Lightning flashed brightly, enough to blind anyone without the benefit of cultivation. In the distance, a mountain stood at nearly a quarter of its previous height, its top blasted out of existence by he power of a Neophyte.
Xiao Lee threw his hands up in frustration, his patience starting to fray. His fights with Bornie, embarrassing as they were, showed him a crucial issue he needed to deal with. Namely, his lack of firepower. It was rather pathetic, if he was being honest, but the biggest issue he had faced in those fights had been the lack of proper offensive techniques.
Perhaps it would be unreasonable to expect him to get through whatever defensive techniques someone like Bornie could get access to. Then again, he did not reach his current level by lowering his sights. He knew he would tolerate nothing but comparing himself with the best.
So he had decided to see if he could remedy the problem. His first step was to try to properly utilize the tools in his arsenal. While his current techniques were the peak of what he could get on Xenus, they were truly inadequate for handling his attuned lightning.
The main purpose of technique was to create effects that was greater than the sum of it’s base parts. His techniques used his qi to achieve effects that would have been impossible without. Yet they were built for regular lightning qi. The extensive testing he had done had actually shown him that he would bring more power to bear by simply calling his attuned lightning than using his current techniques.
There was also the matter of the High Concept’s echo he had gotten from the chicken. He had only realized how much he was missing when she explained just how much of a boon it could be for him. Of course it was wholly unusable with his what he currently had. Still, though it was something to look forward to, it would have to wait. Especially considering the complete lack of progress he was currently making.
He looked inwards once again, focusing on the concentrated gathering of attuned lightning that sat in his core. It’s wild crackling called to him, inviting him to unleash it’s deadly power onto the world. He pulled a single, thin strand from the mass, holding it firmly with his will. From there, he started threading the strand through his meridians, trying to figure out which meridians were optimal.
It was a drawn out process, and he had to painstakingly check each individual meridian. Even worse, the qi had to flow through the meridians in the proper order. If he sent it through his heart meridian and the next one was the lungs, choosing another one would cause the entire process to fail. It was a process that required lots of trial and error.
His issues did not end there, of course. He also had to thread the qi through his much smaller sub-meridians. They were much smaller and far more numerous than his normal meridians. Though they were present in all cultivators, most did not bother to interact with them. He was, unfortunately, a student of the Dragon Lord, and his master had been thorough. So his cultivation method required him to run qi through the entirety of those sub-meridians infusing even the most far flung part of his body with lightning.
Those tiny channels were not particularly receptive to the exceptionally powerful qi strand he was forcing through them. It had taken lots of practice and pain combined with expensive pills to make them receptive to his more powerful technique’s that required constant streams of thick lightning qi flowing through them. The new attuned lightning was vastly more powerful than the old one. Which meant, of course, that all his work was undone.
So when he, already dealing with the pain of strained sub-meridians, failed to pass the lightning through the proper sub meridian; his frustration only went up. Still, he had made some progress. He knew the pattern for his regular meridians. The sub-meridians would take more time, but he had also figured out a few of them. His raw channels had at least achieved something. At least that was how it looked when he did not set impossible standards for himself,
It didn’t make it less frustrating when the inevitable failure came though. Still, he pressed on, using memories of his fights with Bornie as motivation. When he resurfaced in the outside world a few hours later, even his regular meridians felt raw and he ached all over his body. The aches would linger for a few hours while his sub -meridians healed, something he had not experienced in a while. It was unfortunately, still just as inconvenient as he remembered.
He wanted to continue and likely could have spent days there but a small, reasonable part of him remembered that he had somewhere important to be the next day. Though he may not need to rest physically, the work he had done was draining to his mind. He could continue for days if he entered seclusion, but that would require him to shut himself off to the passage of time completely, something he could not exactly afford to do. There was also the matter of his raw channels.
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He wished he could have spent the past two days also working on the technique. It was not to be, alas. Though the information on the places they were going to visit was quite thorough, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not been satisfied with merely that. They had insisted on putting him through simulations that were modelled after what he could expect to find.
As he had come to expect from Lasvanian simulations, he could not spot anything that identified it as different from the world outside. The people also felt as real as any person he might meet in a ruler’s home.
Still, he could not complain too much about it. There were situations he had come across that made him thankful it was not real life. Actually experiencing something was also a much better method of preparation than simply using a mind packet.
With a few hours to spare till he needed to het ready, he decided to cultivate a little. He strictly controlled his qi intake, making sure the particles where small enough that they could pass through even his sub-meridians without stressing them.
The amount of qi he took using this method was far too small to actually make for any effective sort of cultivation in the long term, but that was not the point. The process of drawing in qi and cycling it in his dantian was soothing to him. It also served as a little practice for his fine control, and he could never get too much of that. Taking in qi in such quantities also helped the meridians heal slightly faster, though the difference was so miniscule as to be largely irrelevant.
When he finished cultivating, his mind felt rested and his sub-meridians largely healed. He would still feel slight aches if he cycled too much qi through them but they were fine for the most part.
He spent a few minutes indulging himself in the bath before putting on one of the new set of clothes the Foreign Ministry gave him for the job. Apparently, they wanted to make him represent Lasvania but still remind people that he was an ascendant.
The result of that was an interesting mix of the fashion styles of the Wu empire and Lasvania. The robes he wore had much less fabric, to the point where they were barely robes. He also wore trousers that were much more fitting that he was used, He thought it was not half-bad, but he didn’t particularly consider himself an expert on clothing.
That position was reserved for July. Lee had not even been surprised when the man mentioned his obsession with clothes. It was far from the strangest there was about him. He had given his approval after looking at it for a few minutes and Lee was willing to take his opinion at face value. He had also tuned the long and complicated explanation that followed.
He went downstairs to find an empty living room. Lisa had not come back since she left three days ago. He had no idea where she could have gone but he they needed to go together and their expected time of arrival was rapidly approaching. with nothing else to do, he called her with his neural processor.
It looked like she was not going to answer when her face suddenly appeared in front of him. He had to blink a few times when he saw her. If she had looked merely stressed last time, she was now a complete mess.
Her eyes were slightly red and her hair was sticking out in different directions. What looked like food stains smeared her lips. He didn’t even know it was possible for someone of her cultivation level to look that bad.
“Hello Lisa,” he greeted cautiously, not quite sure how to proceed. “I apologize if I interrupted something important.”
“You did not. I’m sure you’re calling to ask about our journey. I am aware of it. I will be there in a minute.”
She spoke in an emotionless monotone that was drier than anything he had heard from her before. A portal opened a minute later and Lisa stepped out looking completely different, thankfully.
She had clearly gone to clean up first. Her hair was properly straightened and her eyes were beck to their normal colour. There was barely a hint of the broken down mess that he saw just a short while ago. Not that it had disappeared completely though. There were still signs if you knew what to look for.
The frown that was even more pronounced that it usually was. The stony face and barely concealed hostility she seemed to radiate, and the way she almost seemed to force herself to move properly. He would not have noticed them without the senses his cultivation granted him and the fact that he had spent some time with her, but they were there regardless.
“I’m ready,” she said, then opened another portal and stepped through it immediately.
He followed after, unsure of what else to do. As much as he was worried about her, he did not have nearly enough courage to bring it up with her. She would tell him when the time was right for her. Or perhaps he was just a coward looking for justifications to take the easy route.
They arrived at the familiar reception of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after which they quickly made their way to their point of departure. Already waiting for them when they arrived was an Executor that he had only met the previous day.
It was a bald-headed, dark skinned man that was completely covered from his neck downward. Lee’s eyes slid off of the man if he tried to focus too much and just a brief probe with his senses convinced him of the fact that he was very dangerous.
He greeted the Executor, which earned him a grunt and a nod from the man. Lisa simply ignored him. A higher ranking official he didn’t recognize came over to give them the final briefing. It was mostly about things he already knew but he listened anyway.
The woman kept it short, something he was grateful for. Soon enough, she was finished with them and the long range portal was fired up, ready to take them halfway across the world in an instant. The Executor went through first and stayed for a few minutes before coming back to declare their passage safe.
Xiao Lee took a breath to steady himself, stared at Lisa with some amount of worry, then stepped through to the other side.