V1C4: The Second Stage

When she awoke the next day, Yi Wei found her body covered in a thick layer of black filth. Having left her planar energy to circulate around her body freely, she went to sleep expecting a small change to her strength, like before.

However, whether due to the absorption of a large number of fire techniques, or due to her crossing some sort of unknown threshold in the refining of her body, the effects were far greater than before, and forced out a large quantity of impurities from her body. It took a little less than an hour to fully clean herself, but when she finally had a chance to inspect her body, she was astonished.

The changes were both major and minor at the same time: her skin was clearer and healthier in tone, the fat on her body was cleared away, though without affecting her figure as her key regions were already too insignificant to mention, her eyes gained a spark that she had not seen in four years, and the small scars, scratches and old wounds that littered her skin vanished without a trace.

To her, every single difference was like night and day, but she was also aware that to any casual observer, or even a close friend, there would be almost no way to tell that anything had changed.

‘It even feels easier to breathe today. I wonder how much my strength has grown.’

She stepped outside and punched the air, first with her left hand, then with the right, and quickly understood the approximate extent of her growth from the great blasts of air she produced.

‘In comparison to what I was capable of several days ago, it seems like my strength has almost doubled,’ Yi Wei looked at her fist; it looked no different to before, yet the power within was on a different level, ‘However, future improvements will take a lot longer. If I really want to keep going on this route, I will need to practise body cultivation techniques, and hope that their effects work together with my planar energy’s body refinement.’

Still, that was not something she could learn at this moment. Like every other skill and technique, body cultivation techniques were locked away until one reached the second stage of Energy Condensation.

Before deciding what to do today, Yi Wei found her way to Luo Xiuying’s house, and was immediately astonished for the second time. In place of a charred wreck there was a complete building, with three floors and an ornate exterior. In fact, it resembled the house that stood there before the failed talisman that activated Yi Wei’s mysterious characters blew it up.

Inside was a fancy storefront, with numerous talismans arranged in some sort of order underneath a glass cover, which also had a number of protective talismans stuck to it to prevent theft or any damage to the products.

Despite all that, the old man was still covered in ash and soot, bringing a smile to her face.

“Hey, old man, how have you managed to rebuild this place so quickly? And aren’t you afraid you’ll blow it up again?”

“You… You! How have you converted your cultivation to the Searing Torch so quickly?” the talisman maker questioned, luckily ignoring Yi Wei’s second question.

Yi Wei pretended to not understand what he was saying, “I’ve just read through your technique… Did my cultivation change that significantly?”

“… What about the Sealed Talisman Arts?”

“I’ve read through all of it too.”

He appeared before her, and looked deep into her eyes, “You wouldn’t happen to have some sort of amazing physique, would you? Has your family tested you for it?”

“Not to my knowledge,” she replied honestly. She was just the child of servants, so there was no chance of her actually having any sort of natural unique physique or constitution. Even though such things were not inherited directly most of the time, they would still have a far higher chance of occurrence if one or both of the parents had reached a higher realm in cultivation that just the Planar Pool realm.

“Very well then. If you continue to impress me, I will acquire a pill that can awaken any Earth-grade constitution or below, and then we can be certain about this matter,” Luo Xiuying decided, throwing out a blank talisman paper, “Show me your Sealed Talisman Arts!”

With the complete understanding of the talisman making technique, the process of creating a talisman was a little different to before. Now, she used the characters to form miniature formations that sealed greater quantities of elemental energy inside, and when the talisman was completed in half the time it took previously, the glow released also lingered for several seconds before vanishing into the paper.

“Well done! Do you want me to further instruct you?”

“Not for the moment. I would like to reach the second stage of Energy Condensation as soon as possible, so that I can acquire a few combat techniques and retain my place in the family in two years,” Yi Wei said, “so I shall head out for now. Thank you for the offer nonetheless.”

Luo Xiuying said nothing, so she kept her talisman and left for the technique library, where she went straight for the wood technique section. She explained it to Yi Zhihao by stating that her reading of the fire-type techniques brought her a greater understanding of metal techniques, and that she felt that browsing through a few wood-type techniques would increase that understanding even further.

The man didn’t question the matter too much after she showed off the slight increase in her planar energy quality through the creation of her fire planar energy. She went to one end of the shelves, and then began the arduous task of flipping through every single wood technique.

Four days later.

She had always been a fast reader, but the more that she read through in the technique library, the more that she felt her reading ability grow further. It wasn’t that her mind was somehow becoming wider and more spacious, but more like a mist was being dispelled from it, allowing her clarity.

In the past, while she might have been able to go through the same number of books in just four days, it would have likely left her with quite a lot of gaps in her knowledge, not to mention extremely tired fingers and arms from holding the manuals and flipping through the pages inside of them, but both the mental and physical fatigue were absent for their own reasons. Although recalling every individual word from every technique was still a struggle, it was also getting easier the more time that she invested into it, with more effort being required to find the metaphorical place in which her memory resides rather than accessing and remembering it.

Yi Wei sat in her home; six talismans were stuck to the floor around her. Each was made with a different type of elemental planar energy, with the exception of the sixth, which was created in secret using the purple planar energy. While her typical talismans all had a rather exaggerated effect upon creation, the purple energy had an effect of a completely different level. It bathed her home in light for several minutes, and only calmed down a second before someone knocked on her door to investigate.

Her energy was split into six, and each section revolved around her dantian at a slow pace. In addition to her violet and flame planar energy, she now had green wood energy, blue water energy that resembled watery mist and thin brown dust that was of the earth element. Strangely enough, despite the opposing natures of the elements, something about her specific planar energy prevented them from reacting to one another.

‘Now that I have all of these techniques in my head, I can attempt to continue my cultivation,’ she thought, glancing into herself at the mysterious characters, ‘Perhaps I will be able to achieve that legendary perfected stage.’

She took a deep breath, reaching out to tap on each talisman before returning to a standard cultivation stance. The talismans began to singe at the edges, just as Yi Wei began to cultivate.

All of a sudden, her home was flooded with planar energy. Each talisman, alongside her mysterious characters, attracted a similar amount of planar energy, increasing her energy pull by six times. She nearly spat out a mouthful of blood as the planar energy pressed onto her, threatening to crush her body, but she was able to narrowly resist due to her strengthened body.

“Ugh… With this much force, it’s like being on the side of a fight between two Planar Pool experts…” she muttered, clenching her teeth to endure.

Just before it got too concentrated for her to maintain her cultivation, the first wisps of planar energy reached her dantian, and filled it further. In seconds, the pressure lessened, and the energy around her was absorbed into her body, where it occupied the last few empty spots of her dantian.

Crack!

The dim, grey walls of the dantian suddenly broke, and the outer shell broke down to reveal a pristine white layer. Her cultivation broke through with it, bursting out of her dantian for a brief moment before falling back in, concentrating further.

Where her planar energy was previously akin to mist and thin dust, it now became fog, but before it could stabilise, it condensed again, getting even less transparent.

Although it looked like she had broken through to the second stage, she knew that it was not the case – instead, this was the legendary effect of a perfected stage. She had found a lot more details on it within the various low-level manuals, and learned that every perfected stage had the same effect as two stages, or an additional stage on top of the regular one: if one stage would typically grant her 10% more power, a perfected stage would grant her 20%, and it would persist for the rest of her life.

At lower stages, this matter was not too significant, but with every perfected stage, her power would grow. If she perfected every stage of cultivation, as the mysterious characters seemed suited to do, she would be twice as powerful as any other cultivators.

When combined with her unique planar energy, the strengthening effect of the mysterious characters, and her ability with talismans… she would be far above anyone of the same level.

That was not the end to the changes within her, however. Just as she was about to draw her attention from her dantian, she saw the mysterious characters shift about and rearrange themselves into a new set of instructions. With her increased knowledge and understanding of cultivation techniques, she saw that this was the second stage of the Mysterious Characters (which was the name she had decided to give it temporarily), and that it was as powerful as the previous stage, if not even more so.

“And now that I’m on the second stage-”

“Yi Wei! You’ve suddenly grown the nerve to beat up our junior, have you?” a voice from the outside interrupted her, “Come out and get your limbs broken!”

‘Why would I listen to you in normal circumstances?’ she thought to herself, getting up from her bed, ‘Luckily for you, I do want to see how far I’ve come.’

She straightened her clothes and exited her home, finding a peculiar scene outside. Two men, both taller than seven feet and with similar features, stood beside one another, and another man – Yi Zhang – cowered behind them, doing his best not to stand out.

“Are these people the ones that threated to injure you?” she asked him, receiving a weak nod in reply.

“You must’ve known that you are this family’s favourite beating bag, so you should have also known that fighting back would land you into trouble,” the man on the right said, “Now, which one of us would you prefer to beat you up first?”

The two men who looked so similar that they might have been brothers glanced at one another, before turning back to her.

“Since we’re nice, we’ll let you choose,” the man on the left said, “I practise wood techniques, my bro practises metal techniques. We’re both on the fifth stage of Energy Condensation.”

‘You’ve chosen the wrong target, boys,’ Yi Wei said to herself, looking back and forth between the two, ‘Since I’ve been practising a metal technique for the past few years, using any other one in this conformation would not be wise…’

“I… choose…” she raised her hand and slowly stretched out her index finger to point at one of the men, “you!”

Her chosen opponent was the man on the right, for the simple reason of confirming how her metal energy matched up to a typical technique.

‘Even though I can’t inspect his cultivation with my spiritual sense, I still seem to be have some awareness of his cultivation,’ she noticed that his cultivation was roughly composed of 23% impurities, while his brother’s planar energy had the standard 25% impurity, ‘Either this is the product of my improved cultivation, or of the changes to my dantian.’

The man on the right smiled, and stepped forward, “You’ve chosen well. I am Yi Jin, and I practise the Tempered Steel Sutra. If you know what’s good for you, don’t put up a fight. Or do. We’ll have fun either way.”

‘They sure are cocky,’ she frowned, putting one foot behind the other to be able to sprint at him as soon as the fight begins, ‘And sadistic. I can’t blame them for the former, though. I was only a first stage weakling yesterday, and even if I broke through suddenly, they would have a great advantage over me. Thankfully, we’re both in the Energy Condensation realm – if we fought with a similar gap in stages in the Emergent Anchor realm or above, my perfected stage wouldn’t count for as much.’

“Come on bro, let’s show her why she should’ve just stayed down!” the other brother said, before checking that both were ready, “Fight!”

With an external force deciding the beginning of the duel, both moved immediately. As both practised metal techniques, their speeds were greater than the typical cultivator – and Yi Wei was slightly faster, to the surprise of everyone present.

The difference was not sufficient to earn a significant advantage, however. As the only martial art that Yi Wei knew was the Gentle Breeze Strike, she was unable to use her speed to confuse her opponent by rapidly switching from one attack to another, as no matter which attack she used, it would be a Gentle Breeze Strike.

Still, with the advantage of the attack’s unique feature, she was able to land one strike. Then another. And another. Her fists were able to shift just enough to avoid his arms and strike his body, and since her speed was greater by the smallest of fractions, he couldn’t respond in time.

“Bro, what are you doing?”

“Don’t worry, Yi Jun, I’ve got it!” Yi Jin replied, putting his arms together to block another strike from Yi Wei, “Well done, girl, you’ve put up enough of a fight to warrant me using my planar energy!”

At his stage of cultivation, one didn’t even have to use spiritual will to notice the metallic energy flowing through his meridians, turning his skin silvery. His muscles tensed and almost seemed to grow in size, but the most noticeable change was his speed.

Yi Wei’s next punch, aimed at his stomach, was suddenly blocked and a simple punch from him landed on her arm, forcing her to retreat.

‘I guess I won’t get by without making use of my own planar energy,’ she realised.

With a thought, all of the planar energy within her transformed into metal and spread out into every corner of her body. Seeing that her opponent was already attacking her again, she used Gentle Breeze Strike with both fists simultaneously and struck out with her full speed.

Her left fist struck his arm, instantly breaking the bones within. Her right hand collided with some sort of defensive technique, but, contrary to her expectations, it broke through and crashed into his face.

Yi Jin was sent flying, landing several metres away on his back with another audible crunch. His brother’s eyes widened with fear, and he froze for a few moments as he attempted to understand the situation.

“W-What? How… You! What stage are you on? Fifth?”

“No, I-”

“Sixth, then?”

“No-”

“Seventh?” Yi Jun’s eyes widened a little further.

“No! You’re going in the completely wrong direction!”

“Ninth stage?”

She narrowly resisted the urge to slap his face to try to knock some sense into him, “It’s lower than that, can’t you understand human speech?”

His expression calmed significantly when he finally realised that she wasn’t secretly a Planar Pool expert, “Then, are you on the fourth stage?”

“Lower.”

“Third? There’s no way you could have beaten my bro on the third stage!” he exclaimed, ignoring the pained moans of his ‘bro’.

“I’m sorry to say, but it’s even lower than that.”

“”Second stage?”” both he and Yi Zhang cried out.

“Yes, that’s right. Well done,” Yi Wei felt like she had to offer some congratulation after all of the effort they must have put it. After all, they still had pained expressions on their faces, as if they had exhausted their every reserve of mental energy to come to this conclusion.

“Defeating my bro at this level… We’ll get our revenge!” before she had a chance to go for him, he grabbed his brother, lifted him onto his shoulder, and ran away as far as a wood cultivator could.

Yi Wei allowed them to get away. Her focus shifted to her hands.

Even now, they looked thin, gentle, and weak. They were the hands of a young woman, one who could and had been defeated countless times, and yet, now, those very same hands were able to defeat a far bigger opponent that, by all common sense, should have been stronger. Something about that was just… staggering to her.

She let out a breath and lowered her hands, ‘I guess something this major happening in a mere week can be a little shocking, no matter how prepared I was. Regardless, anything is better than being beaten up yet again, so I should calm down, and enjoy the victory. If things keep elevating like this, a loss will be inevitable.

Instead, I should focus on the battle. The main problems were the speed at which I adjusted to Yi Jin’s increased strength and speed, the lack of sufficient variety within my attacks, and, perhaps most significantly, the- hm?’

Yi Wei suddenly felt a presence behind her, and a faint aura of killing intent, so she shoved her hand into her pocket and threw out a talisman, jumping away immediately as soon as it flew out of her fingers.

A large fist, almost resembling a tree trunk, crashed into where she stood mere moments ago.

It belonged to Yi Jun, who spat out his words, “Damn, you-”

It was then that the talisman landed on his robe. A blinding red light burst out it, and instantly engulfed him in flame.

“AH!” was all that he managed to cry out before running in the direction of the nearest river.

The speed with which he was consumed by fire, and with which the talisman activated upon coming into contact with him, made him look as if he had been made of dried twigs in a dry desert being set alit by a spark.

She watched him run off and waited for a few moments, to confirm that there wouldn’t be another attack, before relaxing.

“Phew… I swear, wood-type techniques do make you more flammable.”

“Um…” someone behind her muttered something. Turning around, she saw Yi Zhang, who still had a few signs of his interaction with her first Burn talisman – namely, incredibly short and thin eyebrows, and an almost bald head.

“You’re still here? Do you want something?”

“I… I h-have to ask… how did you become so strong?” Yi Zhang managed to force the words out of his mouth, his expression carrying a complex mixture of fear, reluctance, worry and a small sign of shattered pride.

She looked back at him, showing an enigmatic smile.

“Well… I wonder...”