Chapter 22- [Swift Storm's Encore]

After yesterday's little yet quite depressing journey, Long Ren decided to take today's day off of cultivation and start learning his new martial arts. [Swift Storm's Encore]

[Swift Storm's Encore] is a martial art that focuses on moving the user's body in such a way that allows the user to utilize every single muscle on their body to increase their speed and flexibility.

It is more so a defensive martial arts more than anything as it mainly focuses on running away as well as dodging and only attacking after finding a good opportunity.

Its techniques are way less aggressive than Long Ren would like to be as a CQC option, but he could always adjust his usage of the style whenever he wanted.

The martial arts divided itself into three books, each having three parts in it. The first book mainly focuses on the user's lower body, increasing their movement speed and flexibility.

The second book further improves upon the first book while also touching upon the upper body, increasing its flexibility to give the ability to do strange but effective movements.

The third book takes what the other books teach and conjoined them together, further improving upon them and teaching how to further utilize them in the most unorthodox ways.

(A/N: if you haven't noticed it by now, I know jack shit about CQC nor Martial arts, or anything really in general, so…yeah >:3)

At least, that's what Long Ren got from the three books after 2 hours of reading. He's never learned martial arts in his previous life before, and while Xing Lao did teach him some techniques while sparring, it was never the full set.

So, he didn't really know whether this book is considered good or not, but if its stored on the fifth floor, as well as having three parts, it should mean something right?

No matter, he would double-check it with Xing Lao tomorrow anyway since tomorrow is their study time.

Feeling content with the book, he decided to practice the first part of the first book.

~~~~~~~

Time passed by and one year had gone by with nothing interesting happening. His cultivation rank has been steadily improving.

His and Xing Lao's goal right now is 1 rank per year, and he can achieve, and even exceed that without even focusing on it.

He is now a rank 4 cultivator. Rank 4 in two years. That's pretty good.

But, as his rank increase, he won't be able to nonchalantly keep the same pace, he would need to try a bit, but there's no rush. After all, building a strong foundation is more important than speedrunning.

This one year, after confirming with Xing Lao that it's at least above average quality, Long Ren practiced [Swift Storm's Encore] with his full focus.

He had enough proficiency in both [Space Step] and [Spatial Bullet] that their progress had stagnated. Though, he still dedicated some days to them, just to not get rusty.

Besides, playing with a gun loaded with a teleporting bullet is fun. Not to mention a watered-down Blink.

One day though, as he was space stepping in his backyard, he accidentally slipped and teleported to a rock. Good thing teleporting into an object is impossible for the current him as his used qi just fizzles away.

Anyway, he had been progressing steadily with [Swift Storm's Encore], completely mastering the first two parts of the first book.

His foot movement now works more fluid and dynamic. Even without using his space step, he could run away or dodge any attacks from Xing Lao quite effortlessly.

If coupled with his space step, Long Ren doubts anyone would be able to catch him, unless they are at least two times faster than him. He just needs to buy time dodging for his space step's "cooldown" to finish.

(A/N: completely my bad, I forgor to write in that his space step has a "CD" and right now it's around 10s, he had this while traveling a few ch's ago. As his proficiency rise, his CD and distance limit will decrease and increase. Sorry :3)

But then again, outside of sparring with Xing Lao every study session, he had not had any combat training with any one of the same rank or combat power.

Xing Lao had encouraged Long Ren to participate in a clan tournament a few weeks ago, but what's the point?

While he may get some combat experience from that, how will that be compared to just sparring with Xing Lao?

As for the prize? Bitch. His parents are rich now. He doesn't need to work to get free stuff.

He could only think of joining the tournament to compare his combat power with cultivators of the same rank.

Which, as tempting as it is (not tempting at all), he would rather skip all the hassle of waiting and registering to gain more sleep time.

Sleep is important for the body!

…

Today, as per usual, Long Ren starts the day off by signing in and rolling his free gacha, and surprise, surprise, he got another trash.

Long Ren wants to know how big the gacha pull of his system is. While it seems unlikely for him to always get useful pulls, but a year of nothing? Really?

This seems absurd.

Looking at his now-massive and cluttered inventory, Long Ren willed it to be sorted by rarity, and sorted by rarity did it happen.

Once again, Long Ren willed the inventory to categorize itself to make it easier for him to observe.

There are six categories Long Ren had personally set for the system's inventory.

Weapons | Artifacts | Manuals | Cultivation Pills | Cultivation Resources | Foods

Weapons are…weapons. Anything that can be used to poke, stab, slash and any offensive action item is categorized here. The best item in his inventory is a Hellflame knife while the worst is an Apple Peeler.

Though, he had used the apple peeler more times than the knife. Speaks a lot about his quiet lifestyle, more than anything.

Artifacts are magical items that can be used by injecting qi into them, performing various tasks. The best item he had is an [Earth's Magus] which could reform the earth, the only limit is his qi reserve.

He had tried playing with it before, but the qi costs an absurd amount, that even with using 50% of his qi reserve, he could only make a 10x10 cm hole on the ground. Not worth, for now.

Manuals are both main and side cultivation manuals as well as martial arts techniques. The best item in this category is the first part of the space body cultivation technique he got on the first day.

This only makes him want to cultivate this technique, as he had pulled some manuals with divine-like names, yet it still stands at the top of the category.

Too bad he still can't comprehend any of it. Another year of collecting dust it is.

Cultivation Pills and Cultivation Resources. The former is the finished product while the latter is the raw product.

While he could consume some Cultivation Resources raw, from Long Ren's point of view, that would just be a waste.

The best pill he had pulled is a [Titan Soul Pill]. At first, when he received this pill, he wanted to consume it, but after some consideration, eating a pill that is most likely way above his paygrade would just be suicide.

The best cultivation resources he now had is still the [Silvervale Ore (500 gr)] he got a while back. Though, there's a lot of new ores and vegetables he had at his disposal.

A good inventory to have if he ever needed money or specific ingredients.

Speaking of ingredients, Long Ren had tried to get into alchemy once this year.

He had tons of resources but decided against learning it as for one, there's no suitable teacher for him, even with Xing Lao's help of searching, and two, his raw materials are all over the place.

He'd be better off eating them raw instead of trying to innovate a new pill recipe with his limited knowledge, limited experience, and a limited amount of resources.

Sure he has many types of raw materials, but it would probably only be enough to try and create a batch of pills. Might as well sell them to someone who recognizes its value and profit off of that.

Alchemy? Not for now, thank you very much.