11 11

After the acceptance to the genius class, Hong had enough time to create his own soul force cultivation technique. The exquisite heavenly demon cultivation technique, as he had named this technique, created both immortal and demonic soul force, clashing them to produce all the other attributes while continuously improving their attributes.

It was a volatile technique that required an extremely tempered body to cultivate without bursting their cells.

The thing was cultivation of martial arts conflicted with soul force.

Martial arts cultivating required a practitioner to have their mind, body and internal energy in a proper discipline. But soul force cultivation coupled with his mystic garden cultivation simply increased his soul strength, while his soul force cultivation increased his mental energy, completely blocking his body's influence like instincts , and thereby blocking his advancement in martial arts. He had only learned it after trying his cultivation technique and almost falling back to grandmaster realm.

Which lead him scrapping the exquisite heavenly demon cultivation technique. It was a shame too, Hong lamented while thinking of the effort he had put up to it. But thinking back at the effort that had taken him to reach back to zenith realm , he sighed before putting aside the technique and going back to the drawing board.

Martial arts had it's perks, but even with his insane talent, he couldn't reach the peak of this world since soul force reigned supreme. To continue his soul force cultivation while cultivating martial arts, he would need techniques that allowed him to upgrade his body and qi along with soul force.

Body and qi go together like soul and spirit. So upgrading his body would increase his qi while changing the quality of his qi would change the quality of his body. And Hong needed a technique which would increase the realm of all these aspects in an equal level , or else his cultivation of martial arts would drop every time he advanced a realm.

He needed a pure body cultivation technique, Hong had deduced it after much contemplating. With different energies like heaven and earth energy, law energy and others that existed , he could use it to change his qi qualitatively at those realms while he could compress his qi to increase it's quality till he reached that level. But the body was a different. The reason there were only few body refining techniques in novel's was because of how hard they were to use. With all the resources and requirements and time used, these techniques would hinder the growth of people practicing them. There were a few that allowed instant results, but they were demonic techniques that needed countless sacrifices. And in the end ,they always prove harmful in the future due to their unstable foundation.

Hong only knew a few arts from reading manhua in his past life, that didn't prove to be harmful. Chang Shen Ba Quan from I am an Evil God, body refining technique of the nine sentries divine book in Demon Magic Emperor and of course the body of tumultuous gold. Thanks to the gifts he had recived from ROB, he could deduce how each body refining art worked, but that would take time, lots and lots of time and research.

Chang Shen Baquan , made the practitioners reach the peak a human body has to offer while using the strength of the soul and lifespan to deliver blows that exceeded human realm. This required the use of a special medicine that allowed the user to use their soul, or as they called it, igniting their will. Normally these techniques would end up burning their life but Chang Shen Baquan made up to this by making the body enter a cycle of rebirth, hence giving longevity . And this technique was strong enough to make the other characters with body enhancement techniques look like baby tantrums.

The nine sentries divine book's body refining technique used arrays to incoperate special treasure materials and beast parts to enhance one's own body without any negative repercussions. In the manhua, Zhuo fan recreated his body using diamond sand, which made him an absolute powerhouse who could beat cultivators, realms above him. And when it wasn't enough, he actually fused a quiln arm and soul burning fire along with lightning beast wings into himself, becoming something completely inhuman.

The body of tumultuous gold needs no introduction since Hong had decided to cultivate it when he made his mystic garden. It alters the body first to change the structure of the divine soul ,I.e soul form, and then utilise the mutations caused to their divine soul due to their mystic gardens completely change their body.

Running his mind through each technique, Hong almost had a headache trying to figure out what his future path should be. There was the bloodline cultivation technique in this world too, but the demerits like bloodline suppression and beastial nature added to the fact, that the existence of animal blood, a completely different species, within human body made Hong discard this method.

Hong looked down at Ning'er, who was currently trying to attack him with her sword and went into deep thought. In the novel , she spent the time after the exams in the heavenly sacred border, a place he had wanted to go till recently, and cultivated there, gaining massive benifits, but thanks to his interference, she was spending that time practicing martial arts.

Dodging an overhead slash which was followed by a thunderclap palm, he began to make plans to the future since he didn't want her to stagnate like he had in his past life.

Xiao Ning'er leapt back before shooting forward, using speed edge to attack, while using Warping touch from what she assumed was Hong's blind spot. Which he dodged without even looking at her, making her completely Irritated.

It had been going like this for a few days now. After receiving her sword and finishing her exams, she had spent her time either cultivating or practicing martial arts. Ye Ziyun, her friend was making progress in her cultivation in leaps like everyone within her group while she was spending time on honing her fighting technique. Thankfully according to Hong, she had a natural talent to martial arts which made her make rapid progress. She had already learned all the techniques except lightning pillar from Hong , a testament of her massive talent.

Delivering one last attack with the final vestiges of her strength, she fell on her bottom due to extreme physical exhaustion.

"Are you even looking at me?" an exasperated Xiao Ning'er asked Hong while looking at the extended hand. It took her a few months of continuous training, elixirs and constant personal guidance of her master to reach the level she was at now, but the said master didn't even need to look at her to defeat her.

"Can't you teach me some other strong martial art? Like the one you used to kill those horned beasts " Xiao Ning'er asked , a bit put off seeing the lack of power in her martial art compared to his.

"You don't even need to move, to beat me " she said making Hong look at her with a weirded out look. Then understanding her thought pattern, he began advising her of her folly, after all it was the duty of the master to see the growth and discipline their students when they are at the wrong.

"Of course you can't touch me, I've been practicing martial arts since I could walk , spent time researching on how to fight, fought demon beasts risking my life to advance my arts to the current level, and spent hours after hours , doing the same action over and over and over till I almost went crazy ,for years. Basically what you've been doing these few months harder for my entire life." He said while looking at her straight in the eyes making her feel a bit ashamed.

"So of course you won't be able to touch me, I mean can a bronze rank spiritualist touch a black gold rank expert?" Hong paused and looked at her only to recive silent agreement.

"As for more stronger art" ,Hong drew out a wooden sword before taking the stancefor nine Yin Lightning art, "look at my moves and burn them to your mind, for this is a glimpse of the peak you must reach as my student."

Suddenly the air around the ground stilled, like the calm sky before thunder strike. As Hong circulated his soul force throughout his body , hundreds of arcs made of pale blue electricity covered his body making Xiao Ning'er back away to safety.

Even though the brightness of the electricity, Hong's eyes glowed in pale blue making anyone who caught sight of them to avert their gaze.

Hong turned his gaze towards the tens of training dummies he had asked to be installed before vanishing from Xiao Ning'er's view. A sonic boom resounded throughout the training ground as he shot towards his targets in a speed so fast ,Xiao Ning'er could only catch a blur with her pale gost eyes. Then he seamlessly switched from speed edge to burning edge, creating a long plasma blade he swung at the unfortunate targets with the same momentum he had retained before switching styles. The poor targets stood no chance as the plasma blade travelled through, completely separating them into top and bottom halves, which promptly caught fire from the extreme heat. But they had no chance to fall to the ground as Hong delivered a swift palm strike with a twist of his upper body. Sound akin to a thunder clap emerged, as a powerful shock wave was created from Hong's outstretched palm, completely splintering the targets near him while flinging the ones a bit far from him even further with a speed close to a ball thrown by a professional baseball player. But he wasn't done there, Hong activated lightning flow, connecting the flow of current to his sword before delivering a rumbling fist straight into the pommel while controlling the output in order to not shatter it entirely. The sword flew foreward with the speed of a bullet, catching up with the moving debris in seconds. Hong connected the current flow from the ground to his sword, acting as a medium before utilising Lightning flow technique ,moving through the current as if he was a charge himself and catching up with the sword before it went past the debris . Then spinning mid air , he enhanced his wooden sword again, this time it's sharpness with sharp edge before madly slashing at the burning pieces of wood that rushed at his direction. The number of debris began over whelming him quickly, but a single use of lightning discharge completely annihilated them. Hong couldn't show Warping touch to Xiao Ning'er since it required a live target . So he decided to show the final move, peak of absolute power in any lightning art, the lightning pillar.

Xiao Ning'er was not a person who could be easily shaken. But the strength of the techniques shown by Hong had managed to do just that. Looking at the power contained by each move made her question if they were even using the same art. Seeing Hong using the techniques with no gaps or breaks made her understand how much behind she was compared to her mentor.

After a masterful display of seven of the nine techniques, Xiao Ning'er noticed that Hong had come to a stop, but she had no chance to question him as he slowly took the stances required for the lightning pillar.

The clouds in the sky came together just above the training ground and the air began to smell of ozone as Hong kept his sword lifted above his head like he was ready to perform an overhead slash, but he didn't swing his sword, not yet. Rumblings grew louder and louder and the single cloud above began to separate charges under the influence of Hong's soul force. Then , without a warning, a bolt of lightning lashed out from the heavens straight towards Hong's sword, but before it could strike the wooden sword, Hong swung the sword with all his might while lightning attributed soul force cloaked his body, completely redirecting the bolt into hitting the ground infront of him.

Dust rose and dirt flew, covering Xiao Ning'er, but she was too out of it to notice that. The ground between her and Hong was now a smoking pit of burnt soil, deeper than her own height. Not just her, but also Ye Ziyun who was always present at their training sessions was dumbfounded by the power released by Hong, who was still a bronze rank spiritualist.

"My dear student, what you see now is just a small peak of the mountain range called the nine Yin Lightning art. " Hong said in a sagely voice while stroking his nonexistent beard.

"The true master of this art will be able to turn all the techniques to one art and roam the skies as an embodiment of lightning". The eyes of all those listening went wide at this declaration while Xiao Ning'er looked at him in marvel. But what he said next made her want to punch him till he was bleeding to death.

"Well ,of course you would need to reach at least the black gold rank to do stuff like that " he said dashing her hopes of attaining such prowess in her lifetime

"That's why you will spend the remainder of your vacation in the heavenly sacred border."