A Year

News from the outside world spread with increasing fervor, but Xiao Kun remained unmoved, continuing to cultivate his techniques and Secret Arts every day.

As for combat techniques, the Xiao Family's level was too low, and the Secret Arts rewarded by the system were already enough for him to fight with at this stage.

Aside from cultivation, Xiao Kun also refined pills once a week.

Since Xiao Kun was mainly refining third- and Fourth Grade Pills now, the ingredients for Fourth Grade Pills were especially difficult to acquire. Even the Mitel branch in Wu Tan City needed a week to gather a single set.

Whenever Xiao Kun went to the Mitel Auction House each week to purchase medicinal ingredients, he would also catch up with Ya Fei and deepen their relationship.

Just like that, a year passed.

Inside a cave in the back mountains of the Xiao Family, a handsome young man sat cross-legged in the center, his hands forming a cultivation seal as surging energy flooded madly into his body.

Before long, with a loud bang, a pair of white wings suddenly sprouted from the young man's back. The appearance of these Dou Qi Wings meant that he had reached at least the Dou Wang realm.

He had taken his first step across the threshold of becoming an expert on the Dou Qi Continent.

And this young man was none other than their protagonist, Xiao Kun.

Having just broken through to the Dou Wang realm, Xiao Kun sensed his nearly brand-new body. The immense energy of his Dou Qi seemed to have remolded it, and his strength had increased severalfold compared to when he was a Dou Ling, leaving him almost intoxicated with power.

Remembering that he could not get himself killed, Xiao Kun quickly suppressed the arrogance in his heart. As he carefully examined his body, he discovered several newly opened meridians in his back. It was through these meridians that he could form Dou Qi Wings behind him, allowing Dou Wang experts to fly on their own.

Furthermore, Dou Qi was no longer stored in his dantian as before, requiring it to be sent from there through the meridians to reach the rest of his body whenever he needed to use it.

Now, Dou Qi could be stored throughout his entire body. He could draw upon it wherever he wanted to use it, making it much faster.

His Soul Power also seemed to have surged tremendously. Refining the sixth-grade pills recorded in the inheritance would no longer be a problem.

The inheritance seals for fifth- and sixth-grade alchemists had already been unsealed when he was a Dou Ling, and he had received those inheritances.

Xiao Kun sent Dou Qi to his back and formed his Dou Qi Wings. He wanted to experience humanity's dream of thousands of years—flight.

As Dou Qi flowed into them, Xiao Kun felt a buoyant force acting upon his body, slowly lifting him off the ground until he floated in the air.

By changing the flow of Dou Qi, Xiao Kun moved about in all directions through the air—up, down, left, and right.

Once he got the hang of it, he suddenly increased his Dou Qi output, flew out of the cave, and soared high into the sky for a fast flight.

Watching all manner of things flash past beneath him, Xiao Kun felt exhilaration well up in his heart. He continued flying for several hours before, having had enough fun, he finally returned to the Xiao Family.

Over the course of that year, aside from the changes in Xiao Kun's cultivation, many other things had also changed.

His Secret Art, Flame Shaping, could now, with the support of his Dou Wang cultivation, shape Heavenly Flames into a nearly transparent giant snake one zhang wide and over ten zhang long. It could even carry out simple automatic attacks. Blowing up an ordinary Dou Wang was no trouble at all.

By occasionally giving Ya Fei, Xiao Yan, Xiao Zhan, and Xiao Xun'er some pills, he had also triggered critical-hit rewards for many useful pills. It was precisely through these pills that he had broken through to Dou Wang so quickly.

Many of these pills had never appeared in the original novel, but they were recorded in the Sixth-grade Alchemist Inheritance.

For example, a single Dou Practitioner Pill could raise a Dou Zhe by two stars, and one could take three of them with each remaining effective. In other words, three such pills could raise someone by six stars within the Dou Zhe realm.

There were also corresponding Dou Master Pills, Great Dou Master Pills, Spirit Augmenting Pills, King Augmenting Pills, and Emperor Augmenting Pills for the Dou Master, Da Dou Shi, Dou Ling, Dou Wang, and Dou Emperor realms. Each could likewise raise the corresponding realm by six stars.

Naturally, none of these pills were low-grade. Dou Practitioner Pills, Dou Master Pills, Great Dou Master Pills, and Spirit Augmenting Pills were all Fourth Grade Pills.

King Augmenting Pills and Emperor Augmenting Pills were Fifth-grade Medicinal Pills and Sixth-grade Medicinal Pills respectively.

There were also pills capable of breaking through major realm bottlenecks.

These included the Master Breaking Pill, Great Dou Master Breaking Pill, Spirit Breaking Pill, King Breaking Pill, Emperor Breaking Pill, and Great Sect Breaking Pill, which respectively allowed breakthroughs from Dou Zhe to Dou Master, Dou Master to Da Dou Shi, Da Dou Shi to Dou Ling, Dou Ling to Dou Wang, Dou Wang to Dou Emperor, and Dou Emperor to Dou Zong.

Their additional success rates were ninety percent, eighty percent, seventy percent, sixty percent, fifty percent, and fifty percent respectively. They were truly formidable.

Aside from the Emperor Breaking Pill and Great Sect Breaking Pill, which were a Fifth-grade Medicinal Pill and a Sixth-grade Medicinal Pill respectively, all the others were Fourth Grade Pills.

Of course, he had not triggered many critical-hit rewards for high-grade pills above the sixth grade during the past year.

This was because Xiao Kun had discovered that, during the critical-hit compensation process, besides the system's explicit restriction that items which had already triggered a critical hit could not do so again, there were also many hidden rules.

First, the more important a character's role was in the original novel, the higher the critical-hit reward multiplier. Xiao Yan stood out particularly in this regard.

For other unnamed characters, every opportunity he gave them had only triggered a tenfold critical hit, meaning he merely received ten times the original item back without any increase in grade. The Sixth-grade Alchemist Inheritance he had obtained through a critical hit was an exception.

To be honest, the critical-hit compensation for the opportunities he had given away at the beginning had been relatively high. Perhaps that had been beginner benefits.

Second, if a person was given opportunities too frequently within a short period, the critical-hit compensation would grow lower and lower. It needed some time between gifts to recover.

Third, the more things he gave at once, the lower the critical-hit compensation multiplier would be.

These were all he had discovered for the time being. Thus, the highest multiplier he had triggered over the past year was only a hundred thousandfold. That one critical hit had given him ten Seventh-grade Medicinal Pills: Form Transformation Pills.

He had obtained ten-thousandfold critical-hit compensation three times. In total, he had gained four sixth-grade Spirit Fusion Pills, three sixth-grade Calamity Breaking Pills, three sixth-grade Spirit Recovery Purple Pills, ten sixth-grade Great Sect Breaking Pills, and ten sixth-grade Emperor Augmenting Pills.

All the others had been hundredfold or thousandfold critical hits. Of the fifty Fourth Grade Pills he had refined, ten had triggered thousandfold critical-hit compensation, granting him four Emperor Extreme Pills and six Emperor Augmenting Pills.

The rest amounted to nearly a thousand fourth- and fifth-grade pills, most of which were the cultivation-enhancing pills mentioned above.

Thus, he would not have to worry about pills until reaching Dou Zong, and he could even use them to cultivate quite a few Dou Emperors for the Xiao Family.

With the help of his pills, his father Xiao Zhan had broken through to seven-star Dou Ling; Xiao Yan and Xiao Xun'er had respectively broken through to seven-star Dou Zhe and one-star Dou Master, while Ya Fei had broken through to eight-star Dou Zhe.

As for everyone else, aside from giving them some third-grade pills he had refined himself while testing the critical-hit compensation, he had not given them any pills over the past year.

Furthermore, Xiao Kun's relationship with Ya Fei had grown much closer through his proactive contact whenever he went to the auction house to purchase medicinal ingredients.

Now, whenever Xiao Kun touched Ya Fei's cheeks, shoulders, or hands, a faint blush would only appear on her lovely face. She no longer avoided him.

He had not needed much time to make such progress, and he was already quite satisfied.

However, now that he had broken through to Dou Wang and had come of age, he was planning to take things a step further.