Chapter 73

Jiu Chen was listening to his disciple's qi song Nightmare Hell. He was surprised by his docile disciple's killing intent and ability to turn alow rank qi song so powerful through his ability in the dao of music only. He noted this moment down and decided to discuss with Jiang Mang what happened this evening tomorrow morning.

The next morning the two girls woke up when they exited their room, they saw Jiang Mang looking at them and asking how they felt. They reassured him, that they were fine but he checked their condition before being reassured. The two girls felt warm inside, with Jiang Mang caring about them.

Jiang Mang had managed to curb his anger and killing intent after yesterday's night. He headed towards his masters' cabin and entered after being allowed inside. They made him sit down to start a discussion. Jiang MAng, who was impatient, started by telling what had yesterday happened and what he wanted to do with that surnamed Wang disciple.

Elder Zhu was the first to answer: "Xiao Mang, I know that you want to protect those two girls, but you need to know cultivators will always find themselves in trouble. They should solve their problems if they want to become powerful. I suggest that you don't take revenge for them but protect them when they take revenge for yesterday from other factors. Do you understand what I getting at Xiao Mang?"

Jiang Mang was surprised to hear these words, but after thinking about them he accepted her advice and was finally able to calm his anger completely down.

His masters were happy to him accept their advice and then started discussing his progress and future training:

" Xiao Mang, after seeing the speed of your progression, we have decided to have you remain in the valley for another nine months. You will not be allowed to leave the valley during this period except over three months when you will tackle the first trial of the formation hall. You will start following both of us at the same time except during the weekend when you will be under Ming alone. During weekdays you will practise music training and start learning all the other instruments. I will train you in the technique while Ming will train you to fuse your charm abilities in your performances. During the weekend, you will practice dancing, formations, and hand to hand combat. This will be the arrangements for the coming three months, and those girls can only accompany you during the weekend on Saturday and Friday afternoon during vocal training."

Jiang Mang acknowledged their arrangements and started his training. His master Jiu ordered him to take out all the musical instruments they had prepared for him. There were ten different variations of zithers, ten different variations of flutes, two erhus, and two pipas.

His master ordered him to learn a flute next. It was a repeat of his zither training by learning all different notes that could be played to perfection. His understanding of the basics of music had grown substantially after the previous two months, and his learning speed with the flute was many times faster than with the zither.

His master Zhu also made him train, during his note training by having him incorporate movements and actions during his practice to be able to use his charm techniques while he played. When the training ended, he was presented with a gift from his masters.

It was a peak rank sage tier artifact that was a zither.

It used to be his master Jiu's zither during his time as a core disciple and it was named Silver moon because it was crafted completely out of a silver-colored metal under a full moon.

Jiang Mang respectfully accepted the zither and promised them that he would make it experience greatness again. When he returned to the cave, he informed the two girls of the change in his training regime. He also informed them that he wouldn't take revenge for them, but when they took revenge themselves, he would shield them. He then started training his flute during the night, trained his vocals for two hours with the girls, and engraved some formations on clay tablets for an hour with the girls. All of his engravings were different foundation formations of perfect quality.

He trained like this for four days, and on the fifth day during the afternoon, he started practicing singing.

He had to sing common songs and infuse qi into them to enhance the emotions within the song.

This was the most common ability of musician cultivators when they played music with their instruments, but had to be practiced by Jiang Mang with his singing repeatedly. The two girls accompanied him in the training, but they had it much harder as they weren't musician cultivators but elemental cultivators of the fire and wood element. Master Zhu also had them use their charm techniques on their voices while having them move around in certain ways.

The two girls weren't deterred and tried their best. Every time, they made a mistake they started over and slowly increased their proficiency in singing and using their voices. Jiang Mang found it easier, but his masters were stricter on him and thus made him restart at the slightest discrepancy in the sound, movements, or usage of qi.

The three continued their training at night, but now they started practicing four hours of vocal training each night through singing, moving, and infusing qi. The sixth day was under master Zhu alone. She made them train in dance through an extremely strict regime. They had to learn nine different styles of dance of which six were seductive and three were traditional. She also provided the required clothing for the dances. The girls didn't have any problems, but Jiang Mang had angered his master again as he didn't accept the training. That was because the three dance styles were for females only and used little amounts of clothes.

His master Zhu still forced him to learn them, as she reasoned that his looks and body were equal to pretty girls while the clothing wouldn't embarrass him as they were not for girls but dancers.

In the afternoon, they switched from dancing to hand to hand combat. Jiang Mang wasn't allowed to use any techniques except mortal combat moves, while the two girls were allowed to use Soft palm. The two girls fought against each other while Jiang Mang faced his master, who had lowered her cultivation to his. He was pummeled until he collapsed when evening arrived.

When they returned at night, they had again changed their night training. Jiang Mang would train his music technique for three hours each night, his voice for another three, and dance and formations for an hour each. The two girls would cultivate during the day except during Friday afternoon and Saturday. They would practice combat during Jiang Mang music training and accompany him during singing, dancing, and engraving where he would also point everyone's faults out. They had also asked Xiao Liu to help them fight by sparring against them by lowering his cultivation.

The seventh day and last day of the week was the day where he learned about formations under master Zhu. She started his first lesson about actual formations by explaining how the interactions between foundation formations worked. She said the following words:

" Xiao Mang, formations are split into three types. They are offensive formations, defensive formations, and trapping formations. Formations also need to be in a certain balance, or they can't influence the spiritual energy of heaven and earth. A formation is either based on the concept of unity, duality, or trinity."

She then sketched three charts that explained the three concepts while explaining them with words:

"The concept of unity means that only one of the five elements, wind or lightning, yin or yang is used to support a dao, multiple daos, or solely exist as a dao.

The concept of duality lies in opposing forces being in balance like yin and yang due to mutual reinforcement. Such a formation either uses the concept to create the entire formation or use other daos to support the duality while using it reinforce themselves. The second type of duality formation can be explained by using a formation as an example. A trapping formation that uses the duality of fire and water can always exist and recover its energy, but the puppet formation diagrams are also included to form beast forms out of both water and fire. These beast forms can continuously revive while also reïnforcing the formation by creating more friction that results in energy that keeps the duality cycle going. The concept of trinity uses all the five elements to create a stable formation that is harder to disrupt and has the same abilities as formations of the duality concept but instead of using opposing elements to create a circle of supporting and reïnforcing, the five elements cycle is used."

She then explained what he would be learning in the coming three months:

"You will only learn level one formations during these three months. Three thousand of the unity concept during the first month, three thousand of the duality concept during the second month, and three thousand of the trinity concept during the third month. You will also be required to be able to engrave ten flawless level one formations of each formation you learned. The last thing you will be required to do is learn how to set each of these formations up within ten seconds with the help of five formation flags."