Chapter 51: Life 58, Age 60, Martial Grandmaster 5

Over the years, I slowly improved. My alchemy skills saw the greatest improvements. While I couldn’t guarantee High-Purity every time, I no longer risked pills collapsing, and my products were always good enough in quality that Jiao deemed them ‘profitable.’ Part of the reason I wasn’t able to make higher-quality pills was simply the ingredients. Jiao openly admitted that I was given all the dregs that no one else wanted to work with. The best or easiest ones were given to other disciples. I was happy with this arrangement, though. I didn’t need easy profit-making opportunities. I needed challenging practice. As for my cultivation, that had become more challenging. My ascension to Martial Grandmaster 2 had been extremely smooth, so I had hoped that was a good sign for the future, but each additional compression became more difficult. The maximum amount of qi I could hold before I began compressions was partly to blame. When filled, my dantian showed signs of buckling quite early. From what I was told, this was mainly due to errors in my weaves, especially at the seams. Small errors created weak points that made the structure more prone to breaking than it should have been, which meant I could store less qi before a compression. Having less qi meant I needed to force it into a smaller ball before the qi reached the proper density to transform and allow my advancement to click into place, and trying to compress at such a low volume was more difficult. After each compression, I needed to do small repairs to my dantian where it had become damaged from the pressure. Under normal circumstances, these repairs weren’t a problem, but during the next advancement, when my dantian was under the most pressure, they became more weak points that would cause more damage. All of this meant that I was becoming less optimistic about my chances of ascending to Martial Grandmaster Peak this life. That was fine, though. Peak Grandmaster was a goal, but it wasn’t essential. My current progress was already enough that if I died, I would be in a far, far better position my next time around. So, I shifted my main focus to other areas. “Disciple Su,” said Jiao as she entered my workshop, “how have you been recently?” “Elder Jiao,” I said with a slight bow, “very well, thank you.” Jiao’s promotion to elder had happened years ago, but she still maintained her position as my handler. “Junior Su, you are sixty this year, and qi stagnation will begin to set in, so you will need to undergo an evaluation for promotion to elder soon.” “Yes, elder. I know.” I nodded. “When will my evaluation take place?” “Two weeks,” she said. “Be prepared at that time.” “Yes, elder.” She began to walk away, but I quickly spoke up to stop her. “Elder, I plan to go to the Martial Peak to look through their technique libraries beforehand. I hope that will be allowed.” She hesitated before answering. “You are still an inner sect disciple, so it is within the rules. Be careful, though. There’s no true danger within the sect, but people may threaten or attack you. If you meet anyone, just say you are with the Defenders and you will be safe.” “Thank you, elder.” I had gotten the permission I needed. In two weeks, I would undergo my examination for elder, and I was guaranteed to fail. After that, I would almost certainly be named an outer sect deacon. This didn’t bother me, but outer sect deacons were not allowed to visit the other peak, so if I wanted to do that, it needed to get done before I was removed from the inner sect. Ahead of me, three men sat on rocks near the side of the path. They made no effort to conceal their presence, and they were just sitting there, talking and laughing. As I neared, they all stood up and walked in front of me, blocking my path. “Alright, pay the toll,” said the burly man in the middle. All three were tall and had bulging muscles. The sleeves of their robes had been cut off, and they were dirty, but it was obvious they were nominal disciple robes. I looked at the three in qi vision and saw that the two on the sides were Martial Disciple 7 and the man in the center was a Martial Disciple 8. The idea of three Martial Disciples stopping a Grandmaster and asking for some kind of toll almost made me laugh. “How much is it,” I asked with a laugh. The men’s faces turned serious. “You look like a fancy one,” the leader said, “how about you give us everything and we let you through.” These boys had clearly never seen an inner sect disciple’s robes before and didn’t know what they meant. It wasn’t that surprising, but they should have been able to tell that something was wrong. “No,” I said lightly, “I don’t think so. I just wanted to walk peacefully by, but if you want me to give you a free lesson, I will oblige.” As my Martial Grandmaster cultivation grew, I no longer needed to worry about the mental effect of my previous cultivation techniques. They had become subdued circuits in my brain that I could access, but I wasn’t compelled to use them. I usually kept the friendly circuits from my Rank 1 active, though, as they helped me be cordial when dealing with people I didn’t trust. However, a wise man adapts to different situations like water adapts itself to different vessels. In this situation, friendliness wasn’t helping. I turned off those circuits and flipped on my Rank 2 aggression. The leader snarled. “Get him!” His lackeys rushed me from either side. I could see that they were using some type of earth technique to affect their movement, and the qi in their arms was concentrated to give a devastating blow. I didn’t even bother defending myself. They both rushed in and threw their punches. One was aimed at my head, the other at my torso. I didn’t dodge or defend. I let them connect. I wasn’t being cocky here, and I wasn’t taking any pointless risks. I wanted to leave an impression on these boys to make the rest of my time here easier. I had already used my qi vision to develop a good understanding of their strength. When the two blows landed, the physical power of the hits was meaningless. My body had been strengthened by my meridians, and no purely physical power from a Martial Disciple could affect me. The only slight danger came from their qi, but when they were close enough, my significantly higher affinities, qi control, and cultivation base allowed me to wrest control of the qi the moment their fists made contact. I acted as a lightning rod and conducted the qi into the ground. “Interesting,” I said. I stood there having not moved an inch after their attack. “Let me try.” Without any movement from my body, my qi exploded outward. Since it was fire energy, it wanted to scorch and burn, but I used a technique to force the explosion to be purely kinetic. The two men were blasted away and fell to the ground. They weren’t hurt badly since I limited my power, but that should have sent a warning. I looked at their leader. His eyes squinted. “Let’s talk,” I said.