Martial Tower

The ingredients I had were fairly limited. Fortunately, that foodie Lu Ze had some leftover ingredients for me to cook with. As I start up the stove, I begin to weave my chi into the knife, cutting the ingredients with perfection while retaining their spiritual qualities.

Once the preparation is over, and the actual cooking start began, the fragrance was extremely delectable. I smiled smugly imagining his expression while waiting for the food. With trained accuracy, I finish cooking after a total of about thirty minutes and prepare all of the plates to look especially fancy.

Once the dishes are set on the table, Lu Ze is already dying to eat. The fragrance was almost enough to have him go straight into the kitchen and sneak bites while it was being cooked. However, he managed to hold himself back. And when he saw the finished product, he was about to dig in.

I sat next to him, which caused him to hesitate. Lu Ze seemed very cautious about misunderstanding people's intentions and he would always come up with some stupid thought. This was part of the reason it was so difficult to be honest with my feelings in the past. Just when I would create a good atmosphere, he would ruin it…

"Wow this looks way better than your cooking from before!" Lu Ze exclaimed. There he goes, ruining the atmosphere again. I ignored him and took a piece of meat with my chopsticks and brought it up to Lu Ze's mouth. Before I realized what I had just done, he shamelessly ate what was presented to him.

"Y…you…" I stammered.

"Err… Were you not trying to feed me?"

"Just shut up and eat!" I can't handle his responses. He started to dig in and inhaled food. If he didn't take a moment to add sound effects after each bite, I would think he wasn't tasting it at all.

"You should eat my food instead of bothering your junior schoolmate to cook for you. I studied and practiced a lot so it shouldn't be any worse than her spirit food." I said while avoiding eye contact.

"That's fine, Alice doesn't mind. She already said she would become my personal chef. And this means I get to eat food from both of you! That's twice as much good food!"

Lu Ze why are you so dense!

"That's it, we're going to the Martial Tower!" I said while grabbing his collar and dragging him to the other room. He tried to resist, but to no avail.

"Meet me in the martial city. I better not catch you slacking." He nodded obediently so I entered after him.

Once inside, there was a huge city. There were many young students here practicing their skills and hoping to get higher on the leaderboards. There were two main leaderboards, an academic leaderboard which ranked you by your class and a martial leaderboard which ranked you by how high you went on the Martial Tower.

The martial leaderboard was separated by class and had a grand leaderboard as well. The higher you were ranked on the leaderboard the more academic credits you would receive per month. However, given Lu Ze's magnetism towards wealth and heft amount of cultivation resources, he didn't need those points very much.

After walking around a bit, I saw Lu Ze looking around like an excited kid.

"Ze, come on, lets enter together and race. Remember, whoever ranks higher gets to order the other to do one thing for them. Go all out so you can't complain later!" I took his hand and started leading him to the tower that reached beyond the sky.

People saw the two of them walking, while 'holding hands' and started murmuring.

"Isn't that Lu Ze? He's so talented. But who is that bitch with him?"

"Stupid! That's Lin Ling, she fought with him on the battlefield. She's also a prodigy and the great-grandchild of Saint Ling Xi!"

"Oh, Lin Ling and Lu Ze are together?"

"Yeah, I saw them hug each other in front of the stage earlier today."

Lu Ze seemed to be eying me and gauging my reaction to all the talk around us. In the past, whenever someone accused us of dating during this time, I would get angry and deny it. But, since I want him to start thinking of me romantically, I obviously wouldn't do that. Seeing that I wasn't getting angry, he seemed to be formulating a reasonable answer.

"Hey Lin Ling could it be… you're scared to lose so you're trying to butter me up?"

Fuck! Lu Ze you goddamn idiot. Sigh, it's fine. I expected this. There are plenty of chances these next few days. Seeing that I didn't respond, he made an arrogant face as if he figured it out correctly.

"Don't worry Lin Ling, I won't order you to do anything excessive…"

"We'll see who will be ordering who. And trust me, mine will be very excessive!" I harumphed at his attempt to console me. Fortunately, we finally arrived at the tower so I went on ahead.

Each wave would become stronger and stronger and award a certain amount of academy credits. This is a good opportunity for me to relearn some of the support divine arts from the past. Unfortunately, my body is too weak to learn the higher tier divine arts. And since we improved so quickly, I don't have many weaker divine arts to make use of.

I practiced my chi stealth and spear divine arts as well as getting accustomed to my weaker body. The first 21 waves were instant kills and didn't even give me a chance to practice anything but my stealth. After wave 30, I already have perfect mastery in chi stealth and experienced mastery in our Ling Xi Divine Arts.

Great-grandpa was someone that could find the weakness of his enemy on the battlefield and silently dispatch them with a single spear strike. His Divine Arts and origin energy assisted me greatly in reacclimating to this body.

I efficiently cleared waves 31 and 32 without spending too much chi. The first difficult fight started once I reached wave 33, which had an opponent from the Barbarian Race. They looked very similar to humans except for their size and shape of their muscles. They also had naturally stronger bodies and body related god arts. This fight was at 110 apertures, so normally it would be very difficult for me.

Spirit Eyes God Art!

The past me at this time could barely see the weaknesses of an opponent a stage above me. However, with my accumulated mental strength and mastery in Spirit Eyes, I could easily peer at the weaknesses of those a realm above me!

Left shoulder, right at the joint. I accelerated with explosive speed and pierced through his shoulder without and issue. My Spirit Eyes are able to track the flow of chi and predict attacks with ease. Once the first weakness was taken advantage of, a new weakness appeared in my sights.

Back of the right knee! Damaged tendon.

I spun around and twisted my spear around my shoulders. Using the torque from my rotation, I allowed the spear to naturally loose from my grip, guided by my back. Just before it reached the target, I tightened my hold and pushed with a powerful force. Although the barbarian race is strong in combat, my speed is simply too quick and my attacks are too accurate.

He fell to his knees and I stabbed through his neck from the back to finish him.

The next opponent was much harder to face. It was an 'ordinary elf warrior.' Since the Elf race was the most powerful race in this corner of the universe, they naturally had something to show for it. In fact, their princess was rumored to be born as a star state. This would take a hundred years for a human prodigy to do!