Chapter Ninety-Four: Lin Huang’s Fate Attribute

"Your parcel has arrived. Please come and receive it!"

Early that morning, after Lin Xin had just left for school and Lin Huang was still clearing away the bowls and chopsticks, a birdlike voice drifted in from beyond the gate.

When he opened the door, a tiny messenger bird, no larger than a palm, was standing there. It tilted its head and glanced up at Lin Huang.

"Good morning, Mr. Lin Huang. You have a parcel."

As the words fell, it shook its wings, and a box as tall as a person appeared before the gate.

The yellow-feathered bird sprang onto the box, a delivery slip already clamped in its beak.

Lin Huang took the slip, scanned the signature code in the lower right corner with his Emperor’s Heart Ring, then reached back into the house and fetched a handful of candies to hand over.

With a sweep of its wings, the bird gathered them all up. Then it beat its wings and rose into the air, saying in a slightly ingratiating tone, "Thank you for your generosity. May you enjoy a pleasant life."

Lin Huang paused at that, and by the time he came back to himself, the little bird had long since flapped away.

"That bird is getting smarter by the day. It even knows how to flatter people now." He shook his head with a smile.

He carried the box back inside and, using a knife, opened it.

Inside was an instrument wrapped in a thick layer of shock-absorbing material. The box itself was seventy or eighty centimeters tall, but the device inside was actually less than fifty centimeters high.

When he took it out, he saw the insignia of the Hunters' Association printed in the lower-left corner. Lin Huang had specifically chosen this life-energy tester because it was produced by the Hunters' Association, and its results carried more authority than those of other companies.

At the center of the top of the device was a white crystal that protruded outward by about ten centimeters. The exposed part was hemispherical, about twenty centimeters in diameter.

Lin Huang knew that this was the test crystal.

He pressed the orange-red switch at the bottom of the device, and the test crystal began to glow.

The originally semi-transparent white crystal lit up like a white lamp.

Lin Huang placed his right palm on it and channeled the life energy within his body into the test crystal.

Once the dark life energy entered, the white crystal began to flicker with multicolored light.

The shifting hues continued for nearly two minutes before stopping. The crystal, once white, had become three distinct colors. The largest portion was crimson-gold, followed by a section of black, with a small part in red.

"Testing complete. The user's life energy is polymorphic and possesses multiple life-energy attributes. Three attributes have been identified so far. Among them, the dragon-flame attribute and the blood attribute account for most of it, while a smaller portion is of the strength attribute. There may also be trace amounts of other attributes. Would you like to contact the Hunters' Association for a more detailed examination?"

"No need." After hearing the result, Lin Huang roughly understood where the attributes of his life energy had come from.

Most of the life energy he had obtained before had been transformed from Black Charcoal and White, with a smaller portion transformed from Tyrant. Therefore, the dragon-flame attribute inherited from Black Charcoal and the blood attribute inherited from White made up the larger proportion.

He erased the test data and switched off the tester. Only then did he go online and begin searching for information on polymorphic life energy.

There was not much information about polymorphic life energy on the network. He browsed for a long time without finding anything useful.

"If there’s nothing on the Emperor’s Heart network, am I going to have to ask Yi Yeyu and the others again?" Lin Huang frowned, but after a moment he suddenly remembered something. "Right, I almost forgot that I already have bronze hunter privileges now. I can log into the hunters’ private information network!"

He immediately logged into the Hunters' Association’s information network and began searching again. After reading seven or eight related posts in succession, he finally found one discussion thread about cultivating life arts with polymorphic life energy.

The post had been made more than twenty years ago by an anonymous user, who said he had been identified as having polymorphic life energy and asked how one should cultivate life arts.

A crowd of onlookers mocked him in the comments, saying he must have been drunk when he posted it.

After all, even those born with inherent attributes in their life energy were vanishingly rare, and those with dual attributes were even more scarce; there were only a handful in the entire Seventh District. As for multiple attributes, they had only ever been mentioned in theory and had never once been confirmed to truly exist. At the very least, no ordinary person outside the nobility had ever heard of such a thing.

So the thread had actually died down in just a few days.

Then an anonymous, lengthy reply stirred things up again and drew quite a bit of attention.

The reply was extremely detailed, and its wording made it seem as though it had been written by a researcher who had done related studies.

Lin Huang read it carefully from beginning to end, and fell into thought.

In essence, the reply boiled down to one sentence: polymorphic life energy is only suitable for cultivating attribute-free life arts. But the content inside it left him deep in contemplation.

"According to this reply, life energy in this world is actually a relatively stable form of power. But when several different attributes of life energy are gathered together, the instability of that life energy rises exponentially. People born with polymorphic life energy already have an internal self-balancing system. If they cultivate life arts that carry attributes, it will break that innate balance and cause the instability of the life energy to erupt completely. So, in order to maintain the balance of life energy within the body, a person with polymorphic life energy can only cultivate attribute-free life arts."

"This theory does make a lot of sense. But the proportions of the different attributes in my life energy have been changing all along, and nothing seems to have gone wrong. Could it be that my combat strength is too low and my life energy is too little, so it simply hasn't shown up yet?" Although the post sounded reasonable, Lin Huang still had some doubts in his heart.

Still, he intended to follow the advice in the post and cultivate the Art of Soldier Conquest that he already had in hand.

The Art of Soldier Conquest was an attribute-free life art focused on killing and warfare. Many battlefield elites cultivated it, and among upper-grade life arts, there was almost nothing with better value for money.

This life art had nine levels in total, but most people could only cultivate it to the fourth or fifth; very few strong practitioners ever reached the sixth. The sixth level was an important threshold. Once broken through, the strength and speed of the life energy circulation in this life art would be no inferior to some top-grade life arts.

With Little Black in hand, Lin Huang felt that not only the sixth level of the Art of Soldier Conquest, but even the ninth, was within his reach. It was only a matter of time.

Now that his life-energy attributes had been tested, he did not intend to delay his cultivation of life arts any longer.

He put away the life-energy tester, went straight upstairs to his room, and locked the door behind him.

He took out the black crystal the size of a fist and fed it with life energy.

A projection of a middle-aged man appeared before Lin Huang. He stood with a straight back, and even in projected form, Lin Huang could faintly sense the murderous aura about him.

"The life art Art of Soldier Conquest was born from an old-era martial technique, the Scripture of Defying Fate and Conquering Heaven. Though it is only an upper-grade life art, it shares in the crystallized wisdom of the ancients. Its creator was a formidable figure who defied the heavens. He once said that if anyone could cultivate it to its ultimate ninth level, this life art would transcend the effects of a top-grade life art and attain the power of a saint-grade life art..."