Half a day after leaving Shopkeeper Zhang's residence, Tang Wen no longer worried about money.
It wasn't that he had acquired money or thought of a feasible way to earn it.
Rather, he realized that he had already arranged to view the "Dark Night Divine Fist" Contemplation Method three days later.
As a mere Martial Practitioner, it would be too exaggerated to somehow obtain five thousand taels within three days, no matter the method.
It was better to first learn the Contemplation Method and then decide whether to raise funds to experience the "Ultimate Darkness."
In the following days, Tang Wen alternated practicing several Cultivation Methods without leaving the courtyard.
In the blink of an eye, three days passed.
Early in the morning, Tang Wen brought another five hundred taels of silver to find Shopkeeper Zhang.
With the money in hand, the latter nodded and revealed a faint smile:
"Follow me."
Shopkeeper Zhang led Tang Wen into an underground stone chamber.
As soon as they entered, a soft, bright white light filled the entire room.
At the center of the ceiling, a basketball-sized white orb emitted light.
"What is this?"
"A type of ore from underground that naturally glows."
Tang Wen was greatly surprised.
Shopkeeper Zhang: "See that lever on the pillar over there? Pull it up, and this light source will rise, plunging the room into complete darkness. It's currently eight in the morning; someone will knock on the door at eight in the evening!"
Tang Wen nodded, then looked at the two Visualization Diagrams on the wall and asked, "What are these?"
"Two Visualization Diagrams. The one on the left is the Core Strength, and the one on the right is the first stance of the Dark Night Divine Fist," Shopkeeper Zhang explained matter-of-factly.
Huh?
Not the entire thing?
Tang Wen struggled to control his expression: "Are the other stances in different rooms? I can only see two?"
Shopkeeper Zhang chuckled: "Isn't two enough for you to practice? Young man, don't aim too high. The remaining six stances are in six other rooms. You can enter one room at a time, each requiring a separate payment."
Damn it.
So that means I'll need another six thousand taels of silver, right?
Ugh!
Crafty merchant!
"Understood," Tang Wen forced a smile.
Shopkeeper Zhang turned and left, leaving Tang Wen alone.
Suppressing the urge to curse, Tang Wen's mind remained unsettled. He paced around the room a few times.
After confirming there were no hidden holes in the walls or any observers, he assumed a stance and began practicing the Eight Section Brocade.
Over and over.
Until his heart was as calm as still water, he opened his eyes.
He approached the mural-like Visualization Diagram.
Unlike those in Flame Camp or the Wang family of Wujia City, the Visualization Diagram before him was far more refined.
Tang Wen carefully touched the edge of the diagram.
It felt slightly cool and soft, made of a material he had never encountered before.
Stepping back, he sat on a cushion on the floor.
Facing the first Core Strength Diagram, he focused intently.
Buzz.
A wilderness appeared before his eyes.
The red sun rose, its light vast and radiant.
The wilderness was bathed in gold.
Ordinary gravel turned into golden sand.
The sun slowly shifted its position, reaching its zenith and casting endless light.
The shadows of the tiny gravel were compressed by the intense sunlight into small dots, clinging to the sides of the stones.
Gradually, the sun set in the west.
The shadows of the gravel stretched long.
The sun disappeared below the horizon, and the sky turned orange.
The sky darkened completely, and darkness enveloped the wilderness.
Night had arrived.
Tang Wen had never experienced night so meticulously and profoundly.
A starless, moonless night.
Pitch black, where one couldn't see their own hand.
The night was silent yet seemed to hide endless mysteries.
The darkness continued, seemingly unchanging.
But upon closer examination, it seemed to transition from faint to intense, reaching its peak before fading again.
Tang Wen was puzzled.
Wasn't this just an ordinary day?
Is this the core strength Contemplation Method of the Dark Night Divine Fist?
Are you kidding me?
After reviewing it several times, he still couldn't grasp it.
He calmly attempted to meditate, visualizing the interplay of light and darkness, eventually arriving at a silent night.
There seemed to be some effect, but it was too weak. He threw a punch, but it didn't even produce a sonic boom.
It wasn't as powerful as a casual inch strength strike.
After reviewing the Contemplation Method twice more, he still couldn't figure it out.
But the Dark Night Divine Fist obviously couldn't be this weak.
Otherwise, it would have disappeared into history due to lack of practitioners.
So where was the problem?
He pondered but couldn't find an answer.
He decided to look at the first move of the Dark Night Divine Fist: Shadow Kill!
Cloaked in darkness, the fist moved like a shadow.
Extremely fast and brutal.
The fist left behind a myriad of afterimages, both real and illusory.
Tang Wen had a moment of enlightenment: he needed to harness the characteristics of the night.
Only then could the illusion be so convincing.
The key was to meditate on the night.
But how could the night have any power?
In his previous life, Tang Wen was born under the red flag and grew up in the spring breeze.
His impression of the night was one of calmness and tranquility.
Even if he occasionally felt the illusion of being followed while walking at night, as long as he reached the streetlight, the fear would dissipate.
Of course, it wasn't that the night in his original world wasn't dangerous.
It's just that Tang Wen was lucky; the dangers of the night never found him.
Later, when he started working, he enjoyed staying up late.
He felt that only in the quiet of the night did he truly have rare moments of leisure and freedom!
He never found the night terrifying or frightening.
This was determined by his upbringing.
Shadow Kill!
Tang Wen meditated and threw another punch, but it was soft and weak.
Like playful banter between lovers.
Tang Wen felt speechless.
This shouldn't be called Shadow Kill; it should be called the "Make Me Pretty Fist."
The problem still lay in his failure to understand the core strength of the Dark Night Divine Fist.
Meditation martial arts focus on meditation.
This punch of mine only grasped the surface of the technique.
I didn't gain the necessary power from the meditation.
But isn't the night just a natural cycle of the sun and moon?
How could it have any power?
What exactly was the "ultimate darkness" that Shopkeeper Zhang mentioned?
Tang Wen sighed.
He sat cross-legged on the cushion, his back bent, his right hand propping up his chin, frowning in thought.
The knowledge from his previous life made him understand how the night alternates.
If meditating on ordinary darkness and night didn't yield any power.
Maybe he should try meditating on the transition.
When he first encountered meditation martial arts, he would never have dared to attempt such a thing.
Now, he knew more than one set of meditation martial arts.
He had already developed his own understanding of the Contemplation Method.
He estimated that randomly altering the core strength Contemplation Method would be slightly dangerous, but it shouldn't be a big problem.
He immersed himself in meditation, focusing his mental energy. In his mind, an orange-red dusk appeared.
The dusk gradually passed... The scene suddenly zoomed out, revealing a massive, unevenly surfaced sphere slowly rotating, blocking the glowing sun.
Buzz.
Tang Wen's vision blurred.
He exited the meditative state.
He had failed.
The brief attempt left him dazed, groggy, and utterly devoid of energy.
His condition was terrible.
His hands trembled as he picked up the bamboo tube. After managing to drink some water, he didn't even bother to unroll the animal hide he had brought with him. His head tilted to the side, and he immediately fell into a deep sleep.
The modifications to the Contemplation Method had been too drastic, causing a severe depletion of his mental energy.
Learning the Contemplation Method required complete and utter dedication.
Only by fully believing in the images conjured through contemplation could the corresponding power of the fist technique be realized.
Tang Wen visualized the movement of celestial bodies and the arrival of night.
In just an instant, his mental energy drained away like water bursting through a collapsed dam, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
When he woke up.
He checked his pocket watch. Three hours had passed.
Exactly two sleep cycles.
His mental energy had recovered by eighty to ninety percent.
Tang Wen adjusted his state and turned his gaze to the core Visualization Diagram of the Dark Divine Fist, immersing himself in it once more.
During his sleep, he had come to a realization: darkness has attributes.
The restlessness of a spring night.
The stifling heat of a summer night.
The coolness of an autumn night.
The icy chill of a winter night.
The darkness of a graveyard in a mountain village is subjectively eerie.
The darkness of the Pleasure House is filled with the scents of powder, alcohol, cigarettes, and bodily fluids, inducing decadence.
But these were too abstract.
And they held no real power.
There was no need to waste effort contemplating them.
But it didn't matter. Tang Wen had already thought of a kind of darkness that could be considered the ultimate.
That was the eternal night in the corners of the universe, in the void of space, where no starlight had touched for eons.
Cold, lifeless, and empty—these were the dominant themes.
It was the eternal and extreme darkness.
Everything fell silent.
Tang Wen closed his eyes, as if floating in this eternal, silent darkness.
Whoosh!
He opened his eyes, filled with coldness and indifference.
Shadow Kill!
Huu~
A sound like the passing of wind echoed.
Tang Wen's fist unleashed three shadowy strikes.
Two illusory, one real. The real could become illusory, and the illusory could become real.
As the fist technique was executed, a faint white mist appeared in the air.
The temperature in the room dropped slightly.
Success!