A youth could be seen slowly breathing while sitting in a lotus position. His eyes were closed, his body was exuding a strange glow while several glowing wisps hovered close to his body. Those looked like tiny soap bubbles, one of them started slowly approaching his dantian. The youth's face showed a frown as the tiny bubble entered his body and the energy from it started circulating throughout his meridians. The force that entered began crackling and sizzling slowly shifting into a tiny stream of electricity. The new form of the bubble was quite rowdy as the young man tried to keep it in check, slowly managing to make it part of his body.

The young man was Zhang Liu, he was practicing his new cultivation method it was a lot harder than his previous one but it was also a lot more powerful. Even though he wasn't able to condense and transform much of the spiritual energy into the lightning type, he could feel his energy reserves increase exponentially.

He stood up and took on a fighting stance, his fists moving forward at a rapid pace as they gleamed with a faint electric aura. His long ebony hair had started turning pure white, he was getting close to having a salt and pepper type of look now. He was still in the 9th stage of Qi condensation, but due to this technique, he felt that his bottleneck was about to be broken.

"Master's cultivation method is so powerful, I can easily contend with others at the same stage as me... I can even beat the ones on the 10th level."

He took a look at his body, it looked somewhat more profound. It wasn't his muscles, but his skin the first part of the profound physique refining art enhanced the skin of the cultivator. It made it a lot more resistant and elastic, he could take a lot more punishment thanks to that but the way you trained it was quite painful. He had to perform strange poses and chants, holding them for hours while concentrating on his fleshy body. This was extremely painful, his body ached all over as his refining technique destroyed and then rebuild his cells to be tougher. But he powered through this all, his defensive capabilities increased and if he mastered this technique he would be rewarded with an impenetrable shell.

The skill had four stages if he passed it the resistance would increase exponentially the first one was the bronze skin stage, then came the iron skin stage followed by the silver skin stage then the golden skin. He had passed the first and second one., this put his body on the level of a 6th Qi condensation fighter, the third would put him at the 9th and the last would be the 12th. There was one skill that came with this refining technique, the cultivator could temporarily raise their defensive and offensive capabilities. Their skin would start shining slightly taking on bronze, iron, silver or golden color depending on the stage the cultivator was in. It was kind of similar to Zhang Dong's technique, but Matt's also worked on his internal organs so this one was weaker.

People were surprised at how much the young master and mistress had progressed in these past three weeks. The fighting tournament was in full swing and both of them were still in it. The brother was doing better as he was older and had more experience as well as a higher cultivation method. But the younger sister wasn't doing bad either, the combination of her speed and fast kicking attacks had brought her into the middle stage of the tournament.

The older brother preferred overpowering his opponents, while the sister took her time in analyzing the fighting patterns and methodically taking people apart. She managed to get many draws due to her evasive tactics, her bother took some loses due to his bravado instead. Their Master would probably have to take a different approach to each student after they advanced further in. Giving the girl a more speed focus technique at the start, was a good first step for the noobie senior.

The two were doing so well that their mother was worried, if they continued like this they would surely be chosen to come along to the expedition. Being a doting parent she would rather have them remain back here if the expedition failed again her kids still had a chance of survival. She also knew that she would probably be one of the foundation establishment elders selected as she was in the upper late stage and there were only ten or so elders in the great circle stages. At least she could protect her children if they went there together and she knew that they wouldn't forgive her if she did something to make them lose.

The new Patriarch seemed to have some kind of plan so she had high hopes for him. They also had a bit of a scare with his magical life telling plaque, it rumbled for a second but didn't break. They contacted him afterward, the patriarch just replied that he got in a bit of trouble but he handled it already.

Back in Zhang Xue's room, she was also cultivating diligently. She edged out her brother when it came to cultivating in spiritual arts, but did worse with her body refining skills. She had already reached the 8th stage and was going for the 9th one, on the other hand, her Sylph Physique was still in the first stage. It was different than what her brother used, it mostly focused on her libs instead of her skin in the first tome. It was aimed at increasing the cultivator's speed and dexterity. In short, each stage gave a boost to the girl's quickness the special skill let the practitioner send wind blades with their kicks. The wind energy synergized well with the lightning one, so her kicks were even more ferocious. The 'side effect' of this was that her long legs started putting on some meat, this made the male youths in the surroundings quite ecstatic.

During the tournament, they were giving her strange looks, as they discovered a new world after getting stepped on by their junior sister. The clan people were more or less loosely related, so this wasn't as strange as some people might think. Though most people scoffed at inter-clan relations, as you mostly wanted to bring in new blood from the outside or marry your daughters off to strong clans to foster better relations with them. But it did happen, where some cousins tied the knot here and there.

So while Zhang Xue was looking at the weirdos in disgust days went by, the tournament continued while more and more people got eliminated. Zhang Dong was now in a city called Spirit Tree City and would you know it, it had a giant tree right in the middle of it. He was just walking out of the ruling clan house with his spirit stones. He had arrived and scared the people a bit after dropping the massive dead dragon out in the open so he could get his cash reward. He tried to sneak in some snorts and grunts to look menacing but the people in there didn't want to give him even one more spirit stone. They did want to buy the dragon though, but he refused as he didn't trust them on getting a good deal for it. He'd rather people back in his base do it instead, they wouldn't lie to him.

*Ah, why do you have to be so stingy...*

*Well, surprisingly I didn't run into any cartoon-like villains stealing candy from a baby this time around, should I just bolt for the next town or get something to eat first... this place looks like it has some interesting grub.*

Matt didn't really have many things to do besides cultivating and getting more points, so this left him quite bored most of the time. He was used to watching movies, playing games in his free time but none of these existed here. The music was also bad, the played those zither things most of the time, it wasn't bad but just made him want to sleep.

*I don't think I'll find anyone rocking out with a guitar around here anytime soon...*

He went to go eat and not much happened afterward so he just left for the next city. But due to his now enhanced aura skills, he noticed that after he left, some cultivators were trailing him. He could feel three people, all in the core formation stage one in the middle stage and two in the early. He wasn't worried that much, so he led them away from the city so that no one could see them before confronting the group.

Of course, it was people from the clan that was stationed there, they came to the conclusion that Zhang Dong probably stole the dragon body from somewhere and just came for the reward. He was, of course, hiding his power level to be at the lower end of the early core stage but he didn't think people would be so dumb to attack him.

"Leave your belongings behind and scram!"

One of the uncles shouted out at him while they all pulled out their weapons, looking like hungry wolves that just saw a succulent piggy.

"Well, aren't you people from the Ho Ho Clan quite fierce?"

Zhang Dong replied in a mocking tone as he wasn't really fearful of the bunch. He actually thought this would be a great time to test out his sword-fighting skills. So he pulled out his glowy sword while beckoning them over like you would in martial movies with your palm.

The three elders just scoffed at him and flew right at him, thinking that this guy was courting death. The moment they got into the cultivator's range, they felt a strange aura surrounding them. They started attacking him from all sides, thrusting and slashing with their weapons. To their surprise, the cultivator was able to parry all of their moves with just his sword hand. He held one hand behind his back while playing around with the attackers, honing his use of his domain skill.

The three flew back, deciding on a group ranged attack. They fired off various colorful magical skills at him, the fluctuations of core formation experts fighting could be felt in the surrounding area which made everyone close scatter. He took those skills head-on, using the first sword move releasing powerful sword slashes that disintegrated the incoming magical attacks. The three men were just realizing that the man in front of them might have actually been the person that killed that dragon himself now. But before they could apologize the man closed in on them, he started pummeling them to submission till they were a twitching mess down on the ground.

After 'clearing' up the misunderstanding, he was richer but quite a lot of spirit stones though those people didn't have much on them. He just gave them a good old thrashing and left them naked in a forest. He made sure to put them down in a triangle, each enemy cultivator was resting his head on another man's posterior. He nodded to himself after looking at his marvelous work, the only thing missing was a camera to snap a picture for later.

*I guess this also is a valid way to get more resources, and they attacked me not the other way around. I can use their flying swords to upgrade my body refining level.*

He thought to himself while rubbing his chin as he thought that robbing from the rich and giving to the 'poor' wasn't such a bad idea.