“Judging from the shape of the bone injury, this was clearly smashed through with a single punch!”

Henry Dawson picked up a broken piece of bone and tried to snap it with force, but the bone was astonishingly tough and didn’t budge at all. He gathered all his true essence and tried again, but the bone still wouldn’t break—it was even harder than iron!

“The strength in my hands now is definitely over a thousand jin, and this bone has been exposed to the elements for decades. It should have long since lost its former toughness, so how can it still be this strong?”

“A few years ago, some grave robbers dug up the tomb of an ancestor who had been dead for decades. When the remains were reburied, someone accidentally stepped on the bones, and they shattered instantly!”

“That ancestor was a Blood Refining Realm expert in his lifetime!”

Comparing the two, Henry Dawson could only come to a conclusion that shocked him to his core.

The Path to Ascension!

This corpse had walked the Path to Ascension in life and achieved an unimaginable level of existence!

In Henry Dawson’s understanding, a martial artist who crossed the Path to Ascension was basically a legendary immortal. Yet such an immortal had their chest bone smashed by someone’s fist and died a miserable death here!

There is always someone stronger—crossing the Path to Ascension does not mean one is immortal and indestructible.

Henry Dawson carefully searched the corpse and found a book and a token near the pelvic bone.

The book had originally been kept close to the person’s chest and abdomen, but as the body decayed, the book fell and ended up near the pelvis.

However, who knows what material this book was made of—it survived the corpse’s decay without being destroyed! And after all this time, the book hadn’t changed at all. It felt incredibly soft to the touch, almost as if it wasn’t paper, but human skin.

Definitely not ordinary!

If such precious material was used to make the pages, what kind of information could be recorded inside? And it came from someone who may have crossed the Path to Ascension—a peerless powerhouse. For such a person to keep it close, how valuable must it be?

There were no words on the cover. Unable to contain his curiosity, Henry Dawson opened the book.

“Moonshadow Heart Technique”!

The first page had only four characters, written in a bold, flowing script, full of vigor and grandeur.

The word “technique” alone indicated that this was basically a cultivation method. But perhaps this “Moonshadow Heart Technique” was even the reason for that powerhouse’s demise—how significant could it be?

Henry Dawson couldn’t help but keep reading, going through the entire technique.

Sure enough, it was a cultivation method, with just over four thousand words in total. It was a bit obscure, but after pausing here and there, Henry Dawson could grasp the meaning in just a few seconds—it wasn’t difficult to understand.

His comprehension had been constantly improving during his practice of the Nine Forms of Ling Tian. Although he still hadn’t fully mastered the first sword form, understanding the Moonshadow Heart Technique posed no challenge at all.

“I really have to try out the effects of this technique!”

Henry Dawson sat cross-legged and used the method of the Moonshadow Heart Technique to refine the food in his body, extracting free energy and converting it into his own true essence.

“Hmm!”

After circulating the Moonshadow Heart Technique through one cycle in his body, Henry Dawson couldn’t help but stop, a look of shock appearing on his face.

Efficiency!

The efficiency of the Moonshadow Heart Technique in converting true essence was more than twice that of the Sunfire Technique!

According to the Moonshadow Heart Technique, if one cultivated under the moonlight, the effect could be increased by thirty percent. But the Sunfire Technique could also increase speed by twenty percent under sunlight. No matter how you looked at it, the Moonshadow Heart Technique was far superior to the Sunfire Technique!

Even if it was only twice as fast, that meant that to reach the Bone Refining Realm, if it took ten years with the Sunfire Technique, it would only take five years with the Moonshadow Heart Technique!

No wonder this person met with disaster!

On the path of cultivation, time is absolutely the greatest enemy!

For example, in the Flesh Refining Realm, if you can’t break through before the age of twenty, your chances drop to almost zero—this is why The Dawson Family has the rule that if you can’t reach the Flesh Refining Realm before eighteen, you’re not allowed to cultivate.

Although a technique only increases the speed of accumulating true essence, being able to save half the time means you have more time to break through to higher realms.

Moreover, the higher the realm, the longer it takes to accumulate true essence. After reaching the Blood Refining Realm, even a minor breakthrough can take ten years! If you could reach the peak of the twelfth layer of Body Refining in fifteen years, you’d have that much more time to attempt the Path to Ascension!

Life is fleeting—a hundred years pass in the blink of an eye. How many decades can you afford to waste?

Although Henry Dawson could obtain free energy from the black broken sword, the Moonshadow Heart Technique didn’t mean much to him at the moment. But who knew how long the black sword’s power would last?

Maybe it would end after returning his ten years of hard cultivation!

Besides, this technique could be passed on to David Dawson.

David Dawson had already delayed his cultivation for many years because of him. If he switched to the Moonshadow Heart Technique, with David Dawson’s talent, he could reach the twelfth layer of Body Refining in at most five years!

Henry Dawson put the technique away. When the New Year came, his father would surely return.