Master of Kaidan
Chapter 31: Dreams Are Always Out of Reach~~

Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Dreams Are Always Out of Reach~~

Feng Xue’s face turned pitch black as he flipped through this so-called incomplete secret manual, but he found it to be much better than he had anticipated.

First and foremost, this secret manual should come from the official version of the Taiwu Scroll, not the beta version, because it consists of one general outline and five sub-volumes, rather than the ten pages of the beta version.

Moreover, as a fantasy item, this book is not the same as regular books. Although it also has specific content and text within, it possesses the extraordinary power of "being able to learn the cultivation technique directly upon finishing the general outline."

The technique called "Steps to Heaven" is a Sixth Grade Technique of the Jieqing Sect, an assassin sect, and is considered a "Miracle Technique." Surely it can’t compare to those of the "Divine Grade" or "Ultimate Grade" Immortal Techniques, but if placed within the martial arts novels of the Gold Element or Ancient series, it would qualify as a top-notch sect’s closely guarded secret.

It’s just a pity that it is an incomplete volume.

Different from the method of reading like the beta version’s Integration and such, this official version technique has a very cumbersome set of completion rules. Just as the notes mentioned, it requires Feng Xue to write it himself.

He needs to use his own knowledge to fill in the missing parts of the book, turning it into a complete cultivation technique. Only by doing so could he cultivate this inner power technique to great success; otherwise, he would only be able to cultivate inner strength without enjoying the various mysteries this technique offers.

Fortunately, "Steps to Heaven" is quite different from other techniques, or it can be said that the techniques of the Jieqing Sect have this characteristic: they don’t just take the meaning of the words but also their shape.

Simply put, although "Steps to Heaven" is filled with text, if someone with nearsightedness were to take off their glasses and look at it, they would discern a star map. This is what is referred to as "patterns within sentences, images beneath words, whether abundant or sparse, without loss or excess, thus shaping the star formations of the heavens within the text."

To use a more illustrative analogy, it’s like those character-based emoticons (or large ASCII art) commonly found on the internet.

So although every page of this book looks as if it had been blotted with water making the ink run, as long as one holds the book a bit further away, a rough star map can be pieced together. Afterward, simply fill in the appropriate text based on the star map, then modify it according to the word meanings, and that should suffice.

Although this type of puzzle game is also incredibly cumbersome, it is at least much easier than creating a book from scratch.

Moreover, even without subsequent content, with just the general outline, Feng Xue could already clearly feel the help that inner strength brought to him.

Merely starting out—with no accumulation of inner strength through practice and no "experience" to improve mastery of the technique—he felt as if he had gained a madman’s visage (Note ①)—although without the bloodsucking, that is.

"Compiling this thing requires knowledge of mathematics and astronomy... perhaps even involving things like the I Ching. I don’t have those labels right now," Feng Xue sighed with a headache, then rolled up the secret manual and stuffed it into his storage bag.

Such a thing should be kept for a good occasion. Even if he cannot complete it in the future, it would still be beneficial for training his underlings.

After this opening success with the secret manual, Feng Xue couldn’t help but shift his gaze to the remaining cards. However, considering his crafting skills, these remaining items probably couldn’t be turned into another "book." He simply refined everything that had elements like "Tool" or "Toy" all at once, and then began to ponder over his two biggest gains of the day.

Compared to the serendipitous inner power secret technique, the real focus was indeed on the elements of the "Perpetual Motion Machine" and "Destiny."

The problem also lay here. Unlike elements like "Death" or "Time" that seemed abstract but often had physical carriers, perpetual motion machines and destiny were extremely rare elements. The perpetual motion machine was manageable; knowing that it dropped from the D-rank landfill, it should eventually be obtainable. But destiny...

He had picked up around a hundred "Destiny Cards" from the garbage dump, but among them, there was only this one opportunity card that had the element of destiny.

Because it was rare, Feng Xue had to consider a problem—

Refining could fail.

Although by his current experience with mass refining, the success rate of extracting an element from an item was about 30%, which could also increase due to the abundance of elements present, the trouble was, no matter how many elements an item had, only one could be extracted after refining.

This meant that for this card containing "Opportunity," "Destiny," and "Adventure" elements, once refined, the probability of getting "Destiny" would not exceed one in ten.

Therefore, if Feng Xue wanted to maximize the retention of the "Destiny" element, the only choice was to use this card as the base.

Cards with the element of destiny were neither plentiful nor scarce. For instance, Yu-Gi-Oh’s Destiny Heroes made up a large series, but using the hard-earned "Destiny" element for a summon card of a Destiny Hero seemed like a loss.

Of course, if he could get something like the Destructor Phoenix or a Blood Devil of some sort, that would still be quite sweet.

This hesitation had Feng Xue wavering for most of the day until, amidst his indecision, he casually threw in the D-ring engine for refining too. Finally, he made a decision—

"A bird in hand beats two in the bush! Even if I cling to the destiny element to death, it won’t spawn offspring. Since the landfill is connected to the Monopoly world, as long as I’m willing to look, I’m bound to find it!"

With this thought in mind, Feng Xue took a deep breath, laid the card flat on the table, and began to cautiously select elements to add.

However, just as he started pondering over what elements he would need to create the Destructor Phoenix, a sudden inspiration struck because he remembered another type of thing that could link to destiny and was a card!

"The Profanity Card is also a card!" Feng Xue thought.

Once this idea took hold, he found it hard to control. Although the Profanity Card was merely a recipe, it too was imbued with the extraordinary principle of elemental convergence. If it were in another world, Feng Xue certainly wouldn’t have taken the gamble, but after all, this was a "dump." Who could say whether in some corner, the main ingredient for the demonic potion might drop?

People should always have dreams, right?

One could say Feng Xue had gotten ahead of himself at this moment, or rather, this was typical gambler psychology—

Since he had to gamble, and was prepared for the possibility of losing, then why not gamble big?

"Wheel of destiny, let’s bet on this one!"

Feng Xue took a deep breath and selected a few suitable elements from his own element library.

"Mystery, Luck... Hmm, shall I add "Machine" or "Monster"?"

Feng Xue muttered to himself as he commenced his refining journey, but soon, he no longer needed to struggle, because the moment he infused the first "Mystery" element, the elements and gibberish on the entire card started spinning wildly...

"Fuck!"