Chapter 30: Dancing Qi Pillar
The Ma family was not the only family within Riluo City improving at a rapid speed. The Deng family had somehow gotten hold of an outstanding mechanism that no outsider to the family knew much about.
It was obvious that these mechanisms were hidden beneath stone and wooden sheds close to the rivers outside Riluo City. They were currently constructing over seven different buildings all at once.
The Deng family also sent out a message conveying that they would buy all the land available at a river with a strong current and that they would reward the sellers handsomely.
The first of these buildings were finished half a year after they started the construction, and the winter was now retreating. The snow was melting but the cold winds and short days still had precedence in the season.
The news about the Deng family gaining these blueprints from Li Fen, the esteemed expert, had caused the Deng family to have the upper hand within Riluo City, and currently they were the strongest family, not counting the Rong family.
During this half year Hui Yue had fought a brave battle against his cultivation and had reached the peak level of the ninth-star Student rank, however, he felt as if something was missing for him to be able to make a further breakthrough.
At least Hui Yue was in no hurry as he walked around the academy grounds. He was satisfied with his current cultivation and as he was now, there was no longer any use for his medicinal pills so he had gifted them to the Rong twins as a token of gratitude.
At first the two of them had refused to accept the pills, only conceding when Hui Yue said that he had bought them for money he had gained from the Black Market Auction House and that he would feel much better if they would accept his gratitude.
Having said that much, the Rong twins could no longer decline and took the pills, happiness evident upon their faces as they quickly excused themselves, heading straight to their individual courtyards.
During this past half year the relationship between Deng Wu and Hui Yue had grown increasingly friendly. The two of them shared a big secret which they would never be able to tell anyone else about, and at the same time they also wished to find a way to use these esteemed experts’ knowledges in the best way.
Qing had given Hui Yue a list of certain plants he should eat at specific times every day and they would help him in increasing the amount of essence he could gather at a time, in turn increasing the amount of Qi that he could refine at any given time.
Hui Yue in turn informed Qing how Lan Feng had broken the seal, but unfortunately stabbing someone’s heart was not a very useful attempt for Qing.
Firstly, if he were to stab someone in the heart, the two of them would die. Unlike Lan Feng, Qing had not gathered up all his energy within the past four thousand years, instead he had been sharing it with Deng Wu in allowing him to advance by leaps and bounds.
Secondly, even if little dragon had been capable of stabbing someone in the heart and successfully create a reincarnation, they would once again be at least ten years behind.
Hui Yue knew that little dragon currently was mainly used as a talisman which could disguise Deng Wu’s true cultivation and at the same time see through all disguises and provide good advice. However, Qing could not transfer any of his martial art skills, and eventually Hui Yue gifted one to Deng Wu.
The skill Hui Yue gifted to Deng Wu was as highly ranked as the ones he himself used. It was a skill known as Dancing Qi Pillar and it’s as a High Duke Ranked Martial Art Attack Skill.
This skill solidified Qi into a pillar of light which would move around based on the owner’s will and intentions. Those who got struck by the pillar would suffer tremendous damage. Although Hui Yue liked the name and the skill, he was aware that his Transforming Weapons was far superior in strength and he could not spend time on learning all these skills just yet.
For those around Hui Yue and Deng Wu, it was interesting to see how the two of them interacted; no one felt as if it was their place to comment on it and instead they enjoyed how Deng Wu had calmed down and became an almost normal youngster.
Hui Yue was sitting inside the classroom, looking outside at the frozen ground and wondered how long it would take before summer returned. He had long since decided to quit searching for more information about the Great Sin and the Dark Age as nothing seemed to be available to him and instead he prioritized growing stronger.
Everyone within the academy kept telling him that one day he would get to know about the Dark Age. One day when he was old enough. So for now, gathering strength was what mattered.
In the other end of the classroom was Wang Ju Long, present like always, however, this day he was not meditating as he usually did, instead he was staring at teacher Li Yuan with great interest.
“Students,” he said with a tired voice and shocked expression as he noticed that both of his star students were actually paying attention to him this day. “As you most likely know already, the Riluo City’s Royal Academy tournament is going to take place next month. I need to sign you up for this. Everyone is required to attend, and everyone will gain a price.”
Hui Yue and Wang Ju Long looked at each other, both pairs of eyes were filled with a stubbornness and an urge to fight, which caused their teacher to sigh deeply.
Hui Yue rushed down and signed up on the papers teacher Li Yuan had brought, and Wang Ju Long followed right behind before doing the same.
After signing up, the teacher ended the lesson and gave the youngsters a paper with the general information about the tournament.
The tournament had eight groups of a thousand in each group. The groups were split up into which year they were from. The fights were then split into lower brackets and it was an instant knock out tournament.
Eventually, after winning in one of the eight groups, they would fight another group before they would qualify to the semi-finals and from there to the final itself.
The prizes were extravagant. Everyone were to get at least a medicinal pill; however, what really interested Hui Yue was the prices given to the top eight.
First prize was a set of leather armour inscribed with lower ranked spiritual inscriptions. These inscriptions were capable of deflecting the majority of attacks from foes of equal strength or below.
The second prize was twenty Qi Congregating Pills which would make any cultivator salivate just by thinking about it.
The third prize was a set of leather gloves which had been inscribed with a specific attack inscription, allowing a single fireball to be shot out every half hour.
The rest of the top eight were to get ten Qi Congregating Pills each.
Another prize, which did not matter much to Hui Yue, was that the top two in each of the eight groups were allowed to move into one of the courtyards located at the various mountain tops, and those courtyards were enough to make most of the commoner students gasp in surprise.
This was the Riluo City’s Royal Academy Tournament, thus it was held for an audience consisting of the entire Riluo City, however, compared to the Royal Academy Tournament which took place three months from now in the capital, this was nothing but a small gathering.
Hui Yue was excited as he left the classroom. It was finally time to try and put all his effort into practice. He rushed back, although he was not rushing back to his own courtyard, but instead rushing towards Deng Wu’s. It was time to show Wang Ju Long who was the strongest of the two of them.
Hui Yue was currently standing within Deng Wu’s courtyard. His clothes were sticking to his body as sweat was dripping down his back and his face. The last three hours had been used for sparring against Deng Wu and Hui Yue finally allowed a smile to appear on his face.
“You are a monster,” Deng Wu said, shocked as he looked at all the damage which had been done to his home. “Young master Wang is definitely in for a surprise, however, you forget that I am also participating in the tournament and so far you can’t beat me.”
A smile adorned Deng Wu’s face, however, it quickly disappeared when he noticed the smug grin which Hui Yue was displaying.
“That’s true, but are you likely to allow your true cultivation base to be shown?” he asked mischievously, “I doubt you will actually manage to get through to top eight unless you unleash at least some of it.”
Deng Wu remembered that it was indeed true that no one else knew about his strength and an average talent was not supposed to suddenly jump this much in his cultivation base.
“Right,” he sighed dejectedly. “You better win this thing for me then. I will look forward to see how you do.”
The smile upon Hui Yue’s face widened and he gave a thumbs up before he rushed out of the courtyard, running towards his own home.
Returning home to his own courtyard, a smile was still evident on Hui Yue’s face as he swirled his hands and two knives appeared. These knives were white as the finest jade and crackling with pure energy. The knives were both as long as Hui Yue’s forearms and the handles were fit perfectly to Hui Yue’s hands.
Hui Yue knew that Transforming Weapons without a doubt was the most challenging of all the skills he had practiced so far, and after more than half a year of training he had only managed to perfect one type of weapon out of the numerous to choose between.
Back when Hui Yue started practicing, he had realised that his skill at handling knives was as terrible as if it had the first time he tried wielding it. Back then, shock had filled the young man as he had assumed that he could easily wield weapons as he had practiced it for multiple years in his old world. However, even if he had been using it back then, it was still almost eleven years since his reincarnation and within these last eleven years, Hui Yue had only focused on cultivating and learning specific Martial Art Skills.
As soon as Hui Yue noticed that his cultivation was improved on the expense of no longer being able to remember how to properly move according to his former world’s instructor’s teachings, he instantly decided to once again skip the lessons given by teacher Li Yuan and instead use those additional hours a day to focus on his wushu training, starting at the basic level.
Although Hui Yue’s reincarnated body had never experienced this kind of training before, he quickly managed to get past the basics as he had previous experience by soul. Currently, although he was far from his previous abilities, he was still not one who could easily be defeated.
Hui Yue’s smile grew as he looked at the two knives in his hands and he swirled them around, playing with them before he moved towards a newly acquired target dummy.
Playing with knives and practicing the body was one thing not usually emphasized within the academy as the majority of cultivators focused solely on their martial art skills to deal with both offence and defence, however, Hui Yue had decided to combine his martial art skills together with his previous knowledge. This way Hui Yue no longer relied solely on the skills but managed to improve them, merge them, with his own body’s movement.
As Hui Yue started practicing this new type of fighting, he had trained only within his courtyard so that his fighting style did not get revealed before the tournament. The tournament was time for redemption, the tournament was the time to show that Hui Yue was not just equal to Wang Ju Long.
He was more than just the white-haired genius. He was a silver monster.
These emotions had caused Hui Yue’s training to grow wilder and more intense and unfortunately the courtyard had paid quite the price for it. The beautiful walls had been filled with deep gashes, the majority of the trees had been slashed so deeply that they collapsed and the ground was marred with craters and slashes.
Hui Yue had eventually needed to get help from a grandmaster with an elemental affinity of wood. Wood was the affinity which allowed for life to spring forth and this cultivator managed to return the courtyard to its previous appearance.
The price to restore the courtyard was an extravagant seven spirit coins, as Hui Yue required that she swear a blood contract never to reveal the fact that she had worked for him. Still, he found that the money was well spent.
The day after, he purchased a few target dummies created by a Grand Master with Metal and wood as elemental affinities.
These target dummies were shaped as humans and they were adorned with inscriptions which allowed them to have different uses. One was to stand still and allow for the cultivator to hit it constantly where it would repair itself after each hit.
The second option was to activate another inscription and the target dummy would react to attacks. It had no Qi but it had enough ability to avoid attacks.
Creating the dummy and the inscriptions were done by the metal affinity while the wooden affinity was used to constantly repair the dummies.
These dummies were without a doubt their weight worth in gold but the price was five hundred gold coins each.
Hui Yue once again smiled as he activated his two dummies and got ready for a session of training. So far, Hui Yue was capable of having his double knives active for half an hour, and the next half hour the sounds of battle could be heard from within the courtyard.
‘Phew,’ Hui Yue sighed before a yawn contorted his face. Having fought two dummies for almost three quarters of an hour, as he had exhausted his entire Qi spiral, he felt tired beyond belief.
‘It looks quite good,’ Lan Feng said approvingly after having watched the melee display. ‘You seem to have perfected the knives and tomorrow you can start playing around with another type of weapon.’
Excitement grew within Hui Yue as he heard this. He had long since wished to try out a sword, but because of Lan Feng’s requirement of perfecting one thing at a time, he had not tried it out yet.
