Blood Manipulation was the ability to control blood as one saw fit. Alex remembered the various objects the blood Song Shing used turned into that he attacked others with.
This was most likely what he was using, or at least a version of it. Alex wasn't sure if freely passing around these techniques in the book was possible or not, so he could only assume the techniques were changed throughout the millennia in the Song family.
Alex looked at the technique and learned about it. While Blood Manipulation was something that affected blood itself, to Alex's surprise, it wasn't the blood that gave it power, but the blood aura.
It was such a small difference that one wouldn't really think about, but when he did learn it, it made sense.
Blood itself wasn't strong, so it would be the blood aura that was more powerful in this case.
He continued reading and pretty much learned the technique. Unlike the first technique where one would have to gather the blood of others to cultivate over it, this technique worked with just blood, and with as little amount as one wanted as well.
That meant, Alex didn't have to go around killing beasts and humans to gather a large amount of blood, unlike Blood Absorption.
Also, unlike that technique, Alex could use his own blood in this case, which made this much better in his opinion.
He tried to flip the book again, but the words on the page changed for a split second, telling him to give it more blood or blood with a stronger aura.
Alex sighed and used the sword he had to cut open his wrist again and poured what felt like at least half a liter of blood. He tried to force his body not to heal, and he found out that he could affect it a little.
But the best he could do was push it from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.
The blood on the book was suddenly absorbed and another page shined and opened up.
Alex looked at the remaining iron pages and realized there were 4 more. 'How much better does my blood have to be for them?' he wondered.
He looked at the new page that had opened up and read it.
Page 3: Blood Armor
"Armor?" Alex was surprised and wondered if he saw this technique at all. He thought he did see the old woman use this technique.
He read the description of the technique and learned that the armor was formed from one's own blood that poured out of every tiny pore in one's body.
Since the power of the armor depended on the blood's amount and the blood's aura, Alex decided to learn it as well.
Within 5 minutes after finishing reading the technique, Alex did what was told in the technique's description and moved his Qi around. At the same time, he felt the blood aura in his body and pushed it out from every single side.
Crimson blood littered his skin as it slowly oozed out of every pore in his body. Alex found that he had full control of the armor and could change its strength of it, and design as much as he wanted.
There was a higher limit, but no lower limit.
Alex created a helmet, a chest plate, a shoulder plate, pauldrons, bracers, gauntlet, mail, leg armor, and greeves.
Making so many items with his blood took a tremendous amount of blood on his end. Alex was starting to get dizzy, so he decided to lower the amount a bit by getting rid of some stuff.
He kept the helmet, the chest plate, the mail, the bracers, and the leg armor. Everything else he pulled back into his body and his mind was really happy about that.
Alex looked at the current combination of Blood Armor on him and thought it was quite great in his opinion. There was also the advantage of quickly turning the blood armor into normal blood and using that to fight.
The possibilities were endless.
Alex grabbed onto the blade of the sword and let the blood drip onto the book. He poured in nearly 2 liters of his blood, but still, nothing happened.
'I can't lose any more blood,' he thought and stopped. The book drank all the blood but it didn't open any more pages.
"I should probably strengthen my blood aura before I try it again," he thought. "I don't really want to go kill beasts just so I can improve my blood aura, so… the easiest way to improve it would be to break through to the Saint realm, right?"
Understanding that he was correct, Alex closed the book and it disappeared somewhere into his body.
The remaining 3 books were insights again, so he put those back into his storage bag. Then, he once again tried to use the teleportation script.
"Well, guess this is not working," he thought and went back to sit down cultivate. He had lost a bit too much blood so he ate a Blood Revitalizing pill too.
After he was fully cultivated and revitalized, he stood up and turned to leave.
Since he was in a secret realm somewhere around the Icy Hell, the only way to escape would be to find some sort of teleportation script.
Being a secret realm, there had to be a point of entry and exit.
Alex walked through the hole in the ice while thinking about the memories of the 8th Undying God. There wasn't much in his memories, but he tried his best to find some sort of answer to where the way out was from this secret realm.
There were still 3 more mountains to check, so Alex flew off while revisiting the memories.
In one of those memories, he saw something that made him frown a bit. The Undying God had learned the Demon Eyes technique, but right before that, he had used some sort of paste to blind himself.
"Is that the paste meant to cleanse? Why would that blind him?" Alex thought. Suddenly, he remembered a lot more than just regarding the memories.
The diaries he had found in the Demon realm had quite a few lines about the owners wanting a technique and being blind.
Not only that, one of the demons had straight up written that their eyes' level had increased.
"That… that's the Demon Eyes technique, isn't it?" Alex thought. "The paste blinds you before you can learn it."
Alex was sure he was right. The amount of evidence was just too many there for it not to be true.
But then, if that was true, he still didn't have any passes. The Undying God hadn't left behind any sort of recipes or pa—
Alex stopped flying and his eyes moved around rapidly while his mind went to work.
The 8th Undying God was a genius. He had one of the best minds as far as Alex could tell, so there was no way he would make the mistake of not leaving behind the recipe or the paste for the Demon Eyes.
The medallion to start the inheritance was also not here, and he had to get that from the Demon's corpse. Wouldn't that mean that the recipe or paste for the Demon eyes was also most likely with the demon's corpse?
Alex dropped from the sky and landed on the small mound of ice that was on top of the 7th mountain that did not exist on the map. This was the location where the 8th Undying God was born, and Alex was currently standing on it to find something he knew he had.
Alex foraged through his storage ring for a while, going through the many medicinal pastes he had found in the Demon realm before arriving upon something that had no description or use as far as Alex could tell.
He brought it out, the jar full of medicinal paste, and opened it. The acrid smell of the paste, the one that made his eyes water and his nose itchy, was something Alex had experienced many times when he opened this paste to see what it was.
Alex had never really cared for what it was aside from the slight curiosity he would have from time to time. However, now he had a burning curiosity and he sent his spiritual sense into the medicinal paste itself.
If the Undying God was in fact a genius, he would carve the recipe onto the walls of the jar.
There was no recipe on the walls of the jar, but at the bottom of the paste, there was indeed a talisman.
Alex quickly pulled out the talisman and read it. As he expected, it was a recipe, and as he expected, it was the recipe to the paste for the Demon Eyes.
Now, if Alex followed the words on the wall that told him to cleanse his eyes with the paste and indeed use this paste to blind himself, he too could learn the Demon Eyes technique.
He didn't know how long this blindness would last before his eyes would work, but he didn't care. He had spiritual sense anyway which was far better than the normal eyes.
Alex's hands started shaking in excitement so much that he couldn't stop himself from shouting.
"Yes! Yes! I did it. I found it. I actually found it. Now I can finally learn it. Hahaha!" He shouted out loud in pure joy.
"Oh, what can you learn?" A voice spoke from behind Alex.
"Who?" Alex quickly kept everything in his ring and turned around.
When he did, he saw a massive eye the size of his body staring back at him.