Teasing Emotions III

Lu Sheng followed his memories toward the side room he had visited earlier.

After entering the hall, he went up the wooden stairs on the left.

When he reached the side room's door, Lu Sheng looked at the Red Lantern hanging above it and felt his scalp prickle.

Whoosh. A chill wind suddenly swept past. Lu Sheng spun around sharply. For an instant, he had seemed to feel something drift past his back.

"Since Juan Ren Estate has already been wiped out, no ghost should be coming for me in theory. Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive." Seeing nothing, Lu Sheng felt somewhat reassured. He turned back and reached out to push open the side room door before him.

Click.

The door slowly opened. Bright red light filled the room, where two large red lanterns were hanging as well.

"Is anyone here?" Lu Sheng called again as he slowly stepped inside.

"Yes."

A dry, shriveled voice suddenly came from behind Lu Sheng.

He whirled around and saw an old woman carrying a white lantern, standing in the doorway with her eyes wide open.

The wrinkles on the old woman's face resembled the bark of an ancient tree, layer upon layer. Carrying the lantern, her clouded old eyes fixed on Lu Sheng.

"Young man, you shouldn't have boarded the boat at this time."

"I dropped something here—a waist pouch—so I came back to look for it." Lu Sheng forced out a smile.

"Is that so? Then look for it. Look carefully, look carefully." The old woman remained expressionless. She turned and carried her lantern soundlessly toward the other rooms.

Lu Sheng watched her until she vanished past the doorway, then walked over and closed the door.

He turned back to inspect the furnishings in the side room.

The two large red lanterns that had not been there before now hung on one wall, their scarlet radiance dyeing the entire room a vivid red.

Lu Sheng carefully felt around the place where he had sat earlier. Sure enough, he found his dropped waist pouch in a gap along the side of the cushion.

He untied the pouch. Inside the dark brown leather pouch, the gold notes, silver notes, slips of paper, and the small paper packet of powder left behind by the demon ghost were all still there.

After putting away the waist pouch and hanging it back at his waist, Lu Sheng straightened up and looked around the side room again. The light inside those lanterns seemed to have grown even redder.

An inexplicable feeling quietly welled up from the depths of his heart.

"I need to leave." Lu Sheng quickly reached the door and stretched out a hand to pull it open.

The door did not budge at all!

Lu Sheng's heart jolted. He exerted force with his hand. The door, which should have opened with a light pull, now seemed to be blocked by some immense weight. Even with Lu Sheng's current strength, he could only barely pull open a narrow crack.

"Something's wrong!" Alarm bells rang wildly in Lu Sheng's mind. Circulating his inner energy, he yanked with all his strength.

Bang! The door was ripped open violently, and the solid wooden handle cracked apart. Lu Sheng dashed out in a single stride, raced down the corridor and stairs, then rushed out in a few bounds.

Pfft.

With a tap of his toes, he borrowed force from the loops of hemp rope wrapped around the painted boat. He sprinted forward and landed on the riverbank.

Though he had never trained in qinggong, the Black Tiger Saber, Swallow Chasing Wind Saber, and the like all had foundational footwork. He was still far faster than an ordinary person.

After getting off the boat, Lu Sheng turned back to look at the painted boat.

The painted boat was still the same painted boat, and there was still no one aboard. Yet the alarm bells in Lu Sheng's heart had lowered their banners and fallen silent. He clearly no longer sensed any threat.

He gave the painted boat one deep look, then turned and raced toward the city.

He returned home in one breath, pushed open his room door, and locked it behind him. The pitch-black room was cold and empty, devoid of human warmth.

He slowly walked to the desk, took out a flint, struck up sparks with a scrape-scrape, and lit the candle.

The dim yellow candlelight cast shifting shadows across the lower half of his face.

"This painted boat may also be connected to ghostly beings. I never expected that after one Juan Ren Estate was gone, I would run into another Red Chamber Painted Boat. I had originally planned to rest leisurely for two days before cultivating a new inner art. Now it seems there's no need to wait. I should first make every preparation I can."

Lu Sheng left the desk and went to the bed in the bedroom. From beneath it, he dragged out a heavy Refined Iron Box. The box was secured to the floor with sliding grooves, making it difficult for an ordinary person to carry away.

He carefully took a small key from his waist pouch, inserted it into the box, and turned it. With a click, it opened.

Inside the box lay two small, brownish-yellow cloth Books.

Lu Sheng took one out and held it in his hand before closing and locking the box again.

Azure Pine Single-Minded Art.

Five bold characters, like dragons soaring and phoenixes dancing, were clearly written on the book.

Lu Sheng gently opened the first page. After the general outline he had read before came the image of a towering pine beside a sheer cliff.

He focused intently on the picture for a while, then gently closed the book. He climbed onto the bed, sat cross-legged, and began to guard stillness and emptiness.

He had practiced this Life Nurturing Technique on and off for so long. Perhaps because it conflicted with the inner art he had trained before, every time he felt he was about to condense a sense of qi, it would be instantly devoured by the Jade Crane Skill.

This time was no exception. Before long, the Jade Crane Skill began circulating at high speed, swiftly destroying the state of mind created by the Azure Pine Single-Minded Art. A celestial crane spreading its wings to fly seemed to cry out sharply within his body.

"Alas..." Lu Sheng opened his eyes. "With my inner arts conflicting, am I doomed to be trapped like this? Unable to improve any further?"

In his frustration, his hand unconsciously grasped and lightly kneaded his waist pouch. When his fingers touched the packet of powder, he suddenly froze.

"This packet contains a trace of powder left by that demon ghost, doesn't it?"

He gently opened the packet. Inside was clearly a pile of black powder, but he seemed to remember that it had not been this color before.

"The first time I activated my ability, it was related to that stone left by the Water Ghost and that Cobblestone. In that case, could it be that I..." Lu Sheng stared at the powder, a strange thought faintly surfacing in his heart.

"Deep Blue!"

He silently called out.

Whoosh! A blue square immediately appeared before his eyes.

Lu Sheng looked at the Modifier's panel. There was still no option for the Azure Pine Single-Minded Art. After hesitating for a moment, he looked again at the powder.

He reached out, tilted the paper packet, and poured all the powder into his palm.

Ever since obtaining this powder, he had been careful not to let it touch his skin, lest it be corrosive or poisonous. But now that he had no other recourse, there was no harm in trying. At worst, if something happened, he could quickly fling it away.

Then he bit down hard on the index finger of his other hand, breaking the skin. He squeezed out a drop of blood and let it fall onto the powder.

Hiss!

Just as expected, the moment the drop of blood touched the powder, threads of white smoke rose sharply. Before long, the black powder rapidly turned white, as if its color had faded away.

Lu Sheng felt threads of cold energy seep into his body through his palm.

Would you like to perform a martial arts derivation?

Almost at the same instant, that cold energy was absorbed and vanished in the blink of an eye, while a prompt window appeared on the Deep Blue Modifier.

"Just as I thought!" Joy rose in Lu Sheng's heart. This function had indeed appeared.

When he had previously discovered the fourth level of the Black Tiger Saber Technique, he had harbored some suspicions. Perhaps the Modifier used the store of knowledge in his mind to further derive martial arts techniques. That was why the fourth level of the Black Tiger Saber had emerged.

Yet afterward, no matter what techniques he learned, nothing like what had happened with the Black Tiger Saber appeared again, leaving him puzzled.

Now it seemed that perhaps he had been missing residual matter from ghostly beings. That was why he had never been able to continue deriving higher realms of martial arts.

"Back then, I activated the Modifier using the Cobblestone discovered when the Xu Family was massacred. This time, it was the powder left behind after that demon ghost died. It seems my ability truly cannot be separated from ghostly beings." Lu Sheng smiled bitterly inwardly.

Looking at the prompt window before him, Lu Sheng steadied himself.

Would you like to perform a martial arts derivation?

"Yes."

After confirming the option, Lu Sheng immediately experienced a marvelous sensation. It was as though every martial art he had learned within the Modifier could be derived and fused.

These techniques and martial arts were all knowledge he had mastered himself. To him, it felt like reorganizing and systematizing the library of knowledge in his mind, then choosing different cores around which to reconstruct martial arts.

It was like building a house out of blocks. He could choose from many different kinds of houses.

Several selectable buttons also appeared beside the martial arts within the Modifier.

Which techniques could be derived and which could not were clearly displayed.

Lu Sheng carefully looked through them from top to bottom.

"If I can use the Black Fiend Skill as the core and absorb the other systems, that would be best. I could also construct it around the Jade Crane Skill, or use the Black Tiger Saber as the core. The Heart Piercing Palm isn't bad either..." Lu Sheng hesitated somewhat. But then he could only sigh helplessly. "Unfortunately, there isn't enough powder. There are only these few choices."

He looked inside the Modifier. Only the Jade Crane Skill and Black Tiger Saber had selectable buttons.

"Can I only choose between these two?"

With a thought, he pressed the button behind the Jade Crane Skill.

"Inner arts are the most important foundation."

Once he had made his choice, all the buttons vanished, and the entire Modifier slowly blurred. Lu Sheng felt a vast amount of knowledge and understanding concerning the Jade Crane Skill begin to stir on its own in his mind. Combining with the contents of the texts he had memorized, they constantly rubbed and collided together, producing countless new inspirations in the blink of an eye.

In the brief span of ten breaths.

Lu Sheng closed his eyes, then slowly opened them again. A brand-new, chilling aura radiated from his body.

The methods of exerting force from the Jade Crane Skill and the Black Tiger Saber had fused perfectly. This was the Modifier's derivation of a higher level of the Jade Crane Skill using Lu Sheng's stores of knowledge. It integrated the force-exertion techniques of the Black Tiger Saber, forming an explosive inner art stronger than the original Jade Crane Skill.

While retaining the original technique's formidable endurance and recovery abilities, this new inner art also gained explosive power with considerable lethality.

"This new inner art borrowed the force-exertion techniques of the Black Tiger Saber and actually derived a life-nurturing inner art into a combat inner art with lethal properties. This derivation truly is incredible!" Lu Sheng marveled inwardly. "If there had been more powder, or more of those Cobblestones left by the Water Ghost like last time, perhaps I could have derived other, more advanced techniques, such as the Black Fiend Skill."

Feeling out the new inner art, he found that as its explosive power increased, the Jade Crane Skill's original self-healing ability seemed to have been strengthened slightly as well.

"This can no longer be considered the Jade Crane Skill. Since it fused the force techniques of the Black Tiger Saber Technique, I'll call it the Black Tiger Jade Crane Skill from now on."

As that thought crossed his mind, the name displayed for the Jade Crane Skill on the Modifier slowly changed into the five words: Black Tiger Jade Crane Skill.