51 - Impossibility

Su Tao was sitting in a tree cultivating with the water spirit pill one day.

Then, he abruptly fell asleep. But only a few seconds later (about 10-30, and yes this is consistent with earlier) he woke back up.

But one thing was different from before. Both his eyes had seemed to get much brighter, and all the energy from the water spirit pill had utterly vanished.

Su Tao instantly went into the dimension of his eyes, and he was very happy to see that the size of the two balls of eye power had increased to over two feet, which was absolutely massive. This was a very significant increase from before.

But he left right away without caring too much. All he really cared about was the black blood and the power of his heart at the moment.

He took out his bow and an arrow, putting the power of his heart into them.

Instantly, both of them seemed to become obsidian as they gained a glossy smooth covering of black power that spread out evenly across the entire bow and arrow, including the string.

He then shot out the arrow, which flew through the air incredibly fast.

As it stuck into a tree, it went almost halfway in before stopping. It should be known that these trees were extremely dense and hard to damage, yet it had stuck halfway in?

Su Tao realized that not only had the arrow literally gotten stronger, but the bow had gone way up in quality and power, allowing it to shoot faster and with more force.

He hadn't realized this in the endless grassland because he had no point of reference for the strength of the bow originally since it was already so weak and flawed that he couldn't shoot with it.

This made him extremely happy, and he couldn't help but give his heart a higher opinion as he realized just how much he had underestimated it.

Not only did it work on flawed weapons, it could even strengthen normal weapons. This meant that a bow meant for those at the bronze rank would be equivalent to one meant for an average one star silver rank, which was an insane improvement.

His bow was already pretty good among bows for those at the one star silver rank, but it was now much stronger. However, it also took much more strength to draw. However, he was already extremely strong, so it didn't make much difference.

And the arrow itself had gotten much stronger too, allowing it to withstand the force of the impact and stick halfway into the tree where it could only get a few inches before.

But this gave him an idea. If the arrow was much more durable and he could use flawed weapons now, wouldn't that mean that he could practice the flowing bolt arrow without worrying about wasting arrows?

The increased durability would allow the arrow to withstand the chaotic lightning until he got it under control, and if it still damaged the arrow, he could still use that arrow due to the black power of his heart.

But he had already realized something. Strengthening his weapons, he had used a massive amount of the black blood in his body, about half of it. It was even more exhausting than forming the black barrier over his skin.

However, he also had the ability to take back the black power from within the weapons at his beck and call. As such, he took the black power out of the bow, and he went over to the tree where the black arrow was stuck into the tree and he pulled it out, taking back its black power as well.

He was quite happy to find that he had recovered most of the black blood in his body, about 90% of it. This meant that, if he always took back the black power of his heart after using it, he would have only a minimal loss.

It was obvious that it was impossible to use the power of his heart without any loss, and this was because not only would the black power slowly fade from the weapons themselves over time, but as the weapons went through stress or damage, they would lose the power, just like how a knife would slowly lose its edge.

This meant that, if he just left the power of his heart in the bow or the arrow, unless he purposely made it unstable enough to explode, it would eventually just fade away from the weapon and return it to its original state.

He knew that people could do this with weapons with their inner energy, but it required something like an earth elemental inner energy to do so, something steady enough to be controlled precisely through the weapon.

Su Tao then took out his knife and put the black power into it, trying to make the edge as sharp as he possibly could. Even without the precision that came with his eyes, he was capable of making an impossibly sharp edge, but it was even easier with the control of his eyes.

He then used the knife to slash at a nearby branch, and with nearly no resistance, the branch was cut clean off. This branch was about half the width of an arm, and for it to be cut so easily was incredible considering its density and strength.

Su Tao was well aware of how time worked in the endless grassland, so he was aware that only a few seconds had passed in the real world, meaning that he did not have to worry about the amount of time that had passed.

He was happy, because this meant that he had received a massive overall boost to his strength, and he now had a chance to actually pull of an assassination of Su Long.

But he knew that it was still a long shot, and he needed to increase his strength by a lot before he would even get the chance to do so.

He knew that he only had a slight chance of reaching the two star silver rank before the wedding, but since the water spirit pill had been so unnaturally effective, he now had at least a 10% chance of doing so based on how fast he could grind down the bottleneck to the two star silver rank once he finished refining his lightning inner energy.

Because his watery inner energy had reached a limit in every aspect, he only needed to focus on the lightning inner energy from now until he broke through.

As such, he was capable of using his whole attention and all his energy on the lightning inner energy refinement, making it go much faster.

He had noticed when he started to refine the lightning inner energy that it took much longer to refine than before, but he figured that this was probably just because a consistent speed of breaking through in refinement would be too overpowered, even for the increased talent and potential that he had.

This slowdown meant that it took about twice as long to refine, but based on the fact that he could go much faster because he was only focusing on the lightning inner energy, he could go at about the same speed as before.

This meant that, after a month had passed, his lightning inner energy had also reached just below a two star silver rank in terms of strength, and he was now able to start the process of breaking through.

As such, without hesitation, he started the process of breaking through by grinding at the barrier to the two star silver rank.

The process of breaking through after reaching the silver rank was different to reaching the silver rank.

While reaching the silver rank, one would grind through what could be represented as the neck of a bottle with a cork in it. Grinding all the way through the cork would allow you to access the dantian and inner energy.

However, when breaking through after that, it was still called a bottleneck, but it was better represented by an extra layer within the dantian that if you ground all the way through, the dantian itself would get much bigger, and your power would evolve into another form that could be strengthened, just like how inner strength worked at the bronze rank.

Su Tao then used all the inner energy within his body to swirl around the dantian, pressing against the sides of it.

The process of breaking through would grind away at the walls of the dantian to expand it, and once it had completely been ground away, the dantian would expand and the inner energy within it would evolve.

Su Tao's inner energy was extremely powerful, so it was able to exert much more pressure. This was why only geniuses would refine their inner energy first and then break through later while less talented people would do both at the same time.

But Su Tao found an issue. His dantian at this time was extremely strong, strengthened by the black blood. Obviously, the barrier on the walls of it would be strengthened as well. As such, it took a lot more effort to grind away at the barrier to the two star silver rank.

Seeing this, he definitely didn't have any confidence to break through in only twenty five days.

However, there was nothing that he could do to change it, so he simply moved on to trying to see just how fast he *could* break through.

He could attempt to use the power of his eyes to strengthen and bolster the inner energy in his dantian in order to break through faster, but he didn't know how that would go and didn't want to take the risk.

Ultimately, the speed at which he could break through was much slower than when he was breaking through into the one star silver rank. He found that he could break through about 1% each day, but he figured it would be possible to go faster than that.

The speed at which he could break through at this point mostly depended on how high his talent was due to the fact that it used inner energy, which needed to be replenished with Qi. As long as he could keep up, he could go as fast as he wanted to.

This was because, not only had his potential been strengthened by the black blood enough to handle his level of talent, it had actually been increased even further than that. This meant that he didn't have to worry very much about damaging his dantian.

However, despite not being able to break through before the wedding, Su Tao had significantly increased his chances of killing Su Long. He had also trained the third level of the flowing bolt arrow to an average level.

He had only done so through the arrows that he had strengthened with the power of his heart, but even though they had still been damaged in the process, they were still usable if Su Tao used the power of his heart with them, just like he predicted.

If he were to assassinate Su Long, he obviously wouldn't use the flowing bolt arrow since it would be traced straight back to him, but it still allowed him to get better control over his inner energy.

However, if he shot an arrow that had the power of his heart in it, he could make it explode when it reached its target, meaning that there would be no evidence left behind that it was him, which meant that he would most likely use this since it had almost the same level of power as flowing bolt arrow anyway.

He knew that it was possible for him to kill Su Long, but what he didn't know was how to get around the defenses that would definitely be set around him. This would undoubtedly at least include his father, and possibly even his grandfather.

On top of that, he would likely not come out of his house until the day of the wedding, meaning that Su Tao couldn't find him anyways. This meant that Su Tao would likely have to attempt the assassination on the actual day of the wedding.

He would only have one shot. Any more, and he would be found and killed.

He knew there would have to be a large distance between him and the wedding, and he would have to shoot the bow from at least a mile away to make sure. With the bow that had the power of his heart in it, he figured that the bow could probably shoot that far.

However, he didn't know if he could hit anything that far away, and it would take an immense amount of effort in order to calculate all the factors that would play into the path of the arrow.

As such, he put the power of his heart into the bow and an arrow, and he shot it as far as he could.