With the double doors sliding open to let Lin Songmei and Yan Mingqing in, Han Youhong and Wang Taigang stood up, waving them over and welcoming them into the larger training room.
The room was a little larger than the one Songmei and Mingqing had dueled in the day before. Big enough to the point where the left side had a small resting area. A spotless, gleaming, metal table, couple of cushioned chairs, and some warm lights—fancy stuff really.
Watching Youhong wipe his sweat with one hand and eat some jelly with the other, Songmei raised an eyebrow while giving a wave, Youhong was really consistent as always. “Good morning you two, how have both of your mornings been?”
“Pretty ass,” Youhong grumbled, pulverizing another two lychee jellies in short succession. “I almost beat Taigang in our duel. Instead, I got a blazing fist to the stomach.”
“My morning, on the other hand, has been pretty good,” Taigang laughed as he stretched to keep himself loose. “I almost took a sparring blade to the neck, but managed to sock the hell out of my dark assailant with a sun fist.”
“Fun...” Songmei nodded with a chuckle while shaking her head, “So, what’s the plan? Are we just gonna talk about random stuff? Or uh... I don’t know. We’re a team now, yeah? So what do we have to do? And also what are our future plans?”
“Well,” Mingqing called out from the rest area, having set down some drinks. “I didn’t mention this while we were walking over, so I’ll just say it now to all of you. I was thinking we start by talking about our techniques, do some spars, then we can talk about future plans. Also, sometime in the middle we can order some food.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Taigang agreed, pushing himself off the ground. “Want us to demonstrate our techniques while we do it or just verbally describe them?”
“Let’s do both, no point in not doing both,” Youhong shrugged in, his mild grudge being assuaged by the copious amounts of lychee jelly. “Not like anyone here is lacking in Qi, we’re all four meridian cultivators after only a couple months of cultivating.”
That was true, even if Songmei hated some of the more annoying parts of cultivating, it had really only been a couple months. As a quartet, their progress was really blood-vomit worthy. Heaven-defying even.
Well, also, no point in mentioning that she had already opened up her fifth meridian... that could be a fun thing to surprise Taigang and Youhong with later.
... Songmei, for one, was looking forward to it, she could smell the saltiness already—along with the uncountable number of lychee jellies about to be slaughtered by Youhong.
“I'll start us off then,” Taigang offered, doing some light squats and walking to the center of the tan colored training area. “Because I cultivate an extreme-yang, heliocentric art, my main technique is just infusing my body parts with yang-energy. Once I get to a higher realm, I’ll be able to apply it to my entire body all at once, but for now, just a limb at max.”
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Clenching his fist, a blinding golden light began to radiate from inside Taigang’s hand as his skin seemed to become a metallic gold. “While using this technique, I get a boost in strength, so it functions as a second body strengthening technique. Additionally, it ups my durability, which also does make my hits hit harder.”
Of course, another person with some monstrous body strengthening. What kind of cultivation arts are being peddled around these days?? Songmei herself had an above-average body strengthening technique; yet, compared to Mingqing and Taigang, her technique might as well have been a hamster equipping itself with a toothpick to go against another hamster equipping itself with a MK900 electromagnetic nuclear plasma blast-railgun.
Mingqing had her bs technique that Songmei felt was times TEN strength, times TEN speed, for what was apparently no Qi. Now, as Taigang explained the specifics of his main body strengthening technique combined with the bonus his yang-energy strengthening gave, Songmei wanted to just... curl up.
She really needed to find some mega-ultra speed boost techniques to run away from these people during duels...
“Sadly, because of the way my art is structured,” Taigang lamented with a shrug, “I don’t have many other techniques at the moment. I do have some light fire ones, but at my current level, they don’t go far beyond the level of a lighter. In the future, I will be able to match up to most fire cultivators though with balls of sunfire.”
“So you’re going to start throwing balls of literal sun at people?” Youhong asked with a light laugh that seemed to hold a touch of incredulity.
“Pretty much,” Taigang agreed, spreading his arms out wide while letting the yang-energy diffuse its way out of his arms. “I’m going to be honest though, my current fighting capability is on the lower end. Only after passing through the opening meridians stage will it really start to show its true worth.”
Finishing his very short explanation of his techniques, Taigang sat down at the table, grabbing one of the drinks Mingqing had set out with a small thank you.
Getting tagged to go next, Youhong brushed his loose black hair out from in front of his face. Blinking his red eyes to alertness, Youhong couldn’t help but mutter, “‘my fighting capability is on the lower end’ my ass,” just loud enough for everyone else to hear.
With a few light stomps to get some dust off his shoes, Youhong pulled out his two chainblades, twirling them a little before handing them over to the others to take a look. Gleaming under the bright lights of the training room, Mingqing, Songmei, and Taigang all held them with light hands, careful fingers, and wide eyes.
They were really maintained well, the metal that made up the blades had a faint blue-silver hue, the handles were jet-black with some red-highlights, and the chain that connected the two blades was thin to an almost invisible degree.
“That’s my main weapon, don’t cut yourself on it, since it has properties that keep a wound open for longer.” Youhong explained, gathering Qi in his hands. “As you can see, though I cultivate selenocentric art, my Qi is a smoke-ish black.”
Playing with the wispy Qi, Youhong shrugged, guiding it to float around. “To be perfectly honest, not totally sure why it's like that, but I think it might be because I cultivate stealth related things? My master knows, but since he’s decided to be annoying, he just prances around and tells me to ~figure it out myself~”
Seeing Youhong emulate his own master to an almost uncanny degree, Songmei and Mingqing couldn’t help but turn away and bite their lips, suppressing the urge to laugh while Taigang just broke down laughing outright.
His fist clenched, pulling the Qi back into his body, Youhong took the chain blades back before letting out a long sigh. “Prepare for a long one, because unlike Taigang, the list of moves I have goes on... for a while.”