28 - Li Lan breaking through

"What I get out of it is the same as you; freedom and a chance at revenge. My father was killed after he abandoned me as a child. My mother was falsely accused of something she didn't do, and she was brutally murdered right in front of me. My sister was raped and killed by the young master of a city with no repercussions. My whole family, viciously murdered. We have the same goals."

His cold voice sounded across the whole area where Li Lan stood, and she could only barely tell what direction it came from. But hearing this shocked her.

His backstory was the same as her own but more than a few levels worse. Her sect had been destroyed, but she only had close bonds to a couple of the people there who were killed, and her family was safe elsewhere.

Compared to him, the grievances she experienced weren't nearly as bad as having his own mother brutally murdered right in front of him. She couldn't even imagine such a thing.

She didn't have any siblings, but she could tell from his cold and distant voice that he loved his sister from the bottom of his heart, but she had been raped and killed without any repercussions even though everyone knew who did it. Was there any worse way to die?

She couldn't even imagine the pain that Su Tao had gone through, and his cold and emotionless stare now seemed more appropriate based on his story.

She couldn't verify if it was true, but it seemed very likely to be so based on his demeanor and his helping her without much of a motive.

She also realized that it wasn't purely pity that he gave her the resources for. There was also empathy contained within this action.

This backstory of his perfectly fit his character, and she could imagine why he was hiding now. People probably blamed his mother's wrongly accused actions on him as well since he was her son, and they were after him to kill him since he was her family.

She realized that this cold and emotionless boy actually had such a tragic story that her own couldn't be compared. She made a vow in her heart at this moment that she would not trouble him in any way that he mentioned even if she did happen to come upon people who knew of him.

She also figured out what he meant by giving her the resources to break through. He had figured out that she could likely not go into cities easily to get resources, and this would help her immediately whereas she had no risk involved.

His actions were based on logic, empathy, and even her own emotions. It was as if she was under his control, and she was just a pawn in his game of chess. He secured his own safety while also helping someone who's situation he empathized with. He killed two birds with one stone.

And on top of that, he gained the advantage of not having to deal with these resources which he now knew could be tracked based on the aura of Qi they gave off. In this way, he actually realistically killed three birds with one stone.

He did not know much about the higher ranks of the martial arts path since he never took the time to learn when he was younger since he didn't expect to be able to reach that level.

As such, he did not know that one's senses towards Qi in the environment increased once they reached a certain level, and they could not only summon more Qi, they could also find things that had a high concentration of Qi in them if they weren't too far away.

There was almost certainly not a large scale search going trying to find him, and this was because the people who were after him could only act in the dark and not in the light.

As such, there would be at most a few high tier one star silver ranks actually searching for him, and they had most likely already started to search the forest, but it was unlikely they would find him.

However, the situation was different if they could find him based on the aura of resources. These people would, of course, gather resources since they were going out, but a large clump of resources like the one that Su Tao had may allow them to sense him, and he was unaware of this just a little while ago.

Li Lan had not directly told him, but she implied that people other than her could find him if they were a high enough rank.

She only had a unique constitution that increased her sensitivity even before reaching the silver rank. Otherwise, it wouldn't just be a two star silver rank that was chasing after her in the first place.

The thing about the martial arts path was that one always had some form of energy in their body, it was just too weak to notice for the first three ranks.

If one was at the first rank of the martial arts path, they had something called inner strength, but it was so weak that even if it was a hundred times stronger, it wouldn't do much. It was called inner strength because it was the strength of the body, hence why you trained your body for the bronze rank.

At the second rank, the inner strength was enough to improve the strength of the body a bit, but this was only the base amount of strength that increased, so people wouldn't know the difference since they only focused on training their body itself rather than the inner strength in it, which nobody knew how to train or that it even existed at all.

This inner strength was the base strength of their muscles, and while it did not actually increase their strength, it was the reason that even those that had deteriorating muscles were still stronger than the average person of a lower rank.

It was the base strength of the body, and it was the reason that people could continue to train their body and get stronger.

Otherwise, they would be limited by the limits of the human body and be destined to at most have a body at the strength of a peak one star silver rank, and this strength would wither if one slacked off for even a short while.

When one reached the third rank, it was possible for the most talented of people to be able to sense the inner strength in their body, but they couldn't actually use it in any way since these people were too rare and no one could create a technique to use it.

But even if they could, the most it would do was make someone slightly stronger or faster. Inner strength was utterly useless aside from increasing the body's base strength.

Only when one reached the fourth rank of the martial arts path would the inner strength in their body kind of evolve into inner energy, which was why it was considered a different level of strength, hence it being the silver rank. (Yes, I know the word 'considered' implies they know about inner strength, but just ignore this detail please since it doesn't really matter)

But the thing was, most people at the fourth rank could usually only use the inner energy around their fists since this was the most easily controllable part of the body. There were a few who had better control, allowing them to spread it to the rest of their body, like the defensive woman from the arena.

The inner energy they condensed could only appear on the surface of their skin in the form of a thin barrier, and it could slightly extend into weapons, increasing their strength.

One didn't need to control the inner energy which entered the weapons very much, which allowed it to be almost as strong as on the surface of the body.

Combined with the damage from the weapons, the damage dealt was usually even more than the barrier on their fists.

Their control of the inner energy would also increase as they went up the tiers of the first silver star.

This meant that it was more common for people at the peak tier to be able to spread the inner energy barrier around their body and not just their arms compared to a high tier, middle tier, or low tier, but it was still quite rare.

At the fifth rank of the martial path, one would have much better control, allowing most of them to be able to use inner energy across their whole body right away. Only a few of them weren't able to use it across their whole body, but even then, they would be able to use it across most of their body. The thickness of the barrier of inner energy also increased as well, increasing it's power.

At the sixth rank, it was impossible for one to not be able to use inner energy across their entire body, and their control of it was many times more precise as well, allowing them to use a higher tier of skills compared to those lower ranked.

A small portion of sixth ranks were even able to get the inner energy to leave their body for a short distance, but it was nowhere near as efficient or as powerful as inner breath.

At the seventh rank, which was a one star gold ranked warrior, one would have the inner energy within their body increase in both quality and quantity, and it would kind of evolve into inner breath.

They all had the ability to have the inner breath leave their body and jump into the air, and it could maintain more strength while doing so than inner energy from extremely talented sixth ranks while also going further as well.

The strength of their inner breath would be the same as in their body for up to one foot around their body, and it would get slightly weaker after that due to their control, and it could extend up to about ten feet away from them.

At the eighth rank, one would be able to send the inner breath within their body through the air up to as far as thirty feet away, while the precision they could use it with allowed the strength that left their body within ten feet to be the exact same strength as if it never left their body at all.

At the ninth rank, the inner breath would become much much stronger, and it would be able to leap up to a hundred feet away from their body while maintaining control up to fifty feet away. They also gained a unique and innate connection to the element of their inner breath, and it allowed them to unleash devastating power.

As for those at the martial king realm, nobody knew anything about them. They was simply too rare, and it was even rarer for them to actually take action in the presence of those of the martial arts path realm. But even when they did, it was still uncommon for someone to live to tell the tale.

As such, those at the third gold star were considered the leaders of the world even though they were not actually the strongest. But only those at that rank knew just how weak they were.

He then went to a completely different area, keeping an eye on Li Lan. He was now five miles away from her, and he was making sure to also pay attention to her.

But this meant that he would not be able to train his body since that would require too much focus. But he did not dwell on this since his safety was more important. After all, he could not rule out her breaking the deal.

But he saw that she was now cultivating, and she wouldn't be moving for a while. Hence, he decided to cultivate as well. But before doing that, he decided to go into the dimension of his eyes to have another look. After all, he had no clue what exactly it was, and he wanted to see what progress he had made.

HIs consciousness was suddenly sucked away by his eyes, and he appeared in the familiar void. There was no change to the dimension itself, and he could still see absolutely nothing. But there were actually a few differences from before.

In between the two marbles that represented the power of his eyes was a small speck of white light. Even he only barely managed to notice it, and it was at most the size of a single particle. It seemed to be flickering in and out of existence, as if it would disappear at any given moment.

He had no clue what this extremely small white speck was, but it was clearly related to him since it was directly between the two marbles of eye power. But he had no clue whatsoever what it could be. After all, he had next to no information at all about the dimension of his eyes, and even the information that he did have was extremely unclear.

But no matter how much he inspected it, he had no clue whatsoever what it was. But it was new, so he figured that it would reveal what it was after enough time passed since this was the dimension of his eyes.

But there was another thing that he noticed. Not only had the two marbles expanded to about four inches each, they had gotten much closer together, and they were not repulsing each other like they were before.

It seemed that after they had merged before and he had balanced them out, they were not going to fight against each other again, and they were likely going to accept each other.

As for how close they were together, that was what was weirdest. They were exactly as far apart from each other as they would be if they themselves were eyes, and the size of the eyes corresponded to the size of the head of the owner.

In other words, if there was a big head here, these two marbles of eye power would perfectly fit into the place of the person's eyes in size and place.

Another extremely weird thing that was different from before was that his body was not here anymore.

It was just his consciousness existing in a very unique state within the dimension. He could look around as if his body was here, but it was not actually here anymore. He figured that this had something to do with the balancing of his eyes and the black heart as well.

But other than this, he could see nothing new here, so he left and his consciousness returned to his body. He looked over at Li Lan and she was still cultivating. He could see that there was a constant stream of Qi that floated into her body that was no slower than his own, which astonished him.

It seemed that the only reason that she was not at the silver rank was due to the fact that she was being pursued and constantly needed to be on the run, giving her no chance to actually cultivate. This meant that her talent and potential was actually at the same level as the city master's daughter, which astonished him.

But then, he himself started to cultivate. After all, he could not allow himself to fall behind at all since he had goals he needed to accomplish and people to kill.

He was not strong enough now, but once he reached the silver rank, he would have the strength to survive and escape. Once he had the strength to survive and escape, he would be able to kill whoever he wanted since he was already wanted by those people.

Then, he could slowly work his way up the ranks until he could kill even the young master. After all, he was still protected his father, so it would be at least a couple decades before he could kill the young master.

But for now, all Su Tao could do was increase his strength. He just wished that he wasn't so restrained by his potential, otherwise he would be just as fast as Li Lan, who was about to break through to the silver rank while being even younger than him.

He just hoped for her that she could break through quickly, because based on her words, the ones tracking her were very close, at most a day away from reaching her if she stayed here.

But it shouldn't be a problem since she was cultivating with resources and should be able to break through the last 1% of the bottleneck in half a day, and break through at that point.

Very quickly, eight hours passed by. (I consider a day to be 24 hours, and they spend 16 of those hours awake, so I just call a day 16 hours. Therefore, half a day is 8 hours)

Su Tao had been watching Li Lan this whole time, and he saw that she suddenly had an increase in the amount of Qi she was summoning, as if her talent had increased. Then, it turned into a small stream of Qi going into her body rather than just a constant flow, and it kept increasing.

Suddenly, a faint line of green emerged on the surface of her body, and it flowed through her entire arms. Su Tao suddenly jumped up and ran over to where she was to get a better look. After all, he would like to see the process of breaking through for himself.

He arrived about thirty minutes later, and by now, the lines on her arms had thickened and were glowing with a green and brown energy. This was inner energy, and it was condensing further every minute.

After another thirty minutes, the inner energy was completely brown, and it seemed to be erosive and poisonous like poison ivy, but at the same time bursting with life. This was the element of wood, which was a half corrosive and half healing type inner energy.

This meant that it was not very strong offensively, but it had strong survival abilities and would allow her to at least not die in the pursuit from the Yin Moon Sect.

The main advantages of the element of wood was that it was good at getting into the opponent's body and acting as a kind of poison, which would deal erosive and corrosive damage to them over time if they did not get rid of it, which would cause the person chasing after her to have to stop to get rid of it, in which time she could escape.

On top of that, she would be able to use the life properties of the element of wood to heal from any wounds caused, which would further allow her to be able to escape.

In short, the element of wood was perfect for her right now, because she did not need to have a strong defense or attack; she needed strong survivability, and the element of wood did exactly that.

Suddenly, the lines of brown inner energy around her arms suddenly started to expand and quickly cover her entire arms. Within a couple minutes, her whole arms were covered, and it manifested in the form of a thin barrier on them.

At this moment, she opened her eyes and the stream of Qi finally stopped flowing into her body.

She had broken through to the silver rank.