Weapon

Liu Feng pushed the boulder aside which was at the entrance of the cave. He then proceeded to walk out of the cave slowly, trying not to make any sounds as to not alert any beast nearby. “I have to retrace my steps back to the place where I looted the cultivators”.

He made up his mind and started walking through the middle area of the Wild Lands, as he reached the place where he looted the cultivators he noticed that no bodies were lying around and could see drag marks on the ground with blood smears on the drag marks as well.

“The wild beast must have dragged the bodies off to eat,” he thought to himself as he shuddered, thinking that could be him if he had done anything wrongly. He then noticed dried blood heading towards a certain direction, it did not look like smears but instead looked like blood drops.

“This must be the blood of the Dark Ox which was injured and walked off yesterday” Out of curiosity he decided to follow the blood trail of the Dark Ox.

After following the blood trail for about 10 minutes he came across the dead Dark Ox. Most probably it succumbed to its injuries, but it was not alone there was the Vermillion Tiger which from what he learned in school had a cultivation of Qi condensation 5.

He immediately held his breath and kept very still as to not let the tiger know his whereabouts. He observed the tiger, as he watched it use its teeth to rip the Dark Ox’s head off and drag the head away, he almost pissed himself watching that scene. After it dragged the head of the Dark Ox away Liu Feng immediately ran out towards the carcass of the Dark Ox, taking out the sword from the interspatial ring he began to carve the body of the Dark Ox.

“If I am not wrong Wild Beast with a cultivation of Qi condensation and above will have a beast core,” Liu Feng said to himself as he was cutting through the Ox.

“Yesss,” he said in a whispered tone as he was holding a black gem in his hand.

Beast cores will form once a Wild beast reaches the Qi condensation stage and can be used in the three great Arts which are Alchemy, Weapon smithing, and Armour forging. This beast cores can be sold for a lot of money, but Liu Feng did not know how much the core of a Dark Ox can be sold for.

As soon as he kept the beast core into his ring he headed out in the direction of the stronghold as he did not want to waste any more time.

After about 2hrs of hiding and walking without any sound he finally reached the outer lands and from there he started sprinting towards the stronghold. When he saw the giant gates of the West side of the stronghold he screamed for joy internally, after seeing those Qi condensation beasts and cultivators he finally realized how small he truly was.

Even with his innately fast cultivation with all the other strongholds of mankind and with all the other races in distant planets he was just a speck of dust in this universe he was truly small and that made Liu Feng afraid. With a newfound determination, he wanted to cultivate faster not just for the scholarship anymore.

He did not go to the merchant station to sell off the skins of the wild beast in his ring, he decided to go to the weapon store to purchase his first weapon.

As he headed downtown of the stronghold, he passed by many weapon shops but these weapon shops do not sell graded weapons only non-graded ones.

The only place which sells graded weapons was a shop called Phoenix which was owned by Dynasty Corporation. It was a giant building with 30 floors. As he walked up to the building he had to walk through a scanner that measured his cultivation, the scanner stated that he had a cultivation of Qi gathering 3. Immediately a person walked up to him and asked, “How may I help you and what are you looking for?”

“I am looking for a grade F staff” Liu Feng answered

“You are looking for a grade F staff?” The staff asked back as he looked at the clothes Liu Feng was wearing.

Since Liu Feng spent one full day in the Wildlands he did not exactly give off the vibe of someone who could afford a graded weapon.

“You do know that even the lowest quality of graded weapons go for 1 blue dram right?” The attendant asked with a look of doubt on his face

“I do know that and I would like to purchase a grade F staff” Liu Feng replied with a monotonous tone

“Okay since you want to buy a graded weapon let me show you the way,” the attendant said

As they were going to the lift the attendant explained “The Phoenix building which is owned by Dynasty corporation has a total of 30 floors and the first 10 floors sell pill and other alchemy items while the next 10 floors sell armors while the last 10 floors sell weapons and since you need a graded staff we will have to go to floor 22 since floors 20-22 sell non-graded weapons”.

Liu Feng got on to the lift together with the attendant and quickly reached floor 22 and as soon as they got out the attendant passed the information to another attendant who was slightly shorter than the first attendant.

The short attendant then brought Liu Feng to the section which sold graded staffs. “May I know your budget for a grade F staff?” The attendant asked

“My budget would be 1 blue dram”

“For 1 blue dram, we only have 1 grade F staff available,” the attendant said as he took down a staff from the rack for Liu Feng to inspect.

As Liu Feng took the staff from the attendant to examine the staff he saw that the staff had a polished finished with two engravings of a cloud on each end.

“This staff is made by a rank 1 Weapon smithing master from Japan it is called Kumo which means cloud thus the engraving of a cloud on each end of the staff, it is made from cloud oak for its body and its is filled with obsidian sand which has been heated giving it a heavy blow when struck but light when wielded” the attendant explained

There are a total of 10 ranks for each of the three grade professions starting from rank 1 to rank 10, a rank 1 master can make a grade F product and a rank 2 master can make a grade E product, and so on.

“I will be taking this staff,” Liu Feng said as he admired his first graded weapon.

The attendant escorted Liu Feng to the counter for payment to be made. As soon as he reached the counter Liu Feng took out 1 blue dram from his interspatial ring to pay for the staff. The first attendant who was standing at the corner was shocked to see Liu Feng with an interspatial ring since a cheap interspatial ring itself would go for 50 blue drams.

After Liu Feng paid for his staff and got a receipt as proof of purchase he placed both the staff and the receipt into his ring and thanked both the attendants for their assistance.

He then walked out of the phoenix building and went back home to have a shower as he really needed one.

“Finally I feel fresh ahhh” Liu Feng let out a sigh and lay on his bed.

After lying down awhile he got up and took out everything from his interspatial ring and put it on the floor to organize it. He kept the staff which he just bought aside along with the beast core which had no intention of selling at the moment as he may have other uses for it in the future.

He then went on to organize the money, he had a total of 25 green drams he looted plus 6 white drams which he earned on his first hunt.

Keeping the money aside he opened his laptop to calculate the prices of the beast pelts and furs he had including the ones which he looted. After 30 mins of figuring out which beast the pelts came from, he tallied the total amount of all the beast pelts he had to be around 20 green dram which was a lot of money.

Happily, he kept back all the beast pelts in the corner of his interspatial ring along with the money in another corner.

Liu Feng finally looked at the staff he bought and decided to refine it.

Graded weapons can be refined and they would be able to exert their full potential when being used by the person who refines them. And once the owner dies the weapon can be refined by someone else, but some have said that there are weapons with sentience that will die along with the owner.

Liu Feng sat in a lotus position and place the staff on his lap and begun to channel his Qi into the staff. As he was doing that he felt something was wrong and opened his eyes to see red Qi flowing out from his necklace which was under the bed. He was shocked as he thought the red Qi would only appear the next time when he broke through into another realm, he decided not to stop the refinement as he knew that the red Qi would not harm him.

He observed the red Qi as it surprisingly started flowing towards the beast core making the beast core float towards the staff which he was refining. As he continued to observe Liu Feng saw that the beast core was merging into the staff as another pair of cloud was being engraved on to the ends of the staff.

This lasted for an hour, once the beast core merged itself fully into the staff he saw that the staff now had four clouds engraved with two on each side.

*Ching*

He heard the sound of a chime coming within his dantian and saw that the staff and gone into his dantian.

Absorbing the graded weapon into one’s dantian is the sign of successful refinement.

With this done Liu Feng was ecstatic but he sobered down out of confusion since he was now connected to his staff he immediately knew that his staff was not a grade F weapon anymore but instead it was a grade E weapon.

Liu Feng brought Kumo out of his dantian and into his hand and inspected the staff and realized that it did indeed evolve into a grade E weapon.

“But how is that possible” He reached for the necklace under his bed as he saw the hammer which was engraved on the ruby stone of his necklace glow a faint red.

He touched the engraving but immediately felt a searing pain on his hand and the pain escalated immediately spreading throughout his body.

“Arghhhhhh!!!! Why does this always…”

*Thud*

Liu Feng collapsed on to the floor.

Scenes of somebody’s memories were playing through his head, he was seeing things through the eyes of someone else.

There was a baby in front of him who looked exactly like him and holding him was a woman with horns on her head she was clearly an Asura.

“Give this to my son, I will try to hold them back as long as I can. I love you both”

His vision shifted to the eyes of the Asura women where he saw a man with six wings on his back who had his features him flying away to what seemed like an army of millions of winged men. “No!!! My love don’t go you will die!!!” she screamed. She ran through a forest holding the baby in her arms.

Liu Feng’s vision shifted again now he was looking through the eyes of the baby which was him. He saw the Asura women caress his face as she put a necklace on him and placed him into a pod of some kind as she said “My baby I am sorry that I and your father will not be there to watch you grow up, I am sorry we had to leave so early” as tears streamed down her face.

“This necklace is my clan’s keepsake and I have put memories of mine and you're father’s inside, if you decide to walk on to the road of cultivation it will show glimpses of our memories for each layer you break into.” She turned around to see that her pursuers were already behind her.

She hurriedly said “No matter what never ever take revenge for me and your father and just leave your life and get married to a good girl and settle down and have kids of your own. And don’t forget to eat well” The pod closed and blasted away with the distance between him and his mother getting further away.

He saw her mouth the words “I love you” as the men chasing her beheaded her. He noticed that the men who beheaded his mother had horns also and were Asuras.

Liu Feng woke up panting and sweating, his head was hurting badly as he organized his thoughts.

With tears streaming down his face he said out loud “All this while I thought I was abandoned and my parents did not love me but I was wrong how could I have ever thought that, both my parents sacrificed their lives for me.”

With more tears streaming down his face he said, “Mom and Dad I have eaten well all this while and I am now at Qi gathering 3. I know that you told me not to get revenge and live a happy life but please let me as your son find out who killed you and why.”

He kneeled down and kowtowed with his eyes looking towards the sky from his window.