by Tinalynge
Xue Wei knew that the Azure Light Finger took around forty percent of his Qi, and a fully charged Shattering Mountain Palm was the same.
A bit of perspiration dripped down his forehead as he thought about how close he had been to being beaten up, and not just him but also Shen Mu.
Although Xue Wei could feel the loss of energy and was somewhat feeble, his mental state had never been better. He had been bullied and abused for so long, and now he finally had been able to pay back those debts by just a little. He had been able to show that he was not trash, and he felt as if his shoulders were a thousand times lighter than what they had been before.
His usually expressionless face turned into a smile, and his clenched hands slowly opened. He felt free for the first time, and he looked into the sky above, thoroughly enjoying himself. He felt restored.
Shen Mu could feel that Xue Wei had spent all his energy and nodded his head before he escorted Xue Wei back to the mansion. When they returned, they noticed that the manager was waiting outside for them.
When the manager saw Xue Wei being walked home by Shen Mu, he was at first surprised, but then he noticed Xue Wei's state and his eyes turned dangerously dark.
"Manager Su, do not worry," Xue Wei said with an uncharacteristic grin on his face. "Li Jian is much worse off than I am."
"Mu, thank you for following me home. When I am at home, Li Jian will not dare do anything to me, so I am safe now," Xue Wei turned to Shen Mu and told him. This was the first time that Xue Wei referred to Shen Mu by just his first name, and Shen Mu couldn’t help the smile that spread on his lips. It seemed that Xue Wei finally acknowledged their friendship.
"Don't sweat it," Shen Mu grinned back and waved at Xue Wei as he turned around. "Train hard and show that Li Jian that not everyone is as useless as him. He just recently broke into the ninth layer of the Ordinary Warrior rank, so I will expect it to be a half year if not a year before he becomes an Earth Warrior."
Shen Mu started walking down the street, when he turned around and said one last thing to Xue Wei, "Show them all just how strong you are after your next secluded cultivation!"
Xue Wei nodded his head solemnly and reached into his robes where he found the bag filled with medicinal plants.
"Manager Su, please have the maids fill up a bath for me," Xue Wei requested, and the manager nodded his head solemnly.
Although he was incredibly curious about what Xue Wei had meant when he said that Li Jian was looking much worse, he did not dare ask. He was confident that after a short amount of time, the guards and the maids would have brought a rumor back for him to hear.
Xue Wei did not go directly to his room. Instead, he went to the back where the training grounds were located.
He closed his eyes and remembered the feelings he had experienced when fighting Li Jian, and how he had narrowly escaped every attack by relying on the Forbidden Rush ability.
He started moving like a flutter; although there was not much wind within the eastern region, it was as if his every move brought forth a gentle breeze, which slowly increased to become a current of wind and from that wind manifested a gale.
Xue Wei moved faster than the eye could see; he merged with the wind brought forth by his movements, and he thoroughly began enjoying the abstruse feeling of turning ethereal like the wind.
He increased and decreased his speed according to his wishes. He changed his directions with but a thought, and he was capable of jumping far into the sky.
Currently, Xue Wei was only capable of performing these actions, but if he managed to reach a higher level, both of understanding the art and also of cultivation so that he could unleash more of its potential, then it would not be impossible for him to fly in the future.
Xue Wei had read books about legendary figures who had managed to cultivate to a level where they were capable of flying, yet none of the books stated anything about the levels above the Heavenly Warrior level.
Xue Wei came to a stop. This movement martial art did not consume much energy as it instead required the surrounding energy to display its might, but it was still very taxing on his mind as he needed to keep everything within his inner eye so that he could calculate where to move to, how fast to move there, and what path to take.
It was also because of this that Xue Wei noticed that Manager Su had arrived on the training ground, and he turned around after stopping.
"Young Master, the bath has been drawn. You should go to your room and enjoy the bath."
Xue Wei nodded his head, his face once again expressionless, but Manager Su knew from experience that Xue Wei was not deliberately acting cold towards him. This was just his usual self.
Having nodded his head, Xue Wei went straight back to his room where he found a big wooden barrel filled with steaming hot water.
He then reached into his robes and took out the bag of plants that he had bought earlier that day. Blood Ginseng and Corpse Grass were both widespread materials.
The pharmacies could cultivate a Blood Ginseng. They were regular ginsengs that had been fertilized with blood until the root itself had turned crimson .
The older the ginseng, and the more blood it had consumed, the more medicinal properties were within the plant.
The ginsengs that Xue Wei had bought were only ten years old each. Although ten years seemed like a lot to a fifteen-year-old young man, they were not that old in the world of plants.
Humans cultivated most Blood Ginsengs, but a few rare ones could be found in nature if there was some kind of bloody phenomenon. Xue Wei had read about a blood spring that was deep in one of the danger regions, and he knew that that place had to have Blood Ginsengs in large quantities. The naturally formed ones were also much more potent in energy than these domestically grown ones.
But no matter how much Xue Wei wanted to get his hands on the naturally formed Blood Ginsengs, he knew it was impossible; and being realistic, he also knew that his body could not handle all the energy contained within them. It might just end up exploding.
Since this was the case, Xue Wei decided to use the next best, which was a herb he knew he could control. And together with the Blood Ginseng was the forty-year-old Corpse Grass.
Corpse Grass was also a widespread material. In fact, it was even more common than Blood Ginseng and required even less work.
Corpse Grass grew on top of corpses and took nutrients from the carcass. They could store a great amount of energy within their leaves from when the body was still present, and live for up to thousands of years.
With Corpse Grass, the medicinal properties got stranger the older they were.
Corpse Grass was poisonous. It was after all a herb that existed by living off the dead. However, Corpse Grass that were older were not poisonous any longer but were instead highly effective medicine for young and budding warriors.
Blood Ginseng were filled with blood essence and consuming one directly was dangerous. But adding it to the bathwater was a great way of extracting the energy from the plant, allowing for him to absorb the blood essence and strengthen his body's exterior.
The Corpse Grass was just old enough to have gotten rid of the poisonous aspect, but too young to contain too much energy. It was a thin balance, so he had to be careful. The older the herb, the stronger it became. Although it lost the poisonous effect, it was also forty years old and had gathered energy for forty years.
Although it was tempting to eat medicine with a lot of strength, the risk was too high. It could enter the body and break down the meridians, the channels within the body where the Qi flowed, and leave a warrior crippled for life; or if he was really unlucky, his entire body could explode.
Keeping this in mind, Xue Wei took a knife and cut open the first of the ten-year-old ginseng. He then saw how small drops of liquid that resembled blood dropped into the bathtub.
After careful observation and ten drops of liquid later, Xue Wei placed the Blood Ginseng back in the wooden box. He had not used more than a third of the m
edicinal fluid within the first ginseng, but it was already enough.
The bath in front of him had turned completely red like blood, and Xue Wei took a deep breath. He then found the Solar Flower and took one of the petals which he dropped into the red water and then added half a leaf of Corpse Grass.
Chapter 13 - Concoction of Herbs
The Solar Flower was a mixture of a sunflower and a lily. It shone with a golden light and was incredibly beautiful.
The plant was extremely common in the southern region of the Kingdom of Heping where the sun shone almost every day of the year.
Getting his hand on three Solar Flowers about thirty years of age was as simple as getting his hands on the forty-year-old Corpse Grass.
Then Xue Wei took the Beast Core he had purchased and used the Azure Light Finger to strike it. He aimed to break it up into smaller pieces, and he managed to succeed.
A resounding boom could be heard as the beam reached the core and shattered it into thousands of pieces.
Beast Cores looked like glass-faceted diamonds. They were stored in the heads of beasts, just behind the forehead, and they gathered all of the beasts internal energy within.
Shattering the core made it look as if it was made from glass, and small shards appeared all over his room. Xue Wei dropped one of the shards into the water basin before he started gathering all the others.
From time to time, he would stir the bath water, which strangely enough did not seem to cool off at all in the time it took him to gather the shards and place them on his table.
Once he was done picking the floor clean of the shards, he took off his clothes and took a deep breath. "This is going to hurt," Xue Wei muttered to himself as he climbed into the bath.
The moment his feet touched the water, Xue Wei gritted his teeth and fought back the urge to scream.
The Corpse Grass was no longer poisonous, but it was still very violent in nature, and it was also a plant that had lived for forty years. This was just about the limit for how much energy they could contain before Xue Wei would receive injuries to his meridians.
The energy entered his body from the foot that had touched the water, and it felt like thousands of needles were traveling through his body.
The temperature of the water made Xue Wei feel as though he was being boiled alive, but the worst was the feeling of constantly having his body being cut by thousands of knives at the same time.
The moment Xue Wei lowered his entire body under the water, his vision turned dark and he almost lost consciousness due to the intense pain; yet by relying on his determination of wanting to become a respected cultivator, Xue Wei forced himself to stay awake.
He sat in the water, his head just above the surface, and was cultivating. The wisps of Qi that entered his body were numerous, traveling through the meridians in his body to be purified before being absorbed into the shining pearl in his dantian.
Xue Wei could feel how his flesh was being strengthened by the Blood Ginseng he had added to the water, and he could not help but feel excited.
"Earlier, when I was fighting Li Jian, it felt as if my strength was superior to the four hundred kilos I should be capable of lifting. Was my imagination playing tricks on me?" Pondering on it for a bit, Xue Wei decided that when he finishes this session of secluded cultivation and fully grasps the Forbidden Rush and the Shattering Mountain Palm, he would find some remote place to test it.
It was not only Xue Wei's physical body that was improving, but Xue Wei could also feel how the energy from the water entered his body and pushed out impurities, making it possible for him to absorb more energy and faster than before.
The water also contained a shard of the beast core of an Earth Ranked Fierce Beast. This was not only some layers above him but a whole realm above him, and the energy contained in that little shard already held as much energy as Xue Wei had with his fourth layer Ordinary Warrior rank.
The energy from the core entered Xue Wei's body together with the whisps of energy, slowly getting refined.
The concoction that Xue Wei had made felt so familiar. It was as if he knew it by heart, but he had never before experienced it on his own body.
He did not know that, previously, he had often helped his late father prepare these baths for the wealthiest families in Lingyun Town.
But now that he felt it on his own body, Xue Wei understood that although this method was an excellent way to cultivate, it was not suitable for everyone.
If one were not able to calm their mind and keep relaxed while feeling such intense pain, it would be a wasted opportunity as they would not gain more than what they could with regular, unassisted cultivation.
Xue Wei sat in the bath all night, and the water turned more and more transparent. His flesh and blood absorbed all the blood essence of the Blood Ginseng, and the Corpse Grass cleared out his meridians. The beast core shard had been depleted, transformed into energy that had become part of his own cultivation system.
Before entering this concoction of plants and a beast core, Xue Wei had been a peak fourth layer Ordinary Warrior. Now, after one night of training, he had broken through to the fifth layer. It made him clench his hands excitedly.
This was not something he could do more than once every third day, or his meridians would not be capable of handling all the energy that went through them. But doing this once every third day also provided a significant effect.
Another benefit of using plants instead of pills was that there were no pill toxins in using the raw materials. True, when using the plants alone, the medicinal strength could not be fully extracted, but the bit that could be extracted was already enough for an Ordinary Warrior.
Pills were relatively rare, but Tiankong City was one of the biggest cities in the Kingdom of Heping, and thus it was natural for it to have an Alchemist Association.
Pills were graded by low purity, middle purity, high purity, superior purity, and profound purity.
You needed to be strong enough to consume a pill of certain purity.
With Xue Wei's current strength, all he could consume would be a low purity pill. Those kind of pills were filled with pill toxins. Although these pill toxins could be removed by for instance using Corpse Grass or other plants, it was a long and tedious process, and the pill toxins might even hurt his prospects.
Because of this, not many were willing to buy pills of low and middle purity; they were simply too poisonous for the cultivators, and only those who had no other option would consume them.
Sighing and shaking his head, Xue Wei stopped thinking about pills. Although he wished that he could take profound pills and be able to increase his cultivation base just like that, he was fully aware that it was suicide. Since this was the case, he could do nothing but consume the plants the way he did every third day, and spend the rest of the time practicing the Forbidden Rush and the Shattering Mountain Palm.
Xue Wei's life fell into a pattern. He would spend his time training and practicing the Shattering Mountain Palm and the Forbidden Rush. And whenever able, he would take a herbal bath like last time.
He eventually ran out of Corpse Grass, but Manager Su personally went to purchase some for him upon realizing this, and nothing interrupted Xue Wei's training regimen.
Another month went by. While Xue Wei was busy training, everyone in Tiankong City was in deep shock.
The same day as Xue Wei had battled Li Jian, a rumor had started spreading in the city stating that Xue Wei was actually not trash and that he was capable of going head to head with Li Jian because he possessed a movement martial arts skill.
The first information was already enough to stun the entire city. Everyone had hated and loathed Xue Wei because he was useless, yet now, after having secluded himself for four months, he was better than the majority of the population of the city.
This alone had made many feel incapable of understanding what was going on. Some changed their opinions and started to consider whether or not they had been too harsh to hi
m when he was weak, and how to become friendly with him now that he was in the spotlight, while others just hated him even more intensely than before.
Some were of the opinion that since he had always been trash, he should just stay as the trash he was and be bullied forever. The fact that he had learned martial arts was actually enough to insult them on a personal level.
Amongst the commoners, the rumor about Xue Wei possessing a movement martial art was shocking, but they were not completely aware of what it resembled, while many of the nobles were completely aware of what it meant and they were all filled with greed.
Fortunately, none of them dared move rashly because of Xiao Lei and the City Lord's Mansion. The only one who had the strength to move was the Li family, as they too had a Heavenly Warrior. But if he truly made a move, it would be seen as a revolt, and the City Lord's Mansion and all their supporters would love to use this opportunity to get rid of Li Jian's father.