Chapter 384: Genius Bai Feng (1)
The Xia Family worked fast.
Before long, news that Su Yu was selling the Soul Devouring Art started spreading. Stories about how Su Yu had used the Soul Devouring Art to easily defeat some top 100 students previously were also spread. In truth, those who had been paying attention already knew all that.
...
Eighteenth Secondary School.
Rear mountain.
Inside the small building, Bai Feng looked exhausted, his face pale.
He indifferently spat a mouthful of blood out before shaking his head. These days, he had suffered numerous attacks from the Divine Character in Liu Wenyan's sea of willpower. With his willpower constantly under assault, he was already used to coughing blood.
Looking at Bai Feng, Liu Wenyan showed his concern, "So you're not going to die yet, right?"
"..."
Bai Feng felt like he didn't really need such a form of concern. But he was generous enough to not bicker with his martial uncle so he answered, "No, I won't die. Martial Uncle, just how have you survived 50 years like this?"
Bai Feng couldn't help but to be filled with admiration. "This thing is constantly jolting your sea of willpower. It has been doing the same thing for 50 years. How can you withstand this torture?"
Liu Wenyan smiled, "You only need to get used to it."
Fine. It was scary how one could eventually get used to anything.
After a few days of hard work, Bai Feng had finally discovered something. He said, "Martial Uncle, your inheritance is not a single character. Rather, you have inherited multiple characters."
"Hmm?"
Liu Wenyan frowned. Nonsense. How could he not know how many characters he had inherited?
"I'm telling the truth." Bai Feng solemnly said, "It's a group of characters linked together. It is probably Grandteacher's character technique. That one character you see was formed of 22 different characters. I checked the repelling force of each character earlier. Each character actually has a different repelling force."
Bai Feng gave a short description of the characters before saying, "Martial Uncle, you already forcefully squeezed some of your own characters into Grandteacher's character technique, but this won't work long term. If you continue down this path, you will either complete the assimilation successfully or have all your characters devoured for nothing."
"Devour?"
"Yeah." Bai Feng nodded.
Liu Wenyan thought for a bit and asked, "You already studied the character for a few days. So do you have a solution?"
"It's difficult..."
The look in Liu Wenyan's eyes turned dangerous. If it couldn't be done, why had he spent the past few days like a lab rat?
Bai Feng smiled, "Don't worry, Martial Uncle. Not easy is not the same as impossible. I still have some tricks up my sleeve."
He looked at Liu Wenyan with an odd gaze as he asked, "Martial Uncle, have you been planning to crush your Divine Characters when you have no choice left for a short burst of strength?"
Liu Wenyan did not answer.
Bai Feng wasn't surprised. He sighed, "I knew it. Your return isn't so simple. Your willpower is very strong since you are able to withstand the assaults of this inherited character for decades without dying. In fact, your willpower is probably as strong as a Mountainsea's. It has probably reached the fourth tier, right?
"Meanwhile, the inherited character is probably at the fifth or the sixth tier. As for your apertures, back then, your sea of willpower suffered a great damage from this inherited character. Many of your apertures were destroyed. Over the years, you have not been opening any new apertures. Instead, you have been repairing your sea of willpower, doing what is essentially similar to what Mountainseas do when fusing apertures. Now that you have finished mending your sea of willpower, have you finished fusing your apertures as well?"
Liu Wenyan smiled and said nothing.
Back then, the inherited character nearly killed him. His sea of willpower suffered a heavy blow. He had indeed spent the past 50 years mending his sea of willpower.
"Sea of willpower, apertures, character...Martial Uncle, if you remove this character now, you might even be able to reach the Mountainsea Realm."
Bai Feng sternly said, "Martial Uncle, do you still want this character? If you don't want it, I have some confidence I can remove it. At worst, you'll only need to recuperate for a period of time. Naturally, your own characters will also suffer some damage. But it's not a big deal as a period of recuperation is enough to repair everything."
"Remove the character?"
"Yeah." Bai Feng nodded, "With the character removed, you won't need more than three years to enter the Mountainsea Realm."
Liu Wenyan was silent. He ultimately shook his head.
"My teacher left this for me. Unless I can find a more suitable inheritor, I won't remove it."
Bai Feng inhaled deeply and said, "But even now, it has yet to fully fuse with you. It is too strong. You are probably planning to unleash a single powerful attack to...kill a Sunmoon, right? To accomplish that, you will destroy some of your characters and even damage your sea of willpower, right?"
Bai Feng stared at Liu Wenyan with a sharp gaze. This martial uncle of his was truly like a silent dog that bites—cough, cough. This martial uncle was truly very good at hiding his true power.
After checking his martial uncle's condition, Bai Feng could guess that his martial uncle was aiming to kill a Sunmoon with one move. That was most definitely his plan.
By damaging his own characters and sea of willpower, he could take the life of an expert and deter the various parties. But it was also very unlikely that he would be able to survive the damage done to his sea of willpower.
Liu Wenyan smiled, "You're wrong. I still want to live longer and enter the Invincible Realm."
"Sure. Whatever you say, Martial Uncle." Bai Feng said, "Since you're unwilling to remove the character, I have a different idea. I don't know if you'll agree to it."
"What is it?"
"Remove—"
Liu Wenyan frowned, "Like I said, I'm not removing it!"
"I'm not removing the entire thing." Bai Feng explained, "I'll be perfectly honest. This character is ultimately not yours. Just because your teacher gave it to you does not mean that it suits you. If it is really compatible with you, you would have completed the assimilation long ago.
"Since this character is essentially formed of 22 characters, it is not a perfect character. The 22 characters are not in full harmony with each other. They are still rejecting each other. Through my observation, around half of them are human characters. It is clear that Grandteacher held a strong belief in human characters.
"I intend to disassemble the inherited character and separate the human characters from the rest."
Liu Wenyan said in astonishment, "Disassemble? Are you sure you're not talking nonsense? I have studied this character for decades. This is clearly a single character. Why are you insisting that it is actually 22 characters? And you even want to dismantle it? Kid, are you trying to kill me in a roundabout fashion?"
"..."
Bai Feng had an aggrieved look when he heard that accusation.
"Trust me, Martial Uncle. I am a genius."
"..."
Bai Feng's eyes turned fanatical as he said, "I'm telling the truth! I have performed a lot of research on this topic. I believe that very few humans know Divine Characters as well as me! Martial Uncle, I can definitely disassemble your inherited character. Just look at my Dragon Slaying Sword! I have successfully disassembled it as well!
"Disassemble this character and leave only the useful characters behind and fill the empty spots with your own characters."
The more Bai Feng spoke, the more excited he became, "Martial Uncle, divine and devil characters might be powerful, but I believe they are actually useless. You have formed a large number of characters yourself. Just kick out all the non-human characters and fill the blank spots with your own human characters."
"If you do that, you will be able to truly assimilate Grandteacher's character! It will no longer reject you!"
Liu Wenyan hesitated and said, "But won't the character drop in strength?"
"Yes." Bai Feng nodded, "After all, we are kicking the stronger characters out and filling your characters in. And since your characters are weaker, the overall strength of the inherited character will definitely drop."
Bai Feng quickly followed up, "But Martial Uncle, this is a process of waste removal. The character might drop in strength, but in exchange, you will gain a bright future."
Liu Wenyan rolled his eyes, "This is my first time hearing someone call divine and devil characters waste. Also, the divine and devil characters in your Grandteacher's character technique are very powerful. If we use a modern term to describe them, then they are basically Eternal characters. Can Eternal characters really be considered waste?"
The characters left by the fifth principal were all characters in the Sunmoon Realm. Due to the lack of human Invincible cultural researchers, the human race had opted to call Sunmoon characters Eternal characters instead.
And Bai Feng was suggesting that they remove these Eternal characters like they were some waste that needed to be purged. Those were some big words.
Bai Feng's eyes were still burning as he said, "Exactly! Waste! Martial Uncle, I have two Dragon Slaying Swords, right? Guess what? One of them is formed by the non-human characters I have separated from my human characters. That is the stronger sword, the one I used to kill Zhang Yu.
"The other is a weaker sword, the one blocked by Zhang Yu. Everyone believed that I would attach more importance to the stronger sword. But that is wrong. The weaker sword is more important for me. As for the stronger sword, it is something I don't mind losing."
Liu Wenyan's eyes flickered as he gave his martial nephew a deep look. In all honesty, he had always thought that Bai Feng's talent was nothing special. Even his combat strength was...not too special. The so-called Dragon Slaying Sword was only something with 12 foundational characters. It really wasn't anything special.
Bai Feng had only been lauded as a genius because there were no true geniuses around. Back during his era, could someone with only 12 foundational characters in their character technique even be considered the strongest among their peers in the multiple character faction?
If so, what about people like him with 18 characters in his character technique? What about people like Xia Yunji with 17 characters in his character technique? There was also Zhang Mingyue and Hu Ping. Every single one of them was far more talented than Bai Feng. Even the person buried here, Zhang Ruoling, was someone with 15 characters in his character technique.
Thus, when Liu Wenyan said that Bai Feng was merely mediocre in talent, he was actually being honest. Compared with the geniuses of his resplendent era, Bai Feng was really quite mediocre. For the very first time, Bai Feng had surprised him.
Liu Wenyan was not completely clueless about this topic. Hearing Bai Feng's words, he frowned, "But if you lose the foundational characters of your character technique, you won't be able to replace them."
Members of the multiple character faction could only fill in their foundational characters prior to the Skysoar Realm. Only after filling that would they be able to continue adding non-foundational characters into their character techniques at the Skysoar Realm and beyond.That had always been the case.
A character technique that wasn't filled with enough foundational characters before the Skysoar Realm was as good as a crippled technique.
"Martial Uncle!" Bai Feng had an odd look as he asked, "Martial Uncle, just...how many years have it been since you last used your brain? Since I am already capable of disassembling my character technique, why won't I be able to replace my foundational characters?"
"..."
Liu Wenyan was about to give Bai Feng a beating when his expression changed.
"You..."
Shock covered his face.
"Are you...telling the truth?"
His voice was shuddering. He seemed even more agitated than when he was talking about his own life. Disassembly, replacing foundational characters... What did that signify? What was the reason for the decline of the multiple character faction? The biggest reason was the strict requirement of forming enough characters to fill the foundational character slots in their character techniques prior to the Skysoar Realm.
At the Skysoar Realm, these character techniques would solidify and stabilize. One would no longer be able to modify or add new foundational characters into it. One could only add non-foundational characters to strengthen the technique, but the foundation would already be fixed.
Thus, members of the multiple character faction had always been troubled by the fact that they needed to form 10 or more characters before the Skysoar Realm.
A lot of people had failed to resist the temptation of breaking through. Some had simply failed to suppress their advancement. As a result, these people ended up losing their status as members of the multiple character faction.
But now...
Earlier, Liu Wenyan had not put much thought into it. Now that he was thinking, he exclaimed in shock, "Do you mean that you have the means to fully disassemble character techniques, allowing one to fill their technique with foundational characters even after the Skysoar Realm?"
"Yeah." Bai Feng nodded.
Liu Wenyan's face changed as he said, "Go back! Return to the academy! I will get Wu Yuehua to send you back! This needs to be passed down! This must be passed down! Disassembly, assembly, adding foundational characters..."
Liu Wenyan muttered with a crazed expression, "With this, members of our multiple character faction will no longer be forced to form a large number of characters before the Skysoar Realm! Even without enough characters, they can continue their work at the Skysoar Realm with the disassembly method! You...have changed the traditional cultivation path of the multiple character faction! Bai Feng, you are a genius!"
This was the very first time he had ever called Bai Feng a genius. This was a true genius!
The thought had never crossed Liu Wenyan's mind. Since Bai Feng was already capable of disassembling his Dragon Slaying Sword, why couldn't the same be done for everyone else, allowing everyone to keep adding foundational characters after reaching the Skysoar Realm?
In that case, those from the multiple character faction would no longer need to suppress their cultivation before the Skysoar Realm.
Liu Wenyan asked, "Can this also help those at the Skysoar Realm obtain their own character technique? For example, can those from the single character faction obtain character techniques at the Skysoar Realm and fill those techniques with foundational characters?"
"Theoretically, yes." Bai Feng nodded, "Of course, I still can't solve the issue of the technique frame. Those at the Skysoar Realm and above shouldn't be able to enter the technique wall anymore. Without an existing template, they can only form their own original character techniques. That will greatly increase the difficulty."
But still, there was hope!
Liu Wenyan also understood what Bai Feng was saying. In that case, if one had enough characters, even a Mountainsea or Sunmoon of the single character faction would stand a chance at obtaining their own character technique, becoming a member of the multiple character faction!