to cultivate to the Ninth Grade Peak before age sixty, it would mean Gu Feng would forever lose any chance at the Grandmaster Realm.
A Grandmaster enjoys a lifespan of five hundred years, a single person capable of suppressing an entire nation.
Remembering this sentence he had once seen in his father's study, Gu Feng's deep eyes flashed with a hint of determination.
He had finally made up his mind: tomorrow, he would go find his grandfather and lay his cards on the table.
I'm done pretending; I am a peerless genius, and I'm laying my cards on the table. I want the family to help me cultivate.