Uehara was by the natural springs in the area a few kilometres south from the house. The carcass of a wild boar was in front of him, drained of blood. He wiped the blood off his lips and casually manipulated the water in front of him to enter his mouth and wash the aftertaste of the boar’s blood.
[I’m starting to require more amounts of blood than before. I need to find a tailed-beast soon.]
His eyes glowed red as he looked over in Chizuki’s direction. He abruptly shook his head.
[Not yet. She will need every ounce of energy if she wants to safely complete this training. Feeding on her prematurely will be detrimental to her progress. As for other humans, they taste even worse than beasts.]
He tapped his foot on the ground and a rusty iron sword emerged from it. He sat down in a lotus position. Putting the rusty sword in front of him, he began to focus. With the sound of the spring water, the gentle rustle of the leaves and the faint flutter of butterfly wings, Uehara formed a thin, sharp dragon claw on his finger and began inscribing on the rusted sword.
It was a training method his father had given him. By practicing on the uneven and flaky surface of the rusted sword, his control over chakra, his attention to detail and his fine wrist-control would be sharpened to a much higher degree than if he practiced on a new sword.
Drops of sweat fell on the ground as Uehara focused as much as he could to ignore the instability caused by the loose rusted particles. With his eyes closed, his control over chakra was such to the extent that no fluctuations of chakra could be seen or felt. The only thing that could be seen were unrecognisable script characters with sharp edges and deep engravings.
Minutes trickled by and Uehara’s hand steadily travelled from the hilt to the tip. He was about two-thirds done now and his progress until now was commendable. If inscription experts were to see him now, they would immediately cast aside all pretenses and worship him.
Ever since Volkarin began teaching Uehara, he had drilled into him the language of the surins, which resembled the language of the dragons, which was the foundation for some eastern languages. Since he had the blood of a surin inside him, it was much easier to learn the language and using his dragon claw, he could inscribe the characters in a free-flowing pattern.
Having studied the language of the surins and the dragons for four years now, he was very fluid in his writing. Unfortunately he can’t speak the words since he’s still too young. According to Volkarin, hearing him speak is the same as the incoherent babbles of a baby. Only when he reaches the end of his infancy stage in eighty-three-years’ time will he be able to form coherent words. Once he reaches a millennium in age, his words will advance to the point that he will be able to affect the surroundings just by speaking.
Unfortunately, he was still an infant. Although there’s no problem speaking normal languages, his larynx wasn’t developed enough to speak the languages of the ancient demon race. It was already amazing enough that he could write pure surinese that actually has a slight essence that can affect the world.
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Uehara was now inscribing the last character and when he lifted his clawed finger, the scripts shined a bright yellow colour. When the last character glowed, the script dimmed down. A smiled adorned Uehara’s face.
[I finally did it.]
He stood up and ignored his sweaty appearance. Grasping the sword firmly in his hand, he channeled his nature energy into it. Instantly, yellow lighting sparks crackled around the sword. The lighting crackles were so frequent, so strong, and so bright that the surroundings themselves appeared dimmer while the air grew heavier.
Withdrawing his nature energy, Uehara let out a satisfied “Hn” as the lighting decreased in frequency until it was nonexistent.
He was about to send it back into the ground when Chizuki appeared in front of him with her head lowered. Her appearance was haggered and sweaty as her clothes clung to her form.
“Yes, Chizuki?”
“Forgive my intrusion master but I am here for the continuation of my training.”
Uehara looked up at the sky and noticed it was sunrise.
[I need to improve my scripting speed.]
He gave her the sword.
“This is my rusty iron sword. Run your chakra through it.”
She did as she was told. When her chakra ran through it, a pale blue glow was emanated by the characters Uehara had scripted on the sword.
“You’re not using enough chakra. Increase it.”
With a slight wince, she increased the quantity of chakra she was pushing into the sword. Soon after, faint flickers of lightning crackled around the blade of the sword.
“Use more.”
She used more chakra. Her skin was already becoming pale and her hands were already trembling. Whenever she channeled her chakra, it always felt like she was pushing against an immovable mountain.
By now, the frequency of the crackles had increased but the damage the sword could do right now did not even exceed fifty volts of electricity.
“The reason why it is so hard for you even produce a spark is because you’re also pushing my chakra as well. Now, my chakra is purified and comes from nature itself while yours is stuck inside your body and produced inside your body, making it turbid, murky and low-quality. Now, the way to remedy that is for you to draw in chakra from nature itself and use it as a substitute. On a long enough time-scale, the quality of your chakra will be the same as that of nature itself. Although you’ve had my chakra in you for a while now, the quality of your chakra is only slightly above average.”
He took the sword from her.
“During the mornings, I’ll teach you how to draw in nature chakra and in the evenings, you’ll have to push out my nature chakra and my nature energy. As you advance further in your training, controlling your chakra will become instinctual. By then, it won’t even be hard for you to increase the quality of your chakra to nature level and in time, you’ll be able to draw in nature energy in an instant.”
A wisp of blue chakra flame formed on his finger.
“Sit down in the lotus position.”
“Yes master.”
When she sat down, Uehara pressed his finger on her stomach and instantly, Chizuki felt foreign chakra enter her.
“This is my most purest form of nature chakra. Focus on guiding it throughout your acupoints. I’ll be busy with something else so don’t fail. The mark will dissipate once sunset arrives.”
With that said, he vanished. When he landed on a tree branch a few dozen metres, he couldn’t help but look back at her. Watching her creased expressions and her tightly shut eyes, Uehara wanted to help her channel the nature chakra but held himself back.
[This is the most efficient way of getting stronger. She can bare a little pain.]
He vanished again, leaping across the tree branches. With his eyes growing yellow, a fierce determination arose on his face.
“It’s time I open the third path.”