Overbearing Fist!
Doyum. A wall shattered into fine pebbles in front of Tian Longmeng smoking fist. As he began gulping for air he raised his head looking at the rubble, satisfied.
It tooks around 4 or so months to completely master the Overbearing Fist, but seeing this result was well worth it. Tian Longmeng looked at himself and could not help but smile.
"Finally, I have some real firepower. I won't have to fear anyone under the core disciple level." Even though he had various trump cards such as the speed and strength that comes with the body strengthening path, he still had to watch out for the really high ranking core disciples.
When he saw his rank during the last ranking test, he naturally noticed the top 50 names. More importantly, he paid close attention to those names within the first column.
Using his own feat as comparison, their strength must be firmly within the Quazi-Earthen Realm or even at the Earthen Realm. These people are not pushovers like the others and would require more than just some power advantages to surpass.
Now that he had a skill, he would not need to fear them; or he could at least be able to flee if the situation is dire. He hurriedly entered the Ark space to share the good news to Elder Canglong.
Elder Canglong shook his head in approval and simply began to demonstrate. "This is the second of the skills you need to learn. It is called the Overbearing Sweep."
Fu.
Elder Canglong dropped to the floor and made a crescent moon with his foot.
Bang. A wave of essence erupted from the sweep and left meter long cuts into the palace pillars. Elder Canglong rose and reminded Tian Longmeng once more about the rules of cultivation.
"Remember not to rush when you are cultivating. Take your time, even geniuses fall when they go too quickly."
Tian Longmeng energetically nodded his head and scampered away, eager to try the Overbearing Sweep. Should he even grasp just a tiny amount of the skill, he would have another backup.
Elder Chang turned up to Elder Canglong and spoke just as grumpily as usual. "Why you stopping the child from cultivating? You obviously know that time does not matter when it comes to the Ark. Anybody who cultivates using the Ark will face no bottlenecks or negative effects from cultivating too quickly."
"You are suddenly interested in the boy now. I thought you hated the idea of him with the Ark." Elder Canglong shifted his eyes to Elder Chang's direction.
"I did not care for who got the Ark, what I was against was how you broke the rule and opened the child's cultivation." Elder Chang voice mellowed a lot more than when he first confronted Elder Canglong, but it still had some lingering resentment.
Hearing that answer, Elder Canglong paused to gather his thoughts. The reason why patience in cultivation had become an unspoken rule was because a hasty cultivation resulted in a dao deficiency. Meaning that the cultivator would not have enough essence reserves to support their cultivation, resulting in deviation and turning into an inhumane beast, direct explosion or burning of one's soul.
Even the genius could not escape this with precious pills and medicinal herbs. They would just explode from overuse; that is, if the pill toxins that built up from overdose did not kill them first.
On the other hand, if Elder Chang was speaking the truth, that meant that Tian Longmeng could endlessly cultivate without feeling any discomfort or pain. All he would have to do is find the supply to facilitate his growth.
This information is too scary to reveal in public or else the entire martial system would fall apart, losing arms and legs to grab at any chance. Not to mention Tian Longmeng, even if a legendary Dragon was to own such an item, they would be dead before daybreak.
Surprisingly enough, Elder Canglong did not seem to mind this. He calmly responded. "He barely got the opportunity to cultivate. If I was to tell him of that ability, he would drown himself in cultivation. He has a seed of greed within him, it is only faint so I want to kill that."
"The emperor had a seed of greed as well, and he directly ripped it out and made a heart demon arrow from it. It is possible for this child as well." Elder Chang retorted, albeit slightly seriously.
Elder Canglong firmly shook his head. "But the emperor when young had everything pertaining to cultivation at his disposal. Every cultivator has greed but only those who have limiters to keep it in check can survive. But a child who has this much thirst for the dao does not have any limiter, he would become the death of the martial world... if somebody does not kill him first."
Elder Chang solemnly paused for a moment but as he was about to speak, Elder Canglong directed his attention to a mirror made of essence.
In this mirror, the image of Tian Longmeng was projected. He was very elated because while he was practicing the sweep, he unknowingly broke past the Organ Mending Stage into the Breaking Might Stage.
The mirror faded as Elder Canglong began walking away, speaking into Elder Chang's ears. "Plus, I don't know when that happened but his affinity with the Ark space is too high. He is currently borrowing my strength to enter the Ark but the Ark shows absolutely no resistance to him. If he wanted to summon nine lightnings from the heavens and destroy this planet right now the Ark would oblige. Even now, I don't think mid stages or bottlenecks would apply to him anymore, he unconsciously breaks through to stages."
"You can not tell me the emperor was this freakish. The Ark is too scary for his own good."
Elder Chang remained at the same spot, pondering. "I wonder if it is time to awaken the third elder yet? No- she needs to rest a bit more."
.....
In between the massive doors of the martial academy stood 50 students. They were mixed between multiple second-years and third-years with a few first-years and even fewer fourth-years. After all, fourth-years were somewhat seen as a disgrace since most people in their fourth year and above were already core disciples.
One thing of note though was that there were no black robes to be found, meaning that there were no core disciples in this group.
Quite obviously, these people all gathered for the same reason: the Annual Open Botanical Hunt. They clamored about various topics, mostly just people betting on how much jins of medicine others would get.
In the midst of all this, Tian Longmeng stood gazing at the horizon. He knew he was not entering the actual Desolate Wilderness but nonetheless still teary-eyed about his home. He knew if he wanted to experience the martial world, he would have to leave home. However, he could not help but miss home.
He muttered to himself. "I've got to find a way into the Desolate Wilderness Excursion."
"Hey, get on your horses it is time to go. Remember, two to a horse." A loud voice instructed from behind the group as some disciples carry the stable of horses. Each person was assigned to a horse based on their name, year, and rank.
Tian Longmeng hopped on his horse, frightening the disciple sitting in front. He was a 200 odd ranking second-year that was present at the last ranking test and saw Tian Longmeng's incident with Zhongwang Shi.
He was scared out of his mind and blamed his luck for being stuck with such a troublesome first-year. "I hope people don't see me with him and assault me for no reason." He muttered under his breath.
Meanwhile, Tian Longmeng already submitted his materials to the forging facility a long time ago and heard that it should be finished by the time he was done with the hunt, so he perkily journeyed to the designed location in the Desolate Wilderness, completely unaware of the person who looked like he wanted to cry.