A few days’ worth of time passed during which Zilan and Fujo got accustomed to having Kifo around. Of course, the extremely urgent and all-important news was left to Fujo to break or more accurately, he was dying to let Kifo know.
“What is it? Why have you both gone quiet all of a sudden?” questioned Kifo. A minute ago, they were casually conversing about the state of things in the Alchemy Association however, when he asked about what he’d missed during his departure, the room suddenly went silent.
With a stern, striking gaze Fujo stared at Kifo.
“Prepare yourself.” He said. “What I’m about to tell you is something that around certain circles within the Alchemy Association, is currently being referred to as the Mysterious legend.”
Kifo was shocked. Had something truly momentous occurred whilst he was away?
“Go on.” He urged.
“Mm.” nodded Fujo hesitantly. “Few had heard of him. Even fewer had seen his face. However, as of a few days ago, everyone came to know his name. He is the Mysterious Legend. The first of his kind.”
“Who is he?” Kifo was completely engrossed in this Mysterious legend. He didn’t even notice Zilan’s trembling lip and twitching eyelids. He was trying his utmost to keep his laughter in.
“These types of things are better seen than told. Come, I’ll take you to see the Legend’s claim to fame.”
‘Too vicious.’ Remarked Zilan, inwardly.
“Fame?”
“Of course!” exclaimed Fujo. “In some circles he’s even more famous than brother Zilan.”
“Cough, Cough” Zilan could stand it no longer, faking a coughing fit and exiting the room. On his way out, he did not forget to shoot Fujo a look of conflicted emotions. On one hand, he quite enjoyed Fujo’s performance but on the other hand Fujo was just too savage, leaving no face whatsoever for Kifo. In fact, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that he was purposefully tearing away every bit of face from Kifo.
“Surely Kifo won’t go berserk when he finds out and take it out on Fujo, right?” whispered Zilan.
He could just imagine what Kifo would go through upon finding out that he was the individual known as the Mysterious Legend. Furthermore, that it wasn’t because of his strength/great deeds that he’d earned this nickname but rather because of how he was not only ranked last amongst all rookies but also how he’d managed to take the title of first ever to completely not show up for the Rookie Ranking Tournament.
With Fujo there to fuel the flames of humiliation, the newly returned Kifo will probably elect to fight it out with him. As a soul-compression stage practitioner who’s attained an affinity with the Origin laws of Death, Fujo won’t stand a chance.
‘You brought this upon yourself.’ He thought to himself.
………………………….
With the two of them having left, Zilan decided to use this time alone wisely. His fight with Senior Mo was etching closer and after the spectacle he put on during the Ranking tournament. It is fairly reasonable to assume that the other party will try his best to take away some of his advantages, namely formations.
Needless to say, Zilan wasn’t sure about this but he had a gut feeling that something like that was going to happen thus preparations needed to be made. Advancing to the soul-compression stage was his main priority, even if his cultivation did not match Senior Mo’s as long as the gap was not as wide as say, an entire stage, Zilan felt extremely good about his chances.
To break through into the soul-compression stage, one of the things Zilan would need to do is customising or optimising the black core pill for his use.
Why was this necessary? Initially when it came to advancing to the next stage, Zilan had thought that after getting closer to the Origin law of water, he would be able to seamlessly evolve himself into a soul-compression stage expert. Now however, after some more thought into the subject he felt that the Black core pills uses were not to be overlooked. It could potentially give him a boost in removing the hidden impurities within his Blood force during the evolution process.
Of course, this could only be achieved after some tweaking from Zilan.
He thus went up to one of the empty rooms in the house and took out the black core pill. Two stars appeared in his eyes as he examined the pill.
“This isn’t going to be as hard as I thought.” Smiled Zilan.
His arms then transformed into Dragon claws, enlarging to a degree. He then sandwiched the pill in between the palms of his two hands before pressing down with all of his strength.
A crisp ‘pah’ sound escaped from within his hands.
Slowly opening up his palm, Zilan’s gaze closely focused onto the now crushed, powdered pill. Some of its medicinal properties escaped into the air, Zilan paid no attention to it though as the escaping portion of the pill was the Beast force it contained, something totally useless to him.
With his eyes, Zilan could clearly separate where the Universe energy was located as well as where the essence of the pill was concentrated. This made his job much easier as he simply separated what he needed from what he deemed useless.
“This isn’t the end, but with a few more adjustments it should be as good as it can be” He said, carefully storing the extracted materials.
Leaving the room, Zilan headed straight towards the training chamber. As soon as he arrived, he took off his clothes and transformed completely.
He stood in the middle of the chamber, eyes closed, breathing steady, heart calm and mind stable. Although it might look like he was just standing there, Zilan was actually optimising his strength. For good reason too because should he forgo doing this, his control of strength would lead to many problems. For example, if he was to take a step, just an ordinary, unassuming step, without adjusting his strength, Zilan could easily or rather effortlessly level this building he called home as well as part of the surroundings.
Even his breathing was exaggerated in this state. Every breath taken in close to doubles the amount of Universe energy as before. His hearing and eye sight were also both on the level of too much thus requiring him to calm his mind in order to avoid hearing and being overloaded with useless conversations from around the camp and even slightly beyond it.
This sort of training was something needed to be done regularly so that Zilan could effectively and efficiently control his power in every situation. Always going at max speed and strength didn’t always yield good results. This was especially the case for a thinker like Zilan.
Doing a few hand movements and constantly calibrating his body functions, Zilan was completely concentrated on his task. He then began doing some body movements that Fujo and Kifo would have found extremely strange should they have seen them.
Zilan was stretching in all manner of ways before slowly yet also silently performing a martial arts display of some kind. It was rough at first but as it went on, his movements became extremely smooth.
“Phew~” Wiping the sweat off his forehead and brow, Zilan smiled before heading to relax in the bath chamber.
The wing tattoo on his back flashed a few times at the thought of this.
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