Liu Xing wanted to think that this sculptor was exaggerating, but he knew that an obsession could sometimes be unhealthy. He had heard the story of Van Gogh, who cut off his ear just to understand pain.
"Hmm, let's just ignore this page."
While that paragraph probably had a deeper meaning, Liu Xing just wanted to learn this free technique. Flipping the page, he can see a weird pattern spread across two pages. It looked like a painting of a single, narrow eye. Above the eye, he saw a sentence.
"To learn this technique, you need to accept this contract."
Seeing this, Liu Xing stopped running and observed the page.
"Contract?"
He had never heard of a technique with a contract before. Techniques usually involved specific cycling patterns, specific intent, and other things that could activate the technique. In fact, he had never heard of contracts in this world, but it wasn't impossible. Liu Xing believed there must be magical contracts that would ensure two people fulfilled their agreement.
Deciding to sit by the side of the road, Liu Xing turned to the third and fourth pages.
On the third page, there was a pretty long cycling pattern, but what caught his eye was on the next page. An illustration of a round gray shield with green gems in the center was drawn so well, it looked as if a real shield had been inserted into the page.
The next two pages showed a cycling pattern and an illustration of a turtle. This turtle's face was smiling, its eyes were green, and several gems dotted its gray body.
The last two pages of the book contained a cycling pattern and illustration of a girl. The girl was looking up, her face frowning as if she saw something unpleasant in the sky. Her robe was ornate, with a wave pattern on it. The illustration was gray, so there was no color in this statue, but if there were color in her robe, Liu Xing imagined her wearing a blue cultivator robe.
There was actually no information about what this technique would do after activation, but since the title was "Statue Summoning Technique," it must summon the statues like in the illustrations: a shield, a turtle, and a girl.
After memorizing the qi cycling pattern, Liu Xing tried the technique, but nothing happened, as if he had made a mistake. Trying several more times to verify he hadn't done the wrong pattern, Liu Xing realized that it felt incomplete. It was hard to describe, but it felt empty.
Returning to the second page, where the eye pattern spread across two pages, Liu Xing realized that this technique would never activate if he didn't accept the contract.
"Should I accept the contract or not?" Liu Xing muttered.
A contract was, after all, binding, and he didn't see what this contract was about. What if he accepted the contract, and it forced him to do something he didn't want, like sacrificing a baby every day?
Pinching his chin, Liu Xing thought for a moment. He needed to be stronger, and if accepting this contract could make him stronger, then he would accept it. There was a risk, but Liu Xing understood that sometimes he needed to embrace risk.
"All right, let's do it."
Liu Xing wondered how to accept the contract. For a moment, he thought about smearing a drop of blood in the center of the eye, but he decided to send qi into the book instead. When his qi touched the book, the book absorbed it greedily, and the eye pattern started shifting. It split into thousands of dots, each dot circling the page for several moments. Then, the dots reformed back into the illustration of an eye that spread across two pages, but there was a difference. The eye illustration was now fully completed, a realistic drawing of an eye. There was an eyebrow above the eye, and Liu Xing found it familiar.
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After several moments observing it, Liu Xing realized this was his own eye. As he realized this, Liu Xing felt a mental connection to the book, like his connection to his gun.
"All right, it seems the process is over."
Flipping the page, Liu Xing saw a cycling pattern that supposedly summoned a round shield. He went ahead and did the cycling pattern. He wanted to try summoning this shield first.
Since this technique wasn't lightning-based, there were many unfamiliar cycling patterns, but he had already memorized the cycling pattern to summon the girl, and there were some similarities in these two patterns.
Standing up and cycling his qi according to the pattern, Liu Xing willed the technique to activate when the cycling pattern was complete.
Suddenly, a round shield appeared right in front of him. The shield appeared in the air, and since nothing was holding it, it fell to the ground.
Liu Xing observed the gray shield on the ground. It was rather large, more than half a meter in diameter, with a giant green gem in the center. When Liu Xing touched the shield, he felt a smooth surface, as if he were touching the smoothest rock in the world.
Liu Xing flipped the shield and found the handle. Grabbing it, he lifted the shield, adjusted it, and tried to pose as if he were withstanding an attack.
"Hmm, there should be more to this shield."
He tried to send qi into the shield, but the qi bounced off as if the shield were just a rock. Liu Xing then tried to dismiss the shield and succeed. The process similar to how he dismissed his gun.
Next, Liu Xing opened the next page and memorized the cycling pattern of the turtle statue.
The statue appeared several meters in front of him. It was quite big, about the size of a polar bear. Its smile was friendly, as if it were the nicest being in the world.
Liu Xing tried to summon the statue of the girl, attempting to place her on top of the giant turtle. But to his surprise, when the girl's statue appeared, the turtle vanished.
Seeing this, he dismissed the girl statue and pinched his chin. It seemed he could only summon one statue at a time.
"All right, let's do one more experiment, and then I'll stop and focus on gathering treasures."
Before he got this Statue Summoning Technique, Liu Xing had found several shield techniques that could help him maneuver in the air, and since he now had a shield, perhaps he could use it as a stepping stone.
Liu Xing summoned his gun in his left hand and the shield in front of him. Before the shield fell to the ground, Liu Xing grabbed it. Then, he sent his qi to the gun, creating six bullets, and reabsorbed the qi and sending this pure qi to the shield.
Before, the qi had bounced off as if the shield rejected it, but with this pure qi, the shield absorbed it greedily. Soon, the green gem in the center of the shield shone brightly, and Liu Xing felt a mental connection to the shield, as if it had a mind of its own.
Liu Xing slowly released the shield from his hand, and to his surprise, it floated in the air, vibrating like a child happy to see its father.
Liu Xing grinned, his heart beating faster, excitement surging through him. He willed the shield to move, and like an obedient puppy, it floated away like a bubble carried by the wind.
Liu Xing jumped and landed on top of the floating shield. The shield buckled for a moment but then stabilized, still floating in the air.
Realizing what he had accomplished, Liu Xing started to chuckle.
"I'm flying!"
There were several methods of flying, and one of them was riding a sword. Some people used a shield, and it seemed that he, too, would use a shield.
He willed the shield to move, and it did indeed move. But it moved slowly, and Liu Xing felt like he was riding not a flying shield, but an elevator. Liu Xing willed the shield to speed up, and it started to vibrate as if to say it was already flying at top speed.
Realizing this shield couldn't fly fast, and instead with a speed like a crawling turtle, Liu Xing sighed.
Still, he wasn't too disappointed. After all, what he wanted was a technique like Air Steps, and while different, this shield could probably be used to maneuver in the sky.
"But how do I do it?"