Chapter 15: Gan Jiang And Mo Ye
"What the..." said Issei slowly as he stared at the sword in front of him. He was surprised beyond words! The reason for that was because the sword was actually… cultivating!
Yes, indeed, the sword was cultivating. It seemed to have gained something similar to profound veins because of Issei's, well, mistake.
"This..." Issei muttered once more as he picked the sword and analyzed it carefully. It was now slightly bigger, and more dagger-like, with a wide and slightly curved blade. On it, a red hexagons could be seen all over it, giving birth to a tortoise shell-like pattern.
But, the most astonishing changes were on it's interior. Before, they were probably normal swords, but now, they possessed something akin to profound veins!
Issei, obviously, wasn't stupid, and he was quick to figure out that he had indeed made a blunder while trying to follow the instructions, but in reality, he couldn't really be happier.
In all of the blunders that Issei committed in his eleven years, this one was, undoubtedly, the best one!
"Amazing," Muttered Issei in shock as he continued to stare at the sword. It's appearance was truly amazing and it could also cultivate! He couldn't help but to be mesmerized by it.
It was also at that moment that he cast his glance at the pure white sword that had fallen to the ground previously.
"I wonder if I can do the same thing..." said Issei out loud as he looked back and forth between the two swords. As of right now, he had already known that he should have added the spiritual power outside of the sword and not inside it, but Issei had a feeling that he should do the same thing to this other sword.
He also didn't know why the spiritual power flowed inside it naturally, although he didn't command for it do so, but he quickly dismissed it as coincidence.
Deciding to follow his feelings, he set the black sword down, letting it calmly cultivate and increase its spiritual power. As of right now, it was already on the fifth level of the Nascent Profound Realm, the same as Issei. He wondered how far it could go, but since he knew would be finding out shortly, he decided to simply focus on the pure white sword.
Picking it up from the ground, he didn't begin the process with it immediately. Instead, he calmly sat down and rotated his spiritual power through his body, practicing the cultivation skill that Shinso had taught him, the Heavenly Energy Absorption.
The reason why he hadn't begun immediately was because he had almost been drained completely off spirit power when transforming the black sword, so he wanted to be in peak condition before starting the process with the white sword.
In normal situations, Issei wouldn't need to actually sit down and mediated in order to cultivate. One of the properties of his profound veins that he had discovered some time ago was that it would constantly practice the last cultivation skill he cultivated, so it could be said that Issei was, in fact, cultivating 24/7.
But, there was a condition. The moment he begun to use spiritual power, it would automatically stop absorbing and would only begin when he ceased his usage of spiritual power. That meant that in a battle, Issei wouldn't be able to keep a constant supply of spiritual power. Nonetheless, it was still amazing.
Obviously, if Issei wanted to absorb more spiritual power than normal, he could do the same method that normal cultivators did, which was to meditate in a cross-legged position. When doing that, the spiritual power absorption would increase by two-fold.
Since he was in a hurry to change the pure white sword, Issei cultivated the normal way.
After thirty minutes, Issei opened his eyes, this time full of energy. Not only was his eyes brimming with energy, his whole body seemed like it had the vitality to fight with lions at any given time.
One of the best part of cultivation was this one, that when a person cultivated to completely fill their spiritual power, all fatigue would be lost. It was significantly better than a long night of sleep.
Now that his body was ready, Issei quickly picked up the sword and did the same thing he did with the previous sword.
As expected, the same things happened, and it soon reached a point when it began to madly devour Issei's spiritual power, sucking him dry. By the end, the sword also seemed slightly different.
Now, it had less of the shine of a polished metal in its ore, and more of the haze of a cloud, like a white wave pattern.
The shape of the blade also changed, looking identical to the now transformed, black with red hexagons sword.
But, the most important of all was that it also had spiritual power and artificial profound veins.
Now, Issei had two of these strange looking swords. He then picked up the black sword, and saw that it was now at the tenth level of the Nascent Profound Realm. It had also stopped cultivating.
"So that's it's limit, huh?" Issei then brought the two swords together in front of him in order to analyze them at the same time.
But, when the swords came close to one another, a bright light appeared, covering both of them. In surprise, Issei let go of the swords, but much to his surprise, they just kept hovering in mid-air, shining brightly.
After about three minutes, they stopped shining, and slowly fell to the ground. Seeing that they had stopped doing… well, whatever they were doing, Issei came closer, only to see that they had changed once more.
Before, the black sword was only covered in red hexagons and the white in wave-like patterns, but now, in the divide between the hilt and the blade, a yin-yang symbol could be seen on both swords.
On the black hexagon-marked sword, the yin-yang was surrounded a white triangular shape while in the white wave-patterned sword, surrounding the yin-yang symbol was a black, triangular shape.
The hilts, that were originally the same color as the swords, took a wooden-like appearance, although they were still made of metal.
"Interesting..." muttered Issei in surprise as he once more picked up the two swords. Looking at them, he also saw another difference. On the bottom part of the hilt of both swords, there was something engraved.
On the black, turtle-patterned sword, the words Gan Jiang were engraved while on the white, wave-patterned sword, the words Mo Ye were engraved. Issei immediately understood that those were the names of the swords.
"Gan Jiang and Mo Ye, huh?" Issei muttered as he looked at the swords. Although he didn't know why these names only appeared after transforming, he decided not to pry too deep into it. In the end, it wasn't like it mattered.
Looking at the two swords, Issei decided to cast his spiritual power inside them at the same time in order to see if something else happened.
The moment he did that, both swords shined brightly once again. At the same time, miniature drawings of both swords appeared on his hands. Gan Jiang on his right and Mo Ye on his left.
They were really small drawings, almost imperceptible, but Issei immediately took notice of them. He also discovered that by sending spiritual power into them, the drawings would disappear and by sending it again, the drawing would reappear.
It was also important to note that the swords acted according to the drawings. When the drawings disappeared, the swords also disappeared, and when they appeared, so did the swords.
Discovering another fantastical property of the sword, Issei's smile grew wider. This was on hell of a blunder he committed, if he may say.
Well, now that he had already tested out the two swords, he decided to just proceed with what he was supposed to do in the first place.
Holding both swords up at the same time, he made his spiritual power flow outside of them and cover them. Seeing that this time he had done the right thing, Issei smiled, although he still thought that the result of doing the wrong thing was infinitely superior.
Since he had already managed to cover the blades in spiritual power, Issei proceeded to the next step.
Bring both swords in front of you in an x shape, channel your spirit power into the sword and focus on the defense. After practicing it until you can immediately do it, start shouting "Defense".
"So simple?" Issei muttered in surprise as he begun to follow the steps. Three hours later, he had already completely learned the first level.
"Hmm..." Issei muttered somewhat unsure if he had done it right. At the moment, he could already easily activate "Defense" whenever he wanted. Even if he was an unparalleled genius, he couldn't believe that it would be so easy.
Of course, it wasn't. Scroll with Martial Skill are different from normal written scrolls. From the m until near the end, the scroll is completely like an ordinary writing, but the moment that the way to use the martial skill is completely written, the scroll completely changes.
It's said that humans can only create Martial Skill upon reaching the Sky Profound Realm. That's because it's only then that they begin to be recognized by the heavens.
When people of the Sky Profound Realm start creating a martial skill, they must first envision all it's key points. How the spiritual energy flows, how it affects the surroundings, the differences cause by an increase or decrease of spiritual energy, where it's concentrated… and all that. Obviously, limits would be set to the power of the martial skill.
For example, people of the Sky Profound Realm can only make martial skills up to the third rank; cultivators of the Emperor Profound Realm can make skills up to the sixth rank; skills from the sixth to the eight level can only be made by cultivators of the Tyrant Profound Ream and so on...
Either way, after thinking of all that, the difficult part begins. After thinking of the key points, while channeling their Sky Profound Realm rank spiritual power to their fingers, they must use their spiritual power to write all key points of the skill, along with it's effects and abilities onto a scroll.
Then, the heavens recognize that the martial skill is created, making all that it's written on the scroll disappear, becoming a blank piece of paper with only a single writing; the rank of the skill.
After a couple of minutes, the ranking written on the paper would disappear, replaced by a bunch of ancient symbols. That is the language of the heavens.
Upon gazing at the language of the heavens, everyone would read different things. It all depends on their talent for martial skills comprehension. The higher a person's martial skill comprehension, the more easy the method of attaining the skill would be.
Also, the reason that people of lower levels are able to copy martial skill into papers is because if they were to write it exactly as they perceived it with some spiritual power in their fingers, the seemingly ordinary paper would also change to the language of the heavens. As such, it could be said that those that were recognized by the heavens could create martial skill while those that weren't recognized couldn't create them, but could copy them exactly like the original scroll.
As such, if a person has extremely low comprehension, it could even take decades to comprehend a rank 2 martial skill, because of the extreme complexity of the writing. Of course, if a person has an unbelievably high cultivation skill, it would be compact and easy to read that even a baby could understand. Such was Issei's case.
Furthermore, the higher the rank of the skill, the more talent for comprehension a person would need in order to make it easy for them to learn.
Finally, because of all that, although to Issei it seemed extremely simple, to other people, like the number on disciple of the school and the current headmaster, it would seem like they were reading a completely different language.
"Well, no matter," Issei then shrugged his shoulder, "No use in thinking about that. I should just focus on learning the second level and learn the counter-attack skill."
After that, Issei spend the next four hours diligently following the instructions from the scroll, and in the end, he finished learning the second level.
At the moment, he was pondering whether he should try learning the third level or should test out the first two levels on the training dummy. At the end, he decided to go with the later.
"Let's see what this thing can do," said Issei as he walked towards the training dummy. Since both of the skill, counter-attack and defense, required the opponent to attack him, he decided to set the training dummy on the third level, because he wasn't sure if could already handle the later ones.
* zhum * A rumbling sound came from the training dummy as it seemed to awaken. It's feet left the platform and took one step forward, his six arms casually laying by his sides.
Seeing that it was ready, Issei didn't say anything and brought out Gan Jiang a Mo Ye, both drawings appearing on his hands. Sending his spiritual power inside it to fill it and outside it to cover it, Issei leaped forward like a fierce tiger and sent a normal attack to its torso.
The dummy stood there without moving even while facing Issei's attack. Just as the attack was about to land, his whole whole body, including his torso and legs, bent back, finding support only on it's legs lower parts.
"What?" Issei muttered in surprise but before he could continue, the dummy's body went back at full force like a whip and sent an attack at Issei's chest.
Although it wasn't a really strong attack, since it was only at the third level of power, it pushed Issei back by a couple of feet.
"Oh?" Issei said, not bothered by the attack at all. In fact, in his face, a wild smile could be seen, a fierce glint shining in his eyes, "No wonder almost no one other than the top ten of the school can take off your limbs… you truly are good, even at the third level!"
He then took a serious posture, said, "This will be quite fun," then leaped forward at the dummy once more.
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