Pursuing The Summit - Chapter 16 Louis

Laura stood twenty yards away from him, with a rapier in her left hand and the left side of her body facing him. Although he had never seen one before, he could see the runes both in the handle and running down the blade. Earth elemental qi ran down the handle to the tip, but the tip itself was covered with wind elemental qi. Her body was covered in earth elemental qi.

Louis himself had no weapons. Although he practiced the sword, but had never truly fought with a sword. Instead, he was used to relying on his body’s regenerative capabilities as well as his superb amount of qi. He would protect himself with his fire elemental qi while fighting at a range as well as his fists, however, his overall fighting experience was low. Unfortunately, he had wind and water elemental qi now, so while his regenerative capabilities, overall speed and piercing abilities increased, his overall power decreased.

The moment the fight started, a gust of wind pushed against him, threatening him off of his feet. His qi spread out and pushed the gust up as steadied his posture. Once he looked back at Laura, she was already in front of him and her blade a few inches away from his right shoulder. He fell back, lowering his head as he raised his left leg to kick her arm while he raised his right hand to catch the tip. The rapier already disappeared, reappearing only when he felt a burning sensation within his right leg as Laura had leaned forward, dodging his kick.

Falling, Louis sent himself up into the air while he began to heal his right leg. Laura chased him into the air, rapier in hand. The brown elemental qi enveloping her disappeared, replaced by a silver aura. He waved his hand out, throwing out a wall of water, falling past Laura as she flew to his right. This time, Louis grabbed the water with his hand, attached by his qi and swing to the right. Laura unleashed a flurry of attacks, breaking the integrity of the wall and fell to the ground.

Louis took this chance to back away. He slashed with left hand, sending out a wind blade, but Laura simply threw her rapier, easily piercing threw the wind as it lodged itself into his left arm. As he tried to remove the blade, Laura appeared before him, once again surrounded by earth elemental qi, and smashed her fist into his abdomen. Louis relaxed his muscles and created a bubble of air behind his body which absorbed a part of the force as he hit the ground.

By the time he recovered his sight and the dizziness went away, the rapier was standing tall right beside his head and Laura was treating his limbs and back.

Although his abdomen was not pierced, his abdomen was injured and part of his intestine was leaking. He sighed as he sliced his abdomen and sealed the leak, drained the liquid and patched the hole. Then he healed his abdomen.

“I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to deal such serious injuries. If the body and qi was not my main fields of study in alchemy, there is no way I would properly heal, you know that right?” Louis said, as he rummaged through the medical bag. He grabbed a two star pill that increased the blood he would produce for the next three hours, a wind and a water qi replenishing pill, and a Spiritual Energy Upper.

“Well, your medical skills are improving with more practical experience now.” Laura said. “Plus, you are getting better at retreating, but you still spend too much time reactive, treating your injuries and dodging rather than setting up a proper defense and attacking.”

“Well, I prefer practicing when my own life is not on the line.” Louis sat up, checking over his limbs, to check if he missed any spots. “One screw up and I’m dead.” He said, glaring at Laura. “There’s no point of practicing, if I’m dead, you know.”

“Well, corpses are hard to find here, and Imaru advocates for cremating or burying bodies, and respecting the dead. We would have to leave the city and go on an adventure, if you would want to find some corpses to operate on.” Laura said, ignoring his glares.

“That’s true.” Louis said. Seeing everything in his body was alright, he sat in a lotus position. “Well, I’m going to cultivate. It will take thirty minutes this time.”

Two weeks passed since he entered the ruins. The two of them were on the twenty-sixth floor, where the winds smoothed the floors and walls. There was no peace and quiet on the floor, for the winds blowing through the rooms produced an eerie song, becoming louder and quieter depending on the amount of qi within the wind. Furthermore, the room was pitch black, especially during the fights. A fire was only used to eat food and treat injuries.

On the plus side, through continuous fights, Louis went from going down in a single blow to lasting almost a minute against her. Of course, if she truly went for any lethal strikes, he would not last very long. Unfortunately, he did not have a similarly skilled partner, unless he was to fight his sister or fiancee, which would make him hold back too much to be useful. Furthermore, his sixth thread of water elemental qi had formed in his meridians. Although he still needed to revolve it eight more times, two weeks here was equal to two months of training he did before.

When he was pouring qi through his abdomen, he became truly thankful that his lower dantian had not burst open when he was hit. Then again, after the past few weeks, he realized just how important it was to strengthen the defenses around his dantians, so he spent his time strengthening them instead of the rest of his meridians during that part of his day.

He still required a couple of days, perhaps even a week, for him to create the seventh strand of his wind elemental qi, but he would have to wake for his elemental qi purity to increase. While the qi replenishing pills sufficed for the middle seven revolutions for each layer, the first and last revolutions required much more pure qi than usual.

Once he used up all his qi to strengthened the new parts of his body that just had been repaired, he went to Laura. “Alright, I’m ready.” Louis said.

“That took a little longer than before,” Laura said.

“Well, my organs take a bit more time than the other parts of my body to reinforce. I simply don’t enough time in the day or qi for me to reinforce each part of my body.” Louis said, stretching. “So will this be like usual, if I get lapped ten times then I have to do a hundred pushups and situps. Otherwise we both do it?”

“Yeah.” Laura said. “One hour duration. Starting in fifteen seconds.”

The moment the race started, Louis sprinted. He had to. He was smaller, weaker and less developed than Laura, but he also had to match her gait enough to not be lapped. The hundred pushups and situps were negligible, since they were already doing much more, but losing targeted his pride, especially when he was given such a big handicap.

Laura sprinted ahead. Her wind elemental qi flew out, stopping the winds before her as she ran. Her goal during this exercise was improving her qi restoration rate as well as improving her use control, so she spent less qi stopping the wind and kept adequate qi level.s

Louis had almost half of her gait, but he made up for it with running harder. His goal for this exercise was different, he had to maintain a level of physical and qi levels despite extended exercise. He would need to use his qi to alleviate the stress and damages his body would suffer from running as well as increasing the amount of qi he had, since he started the race empty.

When they stopped, Laura had lapped him nine times. She would have lapped him ten times, if they ran for another five minutes, but this was improvement. When they had started, she would lap him fifteen times, no problem. He was jogging then, which defeated the point of the exercise, since he would fail the condition they initially set up: not being lapped ten times.

Now, they walked as they cooled down. Just when Louis was about to eat a qi replenishing pill, Laura stopped him.

“You eat too many pills, you know. They may be helpful when you are fighting for your life or need to make a deadline, but consistent consumption of the pills will only reduce your natural qi replenishing rate and destroy your sleep cycle and more, if you consume so many other pills at the same time.” Laura said.

“It should be fine as long as I exhaust all of its effects and my current qi before I consume more.” Louis said.

Laura shook her head. “You already consume three to six pills everyday, after we fight. Your body can’t possibly cycle through all those pills any faster than that.”

Louis looked at the pill in his hand, then put it away. “Fine.”