บท 64: FIRE AND WOOD ARTS

Lu Ming started to follow the plan laid by his master. He divided his time into the three sectors. The first elder gave him an old roughed out cauldron. The cauldron was quite worn out and very old, rusty. The amount of energy required to heat it up was quite large than the new ones." This is an old cauldron. Although doing alchemy in this is far more difficult when compared to performing the same thing in the new ones, but this is also an exceptional practice material. You will practice alchemy in this cauldron. Your aim is to outshine those who use a much better cauldron than you. This is a task that will take a long time to achieve. I will start training you in alchemy as soon as you are able to maintain the guidelines, I laid down for your using this particular cauldron. Start practicing immediately. The first half of the day will be spent with me, while the second half, I will introduce you to the teacher who will instruct you in the path of fire arts.". Long Tao bowed in agreement and started practicing using the old worn out cauldron.

The cauldron, due to it sold nature and worn-out situation took a lot of time to get heated up. Now the difficult part was maintaining the heat. The heat dissipation from the cauldron was much larger than that of the normal ones. Hence The practitioner not only has to exert more effort in heating it up, but more efforts and energy was going to be wasted and consumed to keep up the temperature. The task took a lot of concentration and diligent efforts. The main reason behind the elder using the old cauldron to teach Long Tao was due to its characteristics. If Long Tao was able to perform alchemy to a good standard in this old worn out cauldron, he would perform exceptionally well with a good one. The days were being spent using the old worn out cauldron and maintaining heat.

The next part of training was fire manipulation. It was the same exercise as the beginning one. Long Tao had to maintain the flame to a certain intensity and regulate as the first elder asked for/notified. It regulated Long Tao's control over the fire and the ability to manipulate it to various projection limits.

The third part was the refining of materials. Long Tao had to first go through the manuals containing information regarding the ingredients to be used. The next step was to memorize what they act like and their medicinal capabilities. The last part was the refining process. Before the combination of ingredients to perform alchemy, they first have to be purified with fire. Only after the purification process is completed and the liquid composite of the ingredients is drawn out, can the combination and further steps be carried out. In initial days Long Tao concentrated just on the purification process. But as time went by, he got better at a visible speed. Both the first elder and the figure, who was watching over Long Tao from shadows were scared of his improvement." This is a genius in making. We need to speed up things according to his pace. From tomorrow onwards he will be accompanying me in pill making. Also, you will introduce yourself to your junior brother. He needs to start his training in the offensive fire arts from tomorrow. Also, I will allocate him to the pavilion where he can see the process of upgrading his training and capability in the wood element region.". The figure nodded in agreement. The current work given to Long Tao was like wasting his time and letting him slack off on work. They needed to use the maximum capability of him to get the best results.

Northeastern regions-

The first month of allocation was now complete. Each individual of the black-buck squad had managed to complete at least 2 missions. These included resource collection, demonic beats hunting, spying, assassination, the ambush of supplies. The Black-buck squad has managed to score a perfect record until now. Long Tao was satisfied with the result. He himself had managed to complete 25 assassination missions which included killing individuals, whose cultivation ranged between the first level to the 6th level of Qi master. He took all their personal possession and had made quite a fortune until now. He had lots of space rings in his possession. But he knew that this was just a small amount of resources in the real-world. He needed to kill a greater number of enemies and collect more amount of resources. This battle-field was a good ground for resource collection. He also managed to collect 3rd level demonic beats corpse and was able to practice the Blood Tempering method quite proficiently at the moment. Long Tao's cultivation was already at the 2nd level of Qi master as 1 month outside meant 4 months in the Crimson Lord world. His Blood tempering art, Crimson world scripture, and Hell solider sutra were all in the 2nd cycle. He also managed to open 5 tertiary meridians in the time period. After each level of cultivation upgrade, the life-weapon of Long Tao went a round of refining. That was the reason for his cultivation speed decreasing. Thankfully he had the Crimson Lord world to compensate for that. He was also practicing the 12 forge of death and the flesh tempering method side by side. Long Tao knew that he needed to pace up his cultivation speed. But if one doesn't temper themself after breaking through, they might start to encounter a bottleneck after a period of cultivation and sometimes even give rise to a heart demon. Long Tao decided that he will start confronting enemies, both directly and in the assassination. He had undertaken around 50 assassination missions and was sure to complete them. On the side, he wanted to kill as many enemies as possible. This helped his training in the blood tempering formula due to his new ability called blood to drain. Also, the huge amount of blood essence required by the weapon tempering formula to refine the life-weapons was also compensated by killing practitioners and demonic beasts.

He had one more month before he was going to return back to the military base. He needed to kill as many enemies as possible in this time period. He called Su Menqi and handed her a list. "This is the list of missions that the squad will complete in the next month. It also lists the training regime they have to follow for the next month and the individual mission and groups that were assigned. You are to supervise the successful completion of these. Also, I have listed the set of missions and goals for you to achieve in the next month. Make sure to fulfil them. You are to break-through 5th level of Qi master before we return to the base." Su Menqi returned with the squad and Long Tao proceeded in another direction. His aim was to wipe squads of enemies this time. He encountered small squads and groups of spies, who were instantly killed by him. By the end of the first day, Long Tao's tally of victims was 50. All of the victims were in the initial stage of Qi master. Long Tao didn't pause at night. By the next day, the tally had already increased to 100. This time it included Qi master of the intermediate level also. Long Tao already completed all his assassination missions. He was now concentrating on tempering his mind and killing more opponents to gather information and gain resources. The soul search method had helped him a lot. With the help of it, he managed to get the location of the nearby members and was also able to pinpoint the location of his targets. This enabled him to gather a lot of information.

The Chu country's military camp was in a state of panic at the moment. Reports of 100 deaths of practitioners of Qi master level was already being reported. They started to form larger groups and send a greater number of squads, which included high cultivation practitioners among their ranks to hunt down the enemy. But again 100 kills were reported in the next 3 days. Another set of reports told that around 4 ambushes happened, which recked the supply of resources and supplies in many strongholds. This was reported to be done by a squad called Black-buck. The upper echelon started to gather to have a meeting regarding the action to be taken in this situation.

Pill hall-

Lu Ming completed his daily practice when suddenly his master appeared with a figure beside him. Long Tao was spellbound when he saw the figure for the first time. It was as if God had carved a figure out of beautiful jade. The lady in the front was like a perfect species and gave rise to his inner thoughts. This lady was someone who gave rise to a natural sense of getting her in the heart of men. Long Tao was silent for a long time. Even the first elder didn't speak as he was enjoying the moment. The figure initially didn't mind the action, but she started to feel shy and irritate as Long Tao continued to view her." What are you looking at you imbecile?" Long Tao was taken out of his fantasy thoughts. The first elder coughed in between to resolve the awkward situation and said "This is your teacher rf or the fire arts. She will guide you in it and will also introduce you to the place where you can start practicing the healing arts. You are to start training from today. Don't slack off." The first elder turned around and left the two of them alone.