Hard Training

Su Yun remembered. This was a detail.

He could not remember most details clearly, but this one had appeared in the first three chapters at the very beginning, so it had left a deep impression on him. He remembered it.

A little more here, a little more there—by the time the plot began, Xiao Yan was exactly fifteen.

"There are still nine years left," Su Yun thought.

It was no wonder he calculated the time so tightly.

He was a lowly commoner with no backing, only an outdated system. If he wanted to grow strong, roam freely across the Douqi Continent, the safest way was to snatch the protagonist's opportunities.

If a man did not look out for himself, heaven and earth would destroy him!

In cultivation, years passed unnoticed. In the blink of an eye, a year and a half had gone by.

"Hoo...

"This Foundation Establishment Spiritual Liquid really gets used up fast."

Looking at the basin of water that had once again become clear to the bottom, Su Yun's gaze was distant as he sighed.

Each batch of Foundation Establishment Spiritual Liquid could only let him cultivate for two months. Every two months, he had to pay a visit to the market stalls.

Thinking about it, he even felt a little guilty.

He got up, put on his clothes, and headed for the market again.

Thanks to the support of the various stall owners, the results of his cultivation were gratifying.

After a year and a half of bitter training, his cultivation had broken through to Dou Qi Stage Seven just seven days ago.

This result was honestly inferior to Xiao Yan's, but it was not slow either.

Xiao Yan had spent three years marking time and laying a solid foundation, and he was also re-cultivating. That was how he could shoot straight from Dou Qi Stage Three to Dou Qi Stage Seven in a single year.

Su Yun had not been useless for three years. Going from Dou Qi Stage Four to Dou Qi Stage Seven in a year and a half, raising himself by three stages of Dou Qi, and possessing such cultivation before even turning eight—he was already very satisfied.

In the original work, even Xiao Yan's fiancée, Nalan Yanran, was only at Dou Qi Stage Eight at twelve years old. Even the dignified Young Sect Master of the Misty Cloud Sect was only at that level, so there was even less need to mention the other so-called young talents of the Jia Ma Empire.

Su Yun's cultivation had already left his peers an entire street behind.

The market he came to this time was not the Xiao Family's previous one. Right now, he had only achieved a little success, so caution remained his first principle.

Every two months, when he came to collect the materials for the Foundation Establishment Spiritual Liquid, he took turns visiting the markets of Wutan City. It was all for the sake of caution. Although recovering items from a meter away basically had no possibility of being discovered, being careful could never be too wrong.

The Foundation Establishment Spiritual Liquid was consumed rather quickly, so he had gathered materials this way many times. Naturally, he had become very practiced at it. After arriving at the market, it took only a short while for him to basically finish collecting everything.

"I'm only missing the last Bone Cleansing Flower and one First Tier Magic Core..." Su Yun murmured inwardly.

"There's one here." Su Yun's eyes lit up. The stall owner was yawning. Taking advantage of this moment, Su Yun directly activated the scan-and-recover function and pocketed it.

After getting it, Su Yun walked past the stall as if nothing had happened.

"Huh? I remember there was a Bone Cleansing Flower here just now. How did it disappear?"

Hearing the voice from behind him, Su Yun still showed no reaction.

He had encountered similar situations before.

But he had been walking properly along the aisle and had not touched anything on the stall at all, so naturally, he did not arouse any suspicion.

Looking back and seeing the stall owner anxiously scratching his ears and cheeks, searching here and there, Su Yun sighed and silently chanted in his heart, sinful, sinful.

After muttering that to himself, Su Yun cast his sins to the back of his mind and stopped defending himself.

He continued searching this market for his final material.

"Hmm..." Su Yun's heart stirred.

Directly in front of Su Yun, three men suddenly walked over. The man in the middle was dressed in luxurious clothes, while the other two walked on either side, positioned slightly behind him.

Clearly, he was some young master from who knew which family.

"Mm, this jewelry isn't bad. I'll take it." The luxuriously dressed young master looked left and right, casually picked up a bracelet from a stall, and stuffed it into his clothes.

"Zhang Yu, pay."

One of the guards took out a Gold Coin from his clothes and tossed it onto the stall. Then the three of them swaggered off.

Su Yun raised a brow. That bracelet had a First Tier water-attributed Magic Core embedded in it.

On the Douqi Continent, jewelry and weapons embedded with Magic Cores like this, even if it was only a First Tier Magic Core, cost one thousand Gold Coins.

"This... sigh..."

The stall owner's expression turned ugly, but he did not dare say anything.

The passersby nearby also acted as if they had seen nothing.

Su Yun looked at the man and silently said in his heart: scan.

Name: Jialie Ao

Gender: Male

Cultivation: Dou Qi Stage Six

Qi Method: None

Dou Technique: None

"Jialie Ao? The side character from the original work who coveted Xiao Xun'er?" Su Yun thought.

He had an impression of this Jialie Ao. He was an early-stage villainous side character, without much screen time.

"His talent is bad enough. He looks thirteen or fourteen and is only at Dou Qi Stage Six." Su Yun secretly looked down on him.

If others knew what he was thinking, they would probably cough up three liters of blood.

Jialie Ao's talent was already not considered low. In the original work, when the plot had just begun, Jialie Ao broke through to One-star Dou Zhe at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, which could already be said to be above average in a small place like Wutan City.

Su Yun had always compared himself in his heart to geniuses like Xiao Yan and Xiao Xun'er. Without realizing it, he had ignored the average standard of the Jia Ma Empire.

The Douqi Continent truly was a place where the weak were prey to the strong. Jialie Ao came from one of the Three Great Clans, and this was his own family's market, so the stall owner could only swallow this hidden loss.

Seeing this scene, Su Yun's desire for strength rose another level in his heart, and he silently mourned for the stall owner for three seconds.

Not meddling in others' business, Su Yun strolled around the market for a while longer, used the system to collect a First Tier wood-attributed Magic Core, then left the market.

After returning home, Su Yun sat cross-legged on the ground and did not immediately begin cultivating.

I'm already at Dou Qi Stage Seven. At my cultivation speed, I'll reach Dou Qi Stage Nine within the next year or two.

Su Yun was thinking about condensing a Dou Qi Cyclone.

On the Douqi Continent, to become a Dou Zhe, one had to condense a Dou Qi Cyclone within the body.

However, condensing a Dou Qi Cyclone carried a considerable failure rate.

After failure, Dou Qi Stage Nine would fall back to Stage Eight. There were also some unlucky people who failed to succeed even after condensing more than ten times.

"I can forget about Qi Gathering Powder." Su Yun sighed.

Although he had the system and Medicine Elder's lifetime Memories, the issue of resources was his sore spot.

Even the medicinal ingredients and Magic Cores for the Foundation Establishment Spiritual Liquid had been obtained by him through the system by getting (stealing) them. The flaw of this method was obvious.

Magic Cores above Third Tier and medicinal herbs used to refine Third Tier items were basically impossible to find in these markets.

As for imitating Xiao Yan and going to an auction house, it was not impossible.

But Wutan City's Mitel Auction House did not have Qi Gathering Powder either...

Su Yun did not dwell on this matter for long. He had Foundation Establishment Spiritual Liquid, so even if he failed a few times, re-cultivating would be simple.

After fusing out the Foundation Establishment Spiritual Liquid, Su Yun once again sank into bitter training.