Ch177 Preparations

Over the past two weeks, I do not exit my outer sect abode much.

I only come out to check on my stewards and spirit crane, making sure they are well fed and there are no problems with the rice fields.

A few times, I use a long-range communication talisman to check on Wang Ming, to get an update from Lingshi City to see if it has been attacked, but there are only peaceful reports.

I’m either sleeping, resting, entertaining Meimei until she gets tired, or training in my hidden realm.

The progress I gain from sparring with the 10th-level illusory demon has begun to slow down.

I’ve gotten used to my new strength.

It is more worthwhile to save my buffer of about half a million remaining spirit stones for emergencies and focus on other forms of training.

I stack up my 7 bronze upgrade cards a day and use a few occasionally to upgrade various tier 1 weapons to their perfected state.

In the middle of the five-element cultivation array, I mostly practice manipulating my spirit grade vibrations paired with qi control training.

I pour higher and higher portions of my raw qi into my meridians while I practice the movements of my Martial Spirit inheritance.

My instincts can mimic them quite well, and practicing with perfect-grade weapons allows the movements to be performed even cleaner, syncing with the swords, daggers, axes, and unique curved blades.

Thin white vibrations bind to the weapons as I practice, making them heavier and faster.

Oddly, the portions of my physique that extend off of my body to strengthen these weapons are not as potent as my true spirit-grade physique. They feel like the inferior vibrations that have not fully consolidated yet.

I replay the words of Mu Shouxin in the back of my mind as I train. In between strikes, I practice fully suppressing my physique. Then, when I actually swing with a weapon, the fluctuations that come out are inferior and unstable, even when I’m trying to use my full strength.

The only time this doesn't work is when I use my fist techniques.

This is my strongest and most natural style I actually used in real combat, and have practiced relentlessly within my rematch simulator.

The fluctuations are too perfectly controlled. No matter how little or much I release, these techniques feel suspiciously stable, like a true spirit grade physique. It will not work well to fool foundational cultivators.

My second strongest fighting style is when I use my bow.

The equivalent of a late-stage mortal-grade physique worth of spirit grade vibrations strengthens the arrows and string, allowing each shot to fly faster and their impacts to be much heavier.

The fluctuations completely disappear after I fire off a shot, and they are not perfectly stable just yet.

–

The inherited memories of this physique morphing into fully realized glowing white weapons repeat in my mind. There is a way to create usable weapons with my energy alone, but I’m far from understanding how.

I’m able to manipulate the thickness of the white shielding around my skin to an extent.

However, every time I try to bend these physique vibrations into shapes that leave my body or to form weapons, they never move more than a ripple a few centimeters off my skin.

The only way for my vibrations to leave my body completely is to tether them to elemental spells. In doing so, I lose connection to them and cannot control their shape or power once the spell is complete.

I feel like I’m tapping into a technique for the later stages of this spirit-grade physique, but my physical strength and mental focus are not quite strong enough to make use of it.

I still practice with the inferior spirit-grade fluctuations anyway. The longer they're tethered to weapons, the more comfortable I feel using them.

A few healing and marrow-cleansing elixirs are consumed over my practice time, but not enough to make a dent in my growing supply of upgrade cards nearing one hundred.

–

It is the middle of the night right now, and the Combat Peak tournament is scheduled to be held once the sun rises today.

I sit practicing my qi control in the center of the hidden realm, holding about 40% of my 7th-level dantian’s qi capacity, churning it around my strongest central meridians.

They have been cycling in a constant rhythm for many hours.

The pure wood qi doesn’t leave behind burnt particles in the fire any longer, and by the end of the cycle, the condensed metal easily dissolves into pure blue water qi without any visible impurities.

I have a very solid grasp on this technique and no longer need to practice inside my simulator.

My dantian is completely filled to the brim with pure raw qi during the process, which is a new development.

Many of my meridians are unused while I maintain this cycle, so I’ve managed to pull in energy from the floor through my spirit roots that are free.

Before, my total concentration had to be kept on keeping the cycle going, but now I can do both at once at a slow pace.

Once my dantian is full, I expel the older elemental qi into the air and force out new pure qi to start the cycle again.

This matures my spirit roots when I use them to refine more elemental qi, and it matures my meridians at the same time as I hold this qi in a continuous cycle.

I take a healing elixir and marrow-cleansing pill when both become too sore to cycle any further.

My mid-stage 7th-level qi-refining bottleneck has loosened slightly, but I’ve made no effort to challenge this breakthrough.

My body and physique are still settling in.

I’d become stronger and more confident in my current realm before pushing it any further prematurely.

In my off time while I heal, I consider the fact that there have been no attacks in Lingshi City these past two weeks. It does not lower my suspicions of the Illusory Demons; it only pushes me to think more.

They are an extremely old and strong late stage foundational clan, with multiple teams of illusory demon assassins. What I’ve experienced so far is just their probing and information gathering, they have not used their main forces or strongest artifacts on me yet.

I’m in a difficult position, and I’ve come up with two possible solutions.

The first option is to simply hide my presence even deeper using no techniques at all…

I could remain inside the sect for months or even years, slowly growing until the Ye Clan gives up their search or I become unrecognizable from the description they have.

This would be the safest. However, my reach outside the sect would stagnate and become limited to only the connections I’ve built right now.

The second option I’ve been dwelling on these past few weeks is far riskier, but it is one that will not slow down my plans of expanding my influence further into the outer sect and its surrounding land.

It is one that shows off my ability without having to suppress myself too much, hiding in plain sight.

I’ll manufacture a fake budding awakening.

I can count on strong foundational cultivators to sense something is off with my vibrations’ purity, so I can take advantage of this and pair it with public knowledge that the sect already has recorded.

With five 9th grade spirit roots, I’ll need some kind of fortuitous event to occur that will make any further public progress believable. It will solve two problems at once.

A smile forms on my face as I practice for a few more hours inside my hidden realm.

Extremely subtle white vibrations tether to my bow as I fire arrows, and I hold my qi cultivation at a steady initial stage of level 4.

Little Red sits on my shoulder, grumpy about the fact that I’ve made him eat a foundational crystal again to match my strength.

Some disciples from the Beast Mastery Peak know the story of my feats leading up to Black Iron Mountain as an initial-stage qi refiner in the War. There are a select few stewards and outer disciples of the combat peak that know them even better as they were on my squad. Though, this past has been drowned out by my heavy involvement with the Wang and Mu Clans.

Any curiosity about my talent has been replaced with sour feelings that my position in the Outer Sect is unworthy and I’m only here because of a friendship with Wang Ming.

Today, I’ll do a little work on tweaking my reputation in a more positive light. Far more disciples of both peaks will know the name of the Heavenly Archer.