In the morning, as the sky turned bright following the rising sun from the east that shines the dark region of the world. The melody of the birds chirping and rooster’s morning squawking filled the Cloud Hands City’s Mansion.

Inside the room, where Chen Yun was staying at was sleeping soundly.

“Urghh” Chen Yun uttered, as he stretches his body. Later on, he opens his eyes with the smile on his face because of last night’s breakthrough. He quickly stood up from his bed and unhurriedly walks out from his room.

When some servants saw him they greeted him respectfully and they always call him “Young Master”, making him a little uncomfortable but he still replied them courteously. The servants a bit puzzled of his replies toward their greetings, but they don’t mind being replied by him sincerely. His route for today is the same like yesterday, the training area. He wants to try out the newly reached Stage the Forming Stage from the Cloud Hands Art which he happened to breakthrough last night. However, the Forming Stage greatly drains his elemental energy making him quickly collapsed when he created the shape of the sword last night it doesn’t mean that he can’t last long, because in the first place when he attempted to have a breakthrough, his elemental energy reserves in his dantian was only 20% without the cost process in forming the sword that greatly depleted him dry but it will not be going to happen again because he had understood the essence of the Forming stage.

When he reached in the training area, he didn’t see any person that was training and it seems like he was the only one practicing this area making him felt puzzled. While he was puzzled he didn’t mind having any companion because it is better to be alone in order not to be distracted. Chen Yun quickly does his warm-ups before he proceeded his daily training. Placing his two hands vertically, he then flicks his hands and a two swirling tornado-like fog were circling in his both hands. Then he continued on the second stage, the Forming stage. Like as usual his two hands slowly revolved around the two swirling fogs, merging and turning into a spherically shaped entity. His two hands slowly increase its pace as the time ticks. This goes on and on like eternity yet not.

5 seconds had passed…

Still, his hands were constantly increased its speed every second in revolving around the sphere-shaped fog.

30 seconds…

1 minute…

3 minutes…

Shing!

5 minutes had already passed before he had successfully formed the sword-shaped fog.

He looked at the sword that was made up of fog in front of him; the form of the sword was a bit crude even with his great effort it turns out as if it was rushed by the blacksmith in forging the sword. Still, he was happy because he only finished turning the spherical fog into a sword-shape fog. The draining capability of the Forming stage was great, making Chen Yun could only shake his head helplessly without knowing what to do. He can only last for 10 seconds if he keeps maintaining the shape of the sword! He can’t even maintain it much longer how much more attempting on moving it. A very steep price will be paid if he will truly maintain it continuously. When he finished looking at the sword, his reserves in his dantian was already at 50% left!

A monstrous martial technique! A monstrous fast draining technique!

He quickly stopped channeling his elemental energy towards the technique and speedily sits on the floor at the same place, and then he contemplated on his recent experience about the second stage of the Cloud Hands Art, the Forming stage. In his understanding, when he was at the ‘revolving’ phase, 20% of his elemental energy reserved was used during the process while the first stage was only used 5%. When he reached this conclusion he quickly realized that he needs to optimize the ‘revolving’ process more quickly and efficiently so that it can save him more elemental energy to be reserved in a longer fight. He wants to reduce the process at least 5% in order to balance it to the first stage which is the Evaporation stage.

With no further ado, he stood up and do the same process of executing the Evaporation stage and the process in Forming stage which he called ‘revolving phase’. Every time he succeeded in transforming the spherical fog and reached the Forming stage he quickly stopped the Cloud Hands Art preserving his remaining elemental energy reserves. Still, he only lasted for 3 attempts before he almost used up all his elemental energy reserves in his dantian.

Without no way on continuing his training, he quietly left the training area and early walked towards his mother’s courtyard. As he was walking towards his mother’s courtyard, in a faraway place distanced by millions of miles from the Cloud Hands City in the central region of the continent where all City Lords was now gathering, in the Lofty Clouded Mountain.

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In the central location of the Lofty Clouded Mountain, stood a great mansion that is bigger than the Cloud Hands City Mansion putting it into shame if this mansion was compared to other City Mansion in South Cloud Continent.

Inside the mansion, a place where a conference was held at the atmosphere was a bit dignified and heavy. There was a roundtable at the center and it was 100 diameters, on the sides of the circular table was placed extravagant chairs that only a high officials can afford. The chair was nine in total and in each chair was set upon by the City Lords. They were the City Lord of Moon Howling city, City Lord of Blazing Spear city, City Lord of Cloud Hands city, City Lord Sundering Sword city, City Lord Frozen Edge city, City Lords Desolate Desert city, City Lords Demonic Beast Mountain, City Lord Death Grave city, and the Lofty Clouded Mountain. The name of each City Lord was respectively rank being the first to be called the lowest and the last as the strongest, but it was unofficially ranked by the citizens.

“Hey old man Chen, why are you feeling upset recently and even today when we are on the last day of our 100-year conference?” someone said besides the Cloud Hands City’s City Lord Chen Zhifang. The man who called him was the Blazing Spear City’s City Lord Mo Chisheng. His brows were a bit bushy yet flaming red in color and were like lifelike flames were on his brows, his hair was also in flaming red in color, his beard with the same beard style like dwarves was flaming red in color but he was not the same height like a dwarf. In contrast, his height was much two heads taller than an average person’s height looking him like a giant with his blazing aura that might burn a tiny person’s life but he didn’t dare flaunt it here because the people who were gathering here in this meeting hall was the strongest and the ruler of their respective city.

Chen Zhifang let out a long sigh as he helplessly looked his old friend Mo Chisheng and darkly replied, “My son got an accident and I don’t know what has happened to him after he fell from the roof of my mansion.”

“What! Your mansion should be at least 1000 meters in height! There’s no one who can ever live up in that state even he use all his elemental energy just to protect his body from the impact, and it was more disastrous as your son was only at the peak of Mortal Realm….” Mo Chisheng quickly answered while blabbering trivial things concerning about health and ways how to preserve life from dangers that only the Cloud Hands City’s City Lord would know that most of it were nonsense. Their conversation and understanding with each of their personalities indicate how close they were to each other. Truthfully said, the Cloud Hands City and Blazing Spear City distance were shorter than the other neighboring city.

“Yes, I know that too. I hope my son survive this calamity or else… I can’t forgive myself for neglecting my son.” Chen Zhifang emotionally said. His features were cool as the clouds with his brows like sword dyed with the color of white, his white hair that reaches to his shoulder was so attracting as each strand emit a silvery glow when exposed to the light making him a celestial being, the onlookers may see him as a celestial being but with an addition of words, ‘Celestial Fatty’ because of his body being a fat man, his belly was big that even his waist was not seen as it was covered by his thick fats. If Chen Yun ever saw his father, he may possibly think how his father did the deed with his fragile looking mother which was like a flower in the lone mountain where the passing mountain winds might blow the delicate flower on top of the mountain.

“Sigh, let’s hope that Yun’er is safe, but for now, let’s hear the discussion about the upcoming 100 Year Battle Arena,” Mo Zhifeng said as he urges his old friend to divert his attention towards their discussion as a leeway of his frustration.

…..

Chen Yun and his mother were eating merrily as his mother was talking about the stories of his mother and father when they were young. Its all about their journeys together around the world before his father had become the City Lord of the Cloud Hands City. After accompanying his mother for a long while, he bid his farewell and excused himself that he wants to continue his training.

When he left the courtyard of his mother, he walked towards his room because he realized that the recovery of his elemental energy was so slow that it only recovered 10% of his initial peak condition. Thinking about this makes him thought to himself that this will not do any good because he only trains for just half an hour before his elemental energy reserves were depleted so he needs to find a way to quickly return to his peak condition in order for him to train again.

Inside his room, he was sitting cross-legged and forming random hand sign with his hands. As he was scanning in the memory fragments he stumbled upon a technique called Minor Gathering technique, which tackles about the gathering of elemental energy and stores it into the dantian of a practitioner. Though it only increases his normal recovery by 10%, it is way better than waiting for his energy to reach the peak, making him feel bored like shit on his bed.

As he was executing the Minor Gathering technique, the surrounding has turned into a magnetic field in 2 meters radius as Chen Yun at the center. The magnetic field was the effect when activating the Minor Gather Technique; it siphons the elemental energy of the surrounding area and a hazy elemental energy will slowly form from the outside of the magnetic field like clouds covering the field, before it passes the boundary of the magnetic field, it will turn into different colors of strands and slowly moved toward the center where Chen Yun is at.

When the different colors touched the skin of his body, like a sinkhole, it was absorbed. Inside his body, the strands which were recently drilled inside his skin were slowly circulating in his meridians and slowly moved towards his dantian and gathered there. The first strand of elemental energy entered his dantian; it suddenly dissipates and turned into a fog as it varies each color with its strands of elemental energy. He was slightly puzzled why the elemental energy has different colors. When he gathered it rather than letting his dantian recover his used up elemental energy, and the color of the non-self-gathered elemental energy was white in color.