Chapter 54: How Disappointing

He sat in the lotus position and started running Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art, the sole reason he was able to pull off using more of Sword Intent. The resilience and damage resistance this cultivation method brought to his body was able to partially withstand the damage. It was also the reason his external wounds made by enemies in this fight did not worry him whatsoever.

The Sword Qi of his opponents lodged in the wounds quickly melted under this tyrannical technique that refined any energy possible to temper him, and his external wounds turned into burning furnaces, where the mechanical impact energy that caused the wound was retroactively extracted and used to temper his body. His wounds started heating up from these energies as they went like streams of lava toward his Dantian. It was as if he was turning time and taking out the cause of the wound, so the wound started closing by itself since there was nothing that caused it. It was a technique that defied some of the laws governing this universe and was extremely powerful, to put it very mildly.

Any grand technique that had the word ‘Chaos’ in it is something that defies logic and the power they hold could not be described with words. So far Wu Long is using two such techniques in this life, the Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art and the Chaos Origin Eyes which were two too many for someone of his humble origins to have.

Though it had its limitations, Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art could use any energy and refine it, and it could also use this energy to convert it into matter. Thus any damage Wu Long received, as long as he did not die, will eventually turn into a part of his strength.

Normally, having such heaven-defying techniques would make Wu Long immediately share them with his loved ones, but there was a catch, and that was that the more powerful a technique was, the more it relied on one’s comprehension. Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art was something the descendants of the Great Rakhshasa Clan had but only a tiny portion could actually comprehend and use. All of his most powerful techniques required thousands of years each to learn and comprehend. Thus it was not that he did not want to share his techniques with for example Ye Ling, but it was that he had to go in an ascending order of difficulty, so he was still deliberating what techniques would be best for her in progression. What he gave out to others was basically trivial to him, and not really that precious.

He refined his injuries into tempering his body and then turned to the more severe internal damage which he caused himself.

This was one of those limitations of the Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art, that it was refining any outside energy for use and went one way inward from the outside, so it could not refine energy the host of the technique was producing, thus the damage done by energy generated by him was not something he could refine.

He took some more medicines and meditated, using healing techniques to mitigate some of the more pressing damage. He also used the golden and silver needles he had and made a moderate recovery that was not complete, but he had to sleep in order for him to be able to operate somewhat normally tomorrow. He recovered enough that there would be no lasting effect, and also to be able to fight in case of emergencies, but he still had some damage left over that he had to slowly heal over time.

He was a little unnerved by his experience this night as his sense of danger has gone up. It was one thing dealing with someone in higher realms in this backwater place, it was another entirely if they had the foundation of the powers from the Seven Boundless Worlds. ｏｖ𝚕．ｃｏ𝚖

Though he really could not predict anything, only generally be prepared, and he was already moving at an astronomical pace through his cultivation given his base talent, as normally someone like him would stop somewhere in the Qi Condensation Realm at best, never having the ability to go higher in realm. And he was far ahead of himself in his past life.

He could not make any big progress in the meantime since he made a lot of fast progress with Sui Luxiao, Ye Ling, and Bi Rui over the course of a very short time. If he tried to go any higher in his cultivation at the moment he could shake his foundation.

Thus he had to expand his power horizontally, meaning become stronger while staying in the same realm. He thought of another auxiliary cultivation technique he could use at the moment. Since he would cultivate with Ye Ling and hopefully Sui Luxiao anyway, the energy he could not use for a cultivation base could be used for a method of increasing power without advancing.

This cultivation technique was quite straightforwardly named Spiritual Qi War Technique. It was quite a powerful technique that was focused on strengthening the Spiritual Qi of the cultivator. It could increase the capacity one had of Spiritual Qi in their Dantian and the density of their Spiritual Qi regardless of the cultivation base. It would also qualitatively improve the Spiritual Qi recovery rates.

This technique was very powerful and quite widely used since it was dealing with the fundamentals of a cultivator. The catch was that everyone’s degree of improvement with this technique was different, and it depended on comprehension, as it seemed like the technique was very simple and straightforward, only to become more profound and mysterious as one further cultivated it, with many people not being able to advance further than the 2nd or 3rd layer of the 108 layers of this technique. In his past life, he was able to advance through 73 layers and was still progressing, albeit slowly.

One of the other reasons Wu Long opted to finish the fight as quickly as possible before besides the possibility of them running away as he gained advantage was that his reserves of Spiritual Qi were dismal in comparison to them. It was only because he gained an early advantage by hurting them that he made them hurry to deal with him, otherwise, they could opt to tire him out and wait for his Spiritual Qi to run dry.

Once he decided to move forward with Spiritual Qi War Technique, he went to sleep, taking a few mild medicines that would help him recover while he was asleep.

When he woke up he was sore all over, he knew that he had some sour days ahead as he could not solely focus on recuperating by just cultivating day in and out, as he had his mortal needs to take care of, as well as beauties to attend to.

*Trrrrr…. BAM!* “Wu Long!”

The sliding wooden door to his room suddenly and violently opened up with a familiar and worried voice sounding out at the same time.

Of course, Wu Long was not surprised since he anticipated it and also could hear Ye Ling approaching his room at a hurried pace.

“Ling’er, it’s ok”

He smiled at her, trying to calm the worry in her eyes.

“But… but I heard you returned bloodied and injured yesterday…”

“No worries, there were a few obstacles I had to overcome, but I am mostly okay now, see?”

He comforted her while giving her a light embrace. She still looked at him with slightly worried eyes but if he said he was fine she trusted him. She was not one to nag at him anyway or inquire about his matters if he did not mention them. She was just genuinely worried and once she actually saw him, she gradually calmed down.

Once he calmed her down he went out to the Peacock Feather Trading Company, as he was ‘pardoned’ from lessons today by both Ye Ling and Hua Ziyan in light of his injuries. Although he said it was okay since they decided to skip the lessons he did not push them.

Sui Luxiao met him with a bright smile on her face that was brimming with life and energy. Something she did not have for who knows how long.

As he sat in her office and they chatted, her husband as well as all of her three sons arrived at her office some hours later as they were told there would be a meeting today. The youngest son was brought out of his house arrest for this one day since this was an important occasion for the family, or as Wu Long and Sui Luxiao understood, for the discontinuation of the family.

“What is he doing here?”

Sui Feng immediately noticed Wu Long’s presence in the office as he was quietly sipping tea on the sofa as if this meeting was not concerning him.

“You do not have to concern yourself with him, the issue is different here”, Sui Luxiao said in a strict tone which immediately turned Sui Feng timid.

“I am going to divorce you”, she said quite straightforwardly while looking at her husband, whose eyes flew wide open, gawking at her. His jaw dropped, as were his sons’ jaws beside him. He was speechless for a few moments before his face became distorted.

“Y-you what?!?! I dare you to say it again!!!” he shouted.

“I am going to divorce you”

“Y-You…”

She said her phrase in the same manner of voice and tone, making it identical in every single way and in the slightest detail to the last one. His words caught in his throat as he was too angry and flabbergasted.

“Yes, me”

She replied, implying that he was not wrong in his choice of words, it was indeed her divorcing him.

“…”

This time he just stared at her with anger and frustration. Veins popping on his forehead.

“I knew it! You were cheating on father with this slimy basta-…”

*Pow!*

Before the oldest of the brothers could end his sentence the palm of his mother flew through the air and hit him in the cheek sending him flying backward in a graceful arc, prompting the hereto tranquil Wu Long to send a fascinated look in their direction. There was a light of amusement, curiosity, and even some awe.

As the oldest of the brothers landed on the floor, Wu Long suddenly stood up, prompting everyone in the room to look up at him as his motion was a very sudden and excited one, quite different from his usual calm demeanor.

‘Is it really…?’

There was a look of fascination on his face as he went their way and came in front of the second of the brothers.

“Wh…What? Why are you looking at me this wa-…”

*Pow!*

The middle brother was sent flying through the air, but he just fell down miserably and rolled away. As he landed and looked up while holding the cheek that was slapped by Wu Long in shock, anger and confusion he saw a look of severe disappointment on his face.

“How disappointing…”, Wu Long said somewhat dejected, and went back to sit where he was before with now a melancholic look on his face, leaving the whole room, including Sui Luxiao to look at him in utter dumbfounded silence.

——————-

***Note: Here is a part of the chapter I cut out since it seems too theoretical, and I am not sure how helpful it would be yet, in any case, I could introduce it later again if it is necessary for the story. It is actually a widely used concept and part of the Chinese Creation Myths, though a bit deliberated on by cultivation novels over the years and some ideas thrown into the mix. Anyway, regular cultivation novel readers should probably recognize it:

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One of the widely known but rarely actually understood, even partially, concepts of the cultivation world of Seven Boundless Worlds was the “Unity, Duality, Trinity and Creation”.

The Grand Dao gave birth to Unity, which gave birth to Duality, which gave birth to Trinity, which gave birth to Creation. The Unity refers to Chaos, the Duality refers to Yin and Yang, the Trinity refers to Energy, Matter, and Soul, and finally, the Creation refers to the Universe.

Thus all of the creation bears the mark of the trinity, and the trinity bears the mark of duality, while duality bears the mark of the unity.

So everything in existence has energy, matter, and soul.

And every energy, every matter, and every soul has Yin and Yang (as there is a Yin fire and Yang fire, Yin Spiritual Qi and Yang Spiritual Qi, the flexible metal of Yin, and the hard metal of Yang, etc).

And Yin and Yang both have chaos (as there is Yang in the Yin and Yin in the Yang).

Chaos Refining Body Tempering Art, in truth, was dealing mainly with two of the trinity born from duality: Energy and Matter. But the degree to which it interacted with the concept of Chaos was already worthy of it being a Godly technique that warranted the name ‘Chaos’ in it.

Though there were many techniques that bore the names of Yin and Yang which were of higher order than Energy, Matter, and Soul, they rarely were actually close to the real Duality and merely dealt with an Energy or Matter that was of Yin and Yang attribute.