Chapter 199: Night Visit [PART 3]
Inside his spiritual sea, Xiang Yu realized he’d have to do something different this time since he couldn’t move. Fortunately, his spirit farmer and alchemy professions were already past the halfway point and would upgrade to the next level after the next reset either way.
"You, practice the Soul Spike technique," he instructed the soul infant, which immediately got to work.
Although Xiang Yu had studied the Soul Spike manual quite thoroughly, he hadn’t yet attempted to practice it himself. The soul energy requirements were incredibly demanding, but now after the system’s doubling effect, he felt he had somewhat passable soul energy reserves to begin learning it.
Even so, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to have the energy requirements to practice the technique further after learning it. Therefore, he came up with a different strategy, well, it wasn’t really all that different from what he was doing before. He would let the soul infant practice first to gain even a single point of experience. Once that happened, he’d be able to experiment with the technique extensively in battle simulations without exhausting his actual soul energy. After all, in the simulation, he’s always at peak condition and reverts back after the simulation is over.
He didn’t mind that the soul infant wouldn’t be cultivating his mind attribute tonight. After the recent experience point increase, the infant no longer tired as easily and might even be capable of practicing mind cultivation all day long if needed.
With the soul infant busy learning the technique, Xiang Yu entered his battle simulation. He first selected peak Golden Core stage Meiling as his opponent.
It wasn’t even a fight anymore. He destroyed her instantly. The difference in power was so huge it almost felt unfair.
Pleased with his progress, he then selected Li Yao as his opponent. Surprisingly, he was actually able to keep up with her this time, fighting almost as equals in terms of raw physical strength. Still, he had no effective way of defending against her techniques, mostly the lightning strikes, which meant he always lost in the end when she unleashed her techniques. But this was tremendous progress compared to his previous hopeless performance.
He decided to make Li Yao his default training partner from then on. The challenge level was perfect for pushing his limits.
Xiang Yu acknowledged that qi cultivation was truly important after all. He’d managed to match Li Yao’s physical capabilities purely because of his superior qi quality, when previously he could barely land a single hit.
In qi cultivation, it was all about increasing the quality of spiritual energy without much changes to physical strength. Technically speaking, he was actually at the Golden Core stage since qi quality was all that mattered in qi cultivation, he just lacked the actual golden core.
He decided to stop overthinking it and just focus on training instead.
For almost an hour, he kept running simulations against Li Yao, refining his combat techniques and testing different tactical approaches. He was genuinely pleased with the improvements he’d made to his fighting style, noticing smoother combinations and better timing in his attacks.
Even more impressively, it seemed his battle awareness was beginning to show some changes though he wasn’t completely sure yet and would need some more experiments to confirm.
Finally, he decided to check on the infant’s progress.
The infant sat in a meditative posture, its face showing clear signs of strain as it struggled to concentrate on the complex technique. Before its forehead, something began bubbling in the air—a strange, cloud like blob that seemed to be fighting to maintain any coherent form.
After several tense moments, the shapeless mass finally formed into what resembled an arrow, though it looked nothing like a proper arrow and appeared to be slowly falling apart at the edges. The malformed projectile then launched forward, moving painfully slowly through the spiritual sea. After traveling just a few inches, it completely broke apart, dispersing into nothingness.
The infant immediately collapsed backward, completely exhausted from the effort. It looked up at Xiang Yu who had just come over.
"Good work. You can rest for a bit," Xiang Yu spoke with a smile as he then checked his system:
[Sacred-grade Soul Spike: Beginner (2/100)]
...
After the infant had recovered somewhat from its exhausting practice session, Xiang Yu returned to running battle simulations. This time, he made a conscious effort to focus more on incorporating the Soul Spike technique into his combat, though he made sure not to neglect his other techniques.
He continued this intensive training for quite some time, fighting countless battles until he was satisfied with the experience points he’d accumulated. After achieving his training goals, he decided to let the infant continue cultivating his mind attribute and departed from his spiritual sea.
When his consciousness returned to the physical world, Li Yao was still sleeping peacefully against his chest, her breathing steady and relaxed. He decided not to interrupt her rest.
Instead, he chose to use this time productively by cultivating his qi refining. He concentrated on the spiritual energy around him and slowly began absorbing and refining. The spirit spring had already been exhausted so he was drawing qi directly from the air in the spirit vein which was also quite rich in qi.
As he cultivated, Xiang Yu found himself thinking that the sensation was genuinely relaxing. One could easily lose themselves in this. The gentle flow of energy through his meridians created a soothing warmth that spread throughout his entire body.
He continued this cultivation session steadily until dawn. Only then did he open his eyes and check his progress.
Looking at his system interface, he felt somewhat disappointed to discover he had only gained fifty points during the entire session. Though given the relatively short timeframe, he supposed it wasn’t completely terrible, but it still felt quite low compared to his usual gains from spirit food. It seemed that cultivating raw without props was quite difficult. He wondered how other cultivators did it.
As he was pondering this, he felt Li Yao beginning to stir against him. She slowly opened her eyes, blinking in the soft morning light filtering into the spirit vein.
"Senior brother?" she murmured, still not completely awake, her voice soft and a little drowsy.
"See? I’m still here," he spoke with a gentle smile.
She smiled back as she gradually sat up, stretching slightly to work out the stiffness from sleeping in an unusual position. "Thank you," she said with a formal bow, though her expression remained warm.
Xiang Yu just smiled in response. "It’s no problem at all," he replied sincerely. He thought to himself that she seemed to have returned to her usual self, at least for now. He really hoped she would stay like that and not relapse. Otherwise, he wouldn’t last long, and neither would the world apparently...
"Are you hungry? Do you want me to prepare something for you?" he asked as he began to get up, already reaching toward his spatial ring.
"No," she spoke quickly, grabbing his hand before it could reach the ring.
"I’ll just have this," she said with a mischievous smile as she leaned in and kissed him softly. Before he could react or respond, she completely disappeared from sight, leaving only her voice echoing in his head: "I’ll be leaving first."
Xiang Yu remained standing by himself in the empty spirit vein. He thought to himself that she had really caught him off guard this time. A slight blush crept across his cheeks before he shook his head, forcing himself to refocus on practical matters.
It was time to refine some weapons, he could finally feed the spirit vein once again.
...
Author’s Corner
Thought I’d do some Chapters for Li Yao as well as progress their relationship a bit. Romance isn’t my best suit so...
Tell me what you think about it.
Am I cooking or should I just give up and move on with the numbers instead?