9 Ch09 - Beasts
The next morning, he was in his room cultivating. He didn't think that Bing would see him before leaving, yet she came in his room. She didn't say anything, nor did she look at his face. She walked up to him and simply hugged him, and he embraced her in return. He felt her relax in his arms, but soon enough, she disengaged herself, turned around and left, whispering a quick goodbye. Even though she left, Yue Yang was in a good mood; her actions were quite telling, he hadn't lost her as a future lover.
He then checked his progress.
[Name: Yue Yang - Age: 19 - Race: Human Male
Level: 20 - Rank: Braveman - Alignement: Neutral Moral
Occupations: Apprentice Summoner - Titles: Yue clan's third young master, Yue clan's failure
Life: 100% - Stamina: 100% - Qi: 100% - Bonus points: 65
Strenght: 140 - Constitution: 188 - Agility: 157 - Dexterity: 177
Wisdom: 234 - Spirit: 233 - Charisma: 313 - Luck: 290]
[Twin Star Inherent Skill: Divine Vision lv2 - Counterfeit lv2
Summoning lv11
Instant Dungeon lv15
Structural Grasp lv13
Shadow Clones lv4
Yue Clan Spear Technique lv16
Earth and Heaven Cultivation Technique lv10-max
Mountain Tiger Body Cultivation Technique lv9
Poison Resistance lv3
Shadow Concealment Technique lv21
Forest Lord Scouting Technique lv21
Celestial Step lv6
Fierce Fist Technique lv16
Revolving Guardian Technique lv16
Binding Fighter lv14
Hidden Hand Technique lv19
Accupuncture lv18
Field Medecine lv14
Angel Hand Massage Technique lv17
Heavenly Runes lv3
Alchemy lv3
Smithing lv1
Mechanic lv1 ]
[3 Wisdom Fruits, 3 Energy Potions, Battle Halberd, Basic Sword Technique manual, poisonous thorns, good quality wood,87 lesser dark essence stones, 29 lesser plant essence stones, 17 lesser blood essence stones, 3 fire essence stones, Body Refining Oil bottle, Yue Qiu's Diary, Yue Yang Mother's Diary ]
With Bing gone and innate qi achieved, Yue Yang decided to work more on summoning and his summoning beasts. There were 2 parts to work on. The first part was about the beasts that were already available. He had to meet Empress Fei Wen Li, and get Xiao Wen Li and her 4 beasts from her. He had to cultivate his Spitting Thorny Flower into a variant, so it could later become a Golden Crown Thorny Flower Queen.
The second part was numbers. Until he got to Tong Tian Tower, fictional Yue Yang only had 6 beasts aside from his Phantom Shadow, 3 of them couldn't be used in battle, and of the other 3, one was a trump card he shouldn't reveal in regular battles. Since a beginner grimoire could hold 10 beasts, and more as it upgraded, our transmigrant though it was a waste of battle potential. He intended to get 2 more beasts soon, if possible a fighting-type and an elemental-type; and before the battle at the classy etablishement, which he identified as the Merry Forest when exploring the city.
Fictional Yue Yang hid his face and acted like an interesting but weak newbie when he registered, and used the pseudonyme Titan. The real one, while wanting to remain low key for some time, didn't want to be looked down upon by the others. He also though of using another pseudonym for his alternate identity.
He went to the guild dressed in black kung-fu pants, dark grey kung-fu shirt, dark green brigandine armor, black protective mask. He had bought it from the Shop, surprised by the sheer number of options he could chose from when looking for clothing and the likes. When he entered the building, the noise of conversations nearly disappeared as the people gazed at him. He walked calmly, with confidence, but also with a grace that hinted at proper combat skills. His gaze was sharp as he took in the whole room with a single glance. The veterans, after observing him, nodded to themselves, recognising that the apparent newcomer wasn't mere fresh meat.
"I'm here to register as a mercenary" he said in a firm voice to the old guild receptionist.
"Pay up and fill this form. If you have extra money, you can buy a Mercenary Heavenly Badge. Every time you complete a mission, it'll record the accumulated points and naturally raise your rank."
"I'll take it" he replied as he quickly filled the relevant sections of the form.
On the form, at the space reserved for the name, he wrote Han Jeehan...
With the registration finished, he had a quick look at the requests available and their reward, and left. He wasn't in a rush to start missions. In the evening, he went to register at the assassin guild. This time, he had an outfit similar to Skyrim's Nightingale armor, dark grey and black scheme color with some silver linings. The old man he found there was just as mysterious as described in the novel. Just like his fictional counterpart, he chose the theorical test over the practical one. He passed them as well as his fictional counterpart without being as shameless.
He was quite happy to have aquired the Vengeance Hunter's Bloodrose Map. Most targets were scumbags, and Yue Yang was quite fine with removing them from society while strenghtening his flower. Unlike his fictional counterpart, he was a bit less selfish, a little bit more concerned about the general public well-being. He always found xianxia worlds too cruel, and he prefered to prevent bad things from happening to innocents, even if just a little. It was also why he wanted to form a spy network in White Stone City with the helpfull ladies from the adult business.
Just like he didn't rush to take a mercenary mission, he didn't rush to go after an assassination target. He would take his time to analyse the missions and targets available while pursuing his training, and more importantly, get himself 2 or more beasts.
While a fighting-type, the barbarian cow shadow could developp earth based defensive skills and fire based offensive skills. He intended to have the Bloody Queen developp wind and lightning based fighting skills, because wind and lightning were his favourite elements, and it suited a flying-type. He intended to get a dark beast, and he wondered wether to make Hui Tai Lang and raise him into a wolf-guy or some kind of werewolf, or get a female wolf (or something else) to raise her into a sexy beast-girl later. Just like fictional Hui Tai Lang, he didn't need to contract the beast to use it (outside of regulated battles). It would also be good to have a beast capable of using water and/or ice moves asides from Xiao Wen Li and her beasts.
He took a day to think about what to do. Instead of rushing and look for bronze or silver ranked beasts, he would cultivate them from the bottom: normal ranked beasts. He bought several summoning cristals from the Shop, each costing 2500 credits, as well as some wire for 2000 credits, and left White Stone City for 5 days to "hunt". He bound and beat to submission a wolf, a tigress, a lizard, an eagle, a panther, a spider, a hawk, and a monkey. The first 4 were for him, and the others for the girls he intended to recruit, all of them normal ranked level 3.
During that time, he also advanced to level 22 and ranked up to Hero, his Shadow Concealment and Forest Lord Scouting gained a level, his Structural Grasp gained 2 levels, and Celestial Step and Yue Clan Spear Technique gained 3 levels.
With his beasts aquired, his schedule was modified. In the morning, he cultivated the Mountain Tiger Body for 2h, and trained in alchemy and runes for 2h at the same time with the shadow clone. In the afternoon, he spent 3h in the lower stage of the IDs to train his beasts and summoning, 3h in the 3rd stage to train his combat skills including the Yue Clan Spear technique. In the evening, he performed qi exercises to improve his control.
After 2 weeks, he had mastered the Mountain Tiger Body, increasing his strenght, constitution and agility by 10, and granting him 5 more points each for every level up he got. It cleared time to work on smithing and mechanics. His beasts got to level 4, and it was a bit of a chore to take care of all 8 of them. He used them in groups of 2 and 3, changing the composition if each group every now and then.
Of course he put extra efforts on taking care of the wolf, tigress, lizard and eagle. The wolf would be the replacement of Hui Tai Lang, but instead of turning it into a demonic-type, he would turn it into a nephilim-type. The tigress, he would give her both dark and ice affinities, earth and water for the lizard, light and lightning for the eagle. 2 fighter-like beasts, a rogue-like beast and a caster-like beast, who would get close to mid-range elemental moves later. He named the wolf Amarok, as he remembered a mythologic wolf had that name. The tigress was named Bastet, after the feline egyptian goddess; the lizard was named Gorn, after a sci-fi serie race, and the eagle was named Thorondor, after the Lord Of The Rings.
Something unexpected but good happened during those 2 weeks.
Due to his constant use of the Instant Dungeon, he developped 10% affinity to space. When he saw the notification, he face-slapped himself. He had never though of observing the process of creation or exit of the ID with his Divine Vision, nor did he ever try to use Structural Grasp on it. For the later, after a few seconds he though it wasn't bad, as he doubted his skill was high enough to get informations about complex items, let alone energy or dimensions. But his divine vision should have given him at least a spec of insight.
Due to this, he started to observe closely with both his eyes and qi senses when he used Summoning, IDs, Shadow Clones, Shadow Concealment and Celestial Steps. Among the skills he knew, they were the ones who used qi and natural energy in the most complex manner. It was quite taxing mentally, but he was getting close to achieve Instant Summoning, and started experimenting on teleportation, shadow element qi and wind element qi. For the last 2 he got inspiration from Naruto's elemental transformation training. Those experiments were still minor, taking no more than 5h of his time weekly.
There was still one beast he hadn't used yet: the Spitting Thorny Flower.
He had to turn it into a variant, and the best way to do that to reach the Golden Crown Thorny Flower Queen was to swallow a living human body. He had selected his target while reviewing informations about the differents ones for the Vengeance Hunters, he settled for the same one his fictional counterpart got. Rock, the used of a strenghtening-type beast, member of the Violent Beasts mercenary group, one of the 3 main groups of White Stone City.
He also recognised the name of the leader of the group, Tie Kuang. He remembered that he was linked to one of the scumbags Yi Nan tracked, which would result in the battle of Merry Forest. He was also pretty sure it was targeting him that led to the lower status ladies of White Stone City being gratefull to him, and later risk their lives to protect Ah Xian and Shuang.
That day, nearly a month after Bing's departure, Yue Yang acted. He tracked Rock from the afternoon onward, using his Counterfeit and Shadow Concealment skills, along with a regular change of outfits to avoid the attention of people. He was prepared for 2 kinds of confrontations against Rock. Either a direct confrontation like his fictional counterpart did, where he could use his combat skills in a 1-on-1 duel to the death, or covert operation, using stealth and surprise critical strikes to take down the target fast and hard, like an assassin should do.
He really wanted to test himself against a real human opponent, see how well he could deal with his defense. Rock was also an experienced mercenary, who probably survived a few assassinations attempts, and he wanted to see how his training and attributes faired against his battle experience. On the other hand, he didn't want to get into the habit of letting his opponent power up to max just to test himself. That was asking for nasty surprises down the road. His fictional counterpart had been extremely lucky when he allowed a Demon summon to proceed.
It was quite annoying for Yue Yang to see such a hated individual walk around freely after all the crimes he commited. He was sorely tempted to torture the guy before feeding him to his flower. The mean streak he had against villainous people was showing up again.
