Immortal Ascension Tower 36 A Tale Of Black Talons, White Branches, Purple Moonligh

Four times; in the span of a few breaths, that was how many times he had been able to freely turn the Immortal Ascension Tower into a Martial Way with Purple Moon properties. And it had been accomplished with just a wave of a palm and the overlapping of the two in his mind...

Cheng Hao stared at his Immortal Ascension Tower with an expression of numbness. As for excitement or fear... After what had just happened, he had already given up on trying to express those kinds of emotions altogether, focusing on the glowing paG.o.da instead. He finally stopped feeding his Spiritual Energy to the I See A Purple Moonlit World Scripture, which in turn made the Immortal Ascension Tower stop glowing altogether.

The overlapping worlds in Cheng Hao's vision slowly turned back into a single one as the purple streams of Spiritual Energy vanished. His golden eyes stared at the hovering paG.o.da for a long, long time, trying to pry into its secrets.

"Seriously... Please just tell me already; what ARE you?"

Of course, the Immortal Ascension Tower did not reply. If it had, he would have freaked out even more. In the end, the youth could only sigh and resign himself to the possibility that he might never come to a full understanding of the miraculous object in his possession.

With a wave of his sleeve, the Martial Way was collected back into his Pseudo-Core, which had been acting uneasy ever since the Immortal Ascension Tower had been removed from its center. Now, at last, its support was back, and the small bead of compacted Qi and Spiritual Energy grew calm and silently rotated on its axis.

Cheng Hao looked at the ruined building in the distance and discovered Xiao Wu had already left. He also went back, hurrying to get to the hut before the girl did in order to avoid any questions on his whereabouts. As much as he hated having to keep secrets from her, whom he had come to treat as a valuable little sibling, he would hate even more having to lie in order to cover them up.

There were some things that, if he were to disclose them to her, he simply wouldn't be able to protect her life with his current strength. For example, if anyone were to find out about his true ident.i.ty and his vast knowledge spread, those seeking to forcefully enter his head in order to fish them out would increase faster than one would blink. He might be able to handle it... but could Xiao Wu possibly do the same?

And as of right now, the Immortal Ascension Tower had become the highest potential threat of them all: if somebody with a high enough cultivation were to have been casually pa.s.sing by while Cheng Hao was summoning the Immortal Ascension Tower out...

"That was... pretty idiotic on my part, wasn't it? When was it that I became so sloppy? This isn't like me!" The youth shivered and, after some consideration, chose to let this was time slide. At the same time however, for a long a while from then on, let alone using the I See A Purple World Scripture, he also wouldn't be pulling the Martial Way itself out anytime soon! To the weak him, right now, that object was both the biggest of blessings, as well as the most vicious of curses.

And he thought that the drop of Supreme stage blood was already too much for the current him... Just goes to show how little he really knew about bulls.h.i.t power-ups.

With those thoughts in mind, Cheng Hao jumped down from the tall garrisons, ran atop on a makeshift staircase of flying golden knives, and then sped towards the 5th ward. On the way there, he pa.s.sed by a pretty interesting place called a 'Beast forest'. According to a sign he had pa.s.sed by long ago, there were many Spirit Beasts inhabiting and cultivating within these woods. Cheng Hao thought of Blindlight and then decided to bring him along the next time around... after all, Blindlight's cultivation as the Heaven Devouring Dragon was vastly different from that of the average cultivator. In order to increase his cultivation base, the adorable Goldy would need to devour objects or beings containing Spiritual Energy. As for those Spirit Beasts that inhabited the Beast Forest, that would be the perfect way for the dragon to feed upon Spiritual Energy.

Initially, Cheng Hao's only option had been to secretly kidnap cultivators within the Sect and let the dragon eat them. Right now, he was happy he wouldn't have to resort to that... as long as there were enough such Beast Forests around, that is.

He made a beeline for his hut and pa.s.sed straight through the Danger Grounds unhindered thanks to the help of a few golden blades he had created from the drop of G.o.dly blood. The weapons circled around him so quickly the naked eye could barely catch them; just like the blades of a blender, they slaughtered whatever beast happened to cross his path, not letting even the gore pa.s.s through the encirclement of swords. Within a minute, he had arrived home. There, he found Blindlight and spoke with him a bit. The small dragon seemed pretty excited about the Beast Forest too: they would head there together later on.

As soon as Xiao Wu came back, the three had a sumptuous breakfast inside the hut before Cheng Hao asked the purple-haired girl to clean up and follow him outside.

...

"So, yesterday night I told you I would impart you with a second scripture other than I See A Purple Moonlit World, didn't I? Well, as promised, here it is: just like the one you practiced this morning, the one that I'm about to teach you is a technique deriving from one of the Three Qi of the Xiao Clan, mainly the Black Dragon Sensed Qi. It comprises of a total of four verses, each containing within a powerful Flying Sword stance." Cheng Hao examined a wooden stick in his hands. "The full technique in general has the name Ascending Black Dragon's Four Deifications."

Cheng Hao turned towards Xiao Wu and, as they had agreed upon during their meal, she handed him the Black Dragon Martial Way. He only needed to imbue his Will in it for the Black Dragon to let out a loud roar and morph into a long, pointy, black sword! It had no guard, only an extremely short handle, attached to which was a triangular blade three-feet-something in length. This was the Martial Way's 'battle form', akin to how the White Tree had taken the semblance of a White Shield in Xu Ling's memories of Xiao Lan.

"The Black Dragon Blades of Xiao Lan are extremely peculiar, as they are not only Martial Ways, but also Flying Swords. As such, the swordsmanship that they tangle with is that of Flying Weapons. Unlike normal swords, which are wielded through their handles, these are wielded through one's sheer Will! Of course, pairing a simple movement of one's hand with the action of one's Flying Weapon, such as making one's blade follow one's hand..." Cheng Hao let go of the blade, which hovered in midair. He then made a series of hand gestures, and the Black Dragon Blade followed all of his commands: he pointed forward and the Black Dragon Blade shot forward; he moved his finger in a spiral and the Black Dragon Blade also rotated on its axis a few times, "Well, that is another way to go at it, especially for those not yet used to controlling a Flying Sword. It helps with focusing, you see? Now then, before we can actually start, there are a few things I need to tell you..."

He placed his hand on the pouch he had stolen from Liu Biao. After a flash of light, a wooden mannequin the size of an adult was brought out. It was a rather useful object that some cultivators liked to use in their training routines, some sort of doll that could be used to practice techniques of all sorts: just by imbuing it with Spiritual Energy and a strand of their consciousness, it could move following the basics commands that were imparted through the Will strand.

Cheng Hao soundlessly rotated his cultivation base and placed his hand on the wooden mannequin. Soon afterwards, the mannequin opened his eyes, which lit up with a red glow, and the child threw a wooden sword at it. The magical mannequin caught the blade in midair and then stopped moving. As he finished making his preparations, Cheng Hao also resumed his explanation.

"Your ancestor, Xiao Lan, was a very emotional person," he spoke. "He attached great importance to certain things, and had always kept close to his heart a children's fable he had loved in his youth. Back when he was still a child, every night, his mother used to smilingly tuck him in bed and then read that story out loud for him. One day however, she died. The death of his mother scarred him deeply, and to escape the pain, every night he would read that story out loud to himself and imagine that his mother was still with him. This went on for a long while, until he came to accept she was truly gone. Eventually, Xiao Lan joined the Evil Saint's army, and befriended Xu Ling, which aided him greatly in his rise to power. As soon as his knowledge and strength allowed him, in order to honor both his dead mother as well as the story which had helped him get over her death, Xiao Lan set his mind on creating a unique technique based on that same story."

"He worked on it for countless days and nights, eventually coming up with four of the world's most domineering Flying Sword forms. The fable that Xiao Lan liked so much was a rather well-known tale in the Xiao Clan, which narrated their origins as some kind of myth." As he spoke, he turned towards Xiao Wu, who was listening by the side, and swung the blade a few times. "You probably know or have heard about it too, although not as a children's story, but rather a myth! The t.i.tle is White Branches, Black Talons, narrating the story of the Xiao Clan's Black Dragon Ancestor."

Xiao Wu nodded: she knew this tale very well. It was taught to youths in the clan, and her being of a high status among the children of Xiao had resulted in an even more in-depth education about her origins... as the descendant of a powerful Primordial Beast, the Black Dragon!

Seeing her nod, Cheng Hao continued, "In its novelized version, the story of White Branches, Black Talons went as such:"

"One day, long ago, there was a world where nine suns and ten moons shone in the sky. In that world there was a palace in the clouds, and in it lived a black dragon - the king of the palace - and its subjects, whom the dragon treated as family. Completely opposite to the care he showed towards his loved ones, the dragon was incredibly arrogant towards his enemies, but had the strength to back it up, so no one really dared to defy his might and cross him in any way. After one too many displays of his tyranny however, during which royal human blood was spilled, there were many amongst humankind that began to scheme against him..."
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