Chapter 315 – Life 76, Age 156, Martial Emperor Peak

ShouLi guided me out of the tent city and north, to a large, open field that had recently been sown with sorghum seeds. 

Seeing the tender young shoots that were just starting to poke up out of the soil, I felt a little bad about what we were planning to do. It was unlikely that any of them would be able to survive. Maybe it would be best to move them somewhere safe to protect them from the chaos that was about to unfold. Maybe…

My thoughts were cut off by the arrival of a large group of mostly familiar faces. At its head were the eight remaining members of the current leadership council. 

Mo, RuLan, GuiMing, and GuiAi all looked… old. Not old-old. Their appearances were roughly the same as mortals in their mid-30s, but they had visibly aged since I had last seen them.

This reminded me of a sad reality. The first generation of my clan was all well over 200 years old. They had all entered calcification long ago, and if nothing changed, they would only be able to live for a few more centuries.

Looking at Liang and NiangBa, though, I had to wonder if such a fate was truly inevitable. These two had aged as well, but where Mo looked to be in his mid-30s, they looked to be in their late 20s. 

Aside from just this reduction in their apparent ages, body cultivation had caused a series of subtle changes in both Liang’s and NiangBa’s bodies. Liang’s skin had taken on a yellowish hue, and his black eyes had turned a light blue. NiangBa’s skin, on the other hand, had shifted to a dusky gray. These changes may or may not be desirable, but if body cultivation could keep a person from aging, what did a little change in skin tone matter?

Blinking, I glanced at ShouLi.

I hadn’t even thought about ages before. Why? Because ShouLi still looked like the same damn, ordinary teenager with the same jade-white skin that she had always had. That might just have been her blessing at play, but maybe it was time to start enforcing stricter body cultivation regimens to keep our population healthier.

Of course, my experiences with Emperor Li suggested that the limited lifespan of cultivators wasn’t entirely natural. Even if body cultivation could keep a person from aging, that didn’t necessarily mean they would be able to live any longer.

Noting this down for further discussion, I turned my attention to the unfamiliar faces in the group.

A young-looking Emperor caught my eye when he walked straight to ShouLi and began talking to her in an overly familiar manner while constantly shooting glances in my direction. What was strange was that I didn’t sense even a shred of hostility or jealousy from Liang at this.

I walked up to the pair and looked at the unknown man.

This caused him to freeze up, so I put on my best cordial smile and dipped my head to him. “Hello, I don’t believe we have been introduced.”

“I… I…” 

The young man looked around wildly for a second before locking onto ShouLi. However, she just grinned playfully at him and remained silent.

“I… I am Su ShouFang.” The moment these words left his lips, he dropped into a deep bow. “Greetings, Ancestor.”

I raised an eyebrow and looked at ShouLi for an explanation.

“ShouFang is my… brother.” ShouLi bit her lower lip as she thought through her explanation. 

“This… time…” She looked around warily. “My parents didn’t have twin girls. They had a single son, ShouFang. I have been… helping him.”

Before I could respond, she added a quick follow-up. “I haven’t broken any rules. I haven’t helped him as the head of the council. Just… as a… sister.”

I nodded politely to the young man. “Nice to meet you, ShouFang.”

The fact that this young man had been able to reach Martial Emperor suggested that ShouLi might have helped him more than just a little, but I wouldn’t make an issue of it. ShouLi had been taking care of my clan for over 200 years. She had earned the right to indulge in a bit of nepotism—just a bit, though.

After a few more introductions, we got to the point of this little gathering.

ShouLi herded everyone to the side of the field while Liang and I walked to its center.

Once there, we moved to stand 200 meters apart from each other and assumed fighting stances.

Liang grinned at me. “You’re going to take it easy on me, Ancestor, right?”

I shook my head and grinned right back at him. “No, but don’t worry. I brought plenty of healing pills.”

Liang closed his eyes, took a moment to focus, and then opened them into fierce slits.

He charged me.

As he moved, he darted wildly from side to side. Each step tore up large clods of dirt and sent sorghum shoots flying in every direction.

Liang was fast, but with my enhanced nervous system, tracking his movements was no issue at all.

I held out my right hand, infused it with metal qi, and waved it in a slicing motion.

An invisible blade of qi cut through the air and headed straight toward the young man.

My qi moved several times faster than Liang's, but it was uncontrolled, so he had no problem dodging it.

I stuck out my right hand again and sliced it through the air in a rapid series of cuts.

A dozen invisible blades flew out, but Liang easily dodged each one.

Before I could send out a third wave of attacks, Liang was on top of me.

He dashed to my side, charged his fist with lightning, and punched out toward my kidney.

As he was still a meter away from me, this punch had no chance of connecting, but once Liang’s arm reached full extension, a thick bolt of lightning shot from his knuckles.

While he was moving into position, I had considered a variety of ways to evade or defend myself, but in the end, I chose to just stand still and take the hit.

As Liang’s lightning bolt shot into my side, I manipulated my metal qi to conduct it along the outer layer of my skin, down my leg, and into the ground.

This left me with a few scorch marks, but no actual damage had been done.

Taken aback by my decision not to block his attack, Liang froze. It was only for a moment, but that was all I needed.

I quickly swung my head to the left, away from Liang. This caused my long, silver hair to whip around.

As it moved, I shot metal qi through each strand of hair to create a series of thin, sharp wires that lashed out and raked the front of Liang’s body.

While this attack had landed, when I looked back at the young man, I saw that all I had done was tear up his clothing. None of the qi wires had been powerful enough to do any damage.

At this point, the fight devolved into several rounds of punching and kicking.

Liang’s lightning body made him too fast for me to land a solid hit, but because of the swiftness aspect that I had imbued into my body, he also found it difficult to land more than a glancing blow. Even when Liang did land a solid hit, it didn’t do any damage. His physical power wasn’t enough to damage me, and I just channeled his lightning-related powers into the ground.

The longer we fought, the more I adjusted to my new strength, and the harder it was for Liang to touch me.

Eventually, I held up a hand to stop the fight.

Liang stood in front of me, panting.

“Why are you so tough?” His eyes flicked to NiangBa. “You’re much harder to hurt than that fool.”

I flicked my left wrist with my right index finger, making a tink. “Metal body. It’s too easy for me to redirect your energy. You either need to get me off the ground, or you need an earth cultivator that can manipulate the area beneath me to keep me electrically isolated.”

This made Liang look at NiangBa, an earth cultivator.

I turned to him as well. It was time for round two.

---------------------------------------------------

After squaring up and starting our fight, NiangBa didn’t rush at me like Liang had. 

He walked toward me slowly and cautiously.

Once he was about 50 meters away, he stopped, punched the ground, and infused it with a massive torrent of earth qi.

The ground exploded and rushed toward me in a 5-meter-tall wave.

Such an attack would have been easy to dodge, but I wanted to see what NiangBa was up to, so I stood my ground.

Less than 3 meters away from me, this wave of earth split apart, and NiangBa appeared in the gap.

The now two, separate waves wrapped around me, blocking me in, while NiangBa bulled forward and threw a punch at my chest.

Instead of dodging, I threw a punch of my own and met him fist-to-fist.

This clash caused NiangBa to be thrown back 3 meters, relatively unharmed. 

As my back was pressed up against the wall of earth that he had created, I had a much harder time absorbing the impact of our clash. My body compressed, and I felt like my internal organs shifted.

Once I came back to my senses, I smiled and nodded to my opponent. “Good. I wanted to see how strong you’d become, but don’t expect to get another hit like that in.”

Unexpectedly, NiangBa dropped out of his fighting stance and backed away.

“Of course, Ancestor.” He bowed his head to me. “However, I wish to make a request. I would like to don my armor.”

I narrowed my eyes and nodded. “That’s fine, but I’ll wear mine as well.”

He grinned. “Of course.”

As I put on my silver, refined, formation-enhanced robes, NiangBa took out what looked to be a simple hemp overcoat. It wasn’t refined armor, but it did have a formation woven into its fabric.

Before I had enough time to figure out what this formation did, NiangBa activated it, and it disappeared.

That is to say, the robe was still there, and in normal vision, I could see the threads of the formation, but it had vanished from energy vision. Not only that, but the robe had also completely hidden any trace of NiangBa’s energy.

He gave me one last smile, pulled a hood over his head, and vanished. He was now invisible to both my regular vision and my energy vision.

Even casting out my soul to feel around, I found nothing. The area was too suffused with NiangBa’s earth qi for me to detect him directly, and I couldn’t find any traces of the light or dark qi from the illusion that was hiding him.

Was it an illusion?

I felt a gust of air to my right and immediately dodged.

A large spike of earth shot up where I had just been standing.

I looked around wildly.

What…

Then, it suddenly clicked. NiangBa’s blessing.

He wasn’t hiding himself with qi, he was shifting the colors of his robe to blend into the environment.

I used my metal qi to cut the air in front of me and began running in a large circle as fast as I could. As I ran, I carefully observed my surroundings. 

If NiangBa only had to deal with me looking at him from one perspective, hiding himself by shifting the color of his clothing might be feasible. If I were constantly moving, however, there was no way he would be able to keep up.

After only half a lap, I spotted a clear distortion in the air and immediately sent out of slash of metal qi.

This didn’t cause NiangBa any damage, but it cut into his clothing and disrupted the qi masking effect.

With my target now partially visible, I charged forward, dodged a series of rock spikes, ducked to the side of NiangBa’s punch, and slammed a fist into his chest.

The result was somewhat the reverse of when I had fought Liang. I was too fast for NiangBa to hit, but his earth body was incredibly tough. I could beat on him all day and not leave a scratch. The only difference was, unlike Liang, if I wanted to, I could infuse an attack with metal qi, pierce through his defenses, and deal him severe internal injuries.

Not wanting to do that, after landing a few hits, I backed off and called an end to the fight.

Then, I waved for the group at the edge of the field to come over.

I took a deep breath. “I don’t know how powerful a Sovereign is. If we fought one, we might be completely outmatched. However, from what I’ve seen today, I am confident that we can stand against even an army of Emperors.”

I looked at everyone with a solemn expression. “We’re ready. It’s time to take down the rest of the formations. It’s time to open up the Wastes and face our enemies head-on.”