“BOOM!”

“I need more control!” Xiaoxia vented.

It is now late in the night of the 4th day, the remaining three opponents he earlier fought after Vlad, did not really put up a fight. Their abilities were lacking and far from what Vlad had to offer.

At this moment, Xiaoxia was trying to re-create how he linked with the final attack and controlled its direction remotely. During the debrief of the match, Instructor Wei, Jay and Menon, constantly questioned him about this. Menon even went as far as to suggest bringing some equipment and gadgets to test him.

Xiaoxia rejected Menon’s offer, with the backing of Instructor Wei who did not want to jeopardize his later matches. Jay was actually all for it, as he felt it would at least answer all of the questions they had.

Amelia who was with them was the only one who showed genuine concern for his well-being. Xiaoxia had sustained various bruises and his body was aching all over after the match with Vlad. The other three were not really concerned, since they learned way back that Xiaoxia had an abnormal healing rate.

Although the rate of healing was not in the realm of the unimaginable, it was relatively fast and he was more or less himself again by the time of his last match.

In the meantime, deep in Xiaoxia’s thoughts, he was also extremely curious about this ability, and made various excuses to retire early when the final match ended. After a quick meal in his dorm, he immediately headed for the training hall.

**********

“POOM! POOM! POOM!”

“Just a little more!” Xiaoxia urged himself.

He could feel a lingering sensation of Ki as the energy left his body and extended into the surroundings, but was not able to follow it after it left his body. However after 3 hours of grasping at straws, he managed to pinpoint the Ki. He could vaguely feel the path it took, but otherwise was unable to see it.

In his lessons with Sem, there were theories and suggestions that some mythical beings as well as legendary creatures could see Ki trails as it moved out of the body. It is believed that in the history of Yuan Zhong, there were many accounts of racial beings who were born with abilities to see it as well.

However after a quick consultation with Sem before he left for the training hall, he had informed Xiaoxia that the closest to this today, were those who performed the healing arts. It was not the same thing, but they could see Ki flows and paths in the body.

However seeing Ki paths and trails aside, both Menon and Sem stated there was no known record of someone controlling Ki remotely after it left the person’s body.

“Young friend, I knew I would find you here,” a raspy voice said, as Xiaoxia was lost in thoughts.

“Menon?” Xiaoxia replied, both surprised and irked at the same time.

He did not want to be left alone with Menon, things have a habit of going according to the flow of Menon’s desires.

“I have a theory, perhaps it will help you,” Menon suggested.

“Theory for what?” Xiaoxia asked.

“Xiaoxia, I know you are curious about to how to control the Ki once it leaves your body, I could tell it from your reaction when we were talking about it during the debrief,” Menon replied.

“No I am not thinking about that,” Xiaoxia lied without blinking an eye.

“Well .. cough .. cough .. ahem! Wait,” Menon started coughing in the middle of the speech, while beckoning Xiaoxia to wait, he whipped out a vial that looked like sewage water and gulp it all down in one go.

“Ahem! Sorry, it’s getting worse,” Menon replied, and continued, “Now young friend, if that’s the case, why else would you have made an excuse and left early only to come here?”

“Erm, you know I, erm, well it’s like this, I mean, uh, ok I lied,” Xiaoxia struggled a little trying to find an excuse before finally admitting.

“Haha, sometimes you can be read like and open book,” Menon quoted a popular phrase.

“So what is this theory?” Xiaoxia asked, somewhat curious.

“Ok, sit down while I theorize,” Menon suggested.

Xiaoxia took a seat rather unwillingly, because he felt he could almost grasp the feeling of the Ki path and trail, before Menon distracted him. As such he wanted to continue practicing before he lost that feeling.

“I have requested someone to join us, I will ask her to join us before I continue,” Menon said, turning towards the door and motioned at someone outside.

A tall lady walked in, she was old but look far younger than the ancient haggard looks of Menon.

“Greetings young friend, I am Yulia, Grandmaster Artisan, Light Alignment, MeisterSchloss Council of Elders,” she introduced herself.

“Chen Zhen Xia greets Senior Yulia,” Xiaoxia cupped his hands and bowed at Yulia.

“No need to be ceremonious young friend, you can call me Yulia, we old folks prefer it this way,” she smiled a warm smile, while her eyes sparkled with a youthful exuberance, making her look way younger.

“Yulia is a Grandmaster Healer, she is one of the best in Yuan Zhong, and nearly into the Unknown Realm,” Menon gave more details to Xiaoxia.

“You exaggerate too much old man,” Yulia smiled as she spoke.

Xiaoxia had no idea what race Yulia was, she looked like one of the typical races, however she was taller than most women and even taller than Instructor Wei. She is even taller than his father at seven and a half feet.

“Well young friend, this old man asked me to help him in something with regards to Ki paths,” Yulia looked at Xiaoxia while saying this and continued, “He informed me that apparently you are able to control Ki once it exited your body.”

“Yes, but it was the only one time, and it was only due to a spur of the moment action, not something I done knowingly,” Xiaoxia affirmed what Menon told her.

"I see," she responded, while looking at Menon.

“Xiaoxia, I theorized that there is a possibility it involved your extra ordinary meridians,” Menon said after nodding at Yulia.

“Extra ordinary meridians? Then does it have anything to do with my special meridian as well?” Xiaoxia asked, thinking it was another one of those special meridian abilities.

“No, and both of us can say this for sure,” Yulia answered for both she and Menon.

“Yes, this is true, more than 65 thousand years of recorded history in MeisterSchloss, we have interacted with many races, humanoids and some mythical beings. There are many who could see the trails of Ki once it exited a person’s body. These individuals have one particular extra ordinary meridian unlocked, and none of them had a special meridian,” Menon enlightened Xiaoxia as Yulia continued where he left off.

“They are called the 8 extra ordinary meridians, due to the fact they are not unlocked in any sequence or order. Unlike the other meridians which must be unlocked one after the other,” she informed Xiaoxia and continued her narration, “when this particular meridian is unlock and its ability honed, you can trace the path of Ki with your sight. We theorize that there must be a corresponding extraordinary meridian which is in tandem to this, allowing the control of Ki once it leaves the body.”

“Do you know the other details on extraordinary meridians?” Menon asked, he only gave a brief summary of it when he tested Xiaoxia the last time.

“Yes I learned it during my lessons,” Xiaoxia replied, having touched on the topic during one of the lessons with Sem.

Extraordinary meridians, not only serves to specially refine Ki for Unique skills, one of its other purposes was a tertiary Ki reservoir. The tertiary reservoirs enables special Ki be stored, as the Ki center’s reservoir only stores Ki absorb from the surroundings and nothing else.

What is known of special Ki, is they are elemental aligned energies. This was how Jay managed to manipulate lightning as well as fire when he destroyed the battle room.

But most importantly extra-ordinary meridians do not have a fix position in the body. It varies from person to person. This is one of the key reasons why everyone who has unlocked their extraordinary meridians possessed skills unique only to them, when they reached Unknown Realm.

There are many similarities in the skills as well as differences. It can be the color, the microseconds it takes to charge, the intensity and more which can be the same and yet at the same time totally different.

“Good, Yulia is going to read the flow of Ki in your body. For this we do not need machines or equipment,” Menon added much to Xiaoxia’s relief.

“Why didn’t you do that last time, instead of making me a pin cushion?” Xiaoxia asked petulantly.

“Young friend, I can read and see flow and paths of Ki in the body, but I cannot tell your potential or other things,” this time Yulia replied on Menon’s behalf.

“Thank you Yulia,” Menon grinned as he explained, “today, all I need for you is to try an grasp the action you did during the final moments of the duel. Yulia will read the flow and see if it’s as we theorized. It’s going to take a while.”

**********

It is now the 6th day of the competition, there were only 256 competitors remaining. At the end of the 3rd day, a quarter of the winners withdrew from the competition. On the 4th day more than half of the winners did the same, and the 5th day saw even more forfeits. These led to extra matches being held to accommodate the forfeited ones.

The tournament took a heavy toll on the competitors, as they were only children and many did not have the discipline and stamina to reserve their strength for subsequent matches. However this is the norm, and based on the competition’s history, some of the tournaments had ended a day or two earlier than scheduled.

The fifth day was uneventful and Xiaoxia managed to overcome his opponents with some ease. One forfeited, while there was another who was a humanoid, but proved to be far less capable than Vlad.

At this moment, Xiaoxia was looking at the remaining names and details on the list, as expected none of his friends were on it. He asked Fred to check on their competition status before he left for the training hall on the night of the 4th day, and received it just this morning.

Charlotte, as Xiaoxia knew beforehand, lost her match against Vlad on the 3rd day, while Sima was true to his words and forfeited his first match. Libby forfeited on the 4th day for unknown reasons.

The twins did well and both lasted till the 3rd match of the 5th day, while Corian and Winfrey lost their final matches on the 3rd day. It was not really expected, as they were considered one of the better freshmen in the Academy of the Six Elements.

However there was a trend in the losses, it seems 5 of them lost to humanoid beings. In fact, of the remaining names and details he was looking at, over 60% of them were humanoid beings.

“Xia Er,” Instructor Wei called him as she entered the room.

“Yes Mentor,” Xiaoxia replied.

“In today's matches, there is a high chance at least two of your opponents are humanoid beings,” she informed him.

Xiaoxia clearly understood, based on the mathematical possibilities. There was even a chance that all of the matches will be against humanoids.

“According to the details, most of the remaining humanoids are Dragonians, Tetsudians and Crustanians. This is expected, as they have the highest natural born defenses among all others,” Instructor Wei mentioned this as she looked through the list.

“There are some others who will give a good fight, but like Vlad, their attacks are good but weak on defense,” she added, and further advised him, “So you will need to ………….”

Xiaoxia was barely hearing her at this point, his mind was directed to the match with Vlad when she mentioned his name. When he thought of Vlad, he automatically thought of the previous two nights he was with Yulia and Menon.

They were still engaged in trying to understand the process of controlling Ki movement outside of the body, and actually managed to mimic it with surprisingly good results.

With Yulia’s guidance and Menon’s suggestions, Xiaoxia managed to connect to the Ki outside of his body during the middle of the 2nd night. Yulia had helped greatly in reading the flow of Ki in Xiaoxia’s Ki vessels, and managed to pinpoint the location of where the suspected extraordinary meridians involved were.

Xiaoxia still could not see the Ki trail, but now he could distinctly sense and connect to it. There was a fair amount of progress after that, and he could effectively change the course of the Ki attack in midair up to 50 feet in diameter.

His control was still inefficient, as it meant controlling Ki in the Ki vessels at regions his Ki Realm was not up to. At his current Ki reservoir size and Ki Realm, he could only maintain constant Ki in the Ki vessels of up to 6 of the minor meridians.

In order for him to manipulate the Ki in his body to these extraordinary meridians, he needed to release the Ki from the 6 minor meridians and at the same time contain the Ki in the Ki vessels up to the extraordinary meridians.

This expanded a ridiculous amount of Ki, and his Ki reservoir was only left with a fraction of its original after using the technique a few times.

“……. therefore you just have to go all out from the begi…. And why are you here?!” Instructor Wei was saying to Xiaoxia who was lost in thoughts when she suddenly raised her voice.

This abruptly brought Xiaoxia back to his senses, and he looked up to see what was bothering Instructor Wei. Looking at the doorway, he notice Jay grinning straight at him.

“Yo! Shizhi, how has it been going?” Jay asked as he ignored his sister.

“Jay Shishu I am fine, how are things with you?” Xiaoxia asked.

“Well besides running away from my sister’s creditors, I am doing well,” Jay grinned teasingly at Instructor Wei when he said that.

“Don’t go around spouting nonsense, I do not owe anyone money and in truth I am chasing some for money!” Instructor Wei said indignantly.

“Haha! I am joking! Relax will you?” Jay laughed out loudly as he gave a jovial slap on the back of Instructor Wei. She immediately ducked and avoid it.

“Don’t touch me with your dirty hands!” Instructor Wei demanded.

“Aw! Come on, you are no fun,” Jay almost manage to sound a little hurt.

“Jay Shishu is there anything you are here for?” Xiaoxia asked, normally Jay would not appear if there wasn’t something he wished to discuss, and this is one of those times.

“Xia Er, it has come to my knowledge that you have managed to recreate the technique you used during that fight with the humanoid,” Jay stated a matter of fact in a more serious tone.

“Huh? How did you know? Yes I did so last night,” Xiaoxia asked and replied.

“I got my sources,” Jay smirked, pretty proud of himself.

“My brother has been stalking you ever since he met you,” Instructor Wei ratted him out.

“Ah! What a bad word to use, I never stalked him, it was just observation! Observation, not stalking. I am not a pervert!” Jay loudly defended himself.

Xiaoxia could only grin at the bickering siblings.

“Anyway, more importantly, Xia Er,” Jay reverted back to being a little more serious, while saying, “that technique you used? I want you to teach me.”

Copyright © 2015, Loke Weng Tuck. All Rights Reserved.