12 - Cultivating

As Xu Xin watched the girl get dragged off the arena, followed by a boy coming towards him, he thought about what he had just done.

It was a very rare ability included in techniques, and it was called shifting elements.

He was able to manipulate his icy inner energy with his watery inner energy and convert it into the watery inner energy, and then later change it back into ice.

In reality, he only actually had an inner energy halfway between ice and water within his body, but he was able to change the element to ice or water as he pleased, and that allowed him to have a whole new level of power.

In fact, the damage could be multiplied by almost five times if he did what he had just done, which was to send icy inner energy onto the surface of a person's body, change it into watery inner energy and let it seep into their body, and then freeze it to immobilize them.

This was a surprise attack, which was part of the reason it was so effective, but even if it wasn't, it was very hard to defend against.

The only way to stop it from happening would be to make sure that he couldn't hit an area he had already hit before, which was extremely hard to do against an opponent as skilled as him.

Xu Xin heard the cheers of some of the people in the crowd, but he just ignored them and started to leave, leaving the boy who was just about to fight against him disappointed.

However, there was nothing to be done, as Xu Xin had accomplished what he came here to do: learn. He had learned how to better use his inner energy, and he could now improve it even faster.

In reality, most people would break through to the second stage of the martial arts path after only about a month or so, and they could sometimes even reach the third stage before turning fifteen, and Xu Xin was already almost fifteen, meaning that he was far below average.

Each stage brought a fundamental change with it, and it got much harder to make progress.

The more experienced girl he had met in the arena was quite untalented, hence why she was still at the first stage despite being the same age as him, and the boy that went on before her was even more untalented, being one of the least talented people in the city.

The girl with the earth element inner energy was considered slightly above average in terms of talent, managing to reach the peak of the first rank at thirteen years old, meaning she would most likely manage to reach the third stage before turning fifteen.

But, as each stage was exponentially harder than the last, only actual talented kids could manage to break through to the fourth stage before turning fifteen, and each stage after that determined the level of the genius that they were.

For every ten people that broke through to a certain stage before fifteen, only one of them could break through to the stage above that at the same age.

This only changed at the seventh stage, where it changed to one in a hundred, meaning that Xu Xin's level of talent, in this continent, was one in a quadrillion, and there weren't that many people on the continent (this is a fictional world, so each continent has about 100 billion people (it's a really massive world)).

The world was absolutely massive, hence why it took him so ridiculously long to travel just between two kingdoms, let alone the total nine kingdoms.

He had gone about five thousand miles during his journey, and although he had been poisoned by the core crippling poison previously, he made up his progress after recovering.

It took more than two months total to reach the edge of this kingdom just from the core city of the other one, and he had only entered the inner city, not the actual main city yet.

During the first part of his journey, he constantly had to stop since he was so exhausted due to his lack of strength not being able to support his running all day, but once his body started to recover, he ran the whole day, and he was able to run about eighty miles in a day on average through the entire journey, with the first few weeks being the slowest by far.

The inner city was a place where the majority of the people in the kingdom lived, and it was absolutely massive, spanning almost to the border between the kingdoms.

In the very center of the inner city was the core city, where the royal palace rested, and it was the place that all of the high ranking officials stayed.

The Xiao kingdom was ranked around the middle of the nine kingdoms in terms of strength, and Xu Xin was merely a mutated genius who was the strongest genius in the continent despite coming from a middle ranked kingdom.

The Xiao kingdom was much smaller than the other kingdoms, but it had a higher average talent, leading it to have the same strength.

Meanwhile, the kingdom that he was in right now was more than twenty thousand miles in diameter, more than double that of the Xiao kingdom.

Previously, at the peak of his life, he would've been able to get between the kingdoms in only a day or two of travel, while it would take about a week by the royal carriage, showing just how much faster he was at his peak.

Normally, even someone at the fourth stage of the spirit realm wouldn't have been able to catch up with him, because he put extra emphasis on learning speed skills, meaning that the royal carriages that took them between the kingdoms were even faster than a stage three spirit realm cultivator, showing just the pure scale of the world.

Even Xia Yue, one of the captains of the army of this kingdom, was only at the third stage of the spirit realm, and her battle power in assassination could be compared to the fourth or possibly the fifth stage, but her other aspects were average, and overall, she was weaker than Xu Xin at his peak, especially in terms of speed, which he far outclassed her in.

All in all, she was fast enough that it would take her about two weeks to cross between the kingdoms, and about four weeks to cross from one core city to the other, and this was under the basis that she ran at full speed.

This was why she was still here; she hadn't gone back to the core city yet, and she had been challenged by the old man before she got the chance to go back, delaying her further.

But after seeing Xu Xin here, she didn't plan to go back without seeing his growth speed and trying to recruit him again. She actually felt lucky that the old man had challenged her, because it gave her the chance to try again to change Xu Xin's first impression of her.

By now, her disciple had already found her and reported that his name was Xu Xin, but she also didn't know any fallen genius of this name, so she figured it was a fake name.

Seeing that Xu Xin was leaving, she started to leave as well, following far behind him. He was aware that she was following him, but he didn't care too much.

He then soon got back to the place that he rented and went inside, and sure enough, a few minutes later, he heard a knock on the door.

Without hesitation, he called out, "Go away." He wasn't in the mood to meet her.

On the other side of the door, she was annoyed, but she knew that he had terrifying capabilities, and if he wanted to be left alone right now, it was better to leave him alone so as to form a better relationship with him in the future.

She was determined to get on his good side, but she had no idea how to do so since he kept refusing to even acknowledge her. Little did she know that, at his peak, she wasn't even as strong as he was.

She was considered a genius in assassination, reaching the third stage of the spirit realm at only twenty years old, but Xu Xin outclassed her by an absolutely ridiculous amount.

As Xu Xin was in his room, he quickly heard her walk away, and he was surprised that she didn't persist, but he didn't care that much.

As he thought about what he learned in the arena today, he realized that he had learned something he never had before.

Previously, the golden flames contained the elements of fire and metal, and it was able to shift between them, but the effects were completely different from that of ice and water, and he found that ice and water shifting was actually more useful and versatile.

Previously, he would be able to turn the golden flames into normal bright red flames that were much hotter than the golden flames or turn them into sharp spikes of golden metal that floated in the air that he controlled, and it was absolutely perfect for an unparalleled offense, but he only just now realized that it wasn't the best overall combination of the shifting of elements.

He also realized that, normally, one would only be able to shift between the elements by at least reaching the fifth to seventh stage of the martial arts path, and even a genius like him had previously only been able to shift between them at the third stage, but he was now able to shift between them right after breaking through.

He suddenly realized that something had fundamentally changed, whether it be the cultivation technique being better, or whether it be his reborn body, he didn't know, but it had brought a massive shift in his abilities.

The ability to shift between ice and water brought an opportunity for extreme defense and also immobilization, and although it didn't have strong offense, he would be able to lower his enemy's fighting power, essentially increasing his own, which he found extremely useful.

It could also allow him to be faster than his opponent, catch them off guard, and a whole bunch of other things, while the only thing the fire and metal elemental shift could do was attack with extreme power.

He figured that, if he played his cards right, he could currently fight against someone at the second stage of the martial arts path despite only having just broken through, which was only slightly below that of when he cultivated the first time.

But Xu Xin's mind quickly strayed from this though, and he started to cultivate, golden drops of qi condensing in the air and floating into his body.

He quickly started to make progress, and he suddenly found something odd.

His cultivation speed was absolutely insane, and he figured that he could break through to the second stage in less than a week, which was even faster than previously.

However, after thinking about it, he realized that it might be because he already had the experience of cultivating before, and it would be easier to cultivate back to that level no matter what element he cultivated.

But he quickly got back to cultivating, the golden drops of qi condensing at an even faster rate than before.

As they entered into his body, just like before, they were instantly changing into inner energy, and he felt his strength rise.

As time went on, he quickly completely filled his dantian back up with inner energy, replacing what he had lost in the fights, and he realized that he could actually recover his inner energy so fast that he might even be able to replace a portion of the inner energy he lost while still fighting.

He wasn't able to do such a thing even at his peak, which showed just how much things had changed for him.

As time went on, he continued to cultivate in peace, nothing else happening.

Meanwhile, tales of his oddities had already spread through this part of the city, and news that even the strongest people present took interest in him spread shortly after.

Most people felt that he didn't deserve this attention, but the very fact that the strongest people actually did pay attention to him showed that he likely did deserve this attention.

Three days later, the quality of Xu Xin's inner energy reached a limit, and he felt that he was at the peak of the first stage, which was just too fast. He was even suspicious if the speed at which he broke through was so fast that it would affect his foundation or not.

After all, when he broke through all those ranks the first time, it took at least two weeks to a month per rank, and it only started to significantly slow down after reaching the fifth rank.

However, he had just almost broken through in only three days, which was far faster than before, being more than four times as fast.

Then, just as the fourth day was about to end, Xu Xin started to break through, gathering a large amount of qi and smashing it into his dantian, filling it beyond what it could handle instead of just refining his inner energy.

Very soon, the inner energy within his dantian started to get extremely chaotic and shifted like waves in a rough sea.

It churned and boiled, seeming to be on the verge of bursting out of his dantian.

But still, Xu Xin continued to force more qi into his dantian, and eventually, it started to compress violently, forcing the inner energy within his dantian to change, not only condensing it, but raising the maximum quality of it and allowing his inner energy to reach a higher level.

And at the same time, the inner energy within his dantian suddenly exploded out of his dantian and into the rest of his body, changing his entire body.

The new level of quality in his inner energy changed his body, making him faster, stronger, and improved his senses.

He had successfully broken through to the second stage of the martial arts path.