36 - Martial arts library

As Su Tao approached the building, he could very clearly see the words 'Martial Arts Library' on the front of the building, making sure that no one would mistake what it was.

As Su Tao entered into this building, he got a few weird looks, but he ignored them and moved on. He had earlier discovered that he had the ability to detect people's gazes, just like Su Xue, the City Master, and his daughter.

As he went into the martial arts library, instead of directly going into the library, he went up to the attendee on the side.

"What is the purpose of your visit this time?" The attendee asked in a nice voice. He knew who Su Tao was, but he was one of the few people who thought he was actually innocent.

"A change in rank as well as to pick up skills for the silver rank level." Su Tao spoke his intentions clearly.

"First, you must prove that you have reached the silver rank, and since I can't sense your aura, you will have to use your inner energy and allow me to determine your rank through it." The attendee spoke words that Su Tao found odd.

The attendee was at the peak tier of the one star silver rank, yet he could not sense his aura? However, he ended up finding this to be kind of normal since he had used the black blood within his body to completely isolate and dissolve any aura he could find within his body.

As such, Su Tao directed some of his watery inner energy to his fist and let the aura of it spill out.

Instantly, all those around him felt the aura of a low tier one star silver rank spill out from him, and they were all inwardly shocked, but they put it aside a moment later. They all just figured that he had a unique constitution that hid his aura.

After showing his aura to the attendee, he retracted the watery inner energy back into his body and silently used the black blood to start dissolving the aura that was left behind, and only a little while after the inner energy retracted, the aura was gone.

After his initial shock, the attendee spoke once again. "Low tier one star silver rank with a unique aura hiding constitution. Su Tao, your official rank is now one star silver rank."

This gave Su Tao quite a jolt, as he had not expected that the elder couldn't sense his aura at all unless he used his inner energy. And based on the fact that he said it was a unique constitution, it was clear that no one else could either.

This meant that all this time he was here, nobody knew how strong he was.

The attendee wrote this down in a book and then set it aside for now.

"You are free to browse and take any skill on the first floor for free, and any skill on the second floor will cost according to its tier. You are not permitted to enter the third floor. Any skill you purchase must be returned after one month."

After hearing this, Su Tao went into the martial arts library.

He wanted to first scan through the entire first floor and see if any of the skills interested him. After all, he only needed to scan over everything quickly to see everything in that row of shelves.

He couldn't instantly understand everything he saw, but his mental speed was many times faster than other people because of his eyes, which meant that he was capable of reading an entire row of shelves of books in only about thirty seconds.

Most of the skills on the first floor were meant for people of the bronze rank, which meant that they did not use any inner energy and were just fighting skills. However, there were a few bottom ranked silver rank skills which he could use, so he scanned over the entire bottom floor before finding a few skills that the name interested him.

He then took these books and put them in his bag after skimming through them and went up to the second floor. There was a person at the high tier one star silver rank guarding the entrance to the second floor, so he had to prove that he was a silver rank again so that he could go up.

As he entered into the second floor, he noticed that it was significantly smaller than the first floor, and everything here was higher quality than the first floor.

This floor was meant for those at the one star silver rank. All the skills here were at the silver rank, and they all had a price below them according to their tier and their value.

The price of a certain tier of skill was not set. It depended on the skill itself and how many people could cultivate it, how strong it was, and other factors.

As Su Tao scanned over these books, he found a few that caught his interest, and he went up to read them.

"Crackling fist: Use the inner energy of lightning to condense a more powerful barrier around your fist that will numb your enemy even if it doesn't break their defense. Increases the power of your fist. Numbing effect twice as strong when making direct body contact. High tier one star silver rank skill. Requires extreme precision and high comprehension. Error using this skill can cause nerve damage."

"Water absorption palm: Use the inner energy of water to form a cushion inside your palm that will help to dilute the power of attacks it blocks. Middle tier one star silver rank skill. Requires high precision and control."

"Flowing essence technique: Used to refine water type inner energy and make it flow better through the body with much higher quality. Top middle tier one star silver rank technique. No requirements."

"Misty ripple body: Form a barrier of water inner energy that disperses and envelops attacks that hit it across your whole body. Strengthens body's natural resistance even without inner energy use. Top peak tier one star silver rank technique. Requires extreme control and high purity of water inner energy."

"Spark step: Use lightning inner energy to speed up the body. Increases speed to twice as fast. Top middle tier one star silver rank skill. Requires high lightning inner energy purity and high precision and comprehension. If used incorrectly, can cause hidden damage to the body."

These were five books that caught his attention, and he hadn't even read a small portion of the books in here. He wished he could have them all, but when he looked at the prices, he realized that he had underestimated what things costed.

But he also noticed another thing. There were many more water elemental techniques than lightning elemental techniques, and all the water elemental techniques were of a higher tier.

On top of that, the lightning elemental ones were not as perfected, and the price was also lower than the water elemental ones.

But this was obviously because there were very few people who cultivated the element of lightning, so there weren't many people to perfect the techniques here.

He also realized as he continued to read that the weakest technique on this level was a stronger low tier skill and most of them were at middle tier or higher.

He could not help but think about the fact that there were a bunch of low tier one star silver ranked books on the first floor, and he had taken a few of them with him that caught his interest.

This meant that for those at the silver rank, they wanted to cultivate higher level techniques, which made sense.

But this was also good for him since anything on the first floor was free. As for the average middle tier skill, it was generally at a price that Su Tao could afford, but that would spend all his money, which he did not want to do.

However, there was one exception to this. The crackling fist skill had a very low price, even lower than most middle tier skills. It was only one gold coin, which was something that Su Tao could afford.

However, Su Tao wanted to think carefully if he wanted to get this skill. He was not concerned about the precision requirement since he had his eyes. He was worried about the warning at the end.

Nerve damage was famously hard to recover from, and an error while using the crackling fist could lead to damage to the nerves. This was why the price was so low.

He also had to worry about the fact that he did not currently have a method to refine his inner energy and needed something like the flowing essence technique so that he could start to cultivate effectively again.

He also had to find something that would work for his lightning inner energy as well.

But he pushed this thought aside and continued to look through the remaining books on the shelves. Only a few caught his interest, but they were all too expensive for him to be able to afford multiple of.

He ended up deciding to only purchase the crackling fist and all the free books he had picked out from the first level. The rest he couldn't afford.

He then walked up to the old attendee and put the books on the counter in front of him. The attendee was surprised when he saw the crackling fist and the lightning type techniques but he said nothing.

"The total is one gold coin. You must return all these books in one month. You are not permitted to share these techniques with anyone else during the time you have them in your possession."

Su Tao then took out a gold coin and payed the attendee and left. He didn't plan to hide the fact that he had the lightning inner energy, otherwise he would've taken the long trip to another city to exchange there where nobody knew him.

Su Tao took the books and put them in his bag before going to the market again. He still had the equivalent of a gold coin left that he wanted to spend.

Meanwhile he had no clue that everyone was freaking out over the fact that he had vanished for a long time, and when he came back, he had already broken through to the silver rank with a special constitution.