"Senior Wang Gang. It seems like your training method is too weak. Please excuse me." Lifting up his huge rock again, Ye Chen continued running.
After Ye Chen left, the crowd got louder.
"Unbelievable! Ye Chen won against Senior Wang Gang! Was that the King Kong Fist he was using?
"King Kong Fist and Breaking Stone Palm are both Middle Ranked Mortal martial arts, so it should not have had such a disparity. And Wang Gang's level is definitely higher than Ye Chen! What happened?"
"It's very simple," a seemingly-very-calm teenager said, "Ye Chen's King Kong Fist has already reached the Gentle Stage! His punches was strong and powerful yet still full of gentleness."
Someone questioned how would he know about that.
The teenager smiled, "Teacher once said, powerful but gentle should be the goal for every power-based martial arts. When Ye Chen held Wang Gang's punch, it seemed so domineering and easy, but it had actually used the gentle method of receiving the enemy attack and rebounding the power with Ye Chen's own attack. Of course, I only realized it after a careful observation."
The path in the mountain was steep and rugged, full of sharp rocks and large boulders making the path very hard to traverse.
With a shaking sweaty body, Ye Chen had just ran more than ten miles around the hills before he stopped in front of a wide river.
Boom!
He threw the rock on the ground, took off his outer clothes and jumped in the deep river. All of a sudden you could see a figure under the water throwing out punches one after another in a quick manner that disturbed the river's flow.
Practicing under the water was a hundred times harder than on the ground, the extreme pressure from the depth and speed of the rushing water would squeeze one's body from each direction and cause many people to be frightened for their lives.
Pushing his Qi into his dantian, Ye Chen firmly stood at the bottom of the river which was full of little rocks and mud as he casually threw a punch. With all the running water around him, the power of his punch could only reach about thirty percent of the usual.
However, this was exactly what Ye Chen wanted, otherwise there was no point in training under the water anymore.
The river suddenly became cloudy, and the flow of the river began to change and spin like a hurricane. It was almost as if there was a large monster hiding in the deep river, shifting its weight in preparation for the right moment to snake its head out.
In this extreme condition, Ye Chen could feel every bone and every muscle in his body shaking and fighting against the sudden turbulence as he finally managed to dig his feet into the river bed to find his balance in the high pressure and turbulence.
Losing track of time, Ye Chen ran out of his breath and finally came out of water.
Gasp! Gasp!
Ye Chen breathed in heavily, he laughed: "Training under the river is so efficient! I wonder how many people know about this method?"
...
The Town of Windy Paths was about ten miles from the Windy Mountain.
On the second floor of the Lucky Coin Restaurant ...
A man was seen stuffing his mouth, grabbing meat slabs with one hand and a bowl of water in the other. Ye Chen slobbered as he tried to sate his starving stomach, going crazy on this big table of delicious dishes, leaving nothing behind.
In the previous life, he would come here once every couple of days because as an outer disciple in the Sky Cloud Martial School, his meal was cooked and served in a huge pot which was like eating gruel, guaranteeing nutrition and nothing more. The good thing was even though the Town of Windy Paths was not large,it was full of delicious cuisines.
Plus, Ye Chen also enjoyed listening to the gossip outside the mountains which broadened his scope of the world, preparing him for the future when he would leave the Sky Cloud Martial School .
Nearby, there were a couple of martial artists sitting close to Ye Chen, each of them carrying a sword or a blade.
"Have you guys heard about it? Wu Wanshan, the Swiftblade lost to a teenage blade artist!"
"Yah, I heard about that, I think that teenager was called Lin Qi or something like that. He is one of the three famous disciples from Northern Snow Academy...His blade is extremely fast and sharp and beat Wu Wanshan in ten moves..."
"No way! Are you joking? Swiftblade has reached the Early Clasping Yuan Realm, extremely powerful! How could he lose to that kid?"
"Bro, you are totally out of it, everyone's talking about that fight, how could it be fake? But, now that you mentioned it, it is quite scary that Lin Qi who only has reached the Late Condensing Reality Realm was able to defeat Wu Wanshan... I wonder what would happen if he fought against a core disciple from the Sky Cloud Martial School?"
Ye Chen's eyes slightly widened as he tried to recall the memories of Wu Wanshan and Lin Qi...
Wu Wanshan didn't belong to any of the martial school or academies, around thirty years old, with his self-created, extremely swift blade art that could slice a drop of water into five parts in one second, once killed more than forty skilled horse thieves all by himself, could cut a bridge in half at a distance. His reputation was of being one of the fastest blade artist!
Lin Qi, one of the three core disciples in the Northern Snow Academy, started to train his Qi at the age of nine, and reached the Condensing Reality Realm at thirteen, Mid Condensing Reality Realm at fifteen, and the peak of Late Condensing Reality Realm at seventeen. With his excellent talent in blade art, his fighting skill was said to be almost equal to the top disciple of Northern Snow Academy - Childe North Snow.
Both of them were way too strong for the Ye Chen of now, but incomparable to Senior Xu Jing. Once he overheard the teacher saying that Xu Jing's skills had already reached beyond some of the Inner Court Masters, her genius in martial arts was unparalleled. She was one of the most rare geniuses in the history of Sky Cloud.
How long will it be until I reach this level? Ye Chen didn't doubt his potential at all because his only disadvantage was that he crossed over so late.
Suddenly, one of the guy said, "Who do you guys think has the most potential among the younger generation of Sky Cloud Martial School, compared to the other top disciples from the other four schools?"
"Without a doubt, Fragrant Plum Sword' - the top disciple of the Sky Cloud Martial School is definitely on the same level of Childe North Snow...As for the rest, I personally think the rank 4 core disciple Jing Jue could potentially make it; he's cold, emotionless, and very experienced."
"Jing Jue is great, but personally I think the rank 3 core disciple Yao Xiaofeng is quite impressive as well. He can always defeat people who are way stronger than him, very smart."
The guy who started this conversation laughed, "All you talked about were the top five core disciples, if it was before I would probably think the same, but this time I am really excited about core disciple rank 23 - Xu Jing."
"How so?" The others wondered, along with Ye Chen, who didn't expect them to mention sister Xu Jing.
"Three days ago, I saw her fight against the famous thief 'Iron Destroyer'..."
He hadn't even finished when the crowd started yammering, "'Iron Destroyer' Li Tong is definitely a character! Fraudulent, crafty, and brutal! He has been wanted for more than half an year now, but is still out there safe and sound. I heard that he learned his special Iron Destroyer art from the Rudra1 Nation and could crumble rocks and break iron. This Xu Jing girl you mentioned shouldn't be able to compete with this, right?"
"Wrong! Especially in that fight, Xu Jing completely beat Li Tong, not leaving him even a chance to fight back. In the end, Li Tong's arms were broken completely, and he vomited too much blood and died."
"What? Li Tong has the top skills of Late Condensing Reality Realm and couldn't even fight back?!"
"It's not that shocking if you were there to see what happened. You would know how strong and powerful Xu Jing's punches actually were. Compared to her, Li Tong seemed weak."
Ye Chen smiled, he was quite familiar with Xu Jing's power. Normally, in power-type martial arts, there were three stages : the first stage was the Gentle Stage, the stage where each movement began to turn from harsh and forceful into a strong, flowing, gentle movement. The second stage was the Opposite Stage, this was the stage where each movement embodied both the elements of hard and soft into strong and gentle movements. The highest stage was the Unity Stage, where one can no longer distinguish in a movement hard or soft, strong or gentle from one another. Xu Jing had already trained her Monster Executing Fist to the second stage! Although he had only trained for a short time, Ye Chen had also managed to reach the Opposite Stage in his King Kong fist which he showcased against Wang Gang.
Obviously, the three stages were not that easy to comprehend. For people who did not have much talent, it could take years, even decades, and could still fail to comprehend even the first stage. For example, that Wang Gang had not even completely understood the movements in Breaking Stone Palm, not to even mention the Gentle Stage...
[1] Rudra: A Rigvedic deity associated with storms and wind. Shares many traits with the Hindu deity Shiva.
In the blink of an eye, another month or so had passed by and the Mu Ren Gang challenge was less than a week away.
During this period of time, Ye Chen split his time between his horse stance practice every morning and night, building his physical fitness, and martial art training.
At this point of time, Ye Chen could already lift a three-hundred-pound huge rock over his head with only one hand; and with both hands, he could easily hold thousands of pounds over his head.
Besides all the noticeable improvements in his body, Ye Chen was finally powerful enough to use sword arts more freely and easily with regards to speed and control. His power had reached a whole new level, and could slice seven falling leaves, cut through a huge tree, and leave four inch gashes on a huge rock, all in just one single move.
It's time to move on to battle skills. Ye Chen realized he had already reached his peak, and improvement would be limited if he kept training. Instead of wasting his time and energy, he might as well try to gain some experience fighting and new techniques so that he could reach his full potential.
However, real battle skills were hard to obtain. Ye Chen was still just an outer disciple who could not go out into the world to risk life and death in battles; even if Ye Chen were of the same realm as an inner disciple, he would still lose after two or three moves. That was the difference between having and not having a life and death experience.
Thankfully, he did not have to fight with an actual person to experience such a battle. There were many demonic beasts in this world for that matter. A demonic beast could actively or passively train themselves, and when the richness of the Demonic Beast Qi inside their body reached a certain level, they would go through a mutation and evolve into the next level.
Since thousands of years, the ancient people classified the Demonic Beasts in different ranks. Rank 1 and 2 were comparable to the Mortal Realm; Rank 3 and Rank 4 were comparable to the Condensing Reality Realm; Rank 5 and Rank 6 comparable to Clasping Yuan Realm; the Demonic Beasts of Rank 6 and higher were extremely rare, only would appear in those deep ancient forests high up in the mountains.
Fighting against a Demonic Beast was not as easy as people would expect. On the contrary, Demonic Beasts were more powerful than human beings. If a monster that had hunted countless animals and humans suddenly appeared in front of you, with one look, it would scare and affect you so much that you could reach only five percent of your actual ability.
With that in mind, Ye Chen decided to go train in the Silent Hills area because there were always some low level demonic beasts around.
Putting his great steel sword down, Ye Chen straightened his clothes and walked out of the yard.
Walking down the mountain, he saw a lot of inner and outer disciples going up and down the path and thought no matter who you are, if you want to live a good life, you would have to have money. The Ye family that he belonged to had a massive fortune, so in theory he was not poor, but sadly that was not the truth. The Ye family had a population of around a thousand people, six or seven hundred of which were businessmen helping the family business, the rest of the four or five hundred people put all their effort into practicing martial arts. However, if you wanted to protect your own property, you would have to hire protection which cost a great amount of money. So even his father, the leader of the Ye family, had only fifty thousand silvers in his personal asset, and as the son of the leader, Ye Chen was given an allowance of one hundred silver per month.
One hundred silvers per month couldn't do much, only enough to eat well and dress decently. He couldn't afford to use expensive medical supplements for the training of his body that the core disciples of the family or the school were able to afford.
He climbed down to the bottom of the mountain and after finding the right direction, he sped up.
Around noon, Ye Chen arrived at the entrance of Silent Hills, where he started to sight some Rank 1 Demonic Beasts. Normally a Mortal Realm warrior would never dare to come to this kind of a dangerous place. Even Ye Chen was quite cautious about his surroundings and kept his hands on his sword at all times, ready to react to any commotion.
Silently walking forward, the strongest demonic beast Ye Chen had seen was a wounded Rank 2 Scarlet Fire Bird. However, Ye Chen lamented his misfortune that he was unable to hunt flying beasts.
After walking for a while and killing three weak Rank 1 demonic beasts, Ye Chen suddenly stopped and moved all his Qi to his ears to enhance his hearing.
There is a fight over there!
The biggest difference between a normal person and a martial artist was the ability to use Qi. A normal person could have amazing senses but after a point, they would hit a limit. But a martial artist could manipulate their Qi to enhance their senses. Ye Chen, by using his Qi, could faintly hear clashes of a fight about a mile away and knew exactly which direction the sound was coming from.
Following the sound, Ye Chen rushed there quietly. Pushing aside the branches, Ye Chen found a forest scene with human figures and a huge growling demonic beast.
When he was thirty steps away from the battlefield, Ye Chen jumped up onto a big tree to watch the fight from above.
In the woods, there was an emptied grassy field about fifteen meters long. And in that field, there were five teenagers holding weapons in their hands, surrounding a huge demonic beast. Its body was about three meters long and looked like a tiger with black shiny hair, panting as its long bloody tongue dripped with purple liquid. Its mouth was filled with huge sharp teeth and its claws were sharp and angled, measuring about a meter long.
It was a Late Stage Rank 2 Poison Saw-Toothed Tiger, its power equivalent to a Mortal Realm Rank 10 martial artist. Its teeth carried a deadly poison that, once touched, would cause the skin to fester and was only cured by a single antidote, otherwise once the poison spread to the heart, even a Condensing Reality Realm martial artist would lose their life.
Ye Chen noticed that the group of teenagers all had a golden loop symbol on their sleeves, identifying them as disciples of a low ranking institution.
The Hall of Golden Light was also a rank 9 school like the Sky Cloud Martial School. The leader of the hall, Li Yi was a Middle Ranked Clasping Yuan Realm martial artist who specialized in using the Deadly Golden Loop weaponry. According to the rumors, he used to be an outer disciple of the Sky Cloud Martial School, before he left to travel to many other countries outside of his native Heavenly Wind Country. Upon returning, he founded the Hall of Golden Light which currently had about five hundred disciples.
The five people attacking the monster were quite lacking, but had great teamwork, a result of spending a lot of time together in many different situations.
A teenage girl in red, holding a skinny sword of the Mortal Realm Stage Level 5 landed several sword attacks on the beast. By her side, there were twin boys with blades who were very bulky and powerful looking. They continuously shouted and ran around the demonic beast in attempt to focus the attacks on themselves.
Although these three people worked very hard, their attacks were not as effective as the other two in their party.
One of them was an extremely fit young man in black, holding a dangerous looking halberd, the "Verdant Dragon Halberd". The two-meter-long weapon seemed very heavy. Every time the Poisonous Sawtooth Tiger was about to attack the others, it would be beaten back by him and left with a bloody wound.
But the one Ye Chen noticed the most was the teenager in blue, he was about eighteen years old, and had only a flute around his waist. Weaponless, his attacks were actually the most powerful, every causal punch of his would conjure up a sharp black storm which would force the monster to back down.
If Ye Chen guessed right, the teenager in blue was a Mortal Realm Rank 9 martial artist, and was able to mix his Qi into the air around his palm and forcefully attack people without them noticing. Of course, the power of that attack could not compare to actually pushing Qi outside the body. Otherwise, the demonic beast would have been dead already.
The badly wounded monster in front of them was already exhausted, and after the poisonous smoke that it futilely blew out was pushed away by the black storm from the punch of the teenager in blue, the monster turned around and tried to escape.
"Not a chance!" The teenager in blue moved fast like lightning, without restraint, and hit the side of the monster extremely hard.
Boom!
After one last growl, the monster was thrown like an old cotton bag by that punch. The beast cried pitifully before it died due to all of its organs exploding.
"Very impressive Brother Liu." the girl in red swiped the sweat off and turned to look at the young man in blue with envy.
The teenager in blue said calmly: "This is not that impressive. In a couple of years you will match this power easily."
The teenager in black holding the verdant dragon halberd said: "Heh, years? I am at the Late Stage Mortal Realm Rank 7, it would only take a couple of months to catch up to you."
"Mmm." The man in blue nodded as he didn't really mind.
The girl in red made a displeased face, as she heard the arrogant statement of the teenager in black.
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