The next few days, Cao Yun kept on training as usual. Now that he could, he using his Seamless Qi Vortex to advance his Qi cultivation. But he was also going in the Howling Crane Gorge to try and consolidate even further his understanding of the Neck Star and of 'Stopping the Waves'. Occasionally, he even went to the martial art pavilion and trained under Chief Elder Baishen.
Recently, he was a bit more aggressive. Now that he had achieved a 3-star Earth rank in alchemy and a 2-star Earth rank in array formations, he was in no hurry to advance anymore. As long as he was a Mortal, the highest grade he could achieve was the 5-star Earth rank in both occupations. Thus, there was no point in going too fast. He decided to put his efforts into his martial arts, his Qi cultivation and kept on advancing steadily in his mind cultivation.
Every day, his Po cultivation was advancing by one repetition. In a month, he should be able to reach True Success and two months later, Perfection. Then he would finally start the last character of the first Layer of 'Sealing the Seven Demons in the Nine Peaks'. He was a bit impatient to know what the second layer would be like. There were four Layers in all and the first one had already brought him many benefits. His mind was similar to an early Spirit Warrior's mind, albeit without any spiritual senses.
In his Qi cultivation, the array formations allowed him to go a bit faster but not by much. After all, he was already very fast before. But even gaining one or two days by meridian could allow him to break through weeks earlier. And in the later stages, he could even save months. He was not just thinking of the Mortal realm, his goal was the Spirit Warrior realm. This was the realm of his parents' murderer and most likely of the demonic cultivator operating in the shadows within the Wubei Sect. Reaching such a level took decades and some cultivators never even reached it either because they lacked the talent, the time or the resources. Some were also injured during their cultivation.
The 'Universal Law of Immortality' was supposed to allow anyone to reach the highest point of the Spirit Warrior realm. However, not everyone was able to follow it. For some people, it took simply too much time by lack of talent or understanding. Some just lacked resources to speed up the process.
Cao Yun's father had reached the Spirit Warrior realm just prior to his death when he was 45. He had used thirty years of his life to get to this point. Cao Yun hoped he would achieve the same result a bit faster.
Finally, we had to talk about his martial arts. His spearmanship was becoming better than his swordsmanship. To be honest, he had not seriously trained his sword skills since his arrival in the Wubei Sect. Indeed, the only arts he knew with his sword were from the Cao family, including the 'Three Storms'. Fearing that he could be recognized by these, he was focusing on his 'Azure Dragon's Seven Piercing Stars'. Coincidentally, they both manipulated winds. But the 'Three Storms' could also manipulate thunder, water and ice, all the elements of the storms.
The 'Azure Dragon's Seven Piercing Stars' seemed to focus much more heavily on wind. But he only mastered two of the seven stars, the Horn Star and the Neck Star. By watching them frequently, Cao Yun was able to understand more and more about this martial art. Just watching theses stars in his sea of consciousness gave him the impression of admiring a dragon soaring in the sky. However, he could only see a small part of its neck and its head. And, the image was still extremely vague, he was more imagining than observing.
By using the star chart within the 'Azure Dragon's Seven Piercing Stars' manual, Cao Yun deduced where the third star should appear. For now, there was nothing much there but a frail white halo. According to what he was reading in the manual, this star should be linked to defense. The first star focused on stabbing with the spear, the second one pertained to the stances and their use to enhance your attacks and your moves. The third one seemed to contain the knowledge of defenses with the spear.
In order to train his defense, Cao Yun decided to keep training a bit within the Howling Crane Gorge. But this time, he did not try to fight off the gale with his spear or even move. No, this time, he stood there perfectly still and tried to resist the powerful gale with his own flesh. By using 'Forging the Fort' from 'Dance of Slaughter', his body could be hardened a bit. It wasn't as hard as the scales of a dragon, but the first and second levels of the gorge were no problem.
However, in the third level, the pain became much more intense. He had to simultaneously focus on circulating his Qi in his legs not to be blown away and in his body to strengthen his muscles. Thankfully, the weekly training of Chief Instructor Peng was very useful. The blows from the turtle tail not only tempered the vessels but also the muscles both superficial and profound. And then, the physical exercises gave even more resistance to the body.
Cao Yun also decided to train other parts of his body with the violent winds, exposing both his sides and his back to them.
The winds could strengthen and temper one's defense, but they were not perfect. In a fight, you would not be faced with a constant force but with several powerful spikes of force. So Cao Yun decided to go train his defense inside a new array formation in order to understand his third star.
The array formation he thought about was the Thousand Snakes Invade the Shell array formation. It was inside a building closer to the inner yard. This array formation's purpose was to send intense waves of pure energy from random directions. This way, martial artists could train their reflexes. But they could also work on dodging, on parrying, on blocking, on deflecting, some even worked on countering. To do so, they tried to match the intensity of the wave to cancel it.
Anyway, this array formation was less glutton in energy so Cao Yun could have access indefinitely given his number of merit points. Inside the building, there was a dozen of array formations and there were probably even more on the seven floors of the pagoda. Indeed, these array formations were pretty small so many of them could be accommodated inside a small space.
Cao Yun went toward an instructor and asked to use one of the array formations. The other disciples looked at him as he was a great attraction. There were some first-years as well. All were very interested to see what he was going to do inside the Thousand Snakes Invade the Shell array formation.
Stolen story; please report.
"Since it's your first time, I'll remind you of the rules. The Thousand Snakes Invade the Shell array formation has several levels of activation. The first one is more or less the strength of a 3rd-grade Mortal and the higher would be equal to a standard 6th-grade Mortal Warrior." He looked at the 2-star Earth array formation master emblem on Cao Yun's chest. "You should be able to adjust the level without help. Here is the layout of the array formation."
The instructor handed Cao Yun a small scroll. Just after taking it, he opened the scroll and memorized the array formation. There was a place called the Gate of Power. You could alter it a little to control the output of the array formation. Usually, the instructor would be necessary to adjust it himself. However, Cao Yun was competent enough to do it without assistance.
He gave the scroll back to the instructor. "Thank you, Instructor. I can indeed adjust it myself."
"Then, just use whatever array formation is available. You can have up to two hours daily."
Cao Yun went toward the nearest spot that was free on the first floor. He had some hesitation but he decided to begin with the lowest setting. The array formation was engraved in the ground but some spots could be changed either to maintain, activate or alter the array formation. After performing some changes, Cao Yun went inside the array formation.
As soon as he got in the middle, the array formation activated itself. Cao Yun focused all his senses and circulated his mind cultivation. He did not use his 'Shen Visualization' to determine the direction the waves of energy would come from. His goal was to strengthen his defense and grasp the concept of the third star. However, he also thought that training his reflexes was good. To do so, he would only rely on his senses and not try to predict in advance the direction of the attack.
The first wave hit him right in the chest. He almost did not flinch and realized that this power level was too low for him. Even without using 'Forging the Fort' he could sustain it without any injury. Still, he tried it out for four more waves when his interest declined.
Everyone around him knew that he was just testing the array formation now. What they wanted to know was up to which level he would go. They were convinced that he was going to train his dodging ability given that was what saved him during the fight with Luduo Bu. Strangely, he seemed to instead stay perfectly still.
Cao Yun was cautious, the Howling Crane Gorge had taught him that sometimes just upping the level a little could change drastically the result. The output was set on the power of a 4th-grade Mortal. Once again, he did not need any defense and only used his physical body. The pain was a bit higher, but nothing unbearable.
Then he tried the 5th-grade Mortal setting, which corresponded to his own cultivation. This time, the first wave hit him in the lower back. The force was greater and he had to move a bit forward as his back bent a little. It did not create any internal damage but he would have an bruise to show for it. For some time, he stayed in this level, using only his body, but quickly he shifted to using 'Forging the Fort'. When the Qi circulated in his body, his flesh became more rigid and the waves had almost no effect anymore.
He had to up the setting to 7th-grade Mortal to get the same result while circulating his martial arts. This time, he trained for half an hour. He was able to sustain the waves fairly easily but he used them to temper his reflexes while focusing on the position of the third star. This was still a white vapor up in the sky but he could feel the faint reaction of the star to be.
The people around lost interest because they understood that Cao Yun was just tempering his body and his reflexes. What they wanted to see was his martial arts. Still, they were surprised that he could resist a force equivalent to a 7th-grade Mortal. Even if he was a late 5th-grade Mortal, fighting two grades higher was very difficult. Mortal cultivators could more easily fight above their own grade because the Mortal realm was rather weak compared to the other ones. It wasn't rare to be able to fight two or three grades higher especially if you specialized in fighting and your opponent was an alchemist whose cultivation had been improved by pills.
But it was clear that Cao Yun could fight a martial artist two grades above him and that was a feat to be recognized. In the fight against Luduo Bu, he had won thanks to his speed, so people were wondering about the rest of his abilities. And clearly, he had not just focused on increasing his speed. His overall fighting ability was on par as well.
Finally, Cao Yun decided to stop his training. Although everyone had stopped looking at him, they realized this change and turned their attention toward him. Was he really just going to leave like that? Maybe the array formation did not have the effects he hoped for?
Cao Yun just left the array formation to fetch his 'Nine Chi Black Dragon Spear'. Then he got back on the platform and stayed at the 7th-grade Mortal setting. Using his spear, he blocked and parried every wave of energy while performing the techniques of the 'Azure Dragon's Seven Piercing Stars''s third star. Alternatively, he used the shaft, the tip or the butt of the spear to block the waves. He clearly felt the power of the strikes in his hands. And to stop his hands from shaking, he used a mix of 'Forging the Fort' and 'Slaughtering the Enemy' to create a counter vibration.
After several minutes, he realized once again that this setting was too low so he upped it to 8th-grade Mortal. The difference between 7th-grade and 8th-grade was pretty big compared to the other ones. And the gap between 8th-grade and 9th-grade would be even bigger.
Nonetheless, Cao Yun was still able to contend with this level of strength and people around were interested but no more. There was nothing to be shocked about. A weapon was meant to reduce the gap between two fighters, as were martial arts. And Cao Yun's martial art was known to be 1-star Human rank. However, it was stronger than that, this rank was due to how slow it was to master. But Cao Yun could literally see the stars in his sea of consciousness so he got much faster than anyone else. Even the creator of this martial art had been slower, since he had to derive all his understandings from nothing.
Cao Yun could both see the stars and use the manual which contained the knowledge of the creator. In fact, the stars that were shining in his sea of consciousness were the stars as the creator of this martial art saw them. Inside them, there was his knowledge.
Cao Yun kept on training at the 8th-grade Mortal setting. This array formation was very beneficial for his reflexes and he could vividly feel the third star starting to condense itself from his understanding of the martial art. Forming the third star could take months, but he was going to so in a matter of weeks. But then came the hard part, understanding the star itself. For that part, he would probably need a month or two. The fourth star would be almost as easy, but the last three ones would require much more time to forge and understand.
When his time was up, Cao Yun did not leave. He went to an empty space to meditate on his experience and observe the stars in his sea of consciousness. Other cultivators did the same, trying to better absorb what they had understood inside the array formation.