Chapter 9: Final Training Session with Zhang Wei

“Swing your sword harder! You aren’t using your full power to attack!”

“Thrust with all your strength! In an actual battle, such a sloppy thrust would have given your opponent an opening!”

“A heavy sword uses strength to overcome the disadvantage of speed and technique! Therefore, before attempting to use speed and technique to augment your blows, you must first master how to properly attack with all your strength!”

A lone child was facing a rain of rubber bullets by himself, while a powerful Warlord was shouting encouragement from the side. When Zhang Wei found out that Yulian broke through the bottleneck of 500 kg. fist strength, he immediately decided to have Yulian train with the Reaction Testing Machine. At this moment, Yulian was training with the difficulty level at the stage of Elite Warrior.

Every second, 8 bullets were shot at Yulian’s body at the speed of 5 m/s. Yulian was simply slashing aside the bullets with his heavy sword. Following Zhang Wei’s advice, he did not move while he smacked aside the bullets. Ten minutes later, the rain of bullets stopped. Yulian stretched and crackled his fingers.

“You lasted for ten minutes with your fist strength of 551 kg. That’s remarkable. It seems that you are trying to reach out for the intermediate level of body maneuvering technique.”

“Body maneuvering technique? The intermediate level?” Yulian parroted.

“It is the level where you can perfectly control every part of your body to dodge or attack by yourself. If you can reach the intermediate realm for agility, you can control every part of your body while dodging, so that in front of powerful attacks you are like a leaf blown in the wind. If you can reach the intermediate realm in your sword technique, you can control every muscle in your body to aid your every motion, which will make your every attack stronger! Of course the Nine Stage Thunder Blade relies on every muscle in your body, so every Fighter who can successfully reach the First Stage in that technique will certainly have reached the intermediate realm in their sword technique. Also, every decent Warlord rank has also reached this level.” Zhang Wei’s had a smile as he said these words.

“Have you reached the intermediate level too?” Yulian curiously asked this question. Just then, he remembered that Zhang Wei’s foot was amputated. Since it was like that, wouldn’t it be impossible for him to perfectly coordinate his body? Yulian’s face immediately turned red from embarrassment.

Hearing Yulian’s innocent question, Zhang Wei’s face turned ugly for a moment before it returned to a smile. “As you know, I have a mechanical leg. Even though it is quite durable, low weight and good enough to use in battle, it isn’t the leg I was born with. So I cannot exhibit intermediate level agility technique. However, I can still fight with intermediate level sword technique!” He lifted his pant for a moment, showing off the yellow colored mechanical limb.

Yulian understood. Agility techniques depend on the feet, hence it is difficult for Zhang Wei to exhibit the Intermediate level while relying on his mechanical foot. However, sword techniques which depend upon the hands would be easier to use.

“Hmph. That said, even though I cannot use my mechanical foot to display the intermediate level agility technique, I can still display higher agility than you.” Zhang Wei had a rather smug expression as he said that.

‘You are a Warlord level Fighter; of course, your agility will be faster than me.’ But even though he said such words in his heart, Yulian would not dare speak them. Instead, Yulian simply smiled. “I think I have fallen upon a bottleneck recently; I am finding it difficult to make any improvements. Would you care to demonstrate the Nine Stage Thunder Blade technique for me? I will certainly find it useful.”

Hearing Yulian’s words, Zhang Wei felt a bit resentful. This young boy had fallen on a bottleneck? What a joke, he hadn’t even been training for a month! However, he did not express his words. He immediately unsheathed the saber strapped on his waist and began attacking a training dummy.

Yulian observed Zhang Wei as he attacked the training dummy. Slash, stab, chop, cleave… all sorts of basic sword techniques were displayed by him. Every time he attacked, his muscles bulged up for an instant. Yulian carefully watched him. As he watched with a keen gaze, Yulian unintentionally began circulating his Genetic Energy in his body. He saw strands of Genetic Energy in Zhang Wei’s body circulate through his muscles, making them unnaturally expand and contract. As he observed, he suddenly saw Genetic Energy flow through Zhang Wei’s mechanical foot. The foot crackled as small electrical sparks visible only to Yulian’s eyes danced…

At that moment Yulian gained a revelation. Yulian finally realized why Zhang Wei could train in the Nine Stage Thunder Blade technique even with a mechanical foot; the Nine Stage Thunder Blade turned Genetic Energy into the electrical element! Before this, Yulian had believed that the Nine Stage Thunder Blade technique would be aligned with lightning, however it was simply speculation!

Yulian observed the Genetic Energy flowing through Zhang Wei’s body, while unconsciously circulating Genetic Energy through his own body, imitating Zhang Wei. Two minutes later, Zhang Wei finally stopped demonstrating the Nine Stage Thunder Blade technique.

“Seen enough, kid? Gained any insights, yet?” Zhang Wei smiled after he finished his demonstration.

“Thanks for exerting yourself.” Yulian simply smiled, not indicating anything about him gaining another insight. He didn’t want to shock Zhang Wei too much.

“Don’t sweat it… even geniuses among Fighters had difficulty breaking through before the age of 18. I think the youngest Fighter ever broke through at the age of 15. Even if you fall into a bottleneck, you must make sure to not slack off. As long as you are diligent, you will certainly break through to become a genius Fighter…” Zhang Wei had a strange expression as he said these words, as if he was recalling unpleasant memories as he spoke. How could Yulian not understand? Zhang Wei’s foot was amputated and replaced; this certainly severed his potential for practicing martial arts.

“All this while, I have instructed you, I haven’t had a single spar with you. The reason behind this is simple; I have difficulty in holding back in a fight. It is certainly my failure as a martial artist. However since it’s my last lesson, let’s have a simple spar.”

“The rules are simple. I am going to attack you with my killing intent. You have to resist it and attack me. I won’t move from my position. If you can hit me, you win… That said, you can give up now if you don’t want to attempt. Being oppressed by killing intent is not a pleasant experience, and it might birth a psychological fear, making it harder to advance.” Zhang Wei looked Yulian in the eye, awaiting his answer. If it were any other 7 year old child, he wouldn’t have asked such a question, however Yulian certainly wasn’t a simple 7 year old.

In answer, Yulian simply picked up his heavy sword and rushed to attack. Zhang Wei’s eyes flashed red and an oppressive pressure fell over Yulian. Yulian was inflicted with fear and a wave of dizziness came over him. His body rebelled against him, desiring to give up, to fall unconscious.

However, Yulian kept running. His hands gripped the heavy sword with greater strength. He knew that if he lost his grip on the blade, it might fall on his feet, smashing them. All his muscles started acting in unity, his mind and body focused on advancing unceasingly! The distance between them wasn’t too large at around 15 m. But this short distance, to Yulian, was like an impassable chasm.

1 m…3 m…5 m… Ignoring the oppressive force, Yulian focused on continuously advancing. In his mind was a single thought, ‘If I can’t even bear your toned down killing intent, for what reason have I been training so long for? This killing intent is nothing to me! The Spiritual Force in my body will kill me in a horrible way if I don’t increase my strength. Before that… this killing intent is nothing!’

7 m… 9m… 11m… As Yulian came near Zhang Wei, his body slowed to a crawl. The oppressive killing intent was completely restricting Yulian’s motions. It was as if the gravity had suddenly multiplied.

Finally, Yulian reached 13 m away from Zhang Wei. The heavy sword was a two meter long blade, and it turned into a silver arc as it smashed into Zhang Wei’s hardened body. After the single sword strike, Yulian fell unconscious.

Zhang Wei picked up the unconscious Yulian, and placed him on the Training Arena’s sofa. “You won, kid.” Zhang Wei’s words were certainly not heard by the sleeping Yulian.

As he walked out of the Training Arena, Zhang Wei looked at Yulian one last time. For a moment, he wondered why the sword strike that struck him was so weak. The force behind was certainly less than 500 kg.

…

Yulian woke up and yawned. Checking the clock, he found out that it was 10:00 AM. He remembered his ‘spar’ with Zhang Wei, where he struck him a single time. “I guess I won this spar.” After casually stretching, Yulian remembered that he hadn’t eaten anything.

In the mansion’s kitchen, the friendly maid who cooked for him everyday wasn’t there. Just recently, Martha had resigned from her job as a maid to undergo specialized Fighter training.

Yulian immediately removed a packet of frozen beef from the fridge, unwrapped and promptly stuck it into the microwave.

As he ate the microwaved roasted beef, he muttered, “As it seems, handmade food certainly tastes better than microwaved stuff…” As a university student who originally survived on ramen packets which were even worse, this wasn’t certainly a new experience for him.

…

Five days passed by. Yulian was still focused on his training. At this moment, he was training with a sword. It wasn’t his heavy sword which he usually employed for training, but a 0.5 metre long, straight bladed sword.

Genetic Energy circulated through Yulian’s body, expanding and contracting Yulian’s muscles. This was the Introductory Stage of the Nine Stage Thunder Blade! Thrust. Slash. Stab. Cleave. Smash. Tap.

Yulian’s sword danced in these motions as he incessantly swung his sword. At the last ‘tap’, two faint blade shadows surrounded Yulian’s blade.

“Not good enough yet… The speed of my blade is too low…” Even though this was the easiest sword technique of the Nine Stage Thunder Blade Manual, its execution relied on building up the momentum of the blade. Yulian stopped swinging his sword and stretched his hands. After this, he immediately began cultivating using the Spirit Immersion technique. Ten minutes later, he grabbed the sword, hardened his heart, and began repeating the movements.

This was the simplest and easiest to master sword technique in the Nine Stage Thunder Blade manual, Three Blades in Unity. Rather than rely on Genetic Energy, it focused more on muscle control. When used correctly, it would cause three blades to chop together at high speed. Of course, only one blade among the three would be real.

To display this sword technique, one’s strength, speed and reactions needed to be at least around Elite Martial Artist. This technique was a part of the First Stage of the Nine Stage Thunder Blade.

“Random people at the HR Alliance forum, thank you for your survey where you ranked the blade techniques of the First to the Fourth Stage of the Nine Stage Thunder Blade. Without your help, maintaining my current training pace would be impossible.” Two weeks before, Yulian discovered a video of the sword training technique of the Nine Stage Thunder Blade on the internet. It was unexpected, but completely useless for him, as these techniques were only viable to use for Beginner Warriors. However, today, he actually found out a survey where the Warlord level Fighters discussed about the Nine Stage Thunder Blade sword techniques! And the training video for the easiest technique, Three Blades in Unity was actually shown on it!

Even though Yulian was focused on training with this sword technique, he really didn’t mind not mastering this sword technique. For now, whenever he used this technique, it would almost completely exhaust his pool of Genetic Energy, allowing him to train faster.

Currently, his fist strength was 551 kg, the sudden increase due to automatically coordinating the muscles in his body while attacking. While using the Introductory Stage of the Nine Stage Thunder Blade technique, Yulian’s fist strength would be around 385 kg. Yulian’s current strength had surpassed the maximum strength of his previous life. His fist strength was steadily expanding, and he had not fallen upon a bottleneck yet.

Yulian was filled with confidence! His Spiritual Force was obediently lying low, and he had not suffered from a single headache all this while. His pool of Genetic Energy was rapidly expanding. As long as it continued like this, Yulian was completely confident of breaking through to a Beginner Warrior and strengthening his body to withstand the explosion of his Spirit Force.

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