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 ahold of an outstanding mechanism that no outsider to the family knew much about.

It was evident that these devices were hidden beneath stone and wooden sheds close to the rivers outside Riluo City. The Deng family were currently constructing over seven different buildings all at once.

They also had sent out a message announcing that they would buy all the land alongside a river with a strong current and that they would reward the sellers handsomely.

The first of these buildings was finished half a year after they had started the construction. 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 mechanism drawings from Li Fen, the esteemed expert, had caused the Deng family to have the upper hand within Riluo City. 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. He had reached the peak level of the ninth-star Student rank. Nonetheless, he felt as if something was missing for him to be able to make a further breakthrough.

Hui Yue was in no hurry as he walked around the academy grounds. He was satisfied with his current cultivation. 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. They only conceded when Hui Yue said that he had bought them with money he had gained from the Black Market Auction House. He would be pleased if they would accept his gratitude.

Upon hearing that, the Rong twins could no longer decline and accepted the pills. Happiness was 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. At the same time they also wished to find a way to use their esteemed experts’ knowledge in the best way.

Little Dragon or Qing, as he was now called, had given Hui Yue a list of certain plants he should eat at specific times every day. They would help him increase the amount of essence he could gather at a time. This increased essence would, in turn, increase the amount of qi that he could refine at any given time.

Consequently, Hui Yue informed Qing how Lan Feng had broken the seal. Unfortunately stabbing someone’s heart was not a very useful endeavor for Qing.

First, if he were to stab someone in the heart, the two of them would die. Unlike Lan Feng, Qing had not gathered up all of his energy within the past four thousand years. He had been sharing it with Deng Wu, thus allowing Deng Wu to advance by leaps and bounds.

Second, 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 was currently used mainly as a talisman which could disguise Deng Wu’s actual cultivation; at the same time, allowing Deng Wu to see through all disguises and be provided with good advice. Unfortunately, Qing could not transfer any of his martial arts skills. Eventually, Hui Yue gifted one to Deng Wu.

The skill Hui Yue gifted to Deng Wu was not as highly ranked as the ones he, himself, used. It was a skill known as Dancing Qi Pillar, and it was a high Duke ranked martial arts 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 skill was far superior in strength. Essentially, 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. 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. 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.

At the other end of the classroom was Wang Ju Long, present like always. This day he was not meditating as he usually did; instead, he was staring at teacher Li Yuan with keen interest.

“Students,” Li Yuan said with a tired voice and an amazed expression as he noticed that both of his star students were actually paying attention to him. “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 prize.”

Hui Yue and Wang Ju Long looked at each other, both pairs of eyes were filled with stubbornness and an urge to fight, which caused their teacher to sigh deeply.

Hui Yue rushed and signed up on the papers teacher Li Yuan had brought. Wang

Ju Long followed right behind, and did the same thing.

After the sign-up, the teacher ended the lesson and gave the youngsters a paper with general information about the tournament.

This tournament would have eight groups of a thousand in each group. These groups were then split up into whichever year they belonged to. The fights were then split into lower brackets, and it was an instant knockout tournament.

Eventually, after winning in one of the eight groups, they would fight another group before they would qualify for the semi-finals and from there advance to the final itself.

The prizes were extravagant. Everyone was to get at least one medicinal pill. What really interested Hui Yue was the prizes given to the top eight.

First prize was a set of leather armor inscribed with lower-ranked spiritual inscriptions. These inscriptions were capable of deflecting the majority of attacks from foes of equal or lesser strength.

The second prize was twenty Qi Congregating pills which would make any cultivator salivate just 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, awarded to the top two in each of the eight groups was authorization to move into one of the courtyards located on the various mountain tops. Those courtyards were enough to make most of the commoner students gasp in surprise.

The Riluo City’s Royal Academy tournament was held for an audience consisting of the entire Riluo City. 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. He was not rushing back to his 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 dripped 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 real cultivation base to be shown?” he asked mischievously. “I doubt that 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. An average talent was not supposed to rise this much in his cultivation base suddenly.

“Right,” he sighed dejectedly. “You better win this thing for me, then. I will look forward to seeing how you do it.”

The smile upon Hui Yue’s face widened. He gave a thumbs up before he rushed out of the

courtyard, running towards his own home.

After returning home to his 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 a perfect fit 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. After more than half a year of training, he had only managed to perfect one type of weapon out of the numerous weapons to choose among.

Back when Hui Yue started practicing, he had realized that his skill at handling knives was as terrible as if it were the first time trying to wield it. Back then, amazement had filled the youth as he had assumed that he could easily wield weapons since he had practiced it for multiple years in his old world. Even if he had been using it back then, it was now almost eleven years since his reincarnation. Within these last eleven years, Hui Yue had only focused on cultivating and learning specific martial arts skills.

Once Hui Yue noticed that his cultivation was improving at the expense of no longer remembering how to properly move according to his former world’s instructor’s teachings, he instantly decided to skip the lessons given by teacher Li Yuan. Instead, he used those additional hours each day to focus on his Wushu training, starting back at the basic level.

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. Even though now 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. He swirled them around, playing with them before he moved towards a newly acquired target dummy.

Playing with knives in addition to practicing the body was one thing not usually emphasized within the academy. The majority of cultivators focused solely on their martial arts skills to deal with both offense and defense. Hui Yue had decided to combine his martial arts skills with his previous knowledge. This way Hui Yue no longer relied solely on the skills. He managed to improve them and merge them with his own body’s movement.

As Hui Yue started practicing this new type of fighting, he trained only within his courtyard so that his fighting style did not get revealed before the tournament. This tournament was the time for redemption. This 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. His courtyard had paid quite the price for it. The beautiful walls had been filled with deep gashes, the majority of the trees had been lacerated so deeply they had collapsed, and the ground was marred with craters and slashes.

Eventually, Hui Yue had needed to get help from a Grandmaster with an elemental affinity of wood. Wood was the affinity which allowed for life to spring forth. This cultivator managed to return the courtyard to its previous appearance.

However, the cost to restore the courtyard to its previous appearance was an extravagant seven spirit coins as the cultivator needed to swear by a blood contract to never tell anyone that she had worked for Hui Yue. He found the money worth it.

The day after, he purchased a few target dummies created by a Grandmaster with metal and wood as elemental affinities.

These target dummies were shaped like humans and were adorned with inscriptions which allowed them to have different uses. One was to stand still and allow the cultivator to hit it constantly wherein 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 repair the dummies constantly.

These dummies were without a doubt worth their weight in gold, but the price per dummy was five hundred gold coins.

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. The following 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, he had exhausted his entire qi spiral and was tired beyond belief.

‘It looks quite good,’ Lan Feng said approvingly, after having watched the melee display. ‘You seem to have perfected the knives. 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. Because of Lan Feng’s requirement of perfecting one thing at a time, he had not yet tried it out.