188 Towards the Chengzi Kingdom (1/2)

The time passed by rather swiftly. Xue Wei tried various formations, only to realize that his soul was nothing compared to the soul of a true master despite his abnormally strong soul.

He could currently only do the simplest and most common formations. When he tried the more challenging ones, he would always fail midway through due to total exhaustion of spiritual energy.

Even the simplest puppet formation or the Paralyzation Formation was enough to strip him of all energy.

It would take him the time it took an incense stick to burn to create either one.

Xue Wei was aware that the puppet formations only worked on structures such as figures or statues to work, but he used plain paper instead since he was just training.

The formations he created this way could only move the paper around, so it had no combat ability or practical usage in any way or form.

After seven days, Xue Wei's spiritual energy had become richer, but he still had yet to have a breakthrough.

Xue Wei did not know enough about spiritual energy. He knew that spiritual energy was essentially soul energy post-refinement, but he was unaware of how to rank it.

For the first time, he was experiencing a breakthrough he could not logically explain – from what to what?

”I better go have a talk with Bai Tianyi when Wan Qiang leaves us alone,” he muttered to himself. Although he felt impatient for the answer, he was not willing to talk about it with the sword spirit in the middle of the mansion where Wan Qiang, in theory, could listen in on their conversation.

Although Wan Qiang was incredibly friendly towards Xue Wei and his friends, Xue Wei's nagging sense of suspicion grew increasingly worse as a result of said friendliness.

Xue Wei did not know how strong Wan Qiang was, but he knew that he was the strongest expert in the Skyward Empire.

The Skyward Empire had quite a few Ordinary Knights and even a few Earth Knights. To be the strongest expert, did that not mean that he was at least a Sky Knight? Reaching that level in his lifetime most likely meant that he had experienced quite a few things in his life.

For such a person to be kind to Xue Wei for no apparent reason meant that he had something he wanted from him, and this unknown factor was what made Xue Wei feel so distressed. What could it be?

Still, he could not simply refuse Wan Qiang's kindness even if he wanted to. If the old monster felt insulted and wanted to kill Xue Wei, then they had no chance of fighting back.

Furthermore, some of the other elders from the Black Iron Fortress had already shown killing intent towards Xue Wei. As to whether or not this was because of his actions in the tournament, Xue Wei did not know, and he honestly did not care either.

Eventually, the week was over. They had stocked up on everything they might need in the Black Iron Fortress. They had bought new clothes for all of them, so much in fact that they would never run out of clothes.

They had bought provisions, as chasing down Fierce Beasts for dinner was a pain because of Xue Wei and his quirk

They bought drinks, wines, and juices. They bought tools and items. In fact, they purchased everything that they could need in their travels, as they would rather be safe than sorry.

Xue Wei used the storage ring he had gotten from the Moon Prince. It was the largest storage ring that they had, and he had given the one from the Crimson Sunshine Sect's disciple to Hei Gou and the one that contained the prizes from the tournament to Wang Xiaoyun.

Bai Tianyi had declined when he tried to give him one. He said that he had no need for storage treasures due to his nature as a sword spirit. He had his own sword spirit dimension that he could use should the need arrive.

The group walked through the Black Iron Fortress on their way to meet up with Wan Qiang at the designated meeting point, when they saw a beautiful ornate green jade hairpin. It was shaped like a blooming sunflower and looked like it was made of crystal.

Xue Wei stopped in his tracks and looked at the hairpin. ”This is beautiful,” he said before picking it up. Then he looked gently at Wang Xiaoyun and held it up to her hair.

”How much is this?” he asked the merchant, who was patiently waiting for said question.

”This is a very special hairpin,” the merchant began with a smile. Xue Wei knew he was trying to bring up the price, but he still heard him out. ”It was one that I purchased for my late wife. But you see, we do not have enough money so I can only sell it. I will let not let it go for less than one gold coin!”

One gold coin was a tremendous amount of wealth. Both for ordinary people, but also for the nobles when it came to something as simple as a jade ornament.

But Xue Wei did not hesitate and paid the one gold coin as he took the jade hairpin and gently went towards Wang Xiaoyun.

”May I?” he asked gently. With a blush creeping up on her face, Wang Xiaoyun nodded her head.