Chapter 71: Return to Nan Qing
Staggering forward a few steps, Li Mo Shang stabbed the sword into the ground to keep himself upright. As he gradually dispersed the accumulated spiritual qi behind his previous attack, Li Mo Shang finally regained balance as he stiffly stood, retrieving the sword.
Just as soon as he had extracted the black metallic blade from the ground, a faint whisper could be heard behind him.
"Youngsters are far too rash…the Nine Imperial Suns, if he can accept its will, then even our bloodline's blessing will be shackled under his control without the drawbacks…"
In his haste and the overwhelming surge of emotions and spiritual qi, Li Mo Shang had completely forgotten that the old man was near him. Turning around, he discovered that the elder's body was slowly becoming illusory, flickering in and out of existence.
As if completely oblivious to the change to his body, the old man simply looked up towards the sky, his cane jabbing towards specific regions of the slowly darkening evening.
"Nine Imperial Suns…<Cast away light, shackle hope, vanquish all>…how we all wish to have the opportunity to wield the almighty heat. A pity, a pity! A kind heart, how long can it beat vigorously in the bloodthirsty Ming Imperial Family…"
Before the old man could finish speaking, his figure greatly distorted, transforming into a burst of scarlet spiritual qi. As the scarlet lights gradually scattered and dispersed into the forest, Li Mo Shang felt a gentle tremor in his chest cavity, instantly withdrawing from his daze.
With an incredulous expression, Li Mo Shang explored with his perception to discover that the spiritual core residing in his chest had calmed, returning to an idle operation. Scratching his head, Li Mo Shang wondered when the spiritual core had even burst with activity.
Walking towards where he had last attempted to unleash a burst of spiritual qi with his sword, Li Mo Shang lightly trod on the beaten grass. Adopting a relaxed posture, the sword lightly gouging the ground, Li Mo Shang gazed at a nearby tree, slowly gathering spiritual qi.
With a quiet whine, the spiritual core trembled once as a thread of spiritual qi detached itself from the orbiting rings, spreading throughout his body. The instant the spiritual qi pooled in his limbs, Li Mo Shang stomped with his left foot, a fierce but silent howl reverberating in the forest's depths.
Shua!
Taking full advantage of his momentum from the heavy forward step, Li Mo Shang held the longsword near his left as he pivoted clockwise on his left heel. Whilst turning, he raised the sword to shoulder height, supporting his right arm with his left as his right leg drew in to accelerate the rotation.
The instant he had completed the pivot, Li Mo Shang released a fierce downwards, diagonal slash to the right, slightly bending his right knee to bear the brunt of his weight, maximizing the radius and impulse of the strike. His left arm slightly bent near his right leg to center his balance, Li Mo Shang agitated the thread of spiritual qi shielding his limbs, forcing it to erupt with a violent strength.
"<Cast away light>."
With a soundless roar, the tattoo of the shackled nine suns manifested onto Li Mo Shang's exposed back, the qi circulation unit spanning across his Lung Meridian exploding with bloodthirst and savage might. A scarlet glow encompassing his body, Li Mo Shang struck forth with the longsword.
His left arm whipping backwards to wrap around his back, Li Mo Shang swung the longsword upwards with a leftward diagonal angle. Forcefully halting his strike midway, he whirled the blade to his right, releasing a powerful downwards, diagonal cut to his left, then following it with another from the opposite angle and direction.
Bolstered by the scarlet spiritual qi, a trail of afterimages chased after the spiritual sword, the air heavily displaced by Li Mo Shang's swift strikes. Once again, the urge to annihilate rose within Li Mo Shang, consistent pulses of aggression and bloodthirst rocking his mind.
Unable to control himself, Li Mo Shang stepped forward, imbuing his feet with spiritual qi. With a light tap onto the ground, he appeared before a small cluster of oak trees, the sword whistling through the air to slice through the trees with a single cut.
The sword flashing in the air, Li Mo Shang bypassed the recorded initial stance of the wandering swordsman Si Zhu's <Earth Rend Technique>, directly accessing the third stance, <Backbiter>.
Reversing his grip on the spiritual sword, Li Mo Shang ground his right heel onto the soft ground as he drew the blade in a horizontal cut towards the left in a complete semicircle, rotating his entire body to accumulate a fearsome momentum. The instant the blade finished its arc, Li Mo Shang stopped the sword, his left palm striking against the end of the hilt.
Drawing the hilt before his left chest, his left hand thrust forwards, his right hand twisting the blade to be parallel to the ground. Transferring most of his weight onto his right leg, Li Mo Shang bent his knee as he stabbed forwards, excess spiritual qi coiling around the blade of the longsword, a shockwave shooting forth.
Drained of strength, Li Mo Shang fell onto the ravaged, soft ground, the scene before him etched into his memories.
Crash! Rumble!
The shockwave emitted from the second strike of the <Earth Rend Technique>'s <Backbiter> had completely destroyed the sea of trees in a linear path, forcefully uprooting the trees before bisecting each one at the same time. Some trees were younger and more resilient against tensile forces, hence the shockwave had brutally snapped and crushed their trunks.
As he lay on the ground, the distinctive fragrance of oak tree sap drifted into his nose, snapping Li Mo Shang out of his daze. Groaning as he stretched his body and stood, he gazed at the line of destruction one more time, before departing.
The addition of the scarlet shockwave alongside of numerous, highly strenuous techniques had drained most of Li Mo Shang's strength. In exchange, the urge to annihilate had calmed, having been ejected as the shockwave's impetus.
It was by nighttime that Li Mo Shang had returned to the clearing of medicinal practitioners, having washed and dried his clothes with spiritual qi. Far too exhausted to think of elaborate excuses of his excursion, Li Mo Shang mumbled about searching for natural herbs, falling asleep the moment he entered his tent.
-
Though having suffered from a tiring day, Li Mo Shang woke up at the crack of dawn, his body refreshed. Lightly exercising and freshening himself, Li Mo Shang quickly ate breakfast, Tai Zi Hua and Feng Zhi entering the makeshift cafeteria with fatigue clearly displayed on their faces.
Noticing Li Mo Shang, Tai Zi Hua released a sigh of relief, sitting down next to him with a loud huff.
"The mutant fell into a coma from what we can observe," he spoke, though unbidden.
"Although we're pretty sure that it won't wake until much longer, we've still shackled and restrained it by multiple layers. I'm sure Old Tie is beaming with joy for being able to use his belts and ropes again," he chuckled.
"How are the results for testing the Shadow of Death?" Li Mo Shang questioned, clearly interested on this matter. Though he had relayed the information of the mutant to the group, he had soon left to muse by himself at the river. Thus, Li Mo Shang had no idea of what Tian Yu and the rest's additional research had returned.
"The results are very well, Doctor Li! First, we began by testing lower quantities of Purple Leaf Stem to an absolute minimum of five milligrams, which resulted in a spectacular poison, causing Senior Doctor Bai to…"
This time, Feng Zhi was the first to reply, directly interrupting Tai Zi Hua. Listening the man endlessly converse without a second care and filtering out any unnecessary information, Li Mo Shang managed to obtain a short summary of the medicine's effects.
"…and if the quantity of wild ginseng was to increase by an exponential factor, we speculated that the reactivity of the Silver Fox Blood and Angel's Tear would sharply diminish, which would allow for the Ink Python Blood to rapidly proliferate and corrode everything. And the most interesting hypothesis of all was that if we were to intentionally corrode the Snow Jade extract before allowing it to mix with the Shadow Spider's mandibles, then Senior Doctor Tian's-"
"Enough. Just look at Young Li that brat, you've lost him already." Tai Zi Hua cajoled, heavily clapping Feng Zhi on the back, causing the man to lean forwards and choke on his breakfast.
Loudly coughing until he had recovered, Feng Zhi glared unhappily at the old man, before turning to Li Mo Shang once again. Before he could speak however, a loud voice rang across the entire clearing, causing all of the practitioners to jump out of their beds in panic.
"Attention! All practitioners are to ensure a physical or electronic copy of their experiments to distribute in thirty minutes!"
"..."
"Screw off!"
A loud wail arose within the entire clearing as more than fifty medicinal practitioners promptly swore at the speaker, frantically rushing to their workstations to begin copying their experimental data onto portable data storage chips.
Thirty minutes later, each practitioner had established a stand in the clearing, distributing the hastily copied data with black circles surrounding their eyes. As they toured around the various stands, Li Mo Shang, Tai Zi Hua, and Feng Zhi eventually settled for collecting all of the seventy-two practitioners' research data, their bags filled with numerous unlabeled and identical storage chips.
As they gazed at their trophies with helplessness flitting across their faces, each knew that organizing the data, with some practitioners not even bothering to sign their work or even describing the processes entailed, would take a massive amount of time.
As such, Tai Zi Hua promptly summoned the rest of the research group to begin sorting through the data, much to the old men's chagrin.
-
A week later, a battered limousine slowly crawled into Blue Rose City, only managing to bypass the dubious guards with Tai Zi Hua's identity as an Imperial Doctor. Kicking Li Mo Shang out of the limousine once they had reached the center of the city, Tai Zi Hua had ordered for the driver Song to bolt towards the western sector undergoing construction.
Dressed in his doctor's robes, Li Mo Shang quickly manipulated the <Cold Wind's Trace> to obscure his figure, quickly dashing across the familiar streets and dodging pedestrians until he stood before Blue Rose University's campus gate. Merging with the flow of students walking through the gates, he bypassed the guards, feet flying as he made for Magnolia Dormitory at high speed.
Silently entering Room 303, Li Mo Shang disengaged his cloaking as he made for his room, noticing that the commons were devoid of the usual participants, even Su Yuan'er whose research group met an hour later was not present. Slightly baffled but deciding not to mind it that much, he grasped the doorknob to his room, lightly turning it and opening the door.
Only to run into a nasty surprise.
"Where did you go for two weeks? Don't you know that you've missed three general examinations, and the teacher's board has been firing questions all day?"
Turning to his right, Li Mo Shang saw Wan Xue sitting on his bed, leafing through a stack of papers. Noticing his entry, she directed an angry glare at him, tossing the papers to the side as she abruptly stood, hands jammed on her hips.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone