by Gore, A. P.
While he fought with Kardash, he had to cultivate ten revolutions through his Refinement Realm qi path, then open a new qi path for the Foundation Realm. This would be tough, as he had so much pure qi that he needed more focus to control its progress through his qi paths. The only way to consume the remaining qi was to fight. The fight should act as a catalyst for him to break through.
A smile slipped on his lips as an idea popped into his mind. What if he fought with another catalyst . . . like gravity pressure on his body?
This was going to be fun. So much fun.
Chapter 62
Fight - Bleed – Fight
A dark brown paw slashed across Li Wei’s skin, leaving a deep trail of blood on his arm, tearing what remained of his sky-blue robe from his arm. Thank the heavens Fei’er had prepared plenty of them for him.
Two black-red eyes sneered at him from the darkness.
Wei groaned in pain, but he chuckled inwardly. The moment the paw had hit him, his body entered a heavy state. The simple action of leaping backward seemed hard.
He pushed on the ball of his foot and jumped to his right, avoiding the next attack. However, the gravity acting on his body made his movement sluggish, and Kardash was already charging at him.
Wei’s dantian churned, pushing pure qi through his qi path, half completing his fourth revolution.
Almost there. The gravity had induced panic in his body, pushing his dantian to work at twice the speed and utilize twice the qi to complete a revolution. This instantly lessened the pressure his dantian felt from the endless amount of pure qi trying to break open it.
“One Sword Strike.” Swinging in midair, Wei sliced his sword downward.
His sword and Kardash’s paw met, and Wei used the rebounding force to somersault. After landing ten feet away from Kardash, he licked his lips, savoring the aftertaste of the Seven-Tailed Fox Blood Essence. It was sweet and bitter, but thank heavens it wasn’t actual blood. Blood essence was purified from heart’s blood, and it was scarce. If he’d had to drink regular blood, that would be gross.
“Again.” Pushing his foot against the rocky ground, he leaped forward, swinging his sword downward. But this was a feint, and he was going to let Kardash hit him so he could get another stack of gravity applied to his body.
Kardash howled and leaped forward, attacking with both of his paws.
Just a moment before their attacks met, Wei felt a sense of dread when he sensed a black aura emitting from Kardash’s paws. It was a different attack than the Black Fox’s Wrath, and he had a feeling it wouldn’t feel good to take it. So, in a split second, he changed his mind and attacked with his sword instead. Pure qi shot into the sword, activating the Strength Expanding Array.
For a moment Wei’s sword illuminated like a mini sun, and then everything changed.
Sun Nuan watched man and beast fight, and her mind filled with intimidation. Frankly, she wasn’t a fighter. Although she had reached the Foundation Realm in qi cultivation, she had advanced using many herbs and potions she’d gotten from the royal palace. Compared to her, Wei Lin must have lived a tough life.
Yet he had achieved something no one she knew had before. He had dual cultivated in body and qi and reached the Foundation Realm in body cultivation.
She sighed inwardly. She could never practice body cultivation. A seal was placed on her Physical Root at birth, so she couldn’t sense it at all. Even if she got the seal removed somehow, she would be killed for treason. Her life was bound by invisible shackles.
At times she felt these restrictions to be unfair, but even though she’d asked many, no one had told her the reason behind these restrictions. All she knew was sects had crippled every royal family member, and royal families were just puppets in the sects’ hands.
This was true for all royal families in the Mortal Realm. They had to live and die in the Mortal Realm.
Her heart tightened when Wei Lin suffered an injury at Kardash’s paw. It left a bloody trail mark, and Wei Lin’s actions slowed a tad afterwards.
“This is bad. He’s been inflicted with Black Fox’s Wrath,” Miss Jiya said in a gloomy tone.
Sun Nuan grew grim. She knew of this skill from a text in the royal family library. This skill’s effect was similar to the martial skill Tiang Chi’s gang of lackeys had used on Wei Lin, but as long as he didn’t get hit again, he should be fine.
But did Wei Lin know about this innate skill of Black Foxes? Given Wei Lin was not from an aristocratic family, he might not know the traits of the dangerous beasts around them.
Wei Lin performed a beautiful somersault and landed away from Kardash.
“He should be fine,” Sun Nuan replied with a calm face, but her heart had been racing like a horse since the moment that stupid Wei Lin had asked for a death match.
But her heart almost gave out when a mini explosion happened in the next clash. Wei Lin was thrown backward and crashed into the cave wall like a meteor, burrowing into the wall a few inches. The stupidest thing? He’d crashed into the wall face first. With her hereditary martial skill, she saw stone piercing through his handsome face.
Stone and dust spread everywhere from the point of impact, leaving a cloud of invisibility behind and she couldn’t see what happened with Wei Lin after that.
“No!” A hand over her mouth, she ran toward him but was stopped by Miss Jiya.
“You can’t interfere. This is a life and death match agreed to by my mother.”
“But he is injured.”
Miss Jiya nodded. “He is injured. He shouldn’t have taken the Iron Paw head on. How naïve.”
“How can Kardash have multiple divine abilities?” Sun Nuan wanted to run over to Wei Lin, but she restrained herself as she saw hi pick himself up and wipe blood from the corner of his mouth. With his disheveled long hair and bruises all over his body, he looked like a beaten-up roadside criminal. Yet he carried an invisible charm that plucked at her heart to see him bleed like this.
Miss Jiya chortled. “Are you humans that naïve, or simply dumb? We beasts are constantly evolving, and each one of us can learn new divine abilities through practice and deduction. Granted, they are not as numerous as the martial skills humans possess, but they are enough to kill our opponents.” Pausing, she rubbed her whiskers. “That divine ability Kardash used doubled his powers for an attack. I’m surprised to see that human still standing.”
By that time, Wei Lin had charged forward again. Just before he clashed with Kardash, Sun Nuan thought she saw the corners of his mouth curl upward.
Was he smiling?
When their attacks clashed again, Wei Lin’s sword slipped and Kardash’s paw slashed through Wei Lin’s shoulder, bringing some more blood and flesh out of his body.
Sun Nuan clutched her robe tightly. She was afraid others might hear the thumping sound her heart was making. “Stupid fellow. How can he make the same mistake again?” she cursed. Another touch of Kardash’s paw meant Wei Lin had received another stack of gravity, and his actions would slow further.
But why? This was unlike him. She had seen him fight before. He was excellent at fighting. He moved with agility and struck with strength. He had everything a warrior needed.
“How could he repeat the same mistake?” She stomped her foot in frustration.
“That’s not a mistake.” The Mother Fox said in a hoarse voice. Since eating that herb, her condition was slowly improving, but her disposition remained gloomy and she didn’t have the strength to stand yet.
“Mother, you should rest.” Miss Jiya rubbed her forehead on her mother’s neck.
“He is using the gravity field to hone his cultivation. He is such a madman.” She laughed lightly. “Jiya’er, you must follow him properly. With him, you might break the shackles of this curse.”
“Mother, why would I follow him? You’re cured now.”
Wei Lin struck with his sword, but Kardash was faster and dodged it easily. The sword passed through the empty air and cut into the rocky surface below as if a knif
e cutting through butter. His strength seemed to have increased since he last fought with a Black Fox.
But he wasn’t agile enough to avoid Kardash’s next attack, and it arced toward Wei Lin’s neck—a weak place on any cultivator. One ill-fated strike could prove fatal.
Sun Nuan’s heart skipped a beat. Was he going to lose his life like this?
Chapter 63
Intent of Earth
Impending doom approached his back, and Li Wei’s lips curled in a smug smile. Although the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, he remained calm and composed. Like a sinister prophet who had divined this moment, he raised his left palm from the cold sword for a counterattack. His left foot pushed firmly against the rocky floor of the cave, leaving him ready to swing at any moment.
In fact, he’d been waiting for this moment since he took the second hit from Kardash deliberately. From the start of their fight, Kardash had tried to aim for his weak points, and he knew Kardash would take this chance as soon as he exposed a weak point.
What could be weaker than one’s frail neck?
The strange thing was he didn’t sense it with his divine sense. It was something else. He’d first noticed it when he clashed with Kardash’s strange attack that threw him into the cave wall. Before crashing, he’d sensed the peculiar feeling of a protruding surface about to pierce through the back of his chest. That could have been an instant death, but trusting his own intuition, he’d forcefully flipped his body and avoided it in the nick of time.
Although by doing that, he’d injured his face, but he didn’t care. Those scars could be mended, and even if they remained, who cared? He wasn’t handsome to begin with, so he didn’t care for his face.
However, that peculiar feeling lingered in his mind. It had started after consuming the Seven-Tailed Fox’s Essence Blood, and he had a feeling he could communicate with his surroundings now. Especially anything made up of rocks and earth.
Was it the Intent of Earth?
He was so shocked by that thought that he almost forgot to swing when the time came, but the nagging feeling of danger in the back of his mind jolted him out of his thoughts, and he swung on his left foot and attacked with his left palm. As much as he wanted to use his Dragon Swallowing Pain Fist, he couldn’t divert his pure qi from his qi path. He was on the sixth revolution, and he didn’t want to lose his current progress.
Was it really the Intent of Earth?
No way. Intent was a high-level concept that one could grasp only after reaching the Houtian Realm. When one removed the shackles of the mortal body and stepped into the Martial Realm, their body underwent some changes and they began perceiving things differently. Intent was a higher-level thing than perception. Only a one-in-a-million person could grasp intent.
Something rang in his head, and a line of information raced through his mind.
Intent, Concept, Fragment of Codex, Codex, Law, Dao.
This information wasn’t something he’d known before, but somehow it reached his mind.
But from where?
Immense pain jolted him awake once again. Kardash’s paw had scratched across his face, missing his eye by a hair’s width. Before he could scream, his left palm hit Kardash’s stomach, sending a physical undulation of power inside the beast’s body and sending it flying away.
Kardash spat blood before he crashed into the wall a few feet away.
However, Wei wasn’t in good condition. His left cheek was hanging by a thread, and he could feel cold air on his cheek bone. Sun Nuan’s loud scream verified his suspicion. He looked hideous.
Then there was pain on top of that. Pain that numbed his face.
That didn’t matter. Pain was inevitable. He pushed his cheek back into position, and his blood rushed to heal the wound. It was a remnant of the blood essence he’d drank earlier. After crashing into the wall, he’d felt it slowly healing his body’s internal injuries. This time, he could feel the waning force of the healing, so he knew he couldn’t do it again and again. But it was enough to stitch his face up.
Once again, his thoughts drifted to the words that had invaded his mind. He repeated them as if they would vanish suddenly.
Intent, Concept, Fragment of Codex, Codex, Law, Dao.
It was the Seven-Tailed Fox’s Essence Blood remnant that was healing him. But what were those words? He was aware of two words from the list: Intent and Concept. Intent was the perception of an element. Although martial skills were divided into low, middle, late, and peak completion levels, there was another state beyond that. It was called a perfect completion, but one could only achieve it when they grasped an elemental Intent. Intent was a broad concept attached to everything. People mainly attached it to elements of nature like fire, water, etc. Many people had studied it, and many academic masters said it was one’s understanding of an element. A person with fire qi would easily understand fire-related martial skills, and they would find it hard to understand water-related martial arts. This was their Intent. If one understood the martial skill well enough to arouse potential out of it, that would be called the Intent of that martial skill. In fact, after spending so many years studying metal in his past life, he had achieved Intent of Metal.
But this definition wasn’t all-encompassing. In his previous life, he had met a person who had reached Sword Intent and Sword Concept, but those were called Sword Realms. Wei had never studied swords, so he knew nothing about them.
Concept was something above Intent. If one understood an element with Intent, one could manipulate that element to a certain degree when one learned the Concept of that element.
Unfortunately, only a few rare individuals reached the Concept level in any one field, so no collective study was done. These were all vague things, but if he heard a list of words where the first two things were known, did that mean there were levels above Intent and Concept? Did this information come from the remnant of the Seven-Tailed Fox’s Essence Blood?
Suddenly, he recognized a strong fluctuation in the gravity field acting on his body, and he became heavier. It was the third stack of a gravity field, but it didn’t feel as heavy as it should have been.
He needed more stacks to tame the pure qi in his dantian. He needed to fight more.
“Again.” Wei charged forward, muscles creaking under the pressure of the extra gravity, but he chuckled as the pressure pushed his dantian hard. With each additional ounce of pressure, his dantian was consuming pure qi from within to stay afloat, and he could already feel some of the pressure from it. He just had to let Kardash inflict a couple more gravity field stacks on his body and fight for half an hour more, and that should push him to the qi Foundation Realm. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.
But before he attacked Kardash, a bad premonition struck him. Someone strong, as strong as the Mother Fox, approached from within the darkness of the cave.
Chapter 64
Purple Soul Spear
Li Wei stabbed with his sword, but the sudden arrival of an unfathomable existence made his hand tremble a little. His mind screamed at him to run away.
Yet he continued with his attack. Even if he wanted to run, the unfathomable existence would kill him if it wanted to. If only his divine sense was working, he could have made a calculated decision.
Licking his lips, he observed Kardash who was busy defending. There was no change in his expression. He might not have sensed the incoming danger. From the corner of his eyes, Li Wei glanced at the Mother Fox still lying on the ground. Facing away from him, she stared at the darkest portion of the cave. He couldn’t deduce what she was thinking. Was the incoming existence a friend or foe?
Wei was distracted, and that single moment of distraction gave Kardash an opportunity.
Leaping to his right, Kardash dodged Wei’s next attack, turned backward, and stomped his right front paw on the ground.
An invisible ripple of energy shot from Kardash’s paw into the ground and headed toward Wei. Wei sensed the attack coming as a strange undulat
ion heading toward him. Maybe he had grasped the Intent of Earth.
How, he didn’t know, and he really didn’t care.
Wei jumped into the air, reaching eight feet off the cave floor with ease. If he had tried, he could have easily jumped nine or even ten feet in the air. This was surprising, because previously he could only jump five or six feet high.
From the air, he got his first glimpse of the unknown entity walking toward them. A panther, white as paper, stepped out of darkness and glanced at him. A red tattoo in between the beast’s eyebrows pulsed with a strange undulation, and Wei felt like his soul would get ripped apart if he stared at it too long.
A White Soul Panther. But this species was said to be extinct from this world. Wei pondered. This panther was a rare Spirit Beast that specialized in soul attacks, and its beast core was used to concoct Soul Replenishing Pills.
Wei landed on the ground, and he could relax for a moment as Kardash had stepped away from him.
“Uncle Chemanol.” The little fox dropped her front knees to the ground and lowered her head. All the other Black Foxes did the same, including Kardash, who had walked far away from Wei.
Who was this White Soul Panther? Wei lowered his sword but kept it ready to strike anytime. Although he maintained a composed face, turmoil erupted inside his dantian the moment he relaxed. The pure qi in his dantian was on the rampage again, crashing against his dantian’s walls, trying to break it open.
A thick film of sweat formed across his lower back, urging him to do something.
“Suppress.” He gritted his teeth and pushed more qi into his qi path, stretching it instead of letting his dantian explode. It was his seventh qi revolution, and if the battle continued, he could break through to the Foundation Realm in half an hour.
No, he would only need fifteen minutes.
The Mother Fox raised her head and asked in an arrogant tone, “Chemanol. What are you doing here?”