Tainted Blood

by Tinalynge

  Still, they were not weak. Four abilities appeared in front of him in the form of four different complex patterns that hovered in the air before they shot into his mind.

  Of these abilities, the first two were Qi martial art techniques and the other two spiritual energy skills.. All of them appeared to be profound techniques too.

  The first ability was called the Sky’s Judgement and created lightning bolts from Qi. Imitating the heavenly tribulation lightning, it struck nine times, each time stronger than the last.

  Sky’s Judgement was a powerful martial art technique that required the user to constantly channel Qi into the art before being able to fully unleash the might of the nine lightning strikes.

  The second ability was Qi Flamestrike. This technique made one’s Qi imitate flames and shoot from the ground while hurting anyone you wished to hurt in your surroundings. The drain of Qi while using this skill was immense, but the results were equally destructive.

  It was rare to find an ability that could hit more than one person at a time, so these techniques were safely guarded by those who owned them. It was something Xue Wei would not have found if not for the Heritage Ring.

  The third ability used spiritual energy and was called Psychic Wrath. It was a direct attack, allowing one to materialize spiritual energy as a seal in one’s hand. Similar to normal Qi attacks, physical contact was required to land it.

  Psychic Wrath was also rather spectacular because of its ability to manifest spiritual energy outside of the body and create a seal from it. Usually, spiritual energy was used to infiltrate another’s mind, so to be able to do this, it was without a doubt a great feat.

  The final ability was called Deadly Whispers. What this ability did was cause the target to suddenly succumb to their worries, which echoed in their mind as though someone was incessantly whispering it into their ears, seeking to corrode their mind.

  Xue Wei was especially very keen on Deadly Whispers, as he would be able to use this ability on multiple targets to lower their abilities during a battle. Even if they were able to endure for some time, it would be impossible to not be affected by it.

  These four skills made his head hurt as they embedded themselves in his mind. The others did not speak to him meanwhile. They all understood that he had to digest and understand the techniques before they could converse with him again, lest they disturb his learning.

  Xue Wei sat with his legs crossed and tried to slowly comprehend his new abilities.

  Lin Xiao and Hei Gou were patiently waiting for him to finish, but Bai Tianyi was on the other hand especially impatient. He had seen the quick overview of the abilities and noticed that two of them were spiritual energy attacks. He wanted to learn about them, and if possible, he wanted to inherit them as well!

  Chapter 38 - Where Is This?

  It took Xue Wei a few hours to fully comprehend the newest techniques that he had acquired from the Heritage Ring. The technique had been embedded into his mind, giving him an initial understanding of them. That would make it easier to begin his training.

  It was, unfortunately, not possible to train his newfound abilities within the carriage. They were quite destructive and he could not help but shiver when he thought about Lan’s face if he ended up injuring the treasure that the latter had stolen from his dad.

  It seemed that his only possibility would be to train Mind Vision. Whether it was Psychic Wrath or Deadly Whispers, it was a bad idea to train them here, as his friends were the only ones around that he could use them on. While Deadly Whispers would not truly harm them, it was not pleasant either.

  The moment Xue Wei opened his eyes, he found that the other three were looking intently at him. He was perplexed. “Is there anything on my face?” he asked with confusion, trying to interpret their expressions.

  “No, no, we are just curious about your new techniques,” Bai Tianyi said, grinning. Lin Xiao was curious about his Qi techniques as they were beneficial to him, and Bai Tianyi was very curious about the spiritual energy techniques as they could raise his strength.

  Neither of them wanted to be the first to bring it up. Both of them just looked at him with puppy eyes, hoping that he understood it himself, and luckily for them, he did.

  Xue Wei started laughing when he understood their expression and what it meant. “So it is like that.” He grinned, and then nodded his head. “You are my comrades,” he continued seriously and stood up. He moved towards the three that had huddled up together on one bench to watch him and wait for him to finish his comprehension until now.

  He stood before the three, reached out his hand and flicked their foreheads. Although the flick was quite strong, he was perfectly well aware that the pain it brought to them would be minute and almost negligible.

  “As my comrades and friends, all my techniques are yours as well. Just say the word and I will make a jade slip for you with the techniques imprinted in it.”

  Having said this, he retrieved two empty jade slips from his storage ring and sat down next to them. He cleared his mind, closed his eyes, and placed the jade slip on his forehead.

  He found all the information he had about the Sky’s Judgement and Qi Flamestrike and added them to the jade slip. He went through his mind a couple of times to make sure that the techniques were completely engraved into the jade slip before he slowly took the jade slip from his forehead and opened his eyes.

  “Here, this contains two profound Qi martial arts techniques,” Xue Wei said as he handed it to Lin Xiao.

  Before even giving Lin Xiao the time to say thank you, he closed his eyes again and did the same with Psychic Wrath and Deadly Whispers. This time he handed the finished jade slip over to Bai Tianyi.

  The two who got the jade slips were ecstatic. Bai Tianyi already had some spiritual energy techniques, but not enough. He had been cultivating both spiritual energy and Qi when he was an apex expert, but he specialized in Qi, which is why his arsenal of spiritual energy attacks was so sparse.

  So far he had been able to merge spiritual energy together with sword energy for all his offensive needs, but if he had more spiritual energy techniques, he could exhaust himself less and still cause problems for their enemies.

  Right now, Bai Tianyi had gone from being the strongest of the three to now being the weakest. This was something that troubled him greatly, even more so now that he was incapable of progressing in his own cultivation while they were in the trans-dimensional tunnel.

  Xue Wei went back to his own corner and then sat down again. He finally had a peace and time to himself, so he decided to start refining the cultivation bases of all those people his Devouring Azure Dragon had eaten from the fight back in the kingdom of Heping.

  He had been at the seventh layer of the Ordinary Knight realm in terms of Qi level when the battle began, but because he had used his Devouring Azure Dragon, he had fallen to the sixth layer of the Ordinary Knight realm—the same rank as his spiritual energy.

  Xue Wei was slowly refining the cultivation bases. He felt how the energy kept pouring out of the small Azure Dragon Spirit in his dantian, and that more and more Qi dragons appeared in his veins, all of them more realistic than the previous and at the same time appearing deeper and deeper azure.

  The energy in the carriage was now greedily being absorbed by Xue Wei. He was so energized and felt how the heaven-and-earth essence was being swallowed by every single Qi Dragon, turning into a stream that merged with the cultivation bases before they entered his dantian to be refined at the same time.

  The trip slowly advanced. Bai Tianyi was extremely bored because he could not train, so instead he was pondering on life issues and kept the other three company when they were not training.

  The carriage turned around a few times as it sensed the spatial storms that were in their surroundings, avoiding them all in the nick of time.

  This trans-dimensional tunnel went through the void. It was dangerous and risky, but this was their fastest means of travel at present, and when they
were in the Blue Phoenix Carriage, they never noticed the dangers of the trip because the carriage itself took care of everything.

  The so-called dangerous trip quickly turned into a casual boring cultivation trip where three of them spent all their time cultivating and the fourth was bored to death.

  Xue Wei managed to advance his Qi levels to the eight layer of the Ordinary Knight rank, but he made no progress in spiritual energy because the tunnel was bereft of soul power. Bai Tianyi had no obvious increase strength but he still spent the time practicing his control of the sword energy. Although his rank seemed unchanged, the time spent pondering and meditating on the sword energy and its uses had great effect to his actual strength. Hei Gou consolidated his strength and Lin Xiao also strengthened his foundations.

  Finally, the carriage that had been moving constantly day in and day out stopped. The four inside the carriage opened their eyes and looked at each other, excitement evident in their eyes. They slowly stood up and opened the carriage door.

  There were no windows in the carriage, and since it had been moving non-stop for so long, none of them had been outside of the carriage for all the time they had been in the trans-dimensional tunnel. As a matter of fact, they had no idea what it looked like inside the tunnel.

  Now that they exited the carriage, they could see that what surrounded them was not a trans-dimensional tunnel, unlike what they had expected. Instead, it was a long grassy plane. Above them was the blue sky, spotted with beautiful cotton-like clouds and a sun that shone strongly down upon them.

  When they turned around they just managed to get a glance at a spatial tear in the fabrics of reality, leading to a blue expanse with many stars all around, both above, beneath and to the sides.

  The carriage returned to this spatial tear shortly after they stepped out, and then the spatial tear closed itself, leaving the four alone in the grassy expanse, unaware of what exactly to make of themselves.

  “This is the Demon Phoenix Continent?” Xue Wei asked tentatively, but he was answered with questioning glances from the other experts in the group.

  “You ask me, but who can I ask?” Bai Tianyi asked, perplexed. He truly had no clue. In fact, none of them did.

  “This could just as well be a part of Chang’an for all that I know,” Hei Gou said hesitatingly. “I am sure that such a vast grassy expanse could be anywhere.”

  “Well, we will get no answers by staying here,” Lin Xiao finally said, looking as lost as the others. “We ought to start moving. The question is just, which way?”

  The four experts looked at one another, hesitating. Where should they go?

  “In the end, it does not matter,” Xue Wei finally came to a decision. He might not be the strongest in their group, but when it came to making the final decisions, he was no doubt the best suited.

  “Let us just walk forward,” Xue Wei said and began walking through the grassy expanse. “No matter what way we walk, we cannot know the result, so this is relying heavily on luck.”

  The other three could say nothing to this conclusion. He was completely correct.

  They moved forward, but not at a leisurely pace. They flew as fast as they could to get out of the vast expanse as soon as possible.

  Unfortunately, this grassy field was much bigger than they had expected. After flying for a full two hours, they still could not see the edge of the field. Where there had previously been no beasts, beasts started appearing, but all of them were of lower intellect, being Fierce Beasts.

  Xue Wei was puzzled. On Chang’an, the Fierce Beasts had all avoided him as much as they could, but here they seemed curious about him.

  At first, when a Cloud Leopard appeared, Xue Wei and the others stopped in their tracks, ready to fight, but the leopard just glanced at them curiously. It appeared to be especially curious when it looked at Xue Wei before it nodded its head and left again.

  This was a scene that happened again and again. More and more beasts came to see Xue Wei, and he started to feel like a monkey in the zoo. All the Fierce Beasts in the vast field seemed to rush towards him just to get a glance at him.

  Not knowing whether to laugh or to cry, Xue Wei looked at them too. There were races of Fierce Beasts he had never seen before, but it was clear that none of them were Primordial Beasts.

  “Oh look, now it is a bird-type beast!” Lin Xiao said to the others and pointed at the sky. He did rightfully so, as a majestic eagle with a wingspan of three meters was flying in the air above them, looking down on Xue Wei with curiosity in its eyes before it screeched and flew away again.

  “This is quite fun.” Bai Tianyi grinned as he looked around them. “Over there is a rather ferocious-looking rabbit!” he said as he pointed into the distance where a white rabbit with fangs and blood red eyes was seated, looking at them with a vibrating nose.

  Xue Wei felt quite unsettled. What had caused all these beasts to show such curiosity towards him?

  But they did not stop moving forward, continuing at top speed. Soon, they suddenly saw a human cultivator not far away from them.

  “Halt!” the cultivator called out loudly. Xue Wei and the others stopped in their tracks. They were not willing to insult someone right after arriving. They had already lived a life being chased as convicts. They did not want to experience that again as soon as they came to this new place.

  “Oh, it is just a group of two-eyed idiots,” the person muttered. Xue Wei heard that thanks to his sharp hearing and was startled.

  When he took in the appearance of the person in front of him, he quickly blinked a few times to ensure that what he saw was indeed correct, and then he looked at the others, who also looked with utter perplexity at the person in front of them.

  Where they had two eyes, this person had a third in the middle. All three were red like blood, looking extremely eerie.

  “What’s wrong?!” the person asked, feeling insulted when he saw their gawking expressions. “Have you never seen a three-eyed expert before?”

  “No...” Xue Wei answered honestly. “Could you perhaps tell us what the name of this continent is?”

  Chapter 39 - Eyes

  The three-eyed person narrowed his three eyes and looked at Xue Wei with undisguised suspicion.

  He then moved closer to Xue Wei and started to circle around him, looking at him from every single angle.

  “Your clothes are rather foreign. I cannot recognize the material,” he said with a nod of his head. “The style is different, and the armor is also quite different.”

  “Your strength is passable, definitely not a strength that you should have been able to achieve with only two eyes at your tender age.”

  “Where are you from?”

  The man had examined him and came to the conclusion that Xue Wei was not lying; he was indeed a stranger to their continent and the three-eyed man could not help but feel curious about the outside world.

  “We come from the continent of Chang’an,” Xue Wei answered honestly. He doubted that his name would resound all the way from the continent of Chang’an to this continent, but he was still not sure about where they were.

  “Chang’an?” The man looked puzzled and seemed to contemplate for some time. “I have never heard about that continent before. Can’t be a very big or important one,” he concluded, leaving Xue Wei and the others coughing. One thing was to think it, but to say it directly, was this not a bit too rude?

  “Come with me,” the man said and waved for them to follow him. With a look at each other, the four of them quickly nodded their heads. No words were spoken, all of them felt that they could follow this man, for now. They felt no hostility from him so following him seemed like a safe choice.

  The three-eyed young man led them across the plain. He moved as fast as them, but a look at him told them that his Qi level was rather low, at most around the Heavenly Warrior rank. This was puzzling.

  Still, in half an hour, the group arrived at a rather sizeable camp. It seemed to be housing around a thous
and people. As to whether or not they were all experts, Xue Wei did not know. He had no knowledge about this continent so he dared not even make any mindless guesses.

  There were other three-eyed cultivators standing guard at the camp, and Xue Wei even saw a four-eyed cultivator walk inside. The guards were extremely polite, to the point of being submissive, towards this individual.

  “Wait here,” the guard said as he entered the camp. Their group was quickly noticed by others and many looked at them. For some reason, they all showed looks of disdain towards their group of four. It was clear that they were being looked down upon.

  “There are so many eyes,” Hei Gou said with a low voice, and the other three nodded their heads. It was indeed confusing to see people with this many eyes. Was this really the Demon Phoenix Continent?

  They were all puzzled and realized that they had been told nothing about the continent they were to enter, only that the Vermilion Bird Clan existed here.