10 - Ice and Arena

As Xu Xin started to look around the room, he realized that there were only a few books here with techniques in them, but they were all of extremely high quality, about the same quality as the majority of those techniques of the Xiao royal family.

He was quite impressed with these techniques, but he didn't find many suitable for him, as the majority were of the element of earth, which he knew next to nothing about.

Just as he was about to ask her what else she had, a small blue book caught his attention. It didn't seem to contain any qi, but it was put up with all the others, meaning that it was something special.

He then picked it up and looked inside, only to see writing in an ancient language. He was instantly shocked when he saw it, because not only could he read it, but it also was something that he had seen before.

Back at the Xiao castle, there was a page written in the same language as this book in the family vault, and nobody knew how ancient it was, because it was written in a language that hadn't been used for thousands upon thousands of years.

The only reason he knew the language was because of an ancient scholar in the Xiao kingdom, who loved to research things from ages past. The scholar himself was over a hundred years old, showing that his knowledge was something that others couldn't compare to.

Xu Xin could read it, but he didn't expect to find something like this here.

"I'll take this book. Nobody can read it in this kingdom, so you have no use for it. I've always been excellent at deciphering ancient languages, so I'll tell you if I can figure it out."

Xu Xin spoke calmly and collectedly, hiding the value of this book. After all, not everything that was ancient was good, and not everything written in an ancient language was valuable.

He only hid the value of it because he knew what it was, and he was worried that if she knew the true value, she might not give it to him.

In reality, it wasn't a super powerful technique, he could see that just based on the first page, but the ancient techniques always were more profound for their level, meaning that its level didn't correspond to its strength like most techniques.

This was because it was a book from the black lotus empire, and empire that ruled thousands of years ago, but had become all but lost now.

He had no clue what was in this book, but he knew from the first page he had read that it was of the water and ice elements, which suited him currently.

He previously focused on fire and metal, but he also made it a point to learn about the opposite elements so that he wouldn't be so countered by them.

This meant that he learned about water and ice, which meant that he could learn this book easier, and on top of that, it was an ancient book which he didn't know the grade of.

Whether it was a low or high grade, it didn't matter, because it was ancient and bound to have many many years of knowledge that went into making it.

This current era was only a shadow of the eras past, and the era of the Black Lotus Empire had some of the best techniques in the history of the continent, and the average technique from then was on the same level as a technique a level or even two or three above it nowadays.

As such, he lied about its value to the old woman, and although he would certainly pay her back for it in the future, he didn't have the ability to do so now and he needed to translate it since he didn't know what it said anyways.

He didn't even know its value currently, he just wanted it because it was an ancient technique and it suited him anyways.

The old woman was suspicious that he knew something about it, but if he did, then that just gave her more reason to give it to him, because, letting him have something that he knew something about but nobody else did, it would give her major benefits in the future.

Therefore, she simply signaled him to leave with the book after giving him a specific box to put it in so that it wouldn't get damaged. After all, it was an ancient book, and there would be no replacing it if it got damaged.

He then left, wondering about how she had come upon this book. Even if they weren't extremely precious, they were astonishingly rare, such that only a page or two would be found intact every year, but there was a whole book now?

He then went around the market some more, looking for techniques of the water or ice elements since he had decided to use this ancient book as his base.

Since he had gotten something quite good unexpectedly, he lowered his standards and just got some average water or ice techniques that caught his interest.

Then, going back to the place he rented temporarily, he took out the book from his bag and put it on the table, looking at it.

Opening it up, he got a whiff of timeworn dust. It was clear that this book hadn't been opened in a long long time, likely because the old woman had given up finding someone to translate it after a while.

He then scanned over it, looking at the ancient text. It was partially worn away, but still legible.

He then mumbled some of the lines in the ancient language it was written in, deciphering it in his mind.

He spoke several ancient languages, and that just happened to include the language of the black lotus empire. He spoke more than ten languages, three of which were ancient and no longer used.

Most people wouldn't be able to even learn three languages in their life, but he had learned more than ten by the age of fourteen, showing his terrifying intelligence.

He had learned almost all of them from the same scholar who taught him the black lotus empire language, and he was almost completely fluent in all of them. For this reason, he was often used as a translator in negotiations between them and hostile countries who used another language.

As he read, he slowly deciphered what it mean, reading ancient words from a time long forgotten.

After a little while, he deciphered the first page. Then the second, and then the third, and so on.

After a total of about fifteen hours, he managed to completely translate the book, and although he didn't write it down, he started to memorize it. After all, ancient techniques were too dangerous to write down lest they fall into the wrong hands.

This was also the reason why when he was translating he spoke in the black lotus empire language; because, just in case somebody was listening to him speak, they wouldn't learn what he was saying.

Finally, after translating the entire thing, he started to go over it again and again, memorizing the entire thing.

He realized that this book wasn't of super high strength, but its profundity surpassed most of the techniques he knew, and it would be an extremely solid base to cultivate with. In fact, he could apply its theories to stronger techniques to make them better and more stable.

It was like building the foundation of a house out of concrete instead of just building the house right there. It made it much easier to add onto the house later and would also make it last longer while being more stable.

After translating it and memorizing it, he put the book back into the box and fell asleep. After all, it was completely exhausting translating something in an ancient language that he had next to no practice in.

When he woke up in the morning, he started to practice the basic level of the technique.

Instantly, the inner energy within his body started to change, and it quickly started to get cold within his dantian. His entire body got colder as the inner energy seemed to turn to flowing ice.

He was astounded at how fast it was changing, because this process would normally take quite a long time. However, since all it did was help him, he didn't question it.

As he messed around with the inner energy, he quickly circulated it around his body using one of the techniques he had gotten in the market, and he felt the cold inner energy gather in his fist, just below the surface, and he punched a punching bag that he had in the room, and a small patch of frost was left behind on it.

He was surprised at the instant effectiveness of it, and he wondered why it was so strong.

As time went on, he got more and more familiar with it, and he found that he was able to make a thin layer of ice on top of the punching bag, but that was because it was a punching bag.

With a person, it would depend on how strong their inner energy was for how much of an effect it had. Also, human bodies were warm, which would diminish the effects of the ice.

He then started to slow down on his progress, and he knew it was because he had only just broken through and needed to get stronger, but he decided to hold out on cultivating for now.

Instead of cultivating, he went to the arena. Every city had an arena, and it was a place for people to make themselves known and fight others in order to get more experienced and stronger.

As he got closer to the arena, he heard the sound of cheers coming from within, and the sound of fighting. It turned out that two spirit realm cultivators were fighting right now, and they were shaking the entire arena as they fought.

As he went in, he saw two people fighting, one of them being an old man and the other, unexpectedly, being the archer who he had met on the way to the city.

The old man then yelled out, "Xia Yue! You cannot win this fight! Give up and save yourself the humiliation!!!" He spoke confidently as he pushed her back. They were currently in close combat, since if she used her bow, people would accuse her of cheating.

Xu Xin felt that this was snobby, because the old man was essentially challenging her and not letting her use the thing that she was best at in the fight. In fact, Xu Xin estimated that, if this was a life and death fight, she might have already killed him multiple times.

"You challenged a captain of the army! There is only one way this can go, and it ends with you losing!!!" She retorted, with a solemn expression, but with confidence in her voice.

However, Xu Xin could see that, just from these couple seconds of the fight that he had seen, she would lose if things continued like they were. And it was obvious to him that this was a fight for the position of the captain of the army.

Suddenly, Xia Yue backed up and pulled out her bow, instantly filling it with the silver inner breath of the spirit realm, while doing the same with an arrow as she nocked in into the bow.

"Or did you forget that I'm an assassin and don't specialize in close combat? I think that it's cheating to force me into close combat, isn't it?" Her voice rang out with craftiness along with a creepy giggle.

Then, she instantly shot the old man with the bow, and he put in all his strength into blocking it, but the arrow still managed to break through his defense, sticking into his chest.

She then shot another arrow, while he started to charge towards her, and it also stuck into his chest.

By the time he reached her, he had arrows in every limb, and he had lost quite a bit of his fighting power.

Then, Xia Yue charged at him and punched out, using every bit of inner breath she had in one hit, and the old man was thrown back and into a wall, and it was obvious that he was defeated.

Some people were annoyed that she used ranged attacks against someone who didn't have any way to attack at a range, but once they thought about it, her words were right, and it was also just as unfair to force someone who specialized in ranged attacks into a close combat fight.

Through this reasoning, both sides of the fight had had an unfair advantage at some point in the fight, therefore it could be considered to be fair. This meant that Xia Yue had fairly won the fight.

A lot of people were angry with her, but it didn't matter since the majority was on her side.

It was at this moment that Xu Xin went over to the fighters area and offered to fight next. Not many people had reacted to the fight being over yet, so he got the spot in the next fight.

As soon as Xia Yue was leaving the arena and the old man was taken out, Xu Xin went out, and just as Xia Yue was about to leave, she saw him, and instantly decided to stay behind.

She did this not only because of the fact that it was him, but also because she noticed that he had already broken through to the first stage of the martial arts path.

As Xu Xin walked out, many people decided to mock him for going on after such an exhilarating fight, but Xia Yue instantly decided to stay behind, and she bet a lot of money for him to win.

Then, another boy went out into the arena, looking for an easy win, and the fight quickly started.

This boy was very untalented and was weak among those his age, so, seeing someone weaker than him, he couldn't resist the chance to humiliate someone weaker than him.

However, the moment the boy reached Xu Xin, he reached out, and faster than he could react, Xu Xin stabbed out with his fingers and hit a spot on his arm, instantly making the arm not only fall limp, but there was even a spot of aquamarine frost on his arm.

The boy instantly screamed out in pain as he stumbled backwards, wondering what was wrong with his arm.

However, before he had the chance to do anything else, Xu Xin punched out, his fist lightly glowing in the same aquamarine color as the drop of blood in his body.

Then, the boy was thrown back as his chest suddenly had a chunk of thin frost appear on it. He fell to the ground and instantly admitted defeat before Xu Xin could approach him again.