Although Liu Shan Men’s property was left mangled, thankfully, nobody was injured. As long as they didn’t want to hurt anyone, Song Chi, Yi Ya and Li Tingzhu could hold back enough to avoid hurting anyone intentionally. Besides, since Yi Ya singlehandedly ended the fighting, the collateral damage was minimised. Moreover, the majority of Liu Shan Men’s members had assembled in a different location during the attack to defend themselves, so they were out of harm’s way.
On paper, Su Xiao and Tang Ye had quitted Liu Shan Men. Therefore, they had no right to be paying visits in the office. For as long as Song Ou was in charge, Su Xiao would only be putting his friends on the spot if he went in to visit them. To circumvent that problem, Su Xiao decided to visit (read: sneak in) at night.
Su Xiao found a quiet place to recalibrate his flow of true qi while waiting for night to fall in the evening. As far as internal disciplines went, he had predominately only trained them; rarely did he utilise them in actual combat. In and of itself, it wasn’t a bad thing because there were disciplines that weren’t designed for combat, such as Internal Vision Technique. Su Xiao felt as though his true qi wasn’t obeying him, so he wanted to try bringing it under control using his usual approach.
While measuring his “volume” of internal energy wasn’t possible for him, it was an irrefutable fact that he moulded the same amount in the past in half the time, and his true qi circulated ten times faster than usual. It was surprising to him since he didn’t know what developing meridians, tendons and bones meant to a martial artist.
Martial artists who cared their progress would change their religious beliefs if they could develop their meridians, tendons and bones the way Su Xiao did. After all, they formed the potential for how far one could go in their martial arts quest. There was a reason that the majority of elite martial artists were those who started early on in life. Even though Su Xiao had Yijin Jing’s magic on his side, it wasn’t until he was fifteen that he started actively developing those three components, so the fruits of that labour would be limited. If Yijin Jing could magically develop them without any limits, he’d inevitably end up suffering qi deviation as he did on Qixia Mountain. Luckily for him, he managed to progress through multiple levels, which permitted his body to undergo the transformation. The only concern for him was his personality not keeping up with his physical transformation; this issue was evident from the fact that he struggled to control his internal energy.
Qi that was potent without being unbridled was the sign of Just Realm internal energy graduating. In other words, one’s internal energy was no longer some entity floating on the water surface but had become part of the water – or in this case, one’s body.
Although he was ecstatic about his progress, Su Xiao didn’t let it go to his head. Instead, he patiently tried to synchronise his breathing with his flow of internal energy as Ming Feizhen taught him. As the vigorous flow of true qi slowed, a comforting feeling akin to sitting on soft cotton overcame Su Xiao.
Realising the frosty and dreamy night had fallen, Su Xiao whistled, but it unintentionally came out as loud as a whistling wind coursing through a forest stretching several kilometres. Nobody in the capital would pointlessly show off their might. Hence, Su Xiao’s whistle invited unwelcome guests.
“Bronze Mask!” Su Xiao exclaimed upon spotting a vague silhouette at the end of the long street.
There were no reported cases of the bronze-masked killer showing up in front of his victims before ending them, but there wasn’t a shadow of doubt that there was a bronze-masked man armed with a blade at the end of the street right now. Su Xiao could sense danger just looking at the blade in his hand. As soon as the individual launched himself forward, Su Xiao instinctively reached to his hip, only to remember Ancient Cold wasn’t there.
“Hey, this isn’t fair! I don’t have my weapon!”
The masked man surprisingly stopped a metre away from Su Xiao. The even more shocking fact was that the man’s clothing didn’t billow and qi flow didn’t flow helter skelter after decelerating from that speed. Once he finished surveying Su Xiao, he pulled back his extended blade, and it seemingly vanished into thin air.
Just as Su Xiao went to breathe a breath of relief, his attacker finished taking his third step back, formed a fist with his left and open hand with his right, inviting Su Xiao to attack. At a glance, his stance was akin to Shaolin’s “Mount Ling Salute” and Mount Hua’s “Green Pine Welcomes the Guest”, except his pose didn’t look good or practical. The one thing Su Xiao was certain of was that his opponent wasn’t going to just walk away.
Since he wasn’t well-versed in hand to hand combat, Su Xiao threw a lousy palm attack. While his opponent was much slimmer than him, he didn’t to fight back with his longer limbs. The masked man’s fist looked small and cute on its own, but it looked huge in the darkness, and the accompanying howling wind showed it wasn’t wise to try catching it.
Before mastering the third layer of Yijin Jing, seeing the punch would’ve been impossible. Even with senses heightened enough to sense an incoming punch, there was no guarantee Su Xiao could actually dodge it.
Su Xiao moved his head off centre and his feet to his right without conscious thought. Alas, the punch still caught Su Xiao on his left shoulder, sending him several steps back whilst groaning. To say he was terrified was an understatement, but, for some reason, his assailant didn’t go head hunting.
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