Chapter 1869 — Deliberating on Martial Arts, Part Two
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
"I only have the first ten. The eleventh stance can only be brought out by a Heaven-rank expert. I never memorized the mental cultivation formula back then..." Uncle Qing said.
"Huh?" Wei Zhao blinked. "Then what rank was your master?" "Heaven-rank..." Uncle Qing said.
"Pff—cough, cough..." Wei Zhao choked on Uncle Qing's words. A Heaven-rank expert wiping out three Earth-rank experts in a single move hardly seemed like anything worth being shocked about, did it? That left Wei Zhao rather disappointed again. Sure enough, where in the world were there such heaven-defying things?
If an expert of the same rank could kill three peers of that rank in a single move, wouldn't that make him invincible?
"Actually... before I met you, I truly never knew of any cultivator who could kill three cultivators above his own rank..." Uncle Qing said with a bitter smile. "In truth, for a Heaven-rank expert—an early-stage Heaven-rank, say—killing three Earth-rank experts is still a very difficult thing, let alone when one of them was a late-stage Earth-rank..."
"...That day was an accident." Wei Zhao did not hide it from Uncle Qing and the others; these were his own people, and they would never harm him. "I forced out all the fire-poison true qi my body had produced when I suffered qi deviation, and used that fire-poison true qi to burn the three Earth-rank experts to death. It was not any martial art..."
"So that was it!" Uncle Qing and Wu Chengtian nodded in sudden understanding. All these days they had puzzled over how Wei Zhao, plainly only an early-stage Earth-rank expert, could have slain three even stronger Earth-rank experts in a single move.
"Brother Arrowbrand is the best—he even knows how to put waste to use!" Shen Yushu said.
"..." Gu Mengyao was speechless too, and inwardly counted their luck. If Wei Zhao had not put that waste to use, would the rest of them have even escaped?
But after bringing out those three stances of the Frenzied Fire Fist, Wei Zhao felt an indescribable weariness. He had not noticed it while unleashing them, but now that he had stopped, it felt as though more than half the true qi in his body had been spent. It was not enough to hinder his movements, yet the exhaustion was genuine.
"Uncle Qing, does the Frenzied Fire Fist consume a great deal of true qi?" Wei Zhao asked.
"Of course it consumes true qi..." Uncle Qing was slightly taken aback by the question, but then he recalled that Wei Zhao had not even known what martial arts were before, and understood. "But it is not that the Frenzied Fire Fist consumes a great deal—all martial arts consume a great deal, and the more advanced the art, the more so. That is why even in duels between experts, no one can unleash martial arts without limit. Otherwise, in the end, before the enemy is beaten to death, the practitioner would exhaust himself to death first."
"So that's how it is!" Wei Zhao nodded.
"But the true qi consumed by martial arts is very easy to replenish—unlike true qi spent in other ways," Uncle Qing said. "Martial arts require a great deal of true qi to unleash, but after use, the true qi is not entirely discharged. A portion of it is converted into another form and remains within the body; after rest, it can be converted back into true qi."
"So miraculous?" Wei Zhao said in surprise. Then he thought about it—of course. If it were truly so hard to recover, who would ever use martial arts? Then all the strength one had painstakingly cultivated would be gone, and the loss would outweigh the gain.