The Blood Immortal Legacy was written on a scroll so old that it crumbled at the edges when Meng Hao unrolled it. The text was written in a script that predated the current era — characters of the Ancient Celestial Tongue, which Meng Hao could not read.

'I can't read this,' he told Patriarch Reliance.

'Good,' the Patriarch said. 'If you could read it, you would be too frightened to try it. The ignorant are always the bravest.' He departed before Meng Hao could think of a suitable response.

Meng Hao spent three days trying to decipher the scroll with the help of the bronze mirror, which occasionally glowed when it recognized a character and more often remained stubbornly dark. By the third day, he had translated perhaps fifteen percent of the technique — enough to understand that the Blood Immortal Legacy was a cultivation method based on absorbing the life force of other beings.

'A demonic technique,' he whispered, his blood running cold. 'This is Black Magic.'

Demonic techniques were the forbidden arts of the cultivation world, practiced by renegade sects and dark cultivators who had rejected the righteous path. Using demonic techniques could twist a cultivator's soul, corrupt their spiritual foundation, and eventually drive them mad. Most orthodox sects executed anyone caught practicing them.

And yet the Patriarch — the leader of an orthodox sect — had given him one.

'Why?' Meng Hao asked the mirror.

The mirror glowed once, which Meng Hao had learned to interpret as 'you're asking the right question, but I'm not going to answer it.'

He studied the scroll again. The technique was dark, yes. But it was also powerful — unimaginably powerful. A cultivator who mastered it could advance through realms in a fraction of the normal time, replenishing their spiritual energy from fallen enemies instead of waiting months for natural absorption.

'You knew,' Meng Hao said to the empty room, thinking of the Patriarch's knowing smile. 'You knew I was advancing too fast with the mirror. You knew I'd hit a wall. And you're offering me a way through.'

He rolled up the scroll and hid it beneath his meditation cushion. He had not decided to learn it. But he had decided not to destroy it. In the cultivation world, that was almost the same thing.