16 - Carriage

As Xu Xin cultivated, he realized that his progress had slowed down massively, though he wasn't surprised considering that his previous experience cultivating was about this fast.

As he peacefully cultivated, drops of golden qi floated into his body from the air around him, and it was simply magical to look at.

Within his body, those drops of qi automatically went directly to his dantian, and the moment they reached his dantian, instead of being converted into inner energy, they were used to merge into the existing inner energy, refining it and purging it of impurities.

Xu Xin was extremely familiar with this process, and it was the process of refining inner energy, which made it stronger.

Once the inner energy was strong enough, it would hit a limit, and you would then have to form massive amounts of inner energy, compressing it beyond what it should be able to handle, forcing it to condense and improve, and if you succeeded, you would have broken through to the next rank.

In this way, you always had an uncomfortable amount of inner energy within your body after you broke through, hence why Xu Xin went to the arena afterwards to get rid of that excess energy.

However, if one failed to break through, all the condensed inner energy within their body would rush out like the breaking of a dam, and it would flood your body with energy that it couldn't handle, not only hurting your body, but also damaging your dantian in the process.

Basically, if someone failed to break through, it was detrimental to their health, and would leave lasting or sometimes even permanent damage that was extremely difficult to recover from.

This was why people were so focused on getting stronger, because when they broke through, the stronger they were, the better chance they had to successfully break through.

Technically, someone extremely extremely talented could reach about the fifth or sixth stage without increasing the quality of their inner energy at all, but that would cause permanent loss in strength that they wouldn't want to have, so nobody ever did this.

But Xu Xin was someone who would cultivate until they reached the end of their potential before breaking through, and this was because he was just so unnaturally talented.

It only took him a short while to reach the absolute maximum quality of his inner energy while at the first stage, so he broke through quickly, but he wouldn't be able to do that again since he wanted to reach the maximum quality every single time.

This time, he felt that it would take a lot longer before he was able to break through, and this was because of the way cultivating worked. The further along the path of cultivation you got, the harder it was to progress, hence why 99.9% of people never reached the spirit realm in the entirety of the time they spent cultivating.

Previously, Xu Xin had enough talent and potential to reach the peak of the spirit realm, and perhaps he could even reach the realm above it, the realm that nobody on this continent had reached for the past thousand years.

The path of cultivation was basically infinite, and every known realm had nine stages, but there was inherently no limit on the number of realms, only a limit on the amount of talent a person could possess.

As time went on, Xu Xin found that his inner energy was slowly increasing in quality, and it was getting stronger and stronger, but he realized that it wasn't going as fast as he would like.

He also realized that he couldn't do some of the things that the ancient ice water technique suggested he would be able to do, meaning that his understanding of water and ice wasn't high enough, which surprised him.

Previously, he cultivated metal and fire, and he learned the opposites of them, and fire was the opposite of ice, which was just another form of water, so he had already learned quite a lot about the elements of ice and water.

But he now was finding that his understanding of them wasn't enough, which completely surprised him, as his understanding should be unmatched against those below the seventh stage of the martial arts path.

He didn't understand why this was the case, because even if this was an ancient technique, his understanding of ice and water should have already been enough to completely learn it, but he found that it wasn't enough.

One of these things that he should be able to do was form a thin layer of ice on top of his skin, like a barrier.

It wasn't just a barrier of inner energy, because he could already do that, but it was a layer of actual ice itself, but he found that he couldn't do this without immobilizing himself, which surprised him.

Another ability that he couldn't use currently was using the watery inner energy to constantly clean a wound and also heal it much much faster than normal, which was why he had let the girl's knife hit his arm.

The giant cut in his arm was currently already healing, but it wasn't healing as fast as the technique would suggest he could heal it.

It was currently only healing at the inherent healing speed of his body, which, although it was already incredibly fast, wasn't fast enough to satisfy him.

He had long ago taken out the knife from his arm, and he had actually done this at the arena, and the girl who he had knocked out to get it had already retrieved it.

Suddenly, in the middle of wondering about his situation, he heard a knock from the door, and without having to think about it, he knew who it was.

After a sigh of exasperation, he yelled out, "Come in!"

The door then opened, and in walked Xia Yue, with an annoyed look on her face.

"Do you know the position you put me in? My status as a captain is going to be reviewed because of you!"

She had a deadly tone as she yelled out. In reality, it wasn't nearly as bad as it sounded, but she was trying to use this opportunity of his inexperience in the laws in order to get more out of this interaction.

However, he obviously wouldn't care about this attempt to squeeze his value.

"There was nothing wrong with what you did, and your position won't be reviewed. He was abusing his power to attack a junior, so he got off easy in my opinion. Even if there is a review, just say that, and nothing will go wrong."

Xu Xin's calm voice instantly shattered her ideas of tricking him. What was more astonishing was that she hadn't even thought of it like this, and when she did, she realized that he was actually right, and that scared her.

This once again reminded her of the reason that she wanted to gain his favor, and she was instantly ashamed for acting like this.

However, she quickly recovered, and she spoke in a much calmer tone this time.

"While that may be, I still helped you, so please come with me this time. I can take you to the core city, where you can live up to your potential."

Xu Xin had already considered this before she had even arrived, because he knew what she was asking him to do.

She wanted to take him to the core city as her disciple, but he felt that she didn't have the right to be his master, considering that his master previously was the old scholar, someone at the peak of the spirit realm, while she was only at the third stage of the spirit realm.

He had already thought about this, and he knew that he would eventually go the core city anyway, but there would be less issues if he went with her.

"I'll go with you, but I won't be your disciple. The only help you provide me by taking me is getting into the core city easier, but that isn't enough to make me your disciple."

Her hopes were dashed by this comment, and she knew that there was no changing his mind, so she quickly started to think about it.

After all, whether he was her disciple or not, he was obviously an extremely terrifying person with unknown potential as a 'reborn' genius.

After thinking about it for a few moments, she finally agreed to his proposition. After all, he would still be associated with her and owe her for getting him there.

Nothing, however, could get him to allow himself to be her disciple, and she knew this from the look on his face, hence why she agreed.

After all, it wasn't that big of a loss since he would still owe her and have a good relationship with her.

Suddenly, Xu Xin stood up from sitting on the floor, and this was the first time that Xia Yue truly got a good look at him, and it was now that she realized that when she first met him, almost none of his hair was aquamarine, but now, she could clearly see the aquamarine roots and it was the same color as his eyes.

As she scanned over his body, she also suddenly saw that even a very very very small portion of his nails were aquamarine, which interested her. She had seen different colored eyes and hair, but never nails, which was something new.

She also realized that he contained the slight demeanor of a king, someone who looked down on the world while filled with strength and wisdom.

He was definitely not someone that could be looked down upon, and he was clearly very powerful before he had been crippled.

She was absolutely positive that he was a fallen genius, and she was planning to have the army get information on all the recent fallen geniuses across the continent.

She hadn't yet learned of Xiao Xin's fall, so she didn't even think that it could be him because she never imagined that he would fall in the first place.

After all, it was too recent, and news hadn't spread to this kingdom yet, which was part of the reason that Xiao Wei was here; he was here to tell the royal family of this kingdom to watch out for Xu Xin, because he was known to create miracles, and just to be safe, they didn't want him to have any chance to recover.

They didn't believe there was any chance that Xu Xin was able to recover, but it was better to be safe than sorry, and Xu Xin, if he recovered, would pose more of a threat to the Xiao kingdom than any enemies they had ever faced.

His threat by himself towards the kingdom was more than the entire blood order, which was already strong enough to contend against the entire continent alone.

Then, Xu Xin walked towards Xia Yue, clearly already ready to leave right now, and he only picked up a bag before walking out the door with her.

She then lead him to a place nearby, where Xu Xin saw a few people waiting, ready to depart.

It was clear that they had been waiting specifically for her in order to leave, and they were annoyed.

Xu Xin stared closely at who it was, and when he saw who it was, he barely restrained himself from exploding on the spot, because the person waiting was Xiao Wei, the person in this world who he hated the most.

However, no expression could be seen on Xu Xin's face, because he had already prepared himself to see Xiao Wei, because there was a chance that he would go with Xiao Wei on his way into the core city with Xia Yue.

Xu Xin seemed to calmly walk forward with Xia Yue, but in reality, he was using every bit of his willpower to not charge over and try to kill Xiao Wei right now.

Please read the author's note, it is important.