When he was about a meter from the kettle, Wuchen stopped. He was a little confused. The kettle was certainly exquisite, but the water inside was just ordinary water.
With the strength of his spiritual sense, his experience from his previous life, and his understanding of the way of water, he could say with certainty that there was nothing special about the water in the kettle. At most, it was a little purer.
Of course, he had no intention of exposing the truth. Since the other party had put it this way, there might be some deeper meaning.
Master Korin didn't look like the sort who would deliberately spread rumors just to make fun of people.
"Excuse me, Master Korin." Wuchen tentatively reached for the kettle.
Just as he expected, Master Korin moved. With an apparently casual wave of the wooden staff in his hand, he hooked the kettle away.
Master Korin yawned, his eyes still closed. The kettle dangled from the tip of his staff, swinging from side to side as if taunting Wuchen.
"Come and take it, come and take it, meow~" Master Korin taunted him as well.
Wuchen kept trying to snatch the kettle, but Master Korin effortlessly dodged every attempt with his eyes closed, keeping it just out of Wuchen's reach.
Is he trying to give me a pointer? Master Korin's intentions weren't hard to discern. And Wuchen was indeed holding back.
He had plenty of ways to snatch the kettle in an instant, never mind using martial arts or footwork.
Given the difference in their strength, he could take the kettle before Master Korin had time to react simply by relying on his speed. He could even swipe the staff along with it.
Or he could attack Master Korin directly and force him to leave an opening, instead of focusing entirely on the kettle and making his intentions obvious, leaving himself covered in openings.
He can predict my movements because of ki. Is that what he's trying to teach me? Wuchen had naturally studied ki, and he could sense other people's ki and how much of it they had.
He sped up a little to put some pressure on Master Korin. Then Wuchen closed his eyes and released his spiritual sense, sensing the ki inside Master Korin's body.
Ki was a kind of bodily energy unique to this world, similar to blood and qi, yet different.
Blood and qi was also a form of bodily energy, a manifestation of vitality. A person's innate blood and qi, both its strength and its limits, were restricted by their race and bloodline.
Body-tempering methods involved absorbing spiritual energy after birth to temper the body, thereby strengthening blood and qi and even changing it at its source.
This, in turn, nourished the body and caused it to undergo a transformation. One might gain immense strength, become impervious to blades and spears, or extend one's lifespan...
As for ki, it was less a form of bodily energy than a concrete manifestation of the body's strength.
Training the body increased the amount of ki within it, and ki could also lie dormant in the flesh and blood.
It was true that ki could make a person stronger, faster, and more resilient. But fundamentally, it was very different from blood and qi. Ki was active, while blood and qi was passive.
A person had to actively draw on their ki to improve their physical abilities. In other words, no matter how much ki someone had, a small knife might still pierce their defenses if they were caught off guard.
That was already a troublesome flaw. More serious still, the strength and quantity of ki had no connection to lifespan, and it couldn't raise one's level of life.
Its only advantage was that, like spiritual power and origin power, it could be released outside the body—and its destructive power was astonishing. It could make up for the sluggish progress and lack of power in the early stages of cultivation.
That was everything Wuchen understood about ki so far.
He considered it less important than the unique, berserk energy inside him and Goku.
The latter was unusual, like some kind of constitution or bloodline. It could change flesh and blood at the source, and it could also be tempered by spiritual energy.
Its progress was simply very slow. In the terms of this world, the changes took place at the cellular level.
And recently, those changes seemed to have hit a bottleneck and were almost at a standstill.
At that moment, Wuchen wanted to learn more about ki from Master Korin. Perhaps it could answer some of his questions.
After all, ki was a key part of this world's cultivation system. It might not be as simple as it seemed.
As for Master Korin before him, among everyone Wuchen had met so far, he might not be the strongest in the way of ki, but he had likely traveled the farthest along it.
One man and one cat.
One relied on his familiarity with the surroundings and his understanding of ki; the other relied on his powerful spiritual sense.
Both had abandoned their sight and begun a race through the air, high above the clouds.
Neither was hindered in the slightest. Instead, both moved with incredible agility and speed, completely aware of each other's movements.
Ordinary people couldn't do that even with their eyes closed—let alone if they had an extra pair of eyes.
"Young man, that Flying Nimbus of yours was given to you by that fellow Mutaito, wasn't it?" They even found time to chat.
"Does Master Korin know the old Master Roshi?" Wuchen asked, thinking that he'd been right. Both their titles included the word "Master"; there had to be some connection between them.
"Master Roshi? That fellow..." Master Korin muttered as if talking to himself, then continued:
"Besides you two, no one has come up here in a long time. The last person to make it up was three hundred years ago, and he was the old Master Roshi you mentioned."
"He was also the first person to drink the Ultra Divine Water, meow~"
"I see." Wuchen understood. Then he fell silent, sped up a little more, and focused even more carefully on sensing the ki inside Master Korin.
Master Korin, however, seemed unable to sit quietly. He brought up another topic:
"To be honest, I can sense people's hearts and read some of their thoughts. The purer someone's heart is, the easier they are to read."
"You and your younger brother were able to ride the Flying Nimbus, so you must be pure of heart and kind. I can feel that your ki is kind, too."
"But I can't read anything from you at all. Can you tell me why?"
Sensing people's hearts? Kind ki? Wuchen felt as if he'd caught on to something important, but he answered without hesitation. "Perhaps it's because we've undergone a special kind of cultivation..."
Yes, Wuchen used cultivation as a convenient excuse. He had planned to spread the word about it anyway, so there was no need to hide it.
And so, while explaining, keeping up the chase, and thinking things through, Wuchen began to analyze the situation.
Ki. Kind ki. Ki also has attributes, though they aren't natural elements. And that so-called ability to sense people's hearts seems connected to ki—or to its attributes. It can be used to sense other people's thoughts.
I've condensed a Divine Soul, while Goku has condensed an Origin Soul. That must be why this technique doesn't work on us. Only someone who has condensed a Divine Soul or Origin Spirit and uses the Soul Searching Technique can affect cultivators.
But these attributes of ki... There may be some mystery to them. They might even be connected to the berserk energy inside Goku and me. By that logic, isn't berserk energy an attribute, too?
Before you continue