Mean while Huang Wen, Zhang Tian Yi, Liu Wang Yun, Chen Wu Xuang, Ma Heng and Tian Zhong steadily approached Nan An.

As much as their colleagues at Fuzhou improved within those days, they who journeyed far from Fuzhou weren't fell behind them. Huang Wen with his newfound ability to hide his presence and sensed low level demons at the same time, provide them with low level demons along the way.

However, since their main priority was to reach Nan An as fast as possible. They didn't spend their time to hunting low level demons. Only when it was near their current position, that Huang Wen dared to separate from the other to catch the low level demon and brought it to them.

At first they insisted that Huang Wen should take the experience himself, but after some persuasion Huang Wen managed to convince them to take the experience.

"At my current level, killing five low level demons like this would help me to breakthrough at most one level. That was only 2 points of stat but if I give 1 low level demon to each one of you. Each one of you could break through 1 level and that's 10 points of stat.", Huang Wen argued and no one could argue back.

The first to get experience from killing low level demon that was caught by Huang Wen was Zhang Tian Yi.

The old sergeant growled, "Okay kid... I owe you one for this."

He was at the peak of level 11 when Huang Wen brought him that low level demon. As a result, he broke through 2 levels at once, now he was at level 13. The next was Ma Heng, and so on from the eldest to the youngest. Huang Wen decided to give it based on their seniority. It was simple and wasn't invited any miss-understanding.

When they finally reached Nan An, all of them reached either the peak of level 15 or early level 16.

Huang Wen had his own reason for why he hunted low level demon and turned it to the other.

At first Huang Wen himself killed zombies diligently. Ever since he knew about the existence of Youshe and Baihu within his soul, Huang Wen didn't dare to hunt for demons. Low level demons wouldn't give him much experience and he also worried it might strengthen Baihu and Youshe as much as it strengthened him. How would he know how much experience points he should actually gain by killing a demon? Who knows? Maybe from hundred points, Baihu or Youshe took tens of it and he wouldn't know. By killing zombies, who only gave 1 point of experience he would know for sure if they dared to take it.

That was until he found higher level zombies who gave more than 1 point of experience.

Since then, Huang Wen stopped killing whether it was zombies or demons. He used his presence to send away zombies near them. That was why he felt guilty toward his companions who couldn't hunt zombies anymore and to solve their problem. Huang Wen hunted low level demons for them. He was good at controlling how much he hid his presence now that he could adjust the range.

Since he didn't want to kill zombies or demon for experience, he turned his focused on practicing martial art and studying the skill he currently had. In exchange of capturing low level demons for them, Huang Wen asked them to spar with him, whenever they set their camp.

Zhang Tian Yi, Liu Wang Yun, Ma Heng, Chen Wu Xuang and Tian Zhong took turn to spar with him. As Huang Wen improved, once in a while he spared against two opponent at once. After hours of practice, his passive skill, martial art, reached another level. Although his level stuck at 21, his fighting level was much improved through it.

After improved his Martial Art skill level, he could spar against 3 of them without losing. He actually asked to spar against 4 of them at once, only then he was put in great pressure, enough to give him something new to learn from that experience.

Huang Wen's fighting ability amazed everyone, even the old hardened Zhang Tian Yi now secretly admire him.

They admire his fighting ability, but the thing that made them admire him the most was his persistence in training. He will meditate late into the night. He woke up early and practicing his martial art. He slept almost exactly 4 hours every night.

At this moment, Huang Wen was sitting and experimenting his fireball skill. He broke the entire process down into several basic procedures and learned each procedures thoroughly.

First the process in gathering the fire attributed forces to form the fireball. The source of these forces came from the nature itself. His body drew power from its surroundings and converted it into fire attributed force. Later he learned that actually rather than converting it, it extracted the fire attributed force. Therefore source for the power is unlimited, but it cost him his spiritual power to extract and control it. As he was getting better at controlling the overall process, he was getting more efficient in using his spiritual power and the cost was reduced a lot.

Next, he needed to control each of those slivers of forces to gather at a certain point rather than let it dispersed back to the nature. Usually that point was a few inches in front of his palm but later he could move it to any part of his body and a few inches above it. It was easier to use his palm since the move to shoot the fireball then would be easily similar to throwing a ball.

As the power accumulated, it grew into a small fireball and the temperature started to increase. He needed to create some sort of barrier to protect his hand from the heat. That was also the reason why he needed to accumulate the power outside their body. His body simply could not handle the accumulated power. He tried it once to see whether he could turn part of his body into some kind of weapon. He tried to gather that power in the tip of his finger and got his finger was burnt instead.

Once the power accumulated into the fireball, the next thing is to throw it toward the target. Huang Wen noticed that the further that power from his body, the harder it is to control it. As more power accumulated, the harder it is to control it. That was the only reason why he needed to shoot it toward its target but he wanted to see how far he could move that power away from his body before he lost control over it.

Right now a very small fireball was floating few meters in front of Huang Wen. It swayed slowly for another meter before dispersed into the night when it reached around 4 meters away from him.

He kept doing it until his spirit point nearly depleted, he was doing this same thing for days now. At the beginning, he could only keep it under his control up to three meters away from his body.

He meditated and waited until his spirit points restored, next he trained another part of his fireball skill, which was forming the barrier that protected his body from the heat. He slowly trained this process apart from the entire process, he needed to make it into its own skill. He was yet to successfully make it into its own skill but slowly he began to understand this process more clearly and see how it started and how it completed without having to integrate it with the rest of the process of creating a small fireball.

He was deep in concentration and goes deeper as he felt that he was closer to extract the skill of creating a protective barrier from the small fireball skill.

The sky's color lightened, one by one the rest of their group woke up.

"He's been like that for hours now.", Tian Zhong who got the last turn to guard the perimeter spoke.

"Isn't that usual?", Liu Wang Yun shrugged his shoulder.

"No, no, no. This time seems different.", Tian Zhong replied.

"Is it?", now Liu Wang Yun's curiosity was triggered.

The two of them watched Huang Wen and pique the interest of the other three.

"What's so different this time?", Chen Wu Xuang stretched his body and lazily asked.

"I'm not sure but Brother Tian is right. I can feel it too. There is something different than usual.", Liu Wang Yun replied.

"Usually he will wake up from his meditation when we start chatting like this.", Ma Heng joined their conversation.

"He did. It seems you're right. I guess it isn't that obvious but this time his concentration is in a whole different level compared than the usual.", Zhang Tian Yi nodded.

Huang Wen's trial started to show results. In the past, he had to go through from the first step of initiating small fireball skill before the barrier formed. Any attempt to create the barrier without following through the small fireball skill's initial steps would fail. This time he skipped several steps and started right away at forming the protective barrier around his body. Part by part he formed a small invisible shield, connected it with the one that was formed earlier and locked it in place, forming a bigger shield.

The progress was really slow as the barrier began to spread around from the center of his chest, slowly covering all of his body.

It grew larger and larger and the area where it wasn't covered by the protection barrier was slowly disappearing.

Since it was the first successful attempt he needed to use all his concentration to guide each step correctly, the cost to his spirit points was great. Within minutes points were reduced. Part of Huang Wen's consciousness watched his spirit points warily but he was too close to give up at this point. The diameter of unprotected areas diminishing, bit by bit.

The closer he was to complete the barrier, the harder his heart was beating and the harder it was to concentrate.

He was watching his diminished spirit points warily.

"5..."

"4..."

"3..."

Suddenly the last formed shield was placed and along with the other shields, it completely covered his body. Now was the hardest part, Huang Wen carefully mentally bound the last shield to the rest and placed the last binding that should keep the entire barrier in place.

Once it was done, he warily loosened his concentration and observed.

Seconds passed by, slowly Huang Wen opened his eyes, he no longer actively controlled the protective barrier and he proudly observed how the barrier stayed intact on its own.

Of his 23 spirit points, 1 spirit point was left.

"Active Skill : Invisible Shell level 1. For the cost of 20 spiritual points, it will form a protective barrier around the body, create a physical defensive barrier that can withstand even bullets and small explosives like hand grenades. The barrier will last for 30 seconds after completely formed."

"Active Skill : Fireball reached master level at level 3. You can activate the skill as much time as you wish to. The only limitation is your spirit point. You cannot improve this skill anymore. You have thoroughly mastered the skill. Further investigation of the nature, of the skill though, may lead you to another skill."

Huang Wen slowly got up from his meditative position and found the other watched him closely. A bit embarrassed he scratched his head and stood there awkwardly.

"What happened? Seemed you just got some break through or some enlightenment. Don't tell me you became a Buddha.", Zhang Tian Yi asked jokingly.

The five of them watched him attentively, for some unknown reasons they felt their hearts were beating faster. They instinctively could feel that something special did happen and Huang Wen's answer surprised them all.

"I just learned a new skill on my own.", he grinned happily.

With this Huang Wen's current stat was :

"Huang Wen: Male"

"Level: 21 (196/348)"

"Class: None"

"Title: None"

"Strength: 10 (10)

Agility: 30 (30)

Vitality: 12(12)

Stamina: 15/15 (15)

Spirit: 1/23 (23)

Health: 11/11 (11)"

"Active Skills : Fireball (master), Invisible Shell lvl. 1."

"Passive Skills : 3rd eyes lvl. 1, Bloodlust lvl. 2, Martial Art (Style : Xing Yi Quan) lvl. 2."

"Equipment : Baihu's Bastard Sword, Generic boot (Agility +1)."

Along with his experience of learning a new skill through his own effort, Huang Wen felt that a path was opened to him. A path that different from other. He through his tenacity, opened a path for himself. He wasn't following the path that was given by god or devil or whoever set the world in its new order.

He believed he found the true path toward cultivation, something that much deeper than the game mechanic system laid down by some godlike existence. He managed to go one level closer to the system on which this game mechanic system built upon. He felt like other people were developing their application with RAD while he, Huang Wen, knew how to write a Windows application using C++ language.

From now on, he might even find a way to pave his way onto the next level without having to absorb soul essence from demons and zombies. As Huang Wen felt the excitement, inside Youshe trembled in fear while Baihu couldn't help, but worried.

How could Huang Wen not grinning happily after such breakthrough? He even felt like dancing if only he could dance.