Chapter 67 – Training (2/2)

The stone sword did not reflect the sunlight, but as it slashed the stone spike, a gray flash suddenly appeared in the forest.

There was no metallic luster, but anyone who saw the sword would be able to feel an icy sharpness coming from it.

It had only been a few breath’s time since Shao Xuan set foot on the stone path.

Looking at the path behind him, Shao Xuan could see that there were many stone arrowheads, wooden needles and stone spikes lying on it, together with some shaking stakes and broken stones. One minute earlier it was just a quiet path with grass and bushes on the sides.

Shao Xuan looked up at some place nearby and asked, “How was I?”

“No good.” Old Ke sat on a piece of stone and said with a poker face.

Shao Xuan rubbed his head, “I feel the same.”

Old Ke didn’t have to say it, as Shao Xuan headed back to remove and clean up all the traps set along the path, whether triggered or not. Shao Xuan had to clear them all, or else other people from the tribe would be in danger when they walked on that path. There were also a few small holes in the ground, but they couldn’t be seen normally by people.

Everyday, Shao Xuan would follow this training routine, where Old Ke was responsible for setting the traps, and Shao Xuan ran through them.

That was a masochistic, abnormal training method, and someone with less willpower would have a nervous-breakdown easily. When one became too nervous, he would become neurotic and feel that there were traps everywhere.

In fact, Shao Xuan kind of had that feeling for the first two days. When they returned to the tribe, he would flinch at every little bit of sound. It was totally over the top, but he got better afterwards.

Old Ke had a feeling of relief as he stared at Shao Xuan, who was busy clearing out the traps. Initially, he was pretty worried about whether his training method would backfire on the kid. He planned to give him guidance after five days of training. But out of his expectation, Shao Xuan had already adapted himself to it before he needed to do anything.

In the beginning, Shao Xuan got wounded a lot, but soon he could narrowly dodge all the traps and keep himself safe. A little later, he could safely dodge all of them, while cutting down the connections among a few linked traps. All the changes happened in half a month!

It was far beyond Old Ke’s expectation, but he was afraid that Shao Xuan might become overconfident and proud, so he kept wearing his poker face all along, and ruthlessly criticized once he found a flaw.

Shao Xuan removed all the things on the path, and completely disassembled all the untriggered traps. He buried them all before he went over to Old Ke, and sat beside him for his comments.

In the eyes of Old Ke, the worst strategy to deal with all those traps was to take them head on. When you can dodge the danger, why not do so? Why force yourself to struggle so hard?

Certainly, according to Old Ke, when facing with traps, the experts would be able to find the best breaking point immediately, and use the least amount strength to break a series of traps. When finding the right breaking point of a linked trap, one could directly cut down the connections between the traps. While the greatest could use the other’s traps to their advantage!

The so called “Defeat the enemy without a battle” was saying the same thing. However, Shao Xuan still had a long way to go.

Unlike the experts mentioned by Old Ke, Shao Xuan couldn’t see through all the traps along the path, neither could he cut down the connections between serial traps every single time. Listening to Old Ke’s explanation every day, sometimes Shao Xuan would have thoughts that perhaps he was too slow at learning? Was he an idiot?

If Old Ke knew about Shao Xuan’s thoughts, he would be completely freaking out; others might not be able to do the same after training 150 days, while he was thinking about doing it faster?!

Some of Old Ke’s skills now were passed on from former generations. Some were more conservative on the art of traps, while others tried to be as sinister as possible. However, they had one thing in common, which was finding the right person and passing down all their skills to the apprentice, so as to pass on the skills to the next generation.

Old Ke looked up at the sky, cherishing his memory, “Back in my days, I went through all the things that you are experiencing now, however, I did better.”

“You were totally awesome.” Shao Xuan didn’t deliberately avoid the thing about Old Ke’s leg, for that would hurt his old pride. Since Old Ke had moved-on himself from the ancient injury, why should anyone else need to show him sympathy? Old Ke didn’t need that.

“How long did you take to become an extreme expert?” Shao Xuan asked curiously.