by Tinalynge
Since he had already said his goodbye, it was time for him to increase his strength. Wang Xiaoyun was already stronger than him in terms of foundations, and activating her bloodline would only make her soar to the skies, making her become an even more outstanding cultivator.
If Xue Wei wanted to catch up to her, or even overtake her, he had to work harder than anyone else, but this was not enough to make him discouraged. He had his special pearl-like dantian and his Azure Dragon Scripture. He was capable of progressing at a speed that others in the Kingdom of Heping could not follow.
Like this, the night went past. And when morning came, Xue Wei was still in a deep trance within the water that had gotten slightly more transparent compared to the night before, yet it was far from being clear.
At the same time, Wang Xiaoyun's father had returned, and with him came a breeze of freshness. Every Wayfarer, apart from Wang Xiaoyun, was filled with excitement and could not wait to set out, but their young miss was filled with sadness and mixed emotions.
Before, she could find nothing more exciting than the hunt to find their Primordial Beast, but now a quiet life together with Xue Wei did not sound too bad. Unfortunately, this was something she could never afford ever to say. She was the miss of the caravan and one day she would be the leader. If she ever mentioned a normal life, the caravan would be deeply disappointed in her.
"You better keep your promise," Wang Xiaoyun mumbled to herself as she turned her back on Tiankong City and entered the carriage. The horses started carrying them out from within the city, and soon the many Wayfarers were nowhere to be seen.
In all of this commotion with the wayfarers, the Diviners had also vanished. No one knew when they disappeared or why, they just noticed that they were not to be found either.
While this was the case, Xue Wei stayed inside his mansion completely unaware of what was happening in the city, but the masked men continued to patrol the streets in abundance.
They had been there when the Wayfarers left, and their faces had been dejected beneath the masks. Xue Wei had never been one to wander the city much, and the only reason he had done so for a few days in a row was Wang Xiaoyun. Now that she had left, he was all alone again and likely to spend all his time in cultivation.
Not only was he likely to cultivate, he no longer had anything holding him down. He did not have to drag Wang Xiaoyun around with him whenever he was trying to flee, and the Forbidden Rush ability could be displayed to the best of his ability.
"Father, why have we not moved against the masked men?" Shen Mu asked curiously. He had seen how these masked experts had chased Xue Wei and Wang Xiaoyun, and he had been sure that his father would make the city guard move to apprehend them.
"It is quite simple." Shen Bingwen sighed. "We know that they belong to the He and Jia family mainly, but a few of them are from the Li family. Although we know this, we cannot prove it unless we catch them, but on what basis are we allowed to catch them?"
"They have not done anything wrong yet apart from slightly disturbing the peace from time to time. They have not even managed to touch the hem of Xue Wei's clothes, so to stop them on his behalf seems impossible."
"If they beat him up, then I could use my power to stop them, but since they cannot even do this, then I cannot stop them. To everyone else, it looks just like two parties playing tag."
"But father, you know as well as I do that if they catch him, it will not be a question about something as light as being beaten up. Xue Wei will be crippled for life!"
"I know," Shen Bingwen sighed in reply, "so let us pray that he will never get caught. There are only a few months left before it is time for you to go to the military camp. If he works very hard and stays in the mansion until then, then who knows what levels he can reach. Hopefully, he will not cause any problems before then."
Shen Mu felt that his father was acting strange, but he was also well aware that he had to be careful with every single move he made, especially one concerning the City Guard.
Although the Shen family right now were the City Lords, it was not certain that they would remain in this position in the future. They had gained this post because they were the first in Tiankong City to obtain a Heavenly Warrior, but now that the Li family had one too, it was clear that they had a formidable opponent.
The Li family had a longer history than the Shen family, and although their Heavenly Warrior had appeared later, he was not much weaker than the Shen Heavenly Warrior.
Shen Mu sighed. He understood that one day it would be his job to ensure that the Shen family maintained the strength and rank that it had in Tiankong City now. Shen Bingwen had placed all his hopes on this specific son because of his promising talent, and he wished for him to make him proud.
Since he had to become the new head of the Shen family, Shen Mu knew that there would be times where he wished to move but would be incapable of making a move because his every action could cause problems for the Shen family. Although he valued friendship highly, he always had to put the Shen family first and view it as his ultimate responsibility.
Time flowed like water within Tiankong City. Xue Wei finished his herbal bath and returned to the back of the training grounds, where he again began the usual pattern of drilling sessions for the Shattering Mountain Palm, the Azure Light Finger, the Forbidden Rush, and lately he had also started practicing the Inner Might ability.
Inner Might was his first profound martial arts ability, and this technique proved to be many times more difficult to learn than both Shattering Mountain Palm, Azure Light Finger, and Forbidden Rush.
It required precise control over Qi and to be able to shape it outside of one’s body as well.
Shaping the Qi proved to be the most troublesome aspect. At first, he decided to try and shape a sword, but the Qi did not even resemble a sword. In fact, it looked like a pool of Qi that wiggled slightly.
On the second attempt, he managed to make the pool turn into a long thin line that looked like it was made from clouds. There was no sharp edge, no handle, nothing to make it resemble a sword.
Xue Wei frowned. He had experienced a few setbacks with the Azure Light Finger, but it was so little that he did not mind it, and he had experienced even less of a setback from Shattering Mountain Palm and Forbidden Rush, yet now he had encountered a real problem.
Chapter 27 - Counterattack Begins
Xue Wei was aware that he had limited time before he had to depart for the military camp. He knew that he had to have comprehended the ability before it was time for departure.
Most of the younger generation members had already picked the kind of weapon they preferred. Shen Mu was using a sword, Li Jian was using his fists and a saber, Luo Zhirou was using the fan, and so on.
Xue Wei had not been cultivating for long, and so far he had been focusing on increasing his strength alongside learning a few abilities that could save his life in a fight. He had not had the time to learn how to wield a weapon just yet.
"I do not want to be locked down with one specific kind of weapon," Xue Wei mumbled to himself as he continued to stubbornly extract his Qi and try to shape it into the form of a sword.
"When I have understood and trained this ability, I will be able to change my weapon as easily as thinking about it. It will give me a great benefit in fights, and since it is made from Qi, I do not have to carry it around with me everywhere."
"The downside is that it consumes quite a lot of energy to create these weapons, and every single clash will make me lose energy, yet the weapon will constantly increase in quality as my Qi becomes stronger and better."
"But this is truly a profound ranked skill," Xue Wei sighed in praise. "Although I have had no issues learning the other ones, this one proves to be rather tricky. Well, I better take it slow and build the right foundations."
Xue Wei knew that some things could not be rushed, so instead he sat down with his legs crossed and took a deep breath. He then spread out his hands. Following that, a long and thi
n streak of Qi appeared on top of his palms that slowly started wriggling and twisting as it tried to take on the shape of a sword.
The days trickled by one after another. On the first day, Xue Wei accomplished almost nothing. The second day, he managed to create the handle, but when he moved further down in an attempt to create the blade, the handle would become obscure and start to dissipate.
When he managed to make the blade and tried to create the handle, reversing the order of creation, the blade would similarly become transparent or dissipate. The sharp edge would not stay.
He had sighed at this, but Xue Wei did not give up. He was as if obsessed, staying seated in the same position day in and day out. His eyes were open and turned increasingly bloodshot, but he was not becoming less focused.
On the fifth day, Xue Wei managed to create a sword. This sword laid on top of his hands and felt as if it had been made from cold steel. It was firm and fit well in his hand when he grasped it.
Jumping to his feet, Xue Wei ran to the closest black gold dummy and got ready to attack. He stayed focused on the sword, ensuring that it kept its shape before he swung the sword diagonally from upside down.
The wind howled from the attack. Xue Wei did not need to inject his Qi into the sword, as the sword was already made from his Qi and was sustained by a continuous stream of energy that was flowing from his pearl-like dantian.
A loud clang sounded out the moment the two collided, and the recoil forced Xue Wei back a few steps. A smile was on his face as he saw a long gash on the dummy's chest, running down exactly where the sword had cut.
Qi weapons could be many times sharper than real weapons. Real blades could only be sharpened to a certain extent, as sharpening it further would mean the edge, while razorsharp, was too thin and would break or chip after one or two clashes with the enemy. Because of this, sharpness of real weapons had to be balanced with thickness and durability. However, Xue Wei was able to conjure insanely sharp weapons because the blade material was his Qi itself.
Although these black gold dummies were incapable of protecting themselves with Qi, they were sturdy, and their bodies were equal to a fifth layered Warrior.
Xue Wei was now able to cut open the body of a fifth layered Warrior with a single casual swing of his sword created by relying on Inner Might.
The sword dissipated the moment that Xue Wei had finished the cut due to a loss of focus, but he did not despair. Instead, he closed his eyes and imagined the sword once more, only to have the Qi shape itself into a sword almost instantly.
Having understood the principles of creating the sword, it was not difficult for him to recreate it. Although he now understood how to create the sword, he was not aware of how to fight fluently with it, and thus he began training with it. He practiced against the black gold dummies, his sword flashing time and time again. With each slash, a long wound appeared on the dummies.
Sometimes, the sword would vanish after a successful attack, and some other times it would last for three or four assaults before it disappeared. As time went on, Xue Wei got better and better at controlling the sword and eventually became able to maintain it in his hands for as long as he wished for it.
After feeling that he had mastered the sword, Xue Wei checked the time and realized that he had already spent more than five days on trying to comprehend the Inner Might attack. It was time for him to return to the herbal concoction.
After this, Xue Wei returned to the painful concoction and increased his cultivation base. He then began to cultivate the Inner Might again, and this time he tried to create a spear.
In the beginning, the spear looked rather pitiful, but as time went on, it looked better and better, and soon Xue Wei started training with the spear. Although it took time to practice and to get used to this kind of weapon, it was shorter than the time needed to learn the sword.
After the spear came the saber. After the saber came a fan. After the fan came a zither, and the list went on. Xue Wei became more and more familiar with the Inner Might ability and was able to create more and more weapons than he had ever tried before. Soon, he could control them all with no problems.
Thanks to the herbal concoctions, Xue Wei had also managed to reach the seventh layer of the Ordinary Warrior rank, and although it was only the beginning of the seventh layer, he could feel a new strength bursting in his body that had not been there before. It was as if he had finally started to feel the benefits of being a cultivator.
"Well then, why don't we go and see if those people from before are still hanging around?" Xue Wei mumbled to himself. He knew he was no enemy to the masked opponents when he was facing them face to face, but Xue Wei had no intention of fighting them head-on.
Xue Wei was not willing to let Manager Su worry about his actions, so he went to the room and changed into an outfit of black trousers and a black shirt. He then tied up his hair in a bun on top of his head with a black silken ribbon.
Then he looked at himself and nodded his head in approval. He was not wearing robes so moving would be easy. His hair was tied up so it would not get in the way, and he was wearing black clothes, so hiding in the shadows should be reasonably simple.
Xue Wei elegantly jumped over the estate wall and entered the city casually while being on high alert. He used his heightened senses to keep an eye on what was happening around him regularly, and it did not take long before he found the first masked cultivator.
"So they really did stay in town. I will bet they come from the He or the Jia family." Xue Wei sneered, but he quickly dodged to the side and entered a small alleyway that was located just opposite the masked expert's seating place.
This masked expert was wearing a mask on half his face; it covered his eyes, nose, and forehead, but his mouth was exposed, and he was sitting outside a drinking den, drinking some fine wine.
Xue Wei grinned sinisterly as he roused the Qi within his body and created a zither. Zithers were exotic weapons. They attacked with sound waves, and someone like Li Jian who practiced the Sonic Palm should be able to work well with the zither.
The reason Xue Wei had tried to learn the zither was because of what he had read about the Ouyang family, and he found these exotic weapons very alluring.
It had taken Xue Wei a couple of days to become proficient at the zither, and he was still a mere beginner, but he had accuracy on his side, so he sat down in the dark alleyway and looked at the masked cultivator that was seated some distance away in front of him.
"Let us see how you will deal with this," he grinned, and his hands rapidly started strumming the strings on the zither, releasing an avalanche of sound waves that went straight for the masked cultivator.
Xue Wei had chosen the zither because he needed a ranged weapon and his experience with the bow and arrow was still too little. Hence, his best option was the zither.
These sound waves rose in the city, and everyone close by looked confused as they heard the violent melody that appeared out of nowhere. The actors and entertainers used zithers, but everyone knew that a real expert could also use them to attack.
It just so happened that no one in Tiankong City was known to use zithers to attack, so when the violent melody sounded out, everyone was certain that some sort of performance was happening and they stopped what they were doing, looking around curiously.
The masked expert was no different. He raised his cup to his lips and looked around only to suddenly frown as he felt a shockwave crush against his chest and throw him back like a kite with a broken string.
The second shockwave did not hesitate to hit him straight in the face. But although it hit like a sledgehammer, the man was after all a cultivator two levels above Xue Wei, and a mask protected his face.
The mask crumbled, and blood started pouring out from a wound on the man's forehead.
The man who was no longer masked jumped to his legs with a roar that shocked everyone present. What had happened was simply too fast for them to realize, and when they noticed that somethi
ng was going on, the man had already jumped to his legs.
"You little devil, where are you hiding?!" the man screamed out as blood gushed out of the wound on his forehead, and from his mouth, as a tooth had fallen out.
"Time to get moving," Xue Wei murmured. Without waiting to see the show, he fluttered in the wind and vanished from the alleyway where he had been before.
The masked cultivator was in a frenzy. He started roaring and smashing everything around him in an attempt to find the expert that had caused him to gain such injuries, but what puzzled him was that although he had been wounded, the reason he was wounded was that he had been unprepared. He could not think of anyone with a strength equal to his that would dare make a move on him as long as he was unknown and hiding behind the mask.
"It couldn't have been?" The man suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. The strength that the assailant had displayed was clearly quite similar to his own strength. If Xue Wei had managed to reach that level so fast, was that not a monstrous change?
