"Y-Your Highness?"
Chen Quan and Chen Bao froze on the spot, staring at the figure before them in disbelief.
Zhou Cheng swept his gaze over them. His martial will, almost tangible, struck them like lightning.
As the two recovered a little, before they could speak, their vision blurred. Iron-band palms clamped around their necks and lifted them off the ground.
Their instincts as martial artists drove them to fight back. Eighth-rank true qi gathered in their fists and feet as they lashed out furiously.
Yet the moment their attacks came within half a foot of Zhou Cheng, all that power crumbled like earth struck against a mountain range, dissipating without a trace!
The gulf!
An unimaginable gulf!
Zhou Cheng held them by their necks, letting them fight back.
With a Grandmaster's true qi shielding his body, these so-called eighth-rank experts could not even stir the hem of his robes, despite fighting for their lives.
Suffocation and despair clenched the two men's hearts. They could hear not only their neck bones creaking, but also what seemed like every bone and meridian in their bodies crying out in agony.
Their struggles grew weaker and weaker. Just before death took them, Zhou Cheng casually tossed them aside, sending them crashing to the ground.
"Cough, cough..."
The brothers shakily rose, looking in terror at that familiar yet unfamiliar face.
"A... a Grandmaster?"
A horrifying thought exploded in their minds.
Who but a Grandmaster could render them utterly helpless with a casual gesture, as easily as crushing an ant?
Ninth-rank experts were powerful, but never to this extent!
"Y-Your Highness?" Even Chen Quan's voice trembled.
Zhou Cheng wiped his hands on his sleeve and spoke evenly.
"Great Eastern Mountain truly deserves its reputation as a sacred place for cultivation. After half a year of arduous training and months in seclusion, today I have finally become a martial Grandmaster."
Though the brothers had already suspected it, hearing him confirm it still left their minds roaring.
A Grandmaster!
He really was a Grandmaster!
A sixteen-year-old Grandmaster!
Who would dare imagine it? Who would dare believe it?
Zhou Cheng's gaze swept across their pale faces.
"I would rather outsiders not learn of my breakthrough. I know you two are my imperial father's eyes and ears, and I intended to kill you to silence you... However, considering your diligence in protecting me throughout this journey, I will give you a way to live.
"From today onward, you can have only one master. Will you choose me, or Emperor Qing?"
The instant he finished speaking, both men dropped to the ground and kowtowed.
A Grandmaster was a living divinity, a single man capable of opposing a nation, standing above the imperial authority of the mortal world!
No one could fail to understand which choice to make.
"Chen Quan (Chen Bao) swears to follow Your Highness unto death!"
Chapter 5: You Are a Good Man
The wind whipped along the cliffs, blowing salty, damp air into his face.
Holding an ordinary iron sword, Zhou Cheng stood motionless atop a huge, dark reef beside the shore.
Before him stretched the vast, deep sea, its azure waters tinged with somber darkness. In the distance, sea and sky met in a hazy expanse.
Grandmaster-level hundred-forged true qi surged through his body, faintly resonating with the world outside him.
He gathered his strength briefly, then simply raised his sword and swept it level before him-
There was no earth-shaking display. Even the air barely stirred.
Only where the blade passed did an extremely thin, faint, almost transparent ripple suddenly extend, moving faster than the eye could follow.
A hundred feet away, a straight, smooth "line" suddenly appeared on the calm sea, like a streak of another color abruptly appearing in a length of plain brocade.
Then that "line" abruptly split to either side and caved in!
The entire surface of the sea was forcibly sliced open by an incomparably fierce, invisible power!
"BOOM!!!"
A deafening blast tore through the air along the sword's path. As though ripped apart and pushed aside by an invisible giant hand, the seawater formed a widening, fan-shaped trench nearly three hundred feet long, reaching all the way down to the reefs on the seabed!
Only after two breaths did the forcibly divided sea thunder back together, its waters colliding violently!
White waves rose like walls, exploding seventy or eighty feet into the sky before breaking into a torrential downpour that crashed back onto the sea in countless flecks of foam.
"So this is... a Grandmaster!"
Standing guard nearby, Chen Quan and Chen Bao witnessed the sight with their hearts and minds reeling, as though they had beheld a god.
Before, the inhuman feats of Grandmasters had been mere legends.
Now they had gained the most direct understanding of a Grandmaster's power, transcending the mortal world.
A single stroke of sword qi possessed such heaven-destroying, earth-shattering might.
They reckoned that anyone below the ninth rank probably lacked even the qualifications to face it head-on.
With sword qi reaching nearly three hundred feet, he would be nothing less than a moving heavenly punishment on a battlefield. Even soldiers clad entirely in armor would die at a touch and suffer wounds from a graze.
Probably only high-ranking martial artists with proper defenses could survive the aftermath.
No wonder the small city of Dongyi City remained as impregnable as a fortress of metal and boiling moats against two great powers.
Against a single Grandmaster, even hundreds of thousands of armored cavalry would be nothing but ants trying to shake a tree, wild grass waiting to be cut.
Zhou Cheng sheathed his sword, his expression calm.
Having produced such a spectacle with one strike, he too was intoxicated by a Grandmaster's vast power. Still, he retained a fairly clear understanding of himself.
I... probably count as the weakest Grandmaster.
He silently assessed himself.
That strike had indeed been astonishingly powerful. In his estimation, it should prove unstoppable when clearing a battlefield or dealing with martial artists below the Grandmaster level.
Against another Grandmaster, however, it would fall somewhat short.
This experiment once again confirmed Zhou Cheng's shortcomings.
He had intended to concentrate all his power into a single line, yet after his sword swung, his true qi had still inevitably scattered.
The spectacle had been immense, but it remained far from the ideal state he envisioned.
In the television drama, Ye Liuyun, the lowest-ranked of the Four Grandmasters, had once cleaved a building with a single sword strike from a thousand feet away. His true qi remained concentrated, condensed as finely as silk, without injuring a single person.
His perception and control were far beyond anything Zhou Cheng currently possessed.
Among the Grandmasters, he fell short even of Ye Liuyun, so the throne of weakest Grandmaster naturally could only pass to him.
Zhou Cheng gathered his thoughts.
Even Grandmasters differed in strength. Having relied on the system to become one, he had merely stepped over the threshold.
He still had a long way to go before he could defeat Emperor Qing, the strongest Grandmaster, and complete his mission.
At least... when it comes to true qi, hundred-forged true qi is inferior to overlord true energy...
Zhou Cheng murmured inwardly.
Hundred-forged true qi was not an advanced martial art granted by the system. It was simply the method best suited to him that he had chosen after gathering cultivation methods from a hundred schools in his early years.
Balanced and mild in nature, it had originally allowed cultivation only up to the eighth rank. Only the system's power had forcibly elevated it to the Grandmaster realm.
Among the Four Grandmasters, aside from Ye Liuyun, who had devised his own Flowing Cloud Loose Hands, Ku He's One Heaven Heart Method, Si Gujian's Nameless Sword Manual, and Emperor Qing's overlord true energy were all supreme martial arts Ye Qingmei had brought out of the Divine Temple-the crystallization of wisdom from countless years of calculations by the Temple Artificial Intelligence.
Compared with those three, hundred-forged true qi had an inherent and considerable disadvantage.
Back then, he had had no choice and no opportunity to obtain those methods, so he could only cultivate hundred-forged true qi.
Though the method's power was mediocre, one special quality had caught his eye.
Hundred-forged true qi could accommodate other kinds of true qi and allowed him to switch cultivation methods without difficulty.
That quality was precisely why he had chosen it over several ninth-rank methods.
"Come, keep helping me cultivate!"
Zhou Cheng condensed his voice into a thread and called to the brothers from afar.
Besides refining his control over true qi by the sea, he also suppressed his cultivation to spar with Chen Quan and Chen Bao.
Lately, however, the two had held back and failed to fight freely, seemingly terrified that he might accidentally kill them. As a result, the practical training had been rather ineffective.
After nightfall, Zhou Cheng ordered the brothers to guard his quarters closely and arranged for a double to make it appear that he was still cultivating quietly in the temple.
Then he changed into coarse hemp clothing, donned a bamboo hat, and silently descended Great Eastern Mountain.
Traveling along the eastern sea, he rode a small boat straight toward Danzhou.
The simplest way to improve his true qi was to switch to a stronger cultivation method.
Of the Four Grandmasters' methods, the easiest to obtain was undoubtedly the overlord true energy in Fan Xian's possession.
Fan Xian had Wu Zhu protecting him, but Fan Xian himself... was a good man.
The little boat cut through the waves, speeding along the coastal waters.
Holding a bamboo pole, Zhou Cheng infused it with a trace of true qi. With a gentle push, the boat shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow. This both hastened his journey and trained his control over true qi.
A solitary figure upon the boundless sea, he felt exhilaration rise within him.
Several days later, he abandoned the boat and went ashore, arriving in Danzhou.
The location of Count Sinan's Residence was not difficult to discover.
After making a few inquiries, Zhou Cheng did not rush to visit. Instead, he found an inn, changed out of the clothes thoroughly steeped in the sea breeze, and took a proper bath before spending a leisurely day wandering the city.
Before you continue