Chapter 13: Concoction of Herbs
The Solar Flower was a mixture of a sunflower and a lily. It shone with a golden light and was incredibly beautiful.
The plant was extremely common in the southern region of the Kingdom of Heping where the sun shone almost every day of the year.
Getting his hand on three Solar Flowers about thirty years of age was as simple as getting his hands on the forty-year-old Corpse Grass.
Then Xue Wei took the Beast Core he had purchased and used the Azure Light Finger to strike it. He aimed to break it up into smaller pieces, and he managed to succeed.
A resounding boom could be heard as the beam reached the core and shattered it into thousands of pieces.
Beast Cores looked like glass-faceted diamonds. They were stored in the heads of beasts, just behind the forehead, and they gathered all of the beasts internal energy within.
Shattering the core made it look as if it was made from glass, and small shards appeared all over his room. Xue Wei dropped one of the shards into the water basin before he started gathering all the others.
From time to time, he would stir the bath water, which strangely enough did not seem to cool off at all in the time it took him to gather the shards and place them on his table.
Once he was done picking the floor clean of the shards, he took off his clothes and took a deep breath. "This is going to hurt," Xue Wei muttered to himself as he climbed into the bath.
The moment his feet touched the water, Xue Wei gritted his teeth and fought back the urge to scream.
The Corpse Grass was no longer poisonous, but it was still very violent in nature, and it was also a plant that had lived for forty years. This was just about the limit for how much energy they could contain before Xue Wei would receive injuries to his meridians.
The energy entered his body from the foot that had touched the water, and it felt like thousands of needles were traveling through his body.
The temperature of the water made Xue Wei feel as though he was being boiled alive, but the worst was the feeling of constantly having his body being cut by thousands of knives at the same time.
The moment Xue Wei lowered his entire body under the water, his vision turned dark and he almost lost consciousness due to the intense pain;, yet by relying on his determination of becoming a respected cultivator, Xue Wei forced himself to stay awake.
He sat in the water, his head just above the surface, and was cultivating. The wisps of Qi that entered his body were numerous, traveling through the meridians in his body to be purified before being absorbed into the shining pearl in his dantian.
Xue Wei could feel how his flesh was being strengthened by the Blood Ginseng he had added to the water, and he could not help but feel excited.
"Earlier when I was fighting Li Jian, it felt as if my strength was superior to the four hundred kilos I should be capable of lifting. Was my imagination playing tricks on me?" Pondering on it for a bit, Xue Wei decided that when he finishes this session of secluded cultivation and fully grasps the Forbidden Rush and the Shattering Mountain Palm, he would find some remote place to test it.
It was not only Xue Wei's physical body that was improving, but Xue Wei could also feel how the energy from the water entered his body and pushed out impurities, making it possible for him to absorb more energy and faster than before.
The water also contained a shard of the beast core of an Earth Ranked Fierce Beast. This was not only some layers above him but a whole realm above him, and the energy contained in that little shard already held as much energy as Xue Wei had with his fourth layer Ordinary Warrior rank.
The energy from the core entered Xue Wei's body together with the whisps of energy, slowly getting refined.
The concoction that Xue Wei had made felt so familiar. It was as if he knew it by heart, but he had never before experienced it on his own body.
He did not know that, previously, he had often helped his late father prepare these baths for the wealthiest families in Lingyun Town.
But now that he felt it on his own body, Xue Wei understood that although this method was an excellent way to cultivating, it was not suitable for everyone.
If one were not able to calm their mind and keep relaxed while feeling such intense pain, it would be a wasted opportunity as they would not gain more than what they could with regular, unassisted cultivation.
Xue Wei sat in the bath all night, and the water turned more and more transparent. His flesh and blood absorbed all the blood essence of the Blood Ginseng, and the Corpse Grass cleared out his meridians. The beast core shard had been depleted, transformed into energy that had become part of his own cultivation system.
Before entering this concoction of plants and a beast core, Xue Wei had been a peak fourth layer Ordinary Warrior. Now, after one night of training, he had broken through to the fifth layer. It made him clench his hands excitedly.
This was not something he could do more than once every third day, or his meridians would not be capable of handling all the energy that went through them. But doing this once every third day also provided a significant effect.
Another benefit of using plants instead of pills was that there were no pill toxins in using the raw materials. True, when using the plants alone, the medicinal strength could not be fully extracted, but the bit that could be extracted was already enough for an Ordinary Warrior.
Pills were relatively rare, but Tiankong City was one of the biggest cities in the Kingdom of Heping, and thus it was natural for it to have an Alchemist Association.
Pills were graded by low purity, middle purity, high purity, superior purity, and profound purity.
You needed to be strong enough to consume a pill of certain purity.
With Xue Wei's current strength, all he could consume would be a low purity pill. That kind of pills were filled with pill toxins. Although these pill toxins could be removed by for instance using Corpse Grass or other plants, it was a long and tedious process, and the pill toxins might even hurt his prospects.
Because of this, not many were willing to buy pills of low and middle purity; they were simply too poisonous for the cultivators, and only those who had no other option would consume them.
Sighing and shaking his head, Xue Wei stopped thinking about pills. Although he wished that he could take profound pills and be able to increase his cultivation base just like that, he was fully aware that it was suicide. Since this was the case, he could do nothing but consume the plants the way he did every third day, and spend the rest of the time practicing the Forbidden Rush and the Shattering Mountain Palm.
Xue Wei's life fell into a pattern. He would spend his time training and practicing the Shattering Mountain Palm and the Forbidden Rush. And whenever able, he would take a herbal bath like last time.
He eventually ran out of Corpse Grass, but Manager Su personally went to purchase some for him upon realizing this, and nothing interrupted Xue Wei's training regimen.
Another month went by. While Xue Wei was busy training, everyone in Tiankong City was in deep shock.
The same day as Xue Wei had battled Li Jian, a rumor had started spreading in the city stating that Xue Wei was actually not trash and that he was capable of going head to head with Li Jian because he possessed a movement martial arts skill.
The first information was already enough to stun the entire city. Everyone had hated and loathed Xue Wei because he was useless, yet now, after having secluded himself for four months, he was better than the majority of the population of the city.
This alone had made many feel incapable of understanding what was going on. Some changed their opinions and started to consider whether or not they had been too harsh to him when he was weak, and how to become friendly with him now that he was in the spotlight, while others just hated him even more intensely than before.
Some were of the opinion that since he had always been trash, he should just stay as the trash he was and be bullied forever. The fact that he had learned martial arts was actually enough to insult them on a personal level.
Amongst the commoners, the rumor about Xue Wei possessing a movement martial art was shocking, but they were not completely aware of what it resembled, while many of the nobles were completely aware of what it meant and they were all filled with greed.
Fortunately, none of them dared move rashly because of Xiao Lei and the City Lord's Mansion. The only one who had the strength to move was the Li family, as they too had a Heavenly Warrior. But if he truly made a move, it would be seen as a revolt, and the City Lord's Mansion and all his supporters would love to use this opportunity to get rid of Li Jian's father.
Amongst the commoners, many of the maids and servants who had quit their job at Xiao Lei's mansion were filled with regret. They regretted it so much that their insides turned green, but they could do nothing about it. It was already too late to go back and beg for another position.
But while the city was split amongst those who felt regret for not treating Xue Wei better when he was trash and those who hated him even more intensely, there was especially one young man who was filled with such enmity that he swore that as long as Xue Wei lived in this world, he would never find peace.
This young man was precisely Li Jian, and his eyes were filled with hatred and resentment.
"Father, we ought to kill him!" Li Jian sneered as he was in his father's study. These words were not foreign to Li Jian's father, Li Fang. He had heard them more than hundred times since Li Jian had returned home from the match that had ended in a draw between Xue Wei and him.
"Father, he has a whole lot of superior martial arts. One of them is even a movement technique! Can it really be that we are too scared of Xiao Lei to try to get our hands on such treasures?"
Li Jian had previously looked up to Xiao Lei like everyone else. However, his hatred towards Xue Wei had long since overtaken his reverence to Xiao Lei, and now he wished to kill both of them if possible.
"You can kill Xiao Lei, and I will kill Xue Wei!" Li Jian said with certainty in his voice, but his father still said nothing. The Li Patriarch just sat behind his desk and looked at his son with a calculating gleam in his eyes.
"I cannot go against Xiao Lei," he finally said with a sigh. "Even if I wish to do so, I cannot win against him. And do not forget that Xiao Lei is not alone, Shen Bingwen is by his side. If I have to face the two of them, I will die within ten moves."
"But father, I cannot let things be like this. I am not satisfied!" Li Jian yelled loudly; his voice was so filled with madness and desperation that Li Fang knew that he had to come up with some sort of solution, or else his son would sink into insanity.
"You can deal with Xue Wei, and I will shield you. You are both members of the younger generation and what happens between the younger generation cannot be controlled by us old geezers," he finally agreed.