Chapter 8

“You want to travel the world? Do you know how dangerous this world is? Since you say you so much about geography, you should know that we are in the outer region. Where over hundreds if not thousands of countries with a population of over 100 million people populate the whole region. Only those which are genii above genii can make it into the inner region let alone the central region where there are only people who are the strongest in the world! I don’t think you understand the strength that is needed for you to travel out safely.” Ye Qiu’s face was aflame with anger. “I just want you to be safe don’t you understand?” Ye Qiu’s posture started to sag into the chair.

“Qiu’er that’s enough! I think your son perfectly understands the dangers of venturing out into the world. I find it brave of him to continue wanting to travel the world despite the dangers, and it isn’t like we were young once wanting to venture the world. We ourselves have gone to at least a hundred countries. I know you have had bad experiences in the past but that shouldn’t mean you should want to stop your son from trying to grow by going out. If you are so concerned about his safety then take the time before he goes now to train him to a level that you deem him to be safe! You have over 13 years before he’s old enough to venture out anyway.” Yu Er started to berate her husband.

Ye Qiu sighed and just accepted what his wife said, “Fine but I’ll be making his training even harder in that case.”

“That’s fine with my father. I’d also like to have my own time to train in two weapons that I have chosen.” Ye Xiu asked his father.

“Two weapons? Are you sure? A weapon will take you a lifetime to master and you want to master two?” Ye Qiu asked inquisitively

“The fighting style I want to use requires the use of both weapons at the same time so it would be best for me to gain the muscle memory to use those weapons as early as possible.” Ye Xiu calmly explained to his father.

His mother asked, “Do you need any help to learn those weapons?”

“We’ll see when we get there.” Ye Xiu started walking out of the room.

“Have a good night then.” Waving his son off, his mother started to turn towards her father and whispered, “Even if our son is unable to venture out into the world, at least he’ll be strong enough to protect himself from the organisation wouldn’t he?”

“That’s true and are you sure that you are still strong enough to fight?” Ye Qiu asked his wife.

“Hah, you think I’d slack with my own training? I’m still as strong as you are.” Yu Er smirked widely.

“Our son will be meeting with the City Lord’s family and the organisation has started to make preparations for infiltration by inserting other masters and mistresses into the friendship of their son. Hopefully, the organisation doesn’t try anything too soon before anybody is ready.” Ye Qiu dragged his hand down his face in frustration.

Going around to her husband’s shoulders and draping herself over them, “It’ll be fine and let’s hope our son becomes good friends with the family. Talking about our son, he seems to have a few secrets of his own at such a young age doesn’t he?”

Ye Qiu was sighing again, “Yes he does and I don’t want to force them out of him after all we have our own secrets that we all wish to keep. I think it is fair for us to let him live out his life and all we can do is watch him until he finally leaves us for his travels. From then on we’ll just see how life progresses.”

Yu Er charmingly smiled at her husband and spoke softly into his ear, “That’s what I’m talking about, now how about we have some fun in the bedroom?”

Ye Qiu smiled back at her, “Let’s go right now then, and let us be quieter since we do have a son who would be able to hear us if we are too loud.”

Yu Er’s shocked face was funny, “That’s true, I can’t make too much noise.”

They both walked out of the dining room and into their bedrooms to make love to each other.

Ye Xiu’s Bedroom -

Ye Xiu was sitting on his bed thinking, ‘Now that I’ve gained my parent’s approval to venture out into the world in the future. All I have to currently worry about is the possible enemies that my family has. However, that shouldn’t matter to me at all right now because I’m still too weak. In order for this to be relevant, I must train to a suitable level to protect my family from these threats.’

Ye Xiu affirmed his resolve to keep improving his strength for the future and his family. After that thought was through he continued on, ‘Now I have to look at the Martial Art Styles sections of the scrolls and see if they have any way of teaching me how to even begin training for the styles.’ Quickly entering the Locket Dimension to get to the scrolls, he opened them and read the note at the very end of it.

‘Note to inheritor, any technique or style that is in the scroll or library has all the necessary information for you to begin training with them. To do this just place the scroll onto your head and insert Qi into it. The information should be transferred to you and you would be able to look through the stances and information at any time. Even though you have the information and stances be warned that you still have to put in the effort to practice these techniques because simple knowledge of something doesn’t mean you’d be able to do things instantly. Most techniques in this library are very reliant on the user to train them and comprehend the abilities to make the full use of them.’

Reading the long note, Ye Xiu realised that he would have to put even more effort in his training if the note was anything to go by for him to achieve anything with these styles. After figuring this out he decided to make a plan. ‘First things first, what I need to do is plan a schedule for training so that I don’t get confused when the time comes. Next, I have to figure out what I’m going to do when I visit the City Lord’s residence in the next few days. Should I truly treat this like a new life and have friends of a similar physical age of me? Or should I go on the path of loneliness which is probably common in this world? I’ll decide that when I get there. After all that is done, I need to come up with a way to retrieve the seeds of herbs and other things which can be grown for my dimension. It can’t be kept empty permanently because that’d just be a waste of the space that Master has left for me. I think I’ll just wait for the next time I visit the Medical Hall or the first visit to the Pill Hall.’ After deciding that, Ye Xiu wanted to compile a training schedule for himself.

‘Training in the morning should usually take 3 hours and bathing then eating afterwards will take another 30 minutes. Thinking of rest, the information I received from the scrolls recently just reminded me of something. The Phoenix manual cultivation because automatic once I start my training with it so that’s convenient. After I come up with my schedule, I’ll start to learn the technique and let it go from there. After the break, I’ll go back to the library to study more about different disciplines in this world. Knowing more about the world before I venture out is important, if I know things about most occupations then I won’t be caught unawares and look foolish. I’d also know the dangers of offending a high ranking person with a discipline so that would be useful. That’ll take me two hours a day, then after that, I’ll go back to the courtyard and start running through the styles that I received. I’ll focus my training on one style for a month before training another, I want the muscle memory to build up. It doesn’t mean that I would be neglecting anything I’ve already learnt, I’d still be taking my time each day to practice what I have already learnt to make sure I haven’t forgotten it or become lacking in my demonstration of the techniques. I’ll train the movement and defensive styles together with the weapon styles at the same time because I want to be fluid in their usage together. This’ll probably take the rest of the day. Whilst I’m training at any time I should just keep circulating the Dragon Technique so I can get the best out of everything.’

After finishing with his schedule, Ye Xiu recalled the information needed for the Phoenix Technique. ‘The way to start the Phoenix technique is to sit in the lotus meditation position. I should be glad that my flexibility is still there otherwise this would hurt like hell.’ Ye Xiu grimaced thinking about that scenario. ‘Empty your mind and focus on your dantian and imagine a burning fire in the centre of it. After that, you should feel qi coursing through your meridians and it should start to heat up. This is just your qi becoming closer to the fire affinity. As the feeling is fading, focus on the imaginary fire in the dantian and imagine the rebirth of a phoenix. From adult to ash. Ash to egg. Egg to baby. A delicate process which is wondrous after witnessing, through this process your mind and soul will start to become stronger and it will occur continuously after successful activation of the technique.’

‘Well this seems simple enough to me, I wonder why there aren’t more techniques similar to this? Could there be something more to this technique to make it more powerful compared to other average techniques? My curiosity has been lit alight by the wonders of this world. As he started the process for the technique, Ye Xiu realised that he could still sense the things around him. Especially the things he had encountered in his previous meditation session; the coloured floating orbs around him. He had theorised that these orbs were most likely the elemental affinities in the world. The more of a colour that he could see was the affinity that he was more attuned towards. This was true because he could see a huge amount of red orbs just floating by him and surprisingly there was also a huge amount of silver visible to him as well similar to the number of green orbs floating around him. He could only see miniscule amounts of brown orbs but he wasn’t able to see any orbs the colour of water which he thought was fitting because fire and water don’t mix well with each other.

Realising that his attention had run astray he went back to the task at hand. He looked at his dantian which looked a lot bigger than the last time he had looked at it. Thinking that it was probably a change from the Dragon Technique he pursued on with the activation with the Phoenix Technique, he started to imagine a huge inferno of flames in his dantian and felt that his qi had started to burn. Thinking that he should embrace himself for a situation similar to the transformation for the Dragon technique he started to run the Dragon Technique because this situation might help him improve his body through the sheer pain that he was about to experience. The burning sensation started to increase in ferocity and he could see that more red orbs were starting to appear around him, knowing that this was what the technique had said to be the increase to the fire affinity he knew that he was attempting the technique correctly. After 15 minutes of the burning pain, the feeling started to fade and Ye Xiu knew that this was the time for the imagery of a Phoenix’s Rebirth. Quickly bringing his imagination to full throttle the technique was successfully completed and he could feel the technique automatically cultivating itself. The progress of the soul and mind strength was slow but he was still young so it could only get better from there.

Getting up from his position, Ye Xiu walked towards the pool to clean himself of the sweat that had accumulated around him.