Chapter 1870 — A Genius?
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 3
Wei Zhao felt a flicker of embarrassment. True enough—his own master had long since gone on his way; Old Man Wei had taken up an internal mental art only as a supplement, a purely auxiliary discipline, to say nothing of practicing any martial techniques; and the one man who could have guided him along the martial path, Old Jiao, was a phantom with a broken memory, whose recollections were so often incomplete that they had to be recovered first... All of which left Wei Zhao feeling that his lot was a bitter one.
"Then the reason the ten stances of the Frenzied Fire Fist after the eleventh cannot be brought out is also that there is not enough true qi in my own body? My strength has not reached that level, so I cannot supply the quantity of true qi needed to trigger the technique?" Wei Zhao asked.
"You could put it that way, though in truth it is not quite the whole of it. If you exhausted every drop of true qi in your body, you ought to be able to force out the next stance above your rank—but that is usually a measure taken to preserve your life at the brink of death," Uncle Qing said. "Because the true qi needed to trigger the next stance is more than your present strength can bear. Once you trigger it, not only will your whole body be drained and left in a terribly weak state, but your true qi will never fully recover either—the next stance converts it into a form that the mnemonic formula of your current grade of internal art cannot convert back. In plain words, you drop a rank..."
But having said that much, Uncle Qing stared at Wei Zhao in great astonishment, his eyes full of surprise and envy.
"What is it?" Under that look, Wei Zhao felt his hair stand on end.
"Theoretically speaking, you should already have collapsed!" Uncle Qing said with a bitter smile. "At early Earth-rank, triggering the first stance of the Frenzied Fire Fist is normal; at the very most you might barely manage the second. But the third stance—that is what a cultivator at the peak of early Earth-rank can trigger. And here you are, bringing them out in one unbroken run, without so much as fainting... So the theory I laid out before may not apply to you..."
"Actually... I am a little tired..." Wei Zhao said, breaking into a sweat. Could this be the effect of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art? He did feel he had used up a good deal of true qi, yet he had none of that limp, strength-sapped exhaustion.
"..." Uncle Qing was speechless.
That evening, before Wei Zhao entered the jade pendant space to cultivate, he could not wait to tell Old Jiao everything that had happened that day.
"Old Jiao, I am not some kind of genius, am I?" After recounting the day's strange happenings, Wei Zhao added smugly.
"Pfft—" Old Jiao had been about to explain, but burst out laughing instead. "Young Lin, you really can flatter yourself! What sort of genius cultivates the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art for ten years and still has not brought the first layer to perfection?"
"Uh..." Wei Zhao was rather embarrassed. "I was only saying it offhand. Today, when I practiced the Frenzied Fire Fist, it flowed like clouds and water, one breath from start to finish, without the slightest hitch. It felt as though the Frenzied Fire Fist had been made to measure for me!"
"That much is true, though not quite accurate. Properly speaking, it is you who were made to measure for the Frenzied Fire Fist!" Old Jiao said.
"What does that mean?" Wei Zhao asked, taken aback.
"Over this time my memory has been slowly recovering, and though it is still incomplete, it is enough to answer some of your questions at this stage," Old Jiao said. "Is there anything you want to ask?"
"Did I not just ask?" Wei Zhao said.