P.S.: Many assassins' guns were not standard-issue weapons, but modified ones. Quite a few of these modified guns used Iron Marbles as bullets. Li Yang's use of Iron Marbles was deliberately misleading, making others think he used firearms. Why bullets? After all, when it came to exerting force with the hand, regularly shaped marbles made it easier to increase the force, and their fired power was greater as well.
There was another point: this book was about flying daggers, that much was certain. Having the protagonist use marbles now was simply unavoidable. Little Li Flying Dagger was too distinctive, and his identity could easily be exposed. As for how one could cultivate immortality through flying daggers, everyone would soon find out. All I could tell everyone was that truly entering the Flying Dagger Path meant internal cultivation; one did not necessarily have to cling to holding a flying dagger in one's hand. A true flying dagger master could easily end an opponent's life even with no dagger in hand.
The days passed one by one. Li Yang spent every day in the villa training with marbles, applying the same perseverance he had once used to practice Little Li Flying Dagger...
Li Yang did not blink, his gaze fixed entirely upon the steel plate ahead. Suddenly, his right hand moved, instantly becoming a blur. Whoosh! A deep whistle of something slicing through the air rose and vanished. Then came a bang! The marble sank completely into the steel plate.
"Li Yang, you brat, this one failed again. It penetrated more than ten centimeters into the steel plate." Overlord Xiang Yu gleefully announced Li Yang's latest failure.
Hearing Overlord Xiang Yu's response, Li Yang's brows furrowed slightly. There's still a problem with the force. It actually penetrated more than ten centimeters? Li Yang's goal was for the Iron Marble to sink exactly ten centimeters into the steel plate—not a fraction more, not a fraction less.
Having reached Li Yang's current level, every marble he fired had to use force that approached perfection. Not one bit more, not one bit less. Li Yang's marble shots were not yet successful, but whenever he threw a flying dagger, he could clearly sense that marvelous feeling. In particular, that profound, mysterious sensation was enough to intoxicate a person; it likewise showed that the flying dagger strike was perfect.
"I refuse to believe I can't use marbles at the same level as flying daggers!" Li Yang's pride flared. He kept training, firing marble after marble into the steel plate. His left hand joined in as well, sending an Iron Marble shooting straight toward the steel plate like a sharp arrow.
Suddenly, Li Yang's hands became like machine guns, continuously firing Iron Marbles one after another. They were so fast that all anyone could see were the streaking afterimages left by his hands.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!...
It was like hurling pebbles into rotten mud. Marble after marble easily sank into the twenty-centimeter-thick steel plate, each one embedding itself at roughly ten centimeters. Suddenly, Li Yang's eyes lit up, and his mind instantly entered the Joyful Spirit Realm. The trajectories of the two marbles fired simultaneously from his left hand immediately changed, entering their designated positions completely according to Li Yang's control.
Li Yang rejoiced inwardly. Good. Most importantly, the control techniques for flying daggers brought by the three great realms haven't changed at all. They can be used directly on marbles!
Night, inside Li Yang's bedroom.
Li Yang sat cross-legged on the bed. No—looking closely, one would discover that there was a gap of several centimeters between his crossed legs and the bed.
Streams of faint bluish-green energy continuously flowed into Li Yang's body. Every part of his body absorbed those bluish-green streams. If anyone who cultivated internal energy saw this, they would surely be stunned, because this was heaven-and-earth spiritual energy so dense it was frightening. The spiritual energy absorbed by ordinary internal energy cultivators was exceedingly thin; it was simply impossible for it to take on color.
Whoosh!
Like a long whale drawing in water, heaven-and-earth spiritual energy rushed rapidly into Li Yang's body. It was continuously absorbed and tempered by him, merging into the nebula within his dantian. In the end, that spiritual energy formed threads of Innate True Qi, deepening Li Yang's cultivation by another layer.
A night passed, and dawn had begun to break. Li Yang rose and walked onto the balcony, breathing in the fresh morning air.
By now, the fourth layer of my Demon Yang Canon should have completely reached the Great Completion Stage, right? Li Yang thought. Back when he had spent half a year at the research institute base, he had reached the fourth layer. After another half year of cultivation, he had already neared the Great Completion Stage. Now that Li Yang had cultivated for some more time, with his terrifying rate of absorbing heaven-and-earth spiritual energy and Overlord Xiang Yu's assistance, he was about there.
"Mm, brat, your Innate True Qi energy should be around 9,000 jing now. Haha, cultivate diligently and break through to the fifth layer. This Hegemon will definitely give you a surprise!" Xiang Yu said cheerfully.
During this period, Li Yang devoted every night entirely to cultivating internal energy. During the day, aside from practicing with Iron Marbles, he would go drink at Taibai Restaurant. After going back and forth a few times, his relationship with the restaurant's owner, Ge Pu, had grown much closer.
"Mu Yi, you're here! Come, come, your old brother will have a couple of drinks with you!" The moment Ge Pu saw Li Yang, he happily came over carrying several bottles of wine. Li Yang, meanwhile, glanced at Tian Gang, who was drinking alone in a corner on the first floor. During this time, Li Yang had seen Tian Gang almost every time he visited Taibai Restaurant.
Li Yang said nothing. He and Ge Pu immediately went upstairs and casually entered a private room.
"Old brother, I haven't asked you yet. Is it just you and sister-in-law? No children?" Li Yang asked with a smile.
"Yes, of course we have one. Your sister-in-law and I have a daughter, Ge Xin. Xin Xin is studying at New York University now and comes home once a week. She came back last time, but you didn't see her. Honestly, haha, Mu Yi, my daughter is a beauty. You brat had better not get any bad ideas!" Even Li Yang could feel Ge Pu's deep fatherly love when he mentioned his daughter. It seemed Ge Pu truly adored her beyond measure.
"You have no idea how amazing my daughter is. This year, she even received New York University's first-class annual scholarship!" Ge Pu boasted to Li Yang, clearly proud of his daughter.
That evening, Li Yang returned to the villa. Back in Shanghai, Li Yang had lived alone, and he still lived alone now. He liked peace and quiet, not clamor.
"I've trained for so long, and the marbles' power has barely reached what I expected. Let's see if there are any good missions to take!" Li Yang entered his bedroom, turned on his computer, and logged into the Assassin World's designated website. The moment he opened it, the page displayed the most trashy sort of adult website. Li Yang paid it no mind. He entered his assassin account and password into the member login, and the page immediately changed, becoming identical to the one he had seen at the assassin broker's place.
"Oh, the highest-paying assassination mission is only fifty million. That's rather disappointing." Li Yang clearly did not care about fifty million, but just as he muttered to himself, the page suddenly refreshed. A mission written in red appeared.
"One billion US dollars! How is that possible? Are my eyes playing tricks on me?" Li Yang stared blankly at the mission before him. Throughout the history of the Assassin World, the highest mission reward was generally only around one hundred million US dollars. Yet now, a one-billion-dollar mission had appeared. Could the other side really be printing money?
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