Chapter 51: Benefits
Although he had enough time to avoid the squid’s attack, he didn’t. Three spears pierced his body, but Jiang Yue only gritted his teeth and ignored them.
"Human, have you given up?" The squid cackled.
It twisted one of the spears that were stuck in Jiang Yue’s thigh and suddenly pulled it out. Blood poured out like a fountain, and the surrounding beasts roared excitedly.
"You dare to covet my prey?"
The squid was not happy, and it swung its spears at the class one sea beasts.
However, Jiang Yue didn’t pay attention.
Instead, he took this time to accumulate momentum for the whip shadow art.
When the squid finally turned towards him, Jiang Yue swung his whip with all his remaining qi.
"Whip shadow art, third form."
Although he had been practising for many years, Jiang Yue was only confident in the first and second forms.
The third form consumed too much qi, and he couldn’t control it well.
However, he didn’t care about that at the moment.
Whatever form he used, the strike would consume all his remaining qi. After that, he would either escape or get killed.
If that was the case, he decided to unleash his strongest attack and hope that everything would work out.
When he swung his whip, every drop of qi in his body was consumed.
In return, the whip’s momentum was several times stronger than his previous attacks.
"Give up your resistance human."
Like before, the squid moved its spears to block the whip.
When the spears and whip impacted, a huge force rushed out.
The surrounding water was lifted up, and Jiang Yue flew backwards and into the array.
"You are too cunning." The squid roared in anger.
However, Jiang Yue couldn’t hear it because he was at the point of collapse.
His clothes were drenched in blood, and the open wounds were bleeding badly.
"I need to stop the bleeding and heal my injuries."
He removed three porcelain bottles from his storage bag and poured out one pill from each bottle.
’I should take a rejuvenation pill before I take the blood replenishing pill and the qi replenishing pill.’
After thinking that, he didn’t waste any time.
He swallowed one of the pills, and a moment later, warm liquid spread around his body.
Visible to the naked eye, the gaping holes on his body began to heal.
However, his internal organs were still in a terrible state and wouldn’t heal right away.
"This is a lesson."
He sat cross-legged and swallowed the other pills.
While he was refining the pills, his mind played out the fight with the class two squid.
He pictured the way that the squid moved and the way it wielded its weapons.
He recalled its reactions and his own reactions to them.
The more he thought about the fight, the more he realised his deficiencies.
When he broke through to the origin forging realm, all his physical attributes had more than doubled.
However, the fight had shown him that he was still lacking.
Although he was naturally fast and could traverse great distances in a short time, this speed could not be fully utilised in a fight.
This is because fighting required him to change directions in a matter of breaths.
If he wanted to take advantage of his speed, he would need to learn a movement art that specialised in agility.
Another weakness he noticed was that his defence was too weak.
This could be remedied by using defence artefacts and treasures, but Jiang Yue didn’t intend to be lazy.
In the end, treasures were external and could be lost or damaged during a fight.
If he wanted to be at ease, it was best to refine his body to prevent himself from being easily injured.
Agility and defence aside, Jiang Yue realised that his attack methods and combat experience were the most deficient.
Although he had killed many cultivators during missions, he rarely fought head-to-head with his targets.
Most of the time, he would use lullaby before beheading while his targets were under illusion.
After fighting the squid, he realised that he urgently needed to cultivate a few more attack arts.
’For now, what I need to do is focus on my recovery.’ He sighed and put the problems from his mind.
It took three days to heal his injuries and another day to replenish his blood. When his body was fully recovered, Jiang Yue began to replenish his qi.
He had just begun to cultivate when he noticed that his dantian had changed.
The change wasn’t large, but cultivators were sensitive to changes in their inner world.
’My qi ocean is a little wider...’
He sunk his consciousness in the qi ocean and spread it around to investigate the changes.
The more he checked, the more he realised that he wasn’t mistaken.
’Why though?’
When he broke through to the origin forging realm, he had formed a qi ocean.
However, the size of this ocean would only increase when he broke through the levels.
After he reached the ninth level of the origin forging realm, he thought the qi ocean would no longer expand.
However, his qi ocean had clearly expanded a little, which meant that his qi capacity had also increased a little.
’Is this because my qi was completely emptied when I fought the squid?’
Previously, Jiang Yue would retreat from the battlefield before his qi was completely emptied.
However, he had no chance to do that when he fought with the squid.
’If that’s the case, fighting with the squid brought more benefits than I expected.’
When he thought of this, excitement filled his heart.
If there was a chance to continue expanding his dantian, Jiang Yue didn’t want to miss it.
Although the increase was not a lot, the benefits of having a larger qi quantity could not be overstated.
In a fight with a cultivator of equal strength and means, the one who could hold out longer would win.
After coming to this realisation, Jiang Yue forced himself to calm down.
He cultivated for another hour, and when his qi was fully replenished, he immediately left his position and returned to the battlefield.
This time, he was not cautious.
Although he did not encounter the class two squid or other higher realm beasts, he fought until he exhausted all his qi before retreating within the array.
"I was right." He said happily.
Once again, his dantian had expanded a little.
Because he was paying close attention, he noticed that even his meridians had expanded a little.
’If I keep doing this, my dantian should expand by at least one point before the war ends.’
After thinking this, he couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
"Jiang Yue..." A voice called just as Jiang Yue was getting ready to return to the battlefield.
He turned around and saw a girl of the same age walking toward him.
"Are you happy because of the ranking?" She asked.
"Qin Junjun, you are also in the second legion?"
The young woman was Qin Junjun.
Jiang Yue and Yu Nianzhen had met her when they first arrived in the sect.
Although she had not entered the inner sect right away, she had broken through to the origin forging realm in the past five years and joined the third peak.
"Ranking?"
"You weren’t laughing because of the ranking? Why were you laughing so loudly?"
"I just remembered something." Jiang Yue was a little embarrassed, but he didn’t explain further.
"Is that so?"
"What about the ranking?"
"You are ranked ninety-eighth on the origin forging realm beast killing list." Qin Junjun explained.
Jiang Yue was a little surprised when he heard that.
There were tens of thousands of origin forging realm cultivators in the Sea Cloud Sect.
After taking four days to recover, he didn’t think his ranking would be in the top one thousand let alone the top one hundred.
However, when he thought about it, he realised that it made sense.
On the first day, he had used lullaby and whip shadows a few times. Because of that, he could kill hundreds of sea beasts at a time.
Fortunately, most disciples couldn’t kill many sea beasts at a time, which allowed his ranking to remain high.
"What about Nianzhen?"
Qin Junjun smiled when she heard the question.
Since she knew Jiang Yue, his first thought was always Yu Nianzhen, even when the other was in seclusion.
"Fellow disciple Yu is ranked sixth."
Jiang Yue was first proud and then competitive.
He was unlucky to run into a class two beast at the beginning of the war, but he wasn’t willing to fall behind.
He was about to excuse himself when he realised something.
"Where is the ranking?"
"I wondered why you needed me to tell your rank. Turns out that you don’t know how to check." She sighed.
Instead of answering, she placed her right palm on her forehead.
Clear qi poured out of the palm and entered the area between her eyebrows
Soon after, a golden light radiated from between her eyebrows and a list was projected in the air.
