(Not So) Friendly Sparr (5)

"Wow, I didn't expect you to be so strong," Xie Mei said flatteringly as Long Ming sat down.

"You overestimate me, I'm not that strong. I was only able to use the advantages I had against my opponents. He Jun was a stage weaker than me, and Fei Lu lacked combat skills. So it was all about converting my advantage into a victory," Long Ming said honestly and humbly. Even though his fight against He Jun had been difficult, it wasn't to the extent that he felt there was any chance of losing; on the contrary, as they fought Long Ming could see more and more how difficult it would be for Fei Lu to beat him.

It wasn't a question of a substantial advantage, such as superior strength or better skill, but of using his opportunities. As, for example, in Long Ming's final blows, where he took advantage of the gaps made by the unbridled use of so many techniques (blows strengthened through Qi) to deliver a sequence of deadly and powerful blows.

Fei Lu had many opportunities to have won the fight, thanks to his greater quantity of Qi, or strength and high speed, but he didn't know how to use these qualities effectively.

"There's no need for such modesty," said Wu Yuying, who spoke quite honestly this time. She had a similar understanding to Long Ming about his match against Fei Lu, but her reaction to it was considerably different.

"Anyway, I hope you'll forgive me for hurting your fiancé, Lady Xie Mei," Long Ming suddenly said, looking at Xie Mei with an apparently apologetic look.

"Fiancé? He's not my fiancé! Your information is quite misinformed, Long Ming," Xie Mei said acidly and angrily. Long Ming seemed surprised by this and, curious, asked: "Really? And why did you cancel the engagement? I heard that this had been a very important event for both the Xies and the Fei. It shouldn't be something that they could easily break off."

"This engagement happened because of my family's ambitions, not because I had any interest or desire in getting engaged to Fei Lu. So I just showed my family that my opinion mattered more than the ambitions behind this engagement," she replied.

'So it was really because Xie Mei's value outweighed the benefits of the engagement, huh...', Long Ming reflected internally as he acquired this information, which wasn't that important to him, but served to feed his curiosity.

"He must have been really upset about this break-up," Long Ming commented, but he noticed that Xie Mei seemed to have become even more irritated at hearing his comment.

"Don't try to get involved in my affairs, Long Ming. When I decided to break off the engagement, it was because I was already aware of all the pros and cons of my action. Even if Fei Lu has high-level providence, my family is not something he can easily offend. And I'm not weak either," she replied, but when she noticed Long Ming's subtle smile, she realized that she had said more than she should have.

"I really don't doubt your family's strength..." he said casually.

"Hmpff," she snorted in response and turned her gaze back to the arena. At that moment, someone else had already gone up and challenged someone. Perhaps encouraged by Long Ming, they also placed a bet, although nothing noteworthy.

Because of this, he decided to ignore this fight and looked at the iron ring that was still in his hand. At first glance it looked like an ordinary ring, with absolutely nothing special about it, so he put it inside his space ring... or at least that's what he tried to do.

'Uh? Can't this ring be stored? But it doesn't seem to have any Qi...', Long Ming began to ponder internally as he thought of a possibility for this. However, unable to think of any possibilities at that moment, and not wanting to arouse too much suspicion, he decided to continue his analysis after arriving in his room.

After two minutes, the fight ended when one of the opponents managed to knock his rival down after lifting his leg. After his victory, that young man was celebrating with joy, before looking at the other guests and, turning around, fixed his gaze in the direction of where Long Ming was.

With a subtle, cunning smile on his face, the guest pointed in his direction and said, "Lady Yuying, could you do me the honor of a little sparr?" With this statement, Long Ming looked curiously at Wu Yuying, who also seemed surprised and even a little hesitant.

However, after a few seconds of apparently deep contemplation, she nodded and spoke, immediately after climbing into the arena: "I hope this fight will be enriching for both of us," it was clear from the tone of her voice that she didn't believe this young man was an opponent for her. Long Ming then watched them curiously, as this would be his first time seeing her fight.

As far as Long Ming could remember, Wu Yuying was one of the strongest young masters in the city and.

"Lady Yuying, could I offer you a small bet?" that young man asked with a suspicious expression. Wu Yuying was quiet for a moment, and after letting out a sigh of derision and disappointment, she said, "No. Can we get started? Can we start?"

"Of course," the young man said with a dejected expression and hurriedly ran towards Wu Yuying. His figure seemed to fade as he ran from place to place, then he suddenly appeared in front of Wu Yuying and, with his claw-like hands, struck her.

Just as that young man's claws were about to touch her, Wu Yuying dodged with precision and countered with a kick to his stomach. The young man hurriedly retreated, using the same footwork, so that he seemed to disappear for a moment and appear somewhere else the next.

However, Wu Yuying didn't seem intimidated by this and quickly turned towards where her opponent was, defending in time with a series of claw blows and successively delivering a blow to her opponent's face.

The young man seemed slightly stunned, but he withstood the blow and counterattacked the next moment with a palm strike towards Wu Yuying's chest.

Wu Yuying deflected the blow using his hand and tried to make another counter-attack and, likewise, his opponent deflected it and they both retreated.

"That young man seems quite capable, but Wu Yuying isn't doing badly at all," Long Ming commented to Xie Mei, somewhat amused.

"He's lucky that Wu Yuying neglects hand-to-hand combat. Otherwise he wouldn't last through an exchange of blows," Xie Mei commented dismissively and with clear contempt for him.

"... he must be the young master of the Zhuhao family, right?" he asked as he recalled the young man's movements and blows.

"That's right, he's Zhuhao Chin. He's a strange guy, sometimes he's shy, but other times he's extremely vulgar and mean," she replied dismissively. Long Ming nodded slightly, as he had already heard something similar from Pan Chang.

He then continued to watch the fight with interest, paying close attention to their exchange of blows. The Zhuhao family were famous for their footwork and claw strikes, which made them similar to tigers; agile, mobile and with lethal blows. And Zhuhao Chin, despite Xie Mei's disdain, was a prime example of this fame.

His movements were quick and cunning, focusing on the blind spots and gaps left by Wu Yuying and, if he didn't notice any gaps, he would keep watching her like a hunter waiting for an opportunity to strike.

On the other hand, Wu Yuying came from a somewhat military family. And her movements accurately reflected this: she watched carefully and didn't make any unnecessary moves. On the other hand, unlike Zhuhao Chin, she didn't wait and constantly advanced towards Zhuhao Chin, attacking with ferocity and lethality.

This led to an interesting dynamic, with Wu Yuying actively attacking, while Zhuhao Chin skied steadily and agilely until she found an opening or reached her blind spots. And when that happened, it was Wu Yuying's turn to dodge until she counterattacked and pushed away Zhuhao Chin, who resumed watching her.

'A great display of technicality', this was Long Ming's conclusion after observing this fight that went on for long seconds, until it reached a minute and, finally, Wu Yuying won after breaking Zhuhao Chin's nose.

Wu Yuying looked disdainfully at Zhuhao Chin, who was screaming in pain as blood ran down his hands and dripped onto the floor. Immediately afterwards, she returned to her seat.

"Congratulations on your victory, Lady Yuying," Long Ming praised honestly after she sat down.

"You should train more in hand-to-hand combat, it's not often you get to have a sword in your hands," Xie Mei spoke in a critical and reproachful manner, apparently dissatisfied with the outcome of the fight.

"Hmpf, you can only say that because I haven't reached sword master level yet," she said, irritated and even slightly offended by Xie Mei's criticism.

'Sword master?' Long Ming thought with confusion, as he didn't understand how this related to Xie Mei's criticism, but he decided to keep quiet about it. They then continued to watch the other fights, while chatting briefly about them and other matters.

After a few hours, when it had become completely dark, the get-together ended and Wu Yuying, together with Long Ming, returned to his residence.

Lying down on his bed, he felt all the tension drain from his pores, before letting out a long sigh filled with a multitude of emotions. After relaxing for a few minutes, he removed the ring from his clothes and observed it: "I wonder if you're the reason he recovered so quickly?" he muttered aloud, although he didn't expect any answer.

"Hmm, maybe you're a super-powerful artifact? But that wouldn't explain your rapid rise...

A manual, who knows? A very high-level manual that allows you to strengthen someone's body to an extreme level..." he began to make countless hypotheses, not caring how logical or absurd they might be, as he continued to observe and analyze that ring by the light of a candle next to the bed.

He kept looking at it but, to his disappointment, it really just looked like an ordinary iron ring.

"... maybe resonance will solve it..." he thought internally, then closed his eyes and concentrated. After twenty seconds, he opened his eyes and, to his surprise and disappointment, he couldn't see anything through his resonance with nature. However, not because the ring remained ordinary, but because there seemed to be something covering the whole ring and hiding it.

"Heh, so you really do have a secret," he said to himself. Then he tried to redirect all of nature's energy into the ring, as if to affect this thing that was hiding the ring.

After several minutes, however, nothing happened and even the 'thing' covering the ring seemed to get stronger and stronger.

"tsc, so I should try to break this thing?", Long Ming thought in frustration, as he removed a hammer from his space ring.

He put the ring down and prepared to break it with a sledgehammer, but stopped the next moment and said to himself: "Why should I break you? Hmm, all right. If you don't want to give yourself to me, then no problem. You're Heaven's gift to Fei Lu, and I respect that. Anyway, possibly I'll have my own gifts from Heaven in the future... maybe even that pendant isn't it?"

Long Ming began a monologue while looking at the ring. He knew this was crazy, but he felt like doing it. In any case, he wasn't too frustrated that he couldn't get the "rewards" of this ring, after all, his instincts didn't tell him that this was a treasure meant for him.

He was someone who was curiously superstitious, perhaps even religious, so he believed there were things meant for him and things meant for others.

Despite this, he didn't bother to pick up the ring and went back to his bed. But this time to try and analyze that pendant.

Taking a closer look at the pendant, he realized that it had a rough surface, with several scratches and small holes. It was something simple, which could be mistaken for just a rough texture, but Long Ming sensed that there was some secret in this atypical texture of such jade pieces.

"Can you read it by touch?" he thought curiously and ran his finger over the surface, wanting to feel those scratches.

"Hmm, no, I don't think so...", he muttered after a few minutes, as he couldn't make out anything 'written' in this way. Despite this, he could feel that these grooves were unnatural and even seemed to have been made on purpose in this way. This further strengthened his theory that there must be something "written" on the pendant.

After thinking for a while, he decided to use his resonance on this pendant too.

After entering the state of resonance, he could notice that the pendant seemed to react with the Qi in the environment, as if attracting it in some way.

Intrigued, Long Ming decided to "accelerate" this activity and began to conduct all the energy into the pendant, just as he had done with that ring. This time, he could notice a change, albeit a rather useful one, on the surface of the pendant, as it became noticeably brighter as time passed.

After several seconds, until the resonance ended, Long Ming noticed a golden light resonating from the pendant. And this time, he didn't need to use the resonance to perceive it, as his senses, now sensitive to Qi, were enough.

Then Long Ming ran his fingers over the surface again and, to his surprise, something changed.

He closed his eyes to concentrate better on this process and, in his mind, he could see several bright, organized characters.

"Six Elements Breathing Manual, Transcendent Earth Grade"

The moment Long Ming read these words, a vast amount of information surged through his mind, overwhelming his senses. He hastily opened his eyes, feeling his back sweat and his breath pant.

"Holy shit... what's happened?" he thought, extremely shocked, unable to comprehend this situation. Still immersed in his thoughts, he looked up with shock when he realized there was a handful of bran in his hands. It was that pendant, which had crumbled!

"... so it was a manual hidden in a rune?" he muttered, still confused and trying to process this strange phenomenon. However, after organizing much of the information in his mind, he recognized it as a breathing manual.

He couldn't remember most of the content, as it was really quite a lot, but the main points, such as its purpose, functioning, qualities and disadvantages were still vivid in his mind.

"An earth-grade breathing manual, huh...", Long Ming didn't know what that was supposed to mean. As far as Long Ming knew, the highest grade of manuals was black grade, which came directly after yellow. He had never heard of an earth grade manual!

"Maybe it's a powerful manual...", and, of course, his ignorance of this grade made him consider this manual to be superior to the black grade manuals. A huge smile appeared on his face at this contemplation, so he hastily took a notebook from his space ring and wrote down everything he had learned through this pendant.

Since he no longer had the pendant in his hands, he feared that he might end up forgetting this information, so he decided to write it down. Besides, he felt it would be extremely useful for the development of his cultivation method.

After he had finished writing down everything he thought was important, he studied the book given to him by He Jun, and wrote down his understandings and new information in another book. He then practiced some basic physical exercises in the courtyard and practiced his use of the twinblade, as well as his footwork.

A few hours later, he returned to his room and went to sleep.