678 Anomalous Behavior (1/2)

They were not allowed to use secret treasures and charms in the next task, so they should focus on improving their strength. Meng Qi had to adjust his original plans, hence his hesitation. He pondered.

”After successfully crossing the first step of the Celestial Ladder, the key is to sense the operation of the world from time to time and intertwine with Dharma and Logos often. Counting on hermetic training alone won't be very helpful, but my knowledge and experience of these are quite complicated. I shall spend six months on the organization of bladesmanship, sword art, fist movement, and palm stroke, truly achieving mastery of the movements that I've learned.”

Although Eight Nine Mysteries was adaptive to changes and was pretty good at imitation, this didn't preclude Meng Qi from operating many other movements. There was a huge difference between simply using a movement and having mastery of it. The former was rigid—at most someone would know when to use which movement. What was more, during a fight, the cohesiveness of the changes between movements wasn't fluent, and it would be easy to find its flaws. If it were not for the Eight Nine Mysteries' ability to sense danger and fight with resistance, Meng Qi would have suffered much pain by now.

On the other hand, the latter was the extraction of the essence from his part of the preliminary knowledge of the Six Strokes of the Overlord and Divine Nine-Annihilation, and then combined with his own bladesmanship, not being restricted to a particular movement. This would allow those movements to cooperate with each other, learn others' strengths and make links smooth, enabling Meng Qi to operate them at his fingertips!

It was like an analogy of sword art by telling stories—every movement was like a coping method. After suddenly learning so many Dharmakaya movements and skills of the Exterior, he was solely operating those coping methods. Operating once or twice would be fine, but if he fought an enemy too many times, it would expose the rules of the coping method. It could easily lead to failure unless his strength was far superior to his enemy's.

Ever since he was promoted to the Exterior, the enemies he had fought were either killed or had faced him just a few times such that it wouldn't expose the problem. However, coming up was a Death Task. As he was aware of this flaw, he should remedy it as soon as possible.

The real master wasn't the one who was unwilling to use coping methods but the one who understood how to abandon representation images and grasp the essences of coping methods, which should be combined according to the circumstances. The fascinating stories came out, therefore, when one abandoned vulgarity, repetition and monotony.

In the past, Meng Qi's palm stroke and sword art were in the master's realm, but once he got a promotion to the Exterior, he encountered too many adventures and attained many skills and movements with mighty power that couldn't be combined with each other. They had to be preserved separately. In this aspect, bladesmanship, fist movement and palm stroke of Heavenly Golden Scripture were way more serious than his sword art problems.

Meng Qi knew this very well and had always been trying to solve it. His primary result was his movement, ”The Big Bang Technique” combined with ”Let All Begone” and ”the Singular Existence of Mine.” The movement ”Falling Sun” — the ”Universal Demise” combined with ”World of Dao” and ”the Chaos Vortex” — was the one that really belonged to him. He thoroughly remembered every change in his heart and the specific level in different situations, which was extremely important.

However, these were just two movements that he had formulated. There were still many bladesmanship, sword arts, and palm strokes that he hadn't combined, and the two sole movements were also divided into ”coping methods” that he had merely developed on his own. There was still a long way to go before he had a thorough understanding of the essence of the new coping method and their linking stories without repetition.

When his movement reached the realm of coming in handy fluently and flawlessly, he could extract his own ”Taoism” from it, which would act as the soul of the whole story.

Therefore, after pondering about it, Meng Qi planned to ”waste” half a year to do this thing. After all, it would be used as an exchange for the Six Taoist. What a pity if he wasted this chance!

Jiang Zhiwei's eyes shone brightly. ”Indeed! I should exchange for half a year as well!”

After she realized the World of Dao, movements such as Unmoved Tai Shang all had new paths and changes. It was true of Anatta Sword when she learned the Twenty-three Swords Skill, Six Kills on Twenty-three Swords Skill, and Cutting Tao And Seeking True-self as described by Meng Qi. The present stage was to extract the essences of other sword arts and combine and achieve mastery given the frame of World of Dao, trying to thoroughly remove the sword art of the Exterior realm.

Meng Qi smiled as his idea gained support. He continued speaking. ”Aside from this, I plan to exchange for the Three knives corresponding to the Three Swords so that they would have their own correspondence when I organize the bladesmanship and sword art instead of forcing to combine the sword and knife. What's more, I plan to improve the quality of Heaven Inflicted Pain and make it a Top Grade weapon.”

The three knives referred to Three Sabers, Three Swords, and Three Souls. The outline that Evil God Xuan Tian extracted from his own bladesmanship was ten out of countless knives could break the world, and just one attack could separate the air, achieving the effect from complex to simple and that was the essence of bladesmanship which had the significance of reference for Meng Qi.

After he finished speaking, Meng Qi had already thought it through. He chose to spend 8,800 Karma points for the Three Knives and 1,200 Karma points for six months. He also selected some materials and made the Dominator of Samsara in Six Realms promote Heaven Inflicted Pain, which was close to Mid Grade, to Top Grade, costing him a total of 1,200 Karma points.

”Heaven Inflicted Pain, Precious Weapon of the Top Grade, with a blade made out of Sky Thunder Gold and a handle carved out of Thunder Wood, and other precious materials... It is exceptionally heavy, weighing more than 700kg... It has definite control over various kinds of lighting and is extremely powerful. The weapon is worth 6,700 Karma points.”

As for Flowing Fire, which had absorbed the blood of Wild Ox Monster, it was infinitely close to Exquisite at present. Meng Qi firmly believed that even without the aid of the Six Taoist, Flowing Fire could naturally get promotion after several challenges of fight and stimulation!

When he finished all these things, Meng Qi still had 1,190 Karma points left. He smiled at his friends and said, ”Who needs to borrow some Karma points and exchange for training? Remember to pay back before the Death Task.”

He didn't worry about problems such as his own protection devices or materials for the Immortality Elixir of East Pole. The inspiration of ”World of Dao” the second time around was to collect Karma points. Meng Qi did not believe that if they had a choice the members of The Immortals could suppress their desire and only sense once!

They would be ”scourged” if they didn't take advantage of such a precious opportunity!

In addition, Meng Qi found that he had other things that he could exchange for Karma points. He had forgotten about things like the skills of Shang River Fairy that he had kept in his mind, or the wages from Six Fan School that could buy exotic minerals and produce and elixirs.

Zhao Heng's eyes shone when he heard what Meng Qi had said, but then he said with a wry smile, ”With enough materials, it didn't take too long for me to get a promotion to the Third-fold Heaven, but to successfully pass the first Celestial Ladder, one could barely count on hermetic training.”

This was the first barrier for the Exterior. The key point was the perception of the rule existing in the world that needed challenges.

The reason why Ruan Yushu didn't choose to exchange for time previously was that she had given the exotic minerals and produce needed for training to the Six Taoist before this task in order to collect Karma points. Under the circumstances without enough materials, hermetic training lasting for five or six years wouldn't help her break through to the second-fold Heaven. Therefore, her first choice had focused on materials. Now that she knew that Meng Qi had some Karma points left, she slightly lowered her head and tried to keep calm as she said, ”I need your Karma points.”

With enough time and exotic minerals and produce, reaching the Third Heaven realm before the next task would not merely be a dream for her.

”I will give it to you later after the trade. We all need to stay here for hermetic training anyway.” Meng Qi considered the affairs of the Immortals and decided to lend Ruan Yushu the points after having the conversation later.

If she promised to join the Immortals, she could gain not just skills but also selective exotic minerals and produce at a real bargain in the Immortal-tracking Alley. She could earn extra Karma points by completing member tasks. She could simply wait until she gets there to exchange training time and enter the Third Heaven realm!