Chapter 18: Heart Facing the Blue Sea (4)
“Prepare? Prepare for what?”
“The preparation to pillage! The preparation to give you the ability to fight back when others take what’s yours!”
The preparation was a wooden spear!
Lao Bai asked Miao Yi what weapon he would like, but Miao Yi himself did not know.
He recalled seeing a cultivator passing by him, resplendently sitting astride on a dragon steed with a silver spear in hand. Therefore, Miao Yi chose the spear!
However, the island didn't have the silver spear he pictured in his mind. Lao Bai also wasn’t planning to let him use the real thing anyway. Since he liked the spear, Lao Bai made him hack a tree and then carve out a one-zhang-long wooden spear.
Below the rocky mountainside, Lao Bai pointed at the bald, rocky mountain as he said, “Use the wooden spear to destroy it. If the rocky mountain collapses but the wooden spear remain intact, then that is considered a success!”
“This……” Miao Yi stared at the wooden spear in his own hand, feeling slightly speechless.
Lao Bai’s long hair fluttered with the wind as he waved his hand to point at the hill, “You must believe that with this spear in hand, there is nothing in this world that can stop you! Even if it is just a wooden spear in your hand, even if it is a massive mountain before your eyes, or even if it’s an iron mountain, you must believe that you can destroy it with one strike of your spear. This is faith. This is the imposing manner that will make your enemy cower in fright! Without this imposing manner, what right do you have to compete with the heroes of the world for the world’s power of will.”
And so, Miao Yi’s cultivation of holding a wooden spear and hacking the rocks of the mountain began.
Although it was just a wooden spear, when it was used by a cultivator and was imbued with the attribution of transcendence energy, the strength of the wooden spear was more powerful than a real spear used by ordinary people.
As he thrust the spear out from his hand, it pierced deep within the rocks of the mountain. With a jerk of the spear, pebbles and rocks flew as rumbling sounds reverberated continuously.
Within a short time, all was still fine. Miao Yi rapidly thrust the spear with immense power, but after a long time passed and when Miao Yi had an inadequate amount of transcendence energy, in the end, the wooden spear was still a wooden spear. Even a real spear wouldn’t be able to withstand the force of mountain breaking, let alone a wooden spear.
Wooden spears broke, one after the other.
As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. After destroying more than a dozen spears, Miao Yi gradually understood the way of combining man, spear and the transcendence arts. In the midst of the clumsy and tedious mountain breaking, Miao Yi gradually mastered the use of the spear and the transcendence art to perfection.
Miao Yi crushed and broke the mountain rocks easily as he waved, thrust, and jerked the spear.
Massive rocks tumbled down the mountain. Miao Yi jerked his spear and struck the rocks furiously, breaking it into pieces.
When the entire rocky mountain collapsed, already two years had passed. Miao Yi carried his eighty-first wooden spear and stood on top of the collapsed crushed rocks as he said to Lao Bai, “I have succeeded. Can I leave now?”
The answer was no. Lao Bai said that the depth of the transcendence energy can increase through time. However, situations where lower-leveled cultivators have managed to kill a higher-leveled cultivator, do happen often. The main point is one’s proficiency when using transcendence energy. The most adept one is invincible!
Lao Bai pointed back to the waterfall!
And so, Miao Yi carried all the collapsed rocks one by one to the area above the waterfall, piling them all up there. He gathered vines and weaved a net which helped him bundle up a huge amount of rocks.
Miao Yi then carried his spear and stood beneath the torrential waterfall with his eyes covered by a cloth.
Standing on top of that mountain, Lao Bai pulled the weaved vine net and its great number of rocks to move along with the torrential waterfall and fall downwards onto Miao Yi. Lao Bai said that this was to train Miao Yi’s perceptivity.
Miao Yi immediately lifted his spear and angrily hit the rocks rushing down with the flow of water. Yet, the rocks crushed during that first round were less than ten percent of the total amount.
Again and again. Not only did Miao Yi have to endure the impact of the torrential waterfall, he had to distinguish the rocks flowing within it. It was unknown how many times he was left exhausted to the point of getting hit into the river by the massive rocks.
As more and more rocks piled up within the valley, Miao Yi became increasingly closer to the area above the waterfall. Miao Yi’s reaction time grew faster, and his skill with the spear became increasingly swift and accurate…
The sea weather tended to change unexpectedly. When a terrifying typhoon was seen approaching on the gloomy, great sea and when the furious waves inundated the horizon, Lao Bai made Miao Yi sail on a wooden raft built out of a pile of coconut shells, and then float out into the tempestuous sea.
In the midst of the fierce wind and furious waves, the heaven and earth seemed to shake. Standing on the wooden raft, Miao Yi gave up on attributing it with his transcendence energy, upon which the wooden raft immediately capsized and was hit by the massive waves.
The one hundred coconut shells were immediately blasted away by the wind and the waves. Instantly, Miao Yi held his spear and stepped onto the waves, pursuing the coconut shells and then crushing them with one spear thrust.
He was seen either holding the spear, flying and leaping across the crest of the furious waves, or rushing into the huge earth-shattering waves.
As the waves calmed down, Lao Bai and Miao Yi sailed towards the deeper regions of the sea.
In the sea of this valley, a kind of Tyrant Fish lived a thousand meters below sea level. It was one meter long with bony scales all over its body. It wasn’t very active so once it had eaten enough, it loved to hide in its cave and hibernate. However, once it leaves its cave, its reaction speed is extremely fast in the sea and has a shocking force behind the bite of its iron-like teeth. The Tyrant Fish preferred to attack in groups and could even chomp an entire whale into white bones within a short while.
Naturally, Lao Bai hadn’t led Miao Yi here to admire the scenery under the sea and feed the fish. Instead, he wanted Miao Yi to dive into the bottom of the sea and kill the group of Tyrant Fish.
The pressure exerted a thousand meters under the sea was astonishingly great. If the wooden spear were not attributed with transcendence energy, it would be crushed into pieces. It was extremely difficult for Miao Yi, who had only just begun diving, to adapt to the pressure, let alone hunting and killing in such a deep region. Plus, it was extremely dark under the sea.
Lao Bai wanted Miao Yi to see the pressure of the deep sea as the pressure of the transcendence energy exerted by a powerful opponent.Through this method, he could get used to attacking under the pressure of another person’s powerful transcendence energy!
When Miao Yi finally adapted to such powerful pressure, Lao Bai then did something that made the Tyrant Fish leave their hiding spot from within their sea caves, and then abruptly surround Miao Yi before attacking him.
During that first time, after Miao Yi killed over a hundred Tyrant Fish under the great sea pressure, he could no longer endure anymore. He fled in confusion back to the surface of the sea and climbed up onto the boat with bloody wounds.
After he had recuperated, Lao Bai made him do it again but this time with the objective of diving a thousand meters under the sea and killing ten thousand Tyrant Fish. Only then, would this training be considered a success.
Time elapsed quickly.
The waterfall that Miao Yi arduously dug had disappeared, because the valley beneath had already been filled up with the rocks that Miao Yi crushed with his wooden spear.
In the midst of the typhoon and furious waves, the one hundred coconut shells would never go missing. Neither the wind nor the waves could stop Miao Yi’s spear from crushing them all.
The rippled surface of the sea was completely dyed with blood, as numerous Tyrant Fish floated on the surface. Lao Bai had calculated their corpses and it was exactly ten thousand, neither more nor less.
Splash! Holding the wooden spear, Miao Yi leaped out of the sea and descended onto the small boat. He scanned the surface of the sea and smiled, “Although your requests were slightly boring, I did what you wanted me to do!”
His figure looked resplendent, vigorous, and energetic. His eyes were brimming with that radiating vigor and his black pupils shone bright like the frosty stars.
His strong muscles were symmetrical, and his physique was upright like a spear. With his resolute appearance, he was handsome in looks.
After a long period of time, where he repeatedly killed, used up all his transcendence energy and then setting forth to attack again, Miao Yi was prepared like an unsheathed precious sword. He possessed an awe-inspiring and courageous aura. This was a rare confidence!
It was an amazing type of confidence, built through countless times of failure and then standing up to try again!
“I never said you were boring.” Miao Yi waved his hand and smiled, “I just thought it’s a pity. I spent most of my time doing the things you’ve requested, but if I used this time on cultivating my transcendence energy, my cultivation would definitely improve a lot. I would be able to reach closer to White Lotus Second Grade.”
“As long as there are chances and time, you can cultivate. However, once the foundation is built, it is a lifelong lesson and will benefit you your whole life. If you had lost the chance to build your foundation and were to establish your own methods, then you wouldn’t be able to repair it even if you wanted to. For example, no matter how great your transcendence energy is, you wouldn’t be able to change the way you think, your personality, and your habits.”
Lao Bai was succinct in his advice as he wasn't the kind of person that would explain non-stop. He nodded, motioning Miao Yi to steer the boat back as he said, “Return!”