Riluo City (Blue Phoenix Book 1) (47 page)

Hui Yue was excited as he left the classroom. It was finally time to try and put all his
effort into practice. He rushed back, although he was not rushing back to his
own courtyard, but instead rushing towards Deng Wu’s. It was time to show Wang
Ju Long who was the strongest of the two of them.

Hui Yue was currently standing within Deng Wu’s courtyard. His clothes were sticking to his
body as sweat was dripping down his back and his face. The last three hours had
been used for sparring against Deng Wu and Hui Yue finally allowed a smile to
appear on his face.

“You are a monster,” Deng Wu said, shocked as he looked at all the damage which had been
done to his home. “Young master Wang is definitely in for a surprise, however,
you forget that I am also participating in the tournament and so far you can’t
beat me.”

A smile adorned Deng Wu’s face, however, it quickly disappeared when he noticed the
smug grin which Hui Yue was displaying.

“That’s true, but are you likely to allow your true cultivation base to be shown?” he
asked mischievously, “I doubt you will actually manage to get through to top
eight unless you unleash at least some of it.”

Deng Wu remembered that it was indeed true that no one else knew about his strength and
an average talent was not supposed to suddenly jump this much in his
cultivation base.

“Right,” he sighed dejectedly. “You better win this thing for me then. I will look forward
to see how you do.”

The smile upon Hui Yue’s face widened and he gave a thumbs up before he rushed out of the
courtyard, running towards his own home.

Returning home to his own courtyard, a smile was still evident on Hui Yue’s face as he
swirled his hands and two knives appeared. These knives were white as the
finest jade and crackling with pure energy. The knives were both as long as Hui
Yue’s forearms and the handles were fit perfectly to Hui Yue’s hands.

Hui Yue knew that Transforming Weapons without a doubt was the most challenging of all
the skills he had practiced so far, and after more than half a year of training
he had only managed to perfect one type of weapon out of the numerous to choose
between.

Back when Hui Yue started practicing, he had realised that his skill at handling knives
was as terrible as if it had the first time he tried wielding it. Back then,
shock had filled the young man as he had assumed that he could easily wield
weapons as he had practiced it for multiple years in his old world. However,
even if he had been using it back then, it was still almost eleven years since
his reincarnation and within these last eleven years, Hui Yue had only focused
on cultivating and learning specific Martial Art Skills.

As soon as Hui Yue noticed that his cultivation was improved on the expense of no longer
being able to remember how to properly move according to his former world’s
instructor’s teachings, he instantly decided to once again skip the lessons
given by teacher Li Yuan and instead use those additional hours a day to focus on
his wushu training, starting at the basic level.

Although Hui Yue’s reincarnated body had never experienced this kind of training before,
he quickly managed to get past the basics as he had previous experience by
soul. Currently, although he was far from his previous abilities, he was still
not one who could easily be defeated.

Hui Yue’s smile grew as he looked at the two knives in his hands and he swirled them
around, playing with them before he moved towards a newly acquired target dummy.

Playing with knives and practicing the body was one thing not usually emphasized within
the academy as the majority of cultivators focused solely on their martial art
skills to deal with both offence and defence, however, Hui Yue had decided to
combine his martial art skills together with his previous knowledge. This way
Hui Yue no longer relied solely on the skills but managed to improve them,
merge them, with his own body’s movement.

As Hui Yue started practicing this new type of fighting, he had trained only within his
courtyard so that his fighting style did not get revealed before the
tournament. The tournament was time for redemption, the tournament was the time
to show that Hui Yue was not just equal to Wang Ju Long.

He was more than just the white-haired genius. He was a silver monster.

These emotions had caused Hui Yue’s training to grow wilder and more intense and
unfortunately the courtyard had paid quite the price for it. The beautiful
walls had been filled with deep gashes, the majority of the trees had been
slashed so deeply that they collapsed and the ground was marred with craters
and slashes.

Hui Yue had eventually needed to get help from a grandmaster with an elemental affinity of
wood. Wood was the affinity which allowed for life to spring forth and this
cultivator managed to return the courtyard to its previous appearance.

The prize to return the courtyard was an extravagant seven spirit coins as the cultivator
needed to swear by a blood contract to never tell anyone that she had worked for
Hui Yue, but he found the money worth it.

The day after, he purchased a few target dummies created by a Grand Master with Metal
and wood as elemental affinities.

These target dummies were shaped as humans and they were adorned with inscriptions
which allowed them to have different uses. One was to stand still and allow for
the cultivator to hit it constantly where it would repair itself after each hit.

The second option was to activate another inscription and the target dummy would react to
attacks. It had no Qi but it had enough ability to avoid attacks.

Creating the dummy and the inscriptions were done by the metal affinity while the wooden
affinity was used to constantly repair the dummies.

These dummies were without a doubt their weight worth in gold but the price was five
hundred gold coins each.

Hui Yue once again smiled as he activated his two dummies and got ready for a session
of training. So far, Hui Yue was capable of having his double knives active for
half an hour, and the next half hour the sounds of battle could be heard from
within the courtyard.

‘Phew,’ Hui Yue sighed before a yawn contorted his face. Having fought two dummies for
almost three quarters of an hour, as he had exhausted his entire Qi spiral, he
felt tired beyond belief.

‘It looks quite good,’ Lan Feng said approvingly after having watched the melee display.
‘You seem to have perfected the knives and tomorrow you can start playing
around with another type of weapon.’

Excitement grew within Hui Yue as he heard this.
 

He had long since wished to try out a sword, but because of Lan Feng’s
requirement of perfecting one thing at a time, he had not tried it out yet.

Chapter 31 - The Tournament Begins!

Hui Yue was no longer the petite and effeminate boy he had been when he started to attend the Royal Academy. He was now a few centimetres taller than he had been when he arrived. The biggest change was, on the other hand, that his face, although still incredibly feminine, no longer resembled a girl’s but a feminine boy’s.

The more Qi Hui Yue gathered, the more he matured. Currently these were still small and subtle changes, in spite of this Hui Yue was aware that a major change would happen to his body once he broke through the bottleneck to the disciple rank.

Throughout the different breakthroughs Hui Yue should expect his body to be enhanced greatly, however, the magnitude of the changes varied from person to person depending on the purity of the qi contained within the body.

Nonetheless, it had to be understood that Hui Yue’s body was anything but ordinary. The fact that Hui Yue had opened the Chong Mai meridian was enough to ensure that he would no longer follow the usual route for enhancements to his body.

The opening of the Chong Mai meridian usually required a large burst of spiritual power and it would normally be something that most Master ranked cultivators would focus on as soon as they managed to break through to Master rank.

The reason these Master ranked cultivators would open this meridian would usually be for nothing more than the sake of seeing what one of the additional eight meridians granted.

Upon reaching the Master rank, cultivators are capable of refining their Qi into spiritual energy, and upon doing this, most cultivators would see no other use for their basic Qi, much like most lower ranked cultivators only saw essence as a way to gain higher and finer Qi.

Essence was an energy that was looming around in the world, absorbed by cultivators and refined into Qi. Every cultivator, no matter which rank, relied on this essence to gain in strength.

However, for a cultivator ranked Master or above, essence was not the only thing which needed refinement. For those who had unlocked the middle dantian, they were now capable of refining Qi into a much stronger type of spiritual energy. This, in turn, made Qi as important to them as as essence was to the lower dantian practitioners, and thus they usually did not want to waste it on fortifying their organs.

The fact that Lan Feng had taken over Hui Yue’s body had caused him to be catapulted far ahead of his peers in terms of progress. It also allowed him to fortify his organs and blood without losing Qi as it was a part of his training schedule.

Fortifying the organs and the blood was beneficial for two reasons. Firstly, these organs became much tougher while protected by the Qi, making it much more difficult for enemies to inflict internal injuries. Secondly, the Qi which has been gathered within the organs and the blood could be used in emergencies; of course, the price to pay for doing so was incredibly high.

When the Qi entered the organs it did not disappear, instead it gathered right under the surface and laid down a protective membrane. Upon withdrawing this Qi, the protective layer would disappear and should the cultivator wish it to return, they would have to start all over by fortifying the organs that had been drained.

This was a process taking weeks for each organ, and Hui Yue who had been performing this process for half a year could feel just how much effort had gone into fortifying his organs. To lose that in the blink of an eye would be extremely painful. On the other hand, Hui Yue also knew perfectly how much Qi he had in his internal reserves. Considering how this had taken half a year, if Hui Yue were to rely on said reserves, then he would definitely temporarily boost himself up to the rank of a three-star Disciple.

Although three-star disciple didn’t sound especially strong, it was an increase of such magnitude that it would definitely provide a chance for Hui Yue to defeat opponents a full realm above him.

Still, Hui Yue currently saw no reason to use up these reserves. He was realistic and he knew that it was unlikely for him to win the tournament, especially considering students such as the Rong twins were participating and had officially broken through to the Practitioner rank.

Hui Yue was fully aware those two were more than willing to give up the tournament if he asked them to, but Hui Yue had no interest in winning the tournament. What he really wanted was a rematch with Wang Ju Long.

Both boys felt the exact same way, and although they knew that they could have sparred anytime they wished, an unspoken agreement had been formed , causing the two of them to tacitly agree on having their grand rematch during the Royal Academy tournament.