16 THE MARTIAL WAYS OF XIAO (1/2)
”Uh?” Xiao Wu was bewildered.
At first, she merely been surprised at Cheng Hao's claim that he would help her step into the inferior stage that same night. Later though she had also been completely and utterly shocked at the identity of that small golden tower but a few inches tall...
Cheng Hao had a Martial Way! This notion by far surpassed almost any other that she had come to learn that night.
After all, a Martial Way was something extremely, impossibly rare! It ws to the point that even comparing to Qilin horns and Phoenix feathers would be somewhat downgrading, because unlike the former two it was simply something that shouldn't exist at all in the mortal world! The reason for that was simple: they were as rare as it was difficult to make them.
A Mortal Realm cultivator creating a Martial Way was impossible by definition. Even the peak of the Mortal Realm, the Reverend stage cultivators had zero chances of creating one! That was because what a Martial Way required was for its creator to have reached the very peak of the Supreme stage. That was the peak of the Thirteenth Stage of cultivation, Second Stage of the Immortal Realm. Although Immortal Realm cultivators weren't too rare even within fallen Clans such as the present Xiao Clan, a Supreme Stage cultivator was extremely rare!
An expert at the peak of that stage would usually only be found amongst Heavenly Beasts, and the Divine Stage that came after it was almost as much of a legend as the Immortal Stage. That was just how rare of an existence were Immortal Realm cultivators as well as the powerhouses amongst said Realm, that were Peak Stage Supreme cultivators!
And let's not forget, even for such a mighty being it would require incredible effort and decades, centuries of meditation just to make one; years that could easily be spent in meditation for further enlightenment!
And yet, that child in front of her, a boy roughly her same age, had just achieved what was impossible! At the age of eight, without a single ounce of Spiritual Energy or Qi in his body, he had condensed a Martial Way all by himself!
And it was even such a mysterious and deep Martial Way, she had never seen anything like it before! To her knowledge, even the ancient Xiao Clan barely had a few dozen Martial Ways after hundreds of thousands of years of legacy.
As for that Immortal Ascension Tower, in aura alone, it was the likes of which not a single one of those mediocre Martial Ways of Xiao would ever be able to hold a candle to! And it was still incomplete? What kind of Martial Way was that! Wouldn't it be more accurate to call it a Martial Cheat?
Maybe... just maybe, there was one person in her entire clan who would be able to create such a marvel, but that person, her ancestor and world-renowned genius, was a monster that had been alive for centuries, and even fought alongside Xu Ling as an equal…
Xiao Lan!
The greatest weapon of the Xiao Clan: he was the only one that would possibly ever be able to accomplish the feat of creating a Martial Way!
But if they were so difficult to make, then why? Why would people still choose to create Martial Ways? The reason… was because it had so many uses one wouldn't be able to recite them all at once, because at least one more would always be discovered with time!
A Martial Way was essentially an item that could increase one's cultivation speed exponentially! If one had even the lowest grade of Martial Way, it would make his or her cultivation skyrocket almost overnight! One must know that, unless one has a Martial Way to aid breakthrough, another one of its wondrous uses, such breakthrough could easily take weeks if not months, years, even decades! After all, if it were that easy, a Supreme stage cultivator wouldn't be so rare at all, instead they would only barely rank at the middle-high tiers of the food chain!
But this new brother of hers had just said that tonight, they would actually break through... Together?
”Brother, you must be joking! Although it would probably be no problem for a genius like you, I have no chance to do that! Let alone a Martial Way, I haven't even have begun to sense my Qi yet! How could I even dream of breaking through?” Xiao Wu laughed bitterly.
The boy slowly opened his mouth and slowly, syllable-by-syllable, he spelled out: ”Triple 'Little(Xiao)' Qi Scripture.”
Boom! As soon as Xiao Wu heard those words she shuddered and her expression changed drastically.
Her eyes had grown cold and she had unconsciously released a storm of wild killing intent, slamming the table with her palm. Before she had noticed it, she had already put up her guard and had entered a strange stance: as soon as she had, the temperature of her surroundings had also begun to rapidly fall. The golden-eyed youth did not move nor did he show any trace of surprise at the sudden turn of the events.
After a few breaths, Xiao Wu dismissed the stance with a sigh and fell back on her seat. ”Please, tell me… how is it that you know those words?” Xiao Wu was finally able to speak through clenched teeth.
In that moment, she was firmly refusing her instincts: as per training of the Xiao Clan's Young Mistress, those words alone would usually have been enough of a trigger to cut the throat of the other party. Ultimately however, it was clear she had still chosen to trust him and to not act. After all, he had helped and taught her so much that she had to, at the very least, trust him enough for him to explain himself.
She looked at the eyes of the child in front of her: occasional flashes of amusement would flash by, but they did not show a trace of fear at her thick killing intent.
After a while, the boy finally spoke with a knwoing smile. ”Of course I know them! After all, that piece of parchment you Xiao hid so diligently within your sacred hall bears my signature as the Co-Creator alongside Xiao Lan!”
Xiao Wu was shocked as the killing intent immediately subsided: was that joke? It had to be! Her brain couldn't perceive it in any other way, so she started laughing, ”Ahahah! You really shouldn't joke on these things, brother Hao! Although it is indeed a mystery how you know that Scripture, or about secrets of our Clan such as the Triple Qi!”