Chương 14: Inside Or Outside?
After opening the door using the strange marked stone, both Issei and Sa Ji walked inside.
The first thing that Issei saw was a training dummy. It's pair of feet were glued onto the ground, with six arms and an odd-looking head.
Aside from the dummy, the rest of the room was entirely empty. It was also relatively large, but not too large. It seemed that it would be just enough for him to fight with the dummy freely.
"This is the training dummy," Sa Ji pointed at the dummy, "This is a special object from our school. It's said that the first head master found fifty of those in an expert's tomb. The private rooms all have one each. As for the public rooms, there's just your normal wooden dummy."
He then walked towards the dummy and motioned for Issei to follow. Upon arriving in front of it, Sa Ji crouched down and pointed at the base of the dummy. On it, there was the number one, along with a small lever.
"This is what defines the level of difficulty of the dummy. By pushing the lever, it increases by one level. By pulling it, it decreases.
"In total, there are five levels. On the first level, the dummy will only try to dodge your attacks. On the second, it will have much better dodging abilities. On the third, it will not only dodge, but will also slightly counter-attack. On the fourth, it starts to counter attack with much more strength. On the fifth level, it will automatically attack you if you come close to it."
As Sa Ji said that far, he then looked back at Issei.
"From the level 2 onwards, it will be able to leave it's base, but always after ending a battle, it will retreat to it's original position. On the fifth one, as long as you are six meters away from it, it will attack you until you fall back to seven meters or is heavily injured."
"Such a profound dummy..." muttered Issei in amazement. Such an excellent training device! At that moment, he couldn't help but to admire the first head master's luck for finding such precious training dummies.
"Also, there's another thing," Sa Ji began, "This dummy automatically regenerates after each battle. Even if you were to cut each of it's limb a hundred of times, it would still grow them back."
"Really?!" Issei asked in a loud tone. This time, he was thoroughly surprised. A dummy that can regenerate... just how amazing is that?! If that were to be used as soldiers on a war, Issei would feel sorry for its enemies.
"Yeah," nodded Sa Ji, "At first, I also didn't believe it, but after fighting with it a couple of times and managing to injure it, I saw with my own two eyes as all the wounds were instantly closed."
"Wow... but, are you sure that it can regenerate even its members? Like legs and arms..."
"Absolutely, but you shouldn't worry much about that. Only the ten best core disciple students are able to inflict such a deep wound into the dummy. No one managed to do that before aside from them, even when the dummy is on level one."
After saying until this point, Sa Ji then stopped and looked at Issei, changing the subject, "Hey, enough about the dummy. Right now, you should probably start cultivation. Is there anything you need? Like food..."
"Food?" Issei asked, a little surprised. Why would he bring food into here?
"But of course! When one cultivate, they normally spend one entire week cultivating. As such, they normally bring a large stock of food with them."
"A week?" Issei asked, even more surprised. Didn't the students have classes or something? It's a school, after all.
As Sa Ji looked at Issei's surprised and confused expression, he understood what he was thinking and quickly explained, "We don't have to attend classes. Our only obligation is to cultivate. Aside from that, we are free to do whatever we want. If you have some doubts regarding cultivation, you can always go to one of the elders."
"Ah," Exclaimed Issei as he finally understood how schools that taught martial skills worked. So the student has complete autonomy, huh?
"Well, as I was saying, you should probably spend some time here. Can you estimate how much time? I need to know how much food to bring," Sa Ji said once more, this time in a slight hurry. He had to report back to her soon, but before that he had to make sure that Issei had everything he needed.
"Hmm..." Thought Issei deeply. He was going to say one week, but decided that he would stay exactly one month in there. If the dummy was truly as good as Sa Ji claimed it to be, then Issei would definitely benefit from it!
"One month, I guess," Issei finally said, after some careful thinking.
"One month?" Sa Ji repeated and then nodded his head. "Alright, I'll be back shortly. Is there anything else you want?"
"Ah, no," was what Issei was intending to Issei, but stopped mid-way as he remembered the Sky Poison Pearl. At the moment, one of the things he needed the most was knowledge on medicines, pills and such. Only with having knowledge could he utilize the power of the pill.
"Well, if it's not asking much, I do have one more request," Issei finally said, politeness all over his voice.
"Don't worry, whatever it is, I'll do it," Sa Ji exclaimed confidently. It was proportional, really. The more the things he did for Issei, the slighter his punishment for letting Issei choose those three damned scrolls would be.
Seeing that Sa Ji was that determined, Issei laughed in his hear, "I don't know why you're helping me this much, but I'll definitely make the most out of it," He thought secretly while he said, "Then, I will have to trouble Senior Brother Ji to grab a few books about medicine and pill concocting for me."
"Books about medicine?" said Sa Ji in a puzzled voice.
"Yes, books about medicine. Such as about pills, medicines, poisons, anatomy of the human body... all things related to medicine and a little about pill concocting."
Deeply engraving the subjects named by Issei in his mind, Sa Ji nodded. "Alright, I'll be back in thirty minutes," He said as he hurried out of the door and onto his duties.
Seeing that Sa Ji had left, Issei closed the door and got the three scrolls from the Sky Poison Pearl. He then laid them on the ground in front of him and then looked at them carefully, wondering which one to start with.
At last, he finally decided on starting with Heavenly Double Swords Might martial skills. Picking it up, he opened it and begun reading it.
On it, it explained that the Heavenly Double Swords Might was not a martial skills, but a martial skills set. Martial skills set were martial skills that had two or more martial skills in them, normally divided by levels.
According to the scroll, the Heavenly Double Swords Might had three different levels. The first level was a defense martial skill. Upon mastering it, it would allow one to block attacks from people up to 1 level above the user in cultivation and skills up to the fifth rank.
After mastering the first level, one could learn the second level. It was a counter-attack martial art skill. It was normally used followed by the defense martial skill from the first level. In short, it used the impact of the opponents attack to strike him back with twice the power. The limit of the power of the counter attack was that it couldn't be three time stronger than a normal attack from the user.
Once again, after mastering the second level, the third level would become available. It was an attack martial skill, about five time stronger than the counter-attack martial skill full power, so about fifteen times stronger than a normal attack.
After Issei finished reading it, he was full of smiles. This skill, it really sounded good. Furthermore, it was three skills in one, making it even better.
Issei was about to begin following the instructions of the scroll in order to learn the first level when someone knocked on his door. Now that he thought of it, he truly did spend over twenty minutes reading the scroll, since the author of it liked to pay too much attention to minimal details of the skill.
"Coming!" exclaimed Issei as he rushed to the door and opened it. After opening it, he saw Sa Ji standing there, a cosmos sack in his hand. His face was full of sweat, it was obvious that he had spend the last twenty minutes running though the scroll grounds non-stop.
"I'm finished..." He said, slightly panting. He then looked at Issei's own cosmos sack.
"Transfer the contents of this cosmos sack into yours, please," He said as he handed him the pouch. Accepting it, Issei quickly emptied the cosmos sack, filling his in the process. Sadly, since the time it took was to small, he couldn't really see what the contents were, although he caught the smell of food.
Seeing that Issei had finished, Sa Ji grabbed his cosmos sack back and looked at Issei with a smile, "One month from now, I'm passing by to bring you to the Mighty Skill Pavilion so you can change your skills," He said, "Now, I have to go, so please excuse me, Junior Brother Issei," He turned around and hastily left.
There was a reason for his sudden leave. It was because the meeting time appointed by her was nearing in, and he absolutely couldn't be late. God knows what she would to him if he were to even get one minute past the appointed time...
"Thanks and good bye, Senior Brother Ji," Issei said, but Sa Ji had long since gone past the area where he could still hear Issei.
Now that he was completely alone, Issei walked back into the room and closed the door. Picking up his cosmos sack, he passed his hand over it, making all of the content he had previously acquired to flow out of it.
Soon, in front of him, a pile with about fifteen books appeared. Also, there was a huge sack, full of food that didn't rot with time.
Looking at the huge amount of food, Issei figured that it would be enough for a month, so he placed them back. At the moment, his attention was completely focused on the pile of books.
In reality, he couldn't help but to be surprised. He had expected Sa Ji to bring him a book or two, but not a pile composed of fifteen, thick and long books.
The reason why Sa Ji brought so many books was because he had some connections with the schools infirmary, and he asked for all the books available there.
After looking through the pile, Issei discovered that there were books about poisons, herbs, medicines, pills concoctions, a complete guide of the human body, and many other things.
Looking at that, Issei couldn't help but to become extremely excited. With this, he would be able to use more abilities of the Sky Poison Pearl.
But, he knew that at the moment, the first thing he should do would be to train in his new skills, so he placed the book back and once more focused onto the scroll.
After reading the way of cultivating the first level of the Heavenly Double Swords Might, Issei closed the scroll, stood up and took off both of his swords from the Sky Poison Pearl.
He had the pitch black sword on his right hand and the pure white one on his left.
He then extended his right hand and tried to follow the steps depicted on the scroll. He started to slowly remember each part and go along with the instructions.
Focus your spiritual power and make it flow into one of your swords
Issei then closed his eyes and calmed his mind. Soon, he could feel the flow of spiritual power in his profound veins and dantian. He then willed for some of the power to exit his dantian and then directioned it towards his right hand and into the sword.
Soon, he could feel as it slowly poured into the sword.
After channeling the spiritual power, the sword should have some spiritual power flowing outside it. Channel more power until it becomes completely covered.
As he remembered that part, he slowly began to channel more power, but much to his surprise, instead of it covering the sword, he felt it actually entering it!
At first, he thought that he had made a mistake, but after thinking carefully about it, it was possible that the person who wrote the scroll mistook himself when writing, since inside and outside it sounded similar.
With that thought in mind, he continued to channel his spiritual power into the sword.
As the spiritual power poured into it, he could feel as it entered the sword, burrowing into it and changing it's atomic structure. Much to his surprise, the spiritual power penetrated into it on an atomic level, entirely changing it's composition.
Since he had already gone so far, Issei continued channeling power. This new power then began to make it's way through the sword, creating something that Issei thought to be similar to profound veins.
He continued pouring more and more power, making the profound veins-looking holes started to get firmer and firmer, seeming more and more like profound veins.
After channeling for five minutes, Issei thought that it was enough as was just about to stop when suddenly, he felt a force of attraction coming from the sword, and without his permission, boundless spiritual power flowed from him into the sword.
Issei's eyes widened at the speed that he was loosing spiritual power and tried to throw the sword away, but it seemed that it had been glued to his hand. He could only watch as he was almost sucked dry of spiritual power, only with a sliver of spiritual power behind.
He grimaced as he wondered how many hours it would need to fill it up again...
But, it was also at that moment that the sword finally fell from his hand and onto the ground, giving off a loud noise.
Looking down, he looked at the sword and couldn't help but to widen his eyes. The previous pitch-black sword was completely different. Now, it was covered with red, hexagonal marks!
But, that wasn't the reason why he was surprised. It was because, even though he stopped channeling spiritual power, he could feel that there was still spiritual power flowing inside it in circles, constantly increasing!
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