Chapter 27: Counterattack Begins
Xue Wei was aware that he only had a limited time before he had to head towards the military camp. He knew that he had to have comprehended the ability before it was time for departure.
Most of the younger generation members already had picked the kind of weapon they preferred. Shen Mu was using a sword, Li Jian was using his fists and a saber, Luo Zhirou was using the fan and so on.
Xue Wei had not been cultivating for long, and so far he had been focusing on increasing his strength alongside learning a few abilities that could save his life in a fight. He had not had the time to learn how to wield a weapon just yet.
"I do not want to be locked down with one specific kind of weapon," Xue Wei mumbled to himself as he continued to stubbornly extract his Qi and try to shape it in the form of a sword.
"When I have understood and trained this ability then I will be able to change weapon as easily as thinking about it. It will give me a great benefit in fights, and since it is made from Qi, I do not have to carry it around with me everywhere."
"The downside is that it consumes quite a lot of energy to create these weapons and every single clash will make me lose energy, yet the weapon will constantly raise in quality as my Qi becomes stronger and better."
"But this is truly a profound ranked skill," Xue Wei sighed in praise. "Although I have had no issues learning the other ones, this one proves to be rather tricky. Well, I better take it slow and build the right foundations."
Xue Wei knew that some things could not be rushed and instead, he sat down with his legs crossed and took a deep breath. He then spread out his hands and on top of his palms appeared a long thin streak of Qi which slowly started wriggling and twisting as it tried to take the shape of a sword.
The days trickled by one after another. The first day Xue Wei managed almost nothing. The second day he managed to create the handle, but when he moved further down in an attempt also to create the blade, the handle would become obscure and dissipate.
When he managed to make the blade and tried to create the handle, the blade would similarly become transparent or dissipate. The sharp edge would not stay.
Sighing, Xue Wei did not give up. He was as obsessed, staying seated in the same position day out and day in. His eyes were open and turned more and more bloodshot, but he was not becoming less focused.
On the fifth day, Xue Wei managed to create a sword. This sword was laying on top of his hands and felt as if it had been made from cold steel. It was firm and fit well in his hand when he grasped it.
Jumping to his feet, Xue Wei ran to the closest black gold dummy and got ready to attack. He stayed focused on the sword, ensuring that it kept its shape before he swung the sword diagonally from upside down.
The wind howled from the attack, Xue Wei did not need to inject his Qi into the sword as the sword was made from his Qi and was sustained by a continuous stream of energy that was flowing from his pearl-like dantian.
a loud clang sounded out the moment the two collided, and the recoil forced Xue Wei back a few steps, a smile was on his face as he saw a long gash on the dummy's chest, running exactly where the sword had cut.
Qi weapons could be many times sharper than real weapons. Real blades could only be sharpened to a certain extent as sharpening it further would mean the edge, while razorsharp, was too thin and would break or chip after one or two clashes with the enemy. Because of this sharpness of real weapons had to be balanced with thickness and durability, however Xue Wei was able to make insanely sharp weapons as the blade material was his Qi.
Although these black gold dummies were incapable of protecting themselves with Qi, they were sturdy, and their bodies were equal to a fifth layered Warrior.
Xue Wei was now able to cut open the body of a fifth layered Warrior with a single casual swing of his sword created by relying on Inner Might.
The sword dissipated the moment that Xue Wei had finished the cut as he lost focus, but he did not despair. Instead, he closed his eyes and imagined the sword once more, only to have the Qi shape itself as the sword almost instantly.
Having understood the principles of creating the sword, it was not difficult to recreate it. Although he now understood how to create the sword, he was not aware of how to fight fluently with it, and thus he began fighting. He practiced against the black gold dummies, his sword flashing time and time again, and with each slash, a long wound appeared on the dummies.
Sometimes the sword would vanish after a succeeded attack, other times it would last for three or four assaults before it disappeared, but as time went on, Xue Wei got better and better at controlling the sword and able to keep it in his hands for as long as he wished for it.
After feeling that he had mastered the sword, Xue Wei checked the time and realized that he had already spent more than five days on trying to comprehend the Inner Might attack. It was time for him to return to the herbal concoction.
After this Xue Wei returned to the painful concoction and increased his cultivation base. He then began to cultivate the Inner Might again, and this time he tried to create a spear.
In the beginning, the spear looked rather pitiful, but as time went on it looked better and better, and soon Xue Wei started fighting with the spear. Although it took time to practice and to get used to this kind of weapon, it was shorter than the time needed to learn the sword.
After the spear came the saber. After the saber came a fan. After the fan came a zither and the list went on. Xue Wei became more and more familiar with the Inner Might ability and was able to create more and more weapons than he had ever tried before and soon he could control them all with no problems.
Thanks to the herbal concoctions, Xue Wei had also managed to reach the seventh layer of the Ordinary Warrior rank, and although it was only the beginning of the seventh layer, he could feel a new strength bursting in his body that had not been there before. It was as if he had finally started to feel the benefits of being a cultivator.
"Well then, why don't we go and see if those people from before are still hanging around?" Xue Wei mumbled to himself. He knew he was no enemy to the masked opponents when he was facing them face to face, but Xue Wei had no intention of fighting them head-on.
Xue Wei was not willing to let Manager Su worry about his actions, so he went to the room and changed into a black outfit of trousers and a shirt. He then tied up his hair in a bun on top of his head with a black silken ribbon.
Then he looked at himself and nodded his head in approval. He was not wearing robes so moving would be easy. His hair was tied up so it would not get in the way, and he was wearing black clothes so hiding in the shadows should be reasonably simple.
Xue Wei elegantly jumped over the estate wall and entered the city casually while being on high alert. He used his heightened senses to keep an eye on what was happening around him regularly, and it did not take long before he found the first masked cultivator.
"So they really did stay in town. I will bet they come from the He or the Jia family," Xue Wei sneered, but he quickly dodged to the side and entered a small alleyway that was located just opposite the masked expert's seating place.
This masked expert was wearing a mask on half his face, it was covering his eyes, nose, and forehead but his mouth was free, and he was sitting outside a drinking den, drinking some fine wine.
Xue Wei grinned sinisterly as he roused the Qi within his body and created a zither. Zithers were exotic weapons. They attacked with sound waves, and someone like Li Jian who practiced the Sonic Palm should be able to work well with the zither.
The reason Xue Wei had tried to learn the Zither was because of what he had read about the Ouyang family, and he found these exotic weapons very alluring.
It had taken Xue Wei a couple of days to master the zither, and he was still a mere beginner, but he had accuracy on his side, and he sat down in the dark alleyway and looked at the masked cultivator that was seated in front of him.
"Let us see how you will deal with this," he grinned, and his hands rapidly started tapping the strings on the zither, releasing an avalanche of sound waves that went straight for the masked cultivator.
Xue Wei had chosen the zither because he needed a ranged weapon and his experience with the bow and arrow was still too little. Hence his best option was the zither.
These sound waves rose in the city, and everyone close by looked confused as they heard the violent melody that appeared out of nowhere. The actors and entertainers used zithers, but everyone knew that a real expert could also use them to attack with.
It just so happened that no one in Tiankong City was known to use zithers to attack, so when the violent melody sounded out, everyone was certain that some sort of performance was happening and they stopped what they were doing, looking around curiously.
The masked expert was no different. He raised his cup to his lips and looked around only to suddenly frown as he felt a shockwave crush against his chest and throw him back like an arrow leaving the bow.
The second shockwave did not hesitate to hit him straight in the face, but although it hit like a sledgehammer, the man was after all a cultivator two levels above Xue Wei, and a mask protected his face.
The mask crumbled, and blood started pouring out a wound on the man's forehead.
The man who was no longer masked jumped to his legs with a roar that shocked everyone present. What had happened was simply too fast for them to realize and when they noticed that something was going on, the man had already jumped to his legs.
"You little devil, where are you hiding?!" the man screamed out as blood gushed out of the wound in his head, and from his mouth as a tooth had fallen out.
"Time to get moving," Xue Wei murmured, and without waiting to see the show, he fluttered in the wind and vanished from the alleyway where he had been before.
The masked cultivator was in a frenzy. He started roaring and smashing everything around him in an attempt to find the expert that had caused him to gain such injuries, but what puzzled him was that although he had been wounded, the reason he was wounded was that he had been unprepared. He could not think of anyone with a strength equal to his that would dare move on him as long as he was unknown and hiding behind the mask.
"It couldn't have been?" The man suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. The strength that the assailant had used was clearly quite similar to his own strength. If Xue Wei had managed to reach that level so fast, was that not a monstrous change?
"I better go warn the others," he said while gritting his teeth. Luckily he had another mask in his bag, and he picked it out and placed it on his face, yet he knew it was pointless. All the commoners and his assailant had already seen his face. It was already known who it was that was hunting Xue Wei.