Spring passed and autumn came, the seasons turning in their endless cycle.
Standing in the snow, with heavy flakes falling all around him, Li Su was bare-chested. After more than two years of training, his body was almost entirely free of excess fat. Like a wild leopard, every line of muscle stood out in the finest detail.
As he shifted from one stance to another, energy stirred around him of its own accord. The falling snowflakes were swept aside before they could even reach him.
Arhat True Qi really was strange.
It was clearly as fierce as could be, yet the further he trained, the more its nature remained overbearing while somehow growing gentler.
It had none of the searing heat of Nine Yang Divine Skill, nor the frigid chill of Nine Yin Manual. Its defining quality was hard to describe. If he had to put it into words, he would call it non-absorption.
As he practiced Arhat Gong, his Arhat True Qi grew fiercely repellent toward other energies. Extremely so.
Once he activated it, forget snowflakes—even water splashed at his face would be forced aside, never touching him, as though it had struck an invisible barrier.
As for its strength, it was certainly powerful.
But when it came to destructive force, it was caught somewhere in the middle. It was even inferior to the Great Strength Vajra Palm practiced by Xuanci and the others.
Li Su finished his practice and let out a long breath. A foot-long pillar of qi shot straight out in front of him.
The nature of the technique didn't match his expectations, but that didn't matter. As long as it worked, that was enough.
His demands in this world weren't high. If he could get a top-tier divine art, great—but its inner power had to be at least sixty years deep.
"Xuankong, did you go find Master?"
The voice belonged to Xuancheng, deep and heavy, with a hint of impatience.
Li Su rolled his eyes.
Since their training schedules didn't overlap, the others had gradually noticed that something was different. Li Su practiced only Arhat Fist, yet his movements carried the same flavor as those of the monk Tianming had once seen perform it.
Once they realized that, the way they looked at Li Su began to change.
What surprised Li Su, though, was that the first to challenge him wasn't the restless Xuanci, but the martial arts fanatic Xuancheng.
But what kind of person was Li Su? He planned to spend most of his life hunkering down in Shaolin Temple. How could he casually fight someone? Not a chance.
He surrendered without hesitation.
His reason was simple: he didn't know martial arts. He only practiced cultivation.
Though Arhat Fist was a combat art, Li Su had turned it into a stance exercise. So despite practicing it for more than two years, he genuinely couldn't fight.
It was a pretty convincing excuse. Though Xuancheng loved martial arts, he understood that Li Su really couldn't fight.
But Xuancheng wasn't one to give up easily. He simply told Li Su to find their master and learn a martial art meant for combat, then they could have another match.
How could Li Su give him what he wanted? Of course he didn't go. He didn't even have enough time to practice his daily exercises—why learn martial arts?
Besides, he didn't need to. All he needed was for his inner power to keep growing. He could learn a couple of moves when the story got underway. What could Nine Swords of Dugu do against overwhelming inner power? One slap, and he'd send out a wall of qi. I'd like to see how you plan to break through that.
In the end, Xuancheng stuck to him like a piece of chewing gum.
He asked him pretty much every day.
Li Su thought for a moment, then picked up his charcoal pencil and wrote, "In a bit."
"Good." Xuancheng nodded and left.
Watching him go, Li Su smiled. He would go, but not to learn martial arts. He was going to ask for more pills. Another year had passed, and he had only one pill left from the batch Kongming had given him. Even after reaching great mastery in Arhat Gong, he still hadn't hit a bottleneck. The further he progressed, the more he would probably need to invest.
It wasn't that the pills had become less effective. If anything, they worked too well. He used to need only one every three days, but now he needed one almost every day, without practicing any more often.
Could he be developing a tolerance?
He remembered Master saying the pills were just supplements. Could supplements lose their effect, too?
After finishing his daily exercises, Li Su got dressed and headed straight for Arhat Hall.
Monk Tianming was there.
There were several others with him.
Xuannan and the others.
Huh, had they started learning finger techniques? Not bad. Did that mean those guys had entered the basics of Dragon Subduing Elephant Taming Art?
In fact, Xuancheng and Xuanci had learned another powerful martial art half a year earlier, a branch of the Vajra arts: Vajra Finger.
Finger techniques were undoubtedly considered advanced martial arts at Shaolin Temple.
After all, fingers were very different from palms, and even with inner power to protect them, they had far less to work with. You needed to build up sufficient strength before you could practice one, or you could easily injure yourself.
And with Vajra Finger as his starting point, Xuancheng had gone straight on to grasp the basics of the Dragon-Capturing Skill. He was taught one of Shaolin Temple's most lethal techniques, the Shaolin Dragon Capturing Skill.
Had you seen Li Jie's version of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre? It was the technique where someone grabbed a wall as if it were made of foam.
Watching Xuancheng practice, one swipe of his claw had gouged a claw mark into a blue brick. Li Su couldn't help but feel his brows twitch. If this guy didn't suffer a cultivation deviation later, then if he ran into You Tanzhi, Li Su seriously doubted the latter would survive until Xiao Feng showed up.
When Li Su arrived, Kongming stopped what he was doing and turned to him. "Xuankong, have you run into any problems with Arhat Gong?"
At his words, Xuannan and the others all looked over at Li Su, their expressions oddly complicated.
Among the disciples of the Xuân generation at Shaolin Temple, only Xuancheng and Xuanci—and now Xuankong—received this sort of treatment, didn't they? The Xuân-generation novices of this class had fairly mild tempers, and Xuannan and the others often practiced alongside Li Su. They knew that though he wasn't good at martial arts, his cultivation was absolutely no worse than those two. Otherwise, if Master had shown such favoritism, Xuancheng and Xuanci might not have complained, but Xuankong would have faced a fierce fight. Giving him special lessons right in front of us? You think we don't have tempers?
At that moment, Li Su's mouth twitched, too. One of the main reasons Xuancheng kept pestering him was right here.
Monk Tianming's special treatment.
Seriously, it was only the advanced version of Arhat Fist, Arhat Gong. Was that really enough to put him on the same footing as Xuancheng and Xuanci?
Li Su took out his charcoal pencil. He didn't intend to waste time; things had already reached this point. He couldn't avoid it, so he would just have to put up with it.
"Master, I'm almost out of medicine."
Monk Tianming nodded. So it wasn't a problem with the technique. Good. The pills were running out—wait, the pills were running out?
Tianming's expression stiffened. He sprang up and landed in front of Li Su. Just like a year ago, he seized Li Su's wrist and began probing.
Arhat True Qi, with its newly acquired repellent nature, wasn't going to stand for that. It erupted instantly.
The moment Tianming's inner power entered, a tremendous force surged forth and sent it flying back.
Instead of being alarmed, Tianming was delighted. He increased the pressure.
Clearly, decades of inner power were far beyond what Li Su could match right now. His Arhat True Qi was instantly forced back.
But before Tianming could do anything, the returning Arhat True Qi naturally filled the meridians in Li Su's body, leaving only the Hand Shaoyin Heart Meridian, the Hand Jueyin Pericardium Meridian, and the Hand Taiyin Lung Meridian unoccupied. The instant Tianming's inner power entered, it was expelled from Li Su's body along those three meridians.
The feeling was like a mud ox vanishing into the sea. Tianming's eyes filled with unconcealed astonishment.
There was no doubt about it: Arhat Golden Body had reached minor achievement!
"Hahaha! Good, good, good!" Tianming burst into delighted laughter as he looked at Li Su with deep satisfaction. As time passed, Xuancheng had already become a treasure the Shaolin Temple could hardly believe it had found. Yet he hadn't expected that Xuankong, who had always kept to himself, would have even greater talent.
Arhat Golden Body! How long had it been since Shaolin Temple last saw one?
This was a body art comparable to Indestructible Diamond Divine Art. But unlike the indestructibility of that art, Arhat Golden Body was a technique that worked from the inside out. Its effect was just like what had happened moments ago: the moment energy entered the body, Arhat Divine Art automatically expelled it.
There was no need to explain how important inner power was to a martial arts expert.
Apart from some external styles and internal arts with weak inner power, any inner power that entered the Arhat Golden Body would be completely drained away. Even inner power of equal quality would be expelled by nine-tenths. Only a higher-grade art could manage to invade—and even then, seven to eight tenths would be expelled.
In other words, the damage caused by virtually any inner art would be drastically reduced by Arhat Divine Art.
Xuankong had only reached minor achievement. Against inner power focused on offense, he could expel at most half of it if it was at the same level, but even that was terrifying.
And because Arhat Divine Art refined qi, his meridians were far more resilient than those of ordinary people. That meant even if Xuancheng used nothing but palm strength, one strike would at most leave him lightly injured.
Tianming released Li Su's wrist and said with a smile, "Wait here. I'm going to find the abbot."
No wonder nearly a hundred Blood Qi Pills had nearly run out before Arhat Golden Body reached minor achievement. Of course they had.
Watching the old monk Tianming disappear in a flash, Li Su gave Xuannan and the others an awkward smile. At that moment, they were staring at him with wide, curious eyes.
They had never seen Tianming act like this. Even when Xuancheng had performed outstandingly—so outstandingly that none of them could hope to catch up—Tianming had remained calm.
What had Junior Brother done? They remembered him practicing only Arhat Fist and Arhat Gong.
Even if Arhat Gong was powerful, it could at most be on the same level as the Dragon Subduing Elephant Taming Art they practiced, couldn't it? As for their progress, they considered themselves fairly quick. So why was Master acting like this?
Li Su's mouth twitched. Even though Xuannan and the others hadn't said a word, he knew what they were thinking.
Truthfully, he was baffled, too. It was just Arhat Gong. Was there really any need to look at him like that?