Chapter 323: Sacred Solarflare
Hui Yue was incredibly curious about the Nine Heaven’s Blood Forging, but he knew that rushing the blacksmith would not yield good results. Some things took time before they were ready, and Hui Yue, although impatient, wished the best for his sword. At the same time, he also found the Sacred Solarflare incredibly interesting. It was a high King ranked spiritual art.
The spiritual and martial arts were split into ranks. They were divided into the Student, Disciple, Practitioner, Master, Grandmaster, Duke, King, Emperor and Saint ranks. Within these ranks, they were further categorized into low, medium, and high level attacks.
What determined the rank of a skill was the rank the creator had when they made the skill. If a peak King expert were to make a martial or spiritual art that art would be a high King ranked skill. If an early stage Emperor were to create a skill that skill would turn into a low Emperor ranked skill.
If you gave a King ranked skill to a low ranked expert, then the skill would keep evolving with the expert until they reached the King rank. As soon as it reached the level it was created at it would be then impossible for it to advance further unless the entire skill evolved, or was improved upon.
Martial and spiritual arts above the King rank were incredibly rare because those experts usually focused solely on Wu Wei attacks. Although they could use spiritual and martial skills, creating them was something which took a very long time and no one truly wished to spend time on that instead of training their own skills. Well that was the majority of cultivators, but when Hui Yue thought about this, he started smiling.
Although most of the experts out there would not spend their energy creating new skills, Rong Ming and Rong Xing were doing just this. They were still a part of the Royal Academy although they had graduated when they reached the King rank. Reaching the King rank, both of them decided to stay and join the Department of Technique Development. There they worked hard to create one new skill after another to assist the kingdom.
As Hui Yue was thinking about martial and spiritual arts he had reached the park, and he once more sought out an area with no other people around. Today he had to choose a location fit for his training. This had to be somewhere that did not many trees or bushes around. The spiritual art he was going to train relied on his Fire affinity and created a large sun which would release one flare after another. This sun would continue until it exploded, releasing a massive supernova which would burn anything in its way.
Learning and perfecting a skill was never a simple task, and Hui Yue started by sitting down on the ground. His legs were crossed and his eyes closed. His mind was fully focused on the skill which occupied his mind. At first, he needed to summon his spiritual energy and infuse it with his affinity for the Fire. After this, he needed to lead the spiritual energy through his meridians in a specific pattern. This was the first step in learning the new skill. Summoning his energy from his middle dantian, Hui Yue took a deep breath and focused solely on the energy which he guided through one meridian after another.
The first attempt failed because his spiritual energy moved too quickly, and controlling it was difficult causing it to miss a meridian. This completely messed up the flow pattern. As the energy followed a different, unharmonious pattern a backlash of energy exploded within Hui Yue’s body causing his internal body to be injured. A sweet taste appeared in the young man’s throat and moments after he coughed out blood.
A sour expression was shown on Hui Yue’s face as he looked at the blood that he had spat out on the ground, but he was stubborn to the core when it came to training; he would not give up that easily.
Once more, Hui Yue closed his eyes and entered the middle dantian to summon more spiritual energy and infuse it with the Fire element which was found in his elemental flame that was floating above his spiritual energy sea.
This time, he failed much like the first, but Hui Yue didn’t experienced a backlash. He had slowed down the speed with which the energy moved through his body and as a result the energy dissipated into nothingness before it managed to finish the pattern it needed to make within his meridians.
Sighing, Hui Yue tried once more while muttering, “Third time’s the charm.” Yet he soon found that his third time was not any better. He was still far from being able to even finish the pattern.
After a while, Hui Yue grit his teeth and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth for the countless time as he finally decided to take a break from trying to finish the pattern needed to create a Sacred Solarflare sun. This, although it was only a high King ranked spiritual arts skill, was one of the hardest skills Hui Yue had ever seen before.
The pattern was incredibly intricate, and the requirements were very high. He needed a very strong affinity with the Fire element, and only someone with enough stubbornness, or perhaps masochistic traits, would fight to master this ability. But with great difficulties came great gains and when it was learned it would be one of the strongest abilities in Hui Yue’s possession. Although it was nothing more than a high King ranked skill, the power behind the ability was strong enough to rival a middle Emperor ranked skill due to the high requirement for the Fire element. One needed to have merged with the Fire element to be capable of executing this intricate pattern.
The day turned to night, and all he had managed to do was to try and create a small Sacred Solarflare Sun yet he failed time and time again. As night descended upon the park, Hui Yue stopped training the spiritual art and instead closed his eyes to refine. He could not afford to waste the night. It was incredibly hard for him to access Yin energy. Yang energy was constantly refined from just breathing, yet to advance he needed a perfect balance of Yin and Yang energy; he needed to become one with the world. But as a man, Yin energy was hard to come by, and as the cold moon’s rays contained only Yin energy, Hui Yue absorbed it greedily.
The essence of the heavens and the earth poured into the young man, and the cold Yin energy floated towards the upper dantian while the essence itself entered the lower dantian to get refined into Qi. Then the Qi was refined into Spiritual Energy and the Spiritual Energy was slowly refined into Wu Wei.
The golden Wu Wei was constantly increasing within his upper dantian, and it gradually merged with the dark Yang energy and the light Yin energy. Although one could refine Wu Wei without bothering about Yin and Yang energies, the person who did this would stay a King forever. To advance to the rank of Emperor, and ultimately to the rank of Saint, one truly needed a perfect balance of the energies within their bodies. Upon reaching a perfect balance, one would merge with the heavens and the earth becoming a God.
Hui Yue knew about this, and Lan Feng had long since told him about this. This was the reason he never allowed for a night to pass by without absorbing the Yin energy of the essence of the heavens and the earth. He knew that this energy was incredibly important for him on his path to become a strong cultivator.
When Hui Yue and Lan Feng underwent the Soul Contract many years back, Lan Feng had given Hui Yue all the Yin energy he had spent thousands of years to refine. Even now while Lan Feng was refining, it was impossible for him to refine Yin and Yang energy. He had no body, only a soul; therefore, he could only increase the amount of Wu Wei he had.
The Yin energy that Lan Feng gave Hui Yue alongside the energy he had gotten from refining energy every night brought him to the eighth star of the King rank. He was even a late stage eighth star, and although he knew that he should be able to push into the ninth star now. But despite this he decided to take it slow and build a stable foundation. He wished to learn skills instead. Skills that would back his strength.
The night went by swiftly before the sun once more broke through the sky. “Just two more days,” He mumbled to himself as he straightened his body. It had been a long time since he last spent the night outside, and the chill had made his body slightly stiff.
He once more sat down and started to push his Fire infused Spiritual Energy through his body, neither too fast nor too slow. He had managed to nail the speed perfectly yesterday, yet despite this, the pattern was in no way easy to form. He had failed it more times than he could count.
Boom after boom could be heard as the ground within the park shook time and time again. Every time Hui Yue would throw up a mouthful of blood before he wiped his mouth with a stubborn expression on his face.
Sometimes he would sit down and meditate then eat a pill and wait for the medication within to heal his internal injuries. He would then once more return to practicing the Sacred Solarflare.
Sitting still, a frown was shown on his handsome face, and small beads of sweat slowly trickled down his chin as intense energy waves were emanating out felt from the young man. They had started as small ripples, yet now they were massive heat waves rolling out from the cultivator.
The heat waves slowly changed. Now they were no longer billowing outwards, but instead upwards where they converged and swirled around in a circle. As it gathered, it caused a small sun to appear. At first, it was tiny, but the massive heat waves fed the sun increasing its strength until it was a staggering four meters around.
The energy which had been collected stopped increasing the size of the mini sun, and instead, the ripples flowed outwards much like small waves of fire. Everything they clashed against turned to ashes. Some massive trees were reduced to nothing as the fire pulse exceeded the distance Hui Yue had expected.
The sun did not last for long, only three or four ripples exploded out from it before the sun itself exploded. This explosion blinded Hui Yue and a boom louder than anything Hui Yue had heard before exploded outwards. All light turned white, and after the boom, it was as though there was no sound whatsoever. He was in a world of his own; a world filled with white light and no sound.
Slowly the vanished sound returned as did the light. Looking around himself, Hui Yue was staring agape. He was standing in a massive crater which was at least twenty meters to both sides. In this crater ash was evident here and there, clearly the remnants of the trees and other things which had been in the way.
As Hui Yue looked at his surroundings he heard noisy sounds from the mansion side, and he turned to see what was coming his way. Servants, maids, guards, and even Xu Piao and Deng Wu were rushing towards him. Their faces alert and weapons in hand.
Looking at the devastation around Hui Yue they all stopped and stared shocked incapable of guessing what was the reason for such destruction. A smile was on the young man’s face. This was the first time he had managed to succeed in creating the Sacred Solarflare spiritual art, and he knew that it could become even stronger. The strength already rivaled a weak Wu Wei attack, and if he managed to perfect his use of the skill, then it should be capable of fighting head on against a medium grade Wu Wei skill.