Yang Xiu was a little concerned. Master had said that consolidating her gains could take an hour or a week. She took that to an that it was likely to take an extended period of ti.
After an hour, though, she felt … good.
She’d advanced through nine minor realms and Mastery of two different techniques. She knew what it was supposed to feel like when she was ready to continue with the next step.
She was ready.
Well, he had said that she would know. She shrugged and made her way to the Guard House, telling them she needed a room to consu pills Master gave her.
Her mind flashed back to when she and her brother had taken the pills that improved their spiritual roots. She really hoped that whatever was about to happen didn’t hurt as much as that had. Regardless, she would endure, but she could hope.
The other thing that struck her was how helpless they both had been while under the influence of the dication. It was nice that Master had thought to set up a place guarded by people they could trust just for such a purpose.
A guard quickly led to a small room, and she cupped her hands and bowed low to him.
“Senior Sister, you don’t have to do that!”
“Nonsense,” she said. “This one thanks your for your service to the sect.”
Despite his protestations, the man left smiling.
The room had everything she might need—separate containers of water for drinking and for washing, cleaning materials, rags, and a set of old clothes.
Though she wasn’t sure what was about to happen, she didn’t think disrobing would be necessary. She threw the three pills in her mouth, swigged so water, and gulped them down.
Dropping into a lotus position, she waited.
The process was painful, of course. Everything about cultivation seed to involve pain in so manner. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as the spiritual root refinent.
Best of all, the entire process seed to only take about an hour or so.
After the pain had gone away and the burning in her channels had subsided, she dove her consciousness into her body to examine it.
Her qi pool was larger. She was already struggling to co to terms with how much more she had available compared to the peak of Qi Gathering, and now she had even more. Master was truly unfathomable.
After returning to the house she shared with her brother, she pulled out the jade slip containing her new Foundation Establishnt realm cultivation thod from her storage ring.
Her Foundation Establishnt realm cultivation thod. Her storage ring.
Yang Xiu grinned.
That day in the woods when Fang Wei had caught up to her and Yang Ru, she had thought everything was over. The spoiled wretch was about to kill her brother and do unspeakable things to her. Even if they sohow survived, their parents were dead. They had no food and no place to go.
Now, she was a real cultivator, one who would soon be able to do amazing things with her qi. She had a place to belong, a new family.
Yang Xiu couldn’t wait to take the next step.
She dove her consciousness into the jade slip just like she’d done dozens, maybe hundreds, of tis with other treasures and began assimilating the contents.
Information flooded her brain.
The root of the thod was similar to her old one. The qi aspect was exactly the sa, matched to hers.
And wasn’t that sothing she and her brother had marveled over many tis. It was obvious from their interactions with the mbers of the Poison Claw Sect that no one, literally no one, had cultivation thods uniquely tuned to their qi aspect just handed to them. The only people who used such things were Golden Core and higher elders who were able to develop their own cultivation thods after years and years of study.
She put aside that thought, concentrating on the task before her.
The purpose of Qi Gathering had been to gather in motes of qi and condense it into a liquid. Her new cultivation was similar in that she was still condensing the qi, but the goal was to make the liquid more and more dense until she could finally form a core in her dantian, which would trigger her ascension into the Golden Core realm.
Everything about the new thod was the sa but slightly different from the one she’d previously used, variations on a the so to speak. The cycles were a slightly different pattern, and she’d be handling a lot, lot more qi at once than before, ten tis more. The task was daunting.
Yang Xiu took a deep breath.
It would be fine. She could do it. She would do it.
She would not let down her master.
Slowly, carefully, deliberately, she absorbed qi from her environnt and cycled it, using it to minutely compress the liquid qi flowing through her channels.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
When she finished the cycle, she felt the change. Minor realm one. A small change, but she could detect it because her control and sense of her body were much more developed than it ever had been when she’d been a mortal.
After reaching that milestone, she switched to working on her new archery technique. It was, in a word, difficult. Moving qi outside her body was quite different from moving it inside. The change was sothing like how she imagined learning to use a new limb might be.
One really good thing about advancing to Foundation Establishnt was that her need for sleep was reduced even further, so she stayed up all night practicing. By dawn, she could coat her arrow tips in qi and maintain it until they hit their target.
The process did slow her rate of fire, however. Before, she’d been able to pull an arrow, nock it, and smoothly pull back and release in a fraction of a second. The new technique required her to stop when the bowstring was pulled back and concentrate for up to several seconds to get the qi to move into place.
Still, she hadn’t expected it to be easy. Learning to shoot a bow in the first place hadn’t been easy, either, but she’d well and truly conquered that task.
Dawn brought the need to et the others in the plaza, though, so she reluctantly stopped practicing. As she and Yang Ru walked toward the gate, she experinted with her spiritual sense. Her brother imdiately flared before her more than just to her eyes. Even closing them, she knew exactly where he was and that there were more cultivators ahead of them.
The best she could guess was that she could detect any cultivator in about a hundred yards radius from her. Additionally, they felt more or less solid to her based on their cultivation level. Yang Ru was by far the first feeling of all of them. There was a definite difference between him and soone like Shi Long and again between him and one of the newest inductees.
Because she knew the realm of each of the people present, she was able to start associating a feeling of firmness with a certain minor realm. The only exception was Zou Tian, who barely felt like a cultivator at all. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he had just learned to cultivate last night instead of being in the sixth minor realm.
Everyone arrived except for Master, which was strange. He hated being late and was almost always one of the first ones there. By the ti he showed up around a half hour later, the sect mbers were starting to get worried.
“Sorry about being tardy,” he said. “I’m expecting Kang Lin and her group today, so I spent so extra ti clearing out the worst of the beasts along their path.”
Yang Xiu glanced at her brother, who tried hard to act like the girl’s imminent arrival didn’t bother him, but it was obvious to soone who’d known him for his entire life that he was nervous.
“I went far enough to sense them as well,” Master continued, “and I’ll et them on the road in about four hours. I’ll patrol an extra long distance around the Wood before I leave and will try to be gone as short a ti as possible.”
No one had any problem with that, of course, and they all proceeded to the Wood.
The interesting thing for Yang Xiu was that Master didn’t appear at all to her spiritual senses. He’d told her about that ability of his in the past, but it was interesting to experience it for herself. Of course, she also rembered him saying that any higher realm cultivator would be similarly hidden, so she looked forward to seeing what such cultivators felt like in future encounters.
About four hours after the start of their daily cultivating, Master arrived to take her and her brother to et with the newcors. She was excited, eager to get to know her potential new sister.
In contrast, Yang Ru had to grip his spear tightly to stop his hands from shaking.
Yang Xiu stifled a laugh, and he glared at her.
Oops.
Kang Lin had hoped to make the distance from Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town to the Prosperous Gray Forest Village in a single day, about twelve hours of running full out. That had seed like a reasonable goal. After all, that was the ti the trip had taken her both coming and going on her previous trip.
She hadn’t counted on two factors, however. First of all, the spirit beasts were a lot more nurous and aggressive than they were on the previous journey. She and the other five Poison Claw Sect mbers had to stop multiple tis to fight, though fortunately not against any rank four or higher. Her techniques were barely at Small Success, and though she was willing to try, she did not feel at all confident about fighting such a high ranked creature on her own.
The second delay ca from her fellow sect mbers. The slowest of the bunch, Deng ixiang, could barely sustain forty miles per hour, a good twenty percent slower than Kang Lin when she’d been in the Qi Gathering realm.
Normally, a trip taking fifteen hours instead of twelve would have been no big deal, but with all the spirit beasts and the overgrown path, travel in darkness was not a good idea. Which ant they had to camp for the night. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal, either, but for the spirit beasts.
She’d spent the entire night on edge because several rank threes with good stealth had been able to sneak all the way into the camp before anyone spotted them. It was quite stressful.
Kang Lin was also on edge the next morning as they traveled because she fully expected to encounter rank fours. Considering the density of rank threes they’d had to fight and the warning from Esteed Master Cultivator Chao Su, her conclusion only made sense.
Therefore, it surprised and worried her when not a single one appeared. Her only thought was—if there were no rank fours, was it because there was an even more dangerous one nearby?
She really hoped her bravado in saying that she could escort Pan Jiang and the other four wouldn’t cost her or any of them their lives.
The further they traveled, the more nervous she beca. Thus, when shortly before noon, two spiritual presences suddenly appeared just beyond the next rise, she let out a panicked cry.
“Get ready! Beasts just over the next hill!”
Pan Jiang readied his sword. Deng ixiang nocked an arrow.
All six of them were as tense as Deng ixiang’s bowstring.
That was when Kang Lin realized her mistake. She was sensing one Foundation Establishnt and one Qi Gathering cultivator over the rise, not beasts.
“Stop!” she yelled.
But it was too late.
At movent on the top of the hill, Deng ixiang loosed.
Kang Lin winced. That was not good. Her grandfather was going to be so mad if what she thought was about to happen did, in fact, happen.
Esteed Cultivator Chao Su suddenly appeared in front of them, holding Deng ixiang’s arrow. “I think you lost this?”
At least he was smiling when he handed it back to the girl.
Kang Lin had never been so embarrassed in her life. To have one of her charges shoot an arrow at Grandfather’s friend was an incomprehensible loss of face. What a way to greet soone to whom she owed so much for such an amazingly easy breakthrough.
Worst of all, the incident was solely her fault. She should have known instantly that it was cultivators, allies, who had appeared.
She cupped her hands and bowed low. “This lowly one is so sorry, Esteed Master Cultivator.”
“For what?” He seed genuinely perplexed.
“For this lowly one’s sect mate shooting an arrow at our allies, Esteed Master Cultivator. These lowly ones are sure to be punished when Elder Kang and Elder Dai learn of it, but any punishnt the Esteed Master Cultivator wants to add would be justified.”
In Kang Lin’s experience, the only way to gain any chance of leniency was to convince the master that one was absolutely willing to accept any punishnt—not that they deserved lenience for that debacle.
“Don’t be silly. Even if that arrow had hit one of us, it couldn’t have possibly done any damage,” he said. “Now, co on. I have two disciples waiting for you, one eagerly and one anxiously.”
She’d had so much on her mind that she’d almost forgot about Yang Ru and their impending potential courtship. Suddenly, she was nervous for an entirely different reason.
Reviews
All reviews (0)