Return Of The Demon - 140 Starting the second round of training

Bai Yun actually only needed a single set of ingredients to make the pill. Bai Yun was confident enough in his alchemy ability that he didn’t think he would fail while making such a basic pill. But he still asked the young man for two sets for three reasons.

The first was that Bai Yun was afraid the young man would not believe him if Bai Yun said that he could make the pill with only one set of ingredients. He knew what the success rate of other alchemists were, and if his success rate was too high, it would instead cause confusion and mistrust.

The second reason was that in the future when some people who wanted more precious pills and had a lot of money came, Bai Yun could ask for more sets than he needed and thus rip them off. This was actually a common practice in the alchemy world, to ask for more sets than necessary. But most alchemists weren’t good enough to ask for too much, and they would often fail and thus wasn’t able to properly make use of it.

The final reason, and the reason he didn’t ask for three sets, was that with this if the young man told someone, then the word would spread that he could make pills with one set less than other alchemists. Thus his reputation as a better and cheaper choice would definitely spread fast.

Bai Yun then sat down and started to work on the pill. Since this was his first order, Bai Yun was extra careful. He didn’t want it to fail and thus have a bad reputation. He slowly made the pill, one step at a time. Since he was so careful, it actually ended up taking more time than Bai Yun initially thought to finish the pill.

When Bai Yun finally opened up his cauldron, he realized that the pill came out even better than he imagined. On the pill was a single circle. The existence and number of circles on a pill showed just how good a pill was. A pill with a circle could only be made with superior ingredients, cauldrons, alchemy fires, and alchemy techniques. This was the first pill that Bai Yun had made that had a circle. After all, Bai Yun usually only used normal ingredients and normal cauldrons until now and thus did not have a chance to make such a pill. Though this pill was only a single circle pill, which didn’t have a lot of extra effects. But the fact that Bai Yun was able to make a pill with a circle showed that his attainment in alchemy was improving. Accepting the alchemy legacy did not mean that his skill had reached the level of the god of alchemy, only that he had that knowledge and some of the skills had been passed on. After all, if it was the god of alchemy here, with the same ingredients, he could have made a three or four circle pill.

There were six things Bai Yun had to train in. One was to train and improve Lions roar, False armor, and soundless motion. The next was to master the third movement of the Moonlight sword, crescent moon slash. He also had to improve the coordination for the simple sword. And finally, Bai Yun also had to remake the second of the six truths of the sword god, sword slash, to the qi step.

Bai Yun decides to first put off the training of the sword slash. Bai Yun remembered the pain he had to go through to remake the first move, sword drawing. Bai Yun figured that such a situation would occur once again. If he was going to train in a safe place then it would be okay, but now Bai Yun was working on both blacksmithing as well as alchemy. If he overdid it, he might not be able to work. Before the young man had come in, he might have decided differently, but Bai Yun was now full of hope for the future.

Bai Yun then decided to break up his day to practice the five things evenly. Bai Yun decided that he would start the day at noon, and spend the hour in the shop, either working or thinking about his training. Then he would work until midnight on the orders he had taken. No matter what, he would only take orders such that his work would finish by midnight. If he hadn’t taken enough orders then he would finish early and start on training early like today. Then he would stop a little after dawn and go to sleep.

Once Bai Yun decided on his schedule, he went to work. The first thing he did was to practice false armor. This was a powerful defensive technique that Bai Yun had taken from the Bai clan. It had a great potential, but Bai Yun just didn’t have enough qi to properly use it until he reached foundation establishment. Even now Bai Yun did not. He could deploy the technique in two ways right now. One was to cover his entire body in a weak cover or to cover only a part of his body in a much stronger cover. Bai Yun started to deploy both the styles of the technique repeatedly. As he did so, Bai Yun would study the technique and try to both decrease its qi usage as well as improve its defensive power. But Bai Yun found both of them quite difficult. He was a master of the sword, so he found it easy to upgrade the moonlight sword all the way to a rank nine technique. But he could only upgrade lions roar and false armor to rank eight. Bai Yun wanted to see if he could raise them to rank nine before he left terracotta hill.

After Bai Yun used up all of his qi while training, Bai Yun started to train in the simple sword. Bai Yun did not need to have any qi to train in the simple sword, only a shadow opponent. At the same time, Bai Yun also started to recover his qi. Now that Bai Yun had reached the four circle realm, he could split his mind even better. Bai Yun could both recover qi as well as train in simple sword at the same time. If he wasn’t training the simple sword, then Bai Yun could probably recover his qi faster, but Bai Yun decided to do this to most effectively utilize his time.

And soon Bai Yun finished the time he had allotted to false armor. After this Bai Yun started on lions roar. When Bai Yun released lions roar, a small yellowish red glow that looked like a squishy shape came up at Bai Yun’s fist. If it was properly used, the lion’s roar would like as if a red lion’s head was covering Bai Yun’s fist, and the strike would create a sound like a roar. This was how the technique got its name. But Bai Yun was quite a good distance from it. Forget the roar, currently, Bai Yun couldn’t even make the glow look anything near a head, let alone a lions head. Bai Yun figured that he couldn’t make the roar until he reached core formation, but he was determined to make the lion’s head by the end of the training.

Unlike the false armor, when Bai Yun used lion’s roar he would punch at the air, and that punch would cause an explosion in the air. This would cause a loud sound. Thankfully Bai Yun had made sure that the training room was quite soundproof. Else the neighbors would have beaten him up due to the sound.

When he was out of qi by using lions roar, Bai Yun once again started to recover and train the simple sword. He repeatedly hacked and slashed at the air to train. And with each slash, Bai Yun’s body was getting more and more familiar with the simple sword.

Once he was done with lion’s roar, Bai Yun started on crescent moon slash. Crescent moon slash was a flying slash. Bai Yun would hold his sword near his waist and the sword edge would light up. Then, as he swung the sword, an arc shaped light would fly off the sword edge at the opponent.

A flying flash was an important part of fighting, as it improved one’s range of attack. In fact, from the second truth of the sword god onward, the attacks came in two variants, a sword variant, and a flying variant. But the flying variant was much harder to use and was usually weaker. In fact, Bai Yun figured that he would not be able to use the flying variant of sword slash before core formation. So if he wanted to use a flying slash, Bai Yun was stuck with crescent moon slash for now.

Bai Yun had bought a large piece of metal to use as a target practice in case his attacks hit the training room and destroyed it. But he need not have bothered with one right now. When Bai Yun held his sword, its edge did light up as he using crescent moon slash. But when Bai Yun swung his sword, nothing came off of it. He just swung his sword through the air, and it made a wooshing sound, and then the light disappeared.

But Bai Yun wasn’t disappointed. Bai Yun had improved the basic structure of moonlight sword to improve it all the way to a rank nine technique. So it was quite difficult to practice. So Bai Yun had settled in for the long haul.

After Bai Yun was done with crescent moon slash, Bai Yun started on soundless motion. Soundless motion was the second movement in the qi part of specter steps and thus was a tenth ranked technique. Thus it was far more difficult than any other technique that Bai Yun had. In fact, Bai Yun had started to train in soundless motion all the way back in his first retreat, but he still hadn’t mastered it perfectly.

As Bai Yun used soundless motion and started to move around the room, Bai Yun regretted that the room did not have a gravity control formation. If it did, a heightened gravity would be of great help in both improving his foundation, as well as making it more difficult to move, so it would help in his training of movement techniques. Unfortunately, there were no gravity chambers that could be rented in terracotta hill. Maybe some of the more powerful forces had one on their premises, but Bai Yun couldn’t just walk in and use them.

So Bai Yun resumed his training of soundless motion. And each moment, Bai Yun focused his attention on the wind produced and kept on thinking of how to reduce the wind resistance. Soon Bai Yun got into a strange rhythm and kept on making one move after another. Bai Yun felt that he was very close to a breakthrough when he finally ran out of qi.

Bai Yun once again used simple sword and recovered his qi at the same time. He then started to train in soundless motion once again. He once again got the feeling that he was nearing a breakthrough, but it never happened.

Soon time passed as Bai Yun continued his training. When dawn came, Bai Yun finished his training and went back down. He took a quick bath and went to sleep.