Rings of Power

The Bloody Boilers began to laugh and gloat as they saw that their combined attack had utterly destroyed the annoying interloper. The noble woman on the other hand grimaced at the demise of her rescuer and began to look around for an escape route while her pursuers were distracted gloating.

"Hah! Direct hit! Eat it loser!"

"He's definitely full of holes right now!"

"Yeah! Hey, who used extra fire aether in their technique though? I wanted to see his body hit the floor!"

"Wait...none of us here can do that."

"What?"

As the dust settled to reveal that the body was missing, the Boilers stopped gloating. Confused, they took up fighting stances once more. It seems like the interloper wasn't some random chump.

That or one of them used a bit more power than necessary, but none of them were strong enough to evaporate bodies yet.

"High alert morons!", one of them barked.

"Where on Valresta did he go?", another growled.

"Up there!"

The Bloody Boilers looked upwards to see that Zhen Liu had avoided their attacks by jumping incredibly high in the air, landing on the branch of a nearby jade tree.

Zhen Liu himself was rather surprised for a few moments, gasping away at his near-death experience. Granted, the bandits acting up below forced him to come to terms with it before he died for real.

"Shoot him down before he-"

But before the red bandana wearing bandit could give the order to fire another volley, Zhen Liu kicked off the branch with great speed and landed a flying kick on the man's ribcage and sent him flying into a jade "tree" with a loud crack. The bandit limped in a boneless manner to the ground.

Zhen Liu landed on his feet with surprising ease, causing the rest of the bandits to become rather tense.

"Shit, he took Leo out with one move too? What art was that? How strong is this guy?!"

"I didn't feel any flux, I think that was just pure brute strength."

"Damnit, he's got to be a Fifth Ring Aether Acolyte, maybe a First Ring Aether Master?", the most perceptive bandit of the bunch warned.

'Yeah, sure,' Zhen Liu grimaced to himself while bluffing a confident fighting stance, 'assume I'm an Aether Master that doesn't need arts and not a third ring Aether Acolyte with some cheat level formula that gave me a freaky physique, just get scared and run now please.'

Every cultivator in Valresta could be divided into eleven distinct rankings of strength. These ranks from weakest to strongest are Aether Novice, Aether Acolyte, Aether Master, Aether Grandmaster, Lord, King, Emperor, Overlord, Saint, Demigod and Deity.

Each rank could be further divided into five tiers of strength referred to as "rings". This naming convention originating from the fact that when cultivators take time to examine their inner formulas, they will notice literal rings of aether surrounding them. When a cultivator makes the jump between rankings, the rings will condense into one solid layer that surrounded their formulas.

The differences between the rings were quantitative in nature, while the differences in rank were qualitative. It is a known fact that at each rank, a cultivator will be able to use their aether in new and unusual ways depending on the rank and what formula they used for their foundation.

In the case of Zhen Liu and his newfound [Chaos Body Forge], practicing this formula for even the few moments that he had gave Zhen Liu a strange physique that allowed him to physically punch a rank above his current one, though it was rather sloppy and poorly used due to lack of an actual training. He still wasn't able to use arts either, but the Boilers didn't need to know that.

"Gah, who cares! We still got him outnumbered three to one! [Sanguine Blade]!"

"Yeah, Get him! [Blood Spike]!"

"Smash him to pieces! [Hemehammer]!"

Getting over their moment of shock, the Bloody Boilers proceeded to activate aether arts that caused the blood vessels in their arms to pulse violently, before bursting open and shooting aether-infused blood into the air. The blood then proceeded to transform into strange, twisted weapons made of blood that covered their arms. One had created a gladiator's scissor made of blood, another had made a katar while the last had a morningstar head on his fist.

"Dammit," Zhen Liu cursed as his bluff failed in the face of idiotic bloodlust.

"Tear him to pieces!", one of the bandits roared before they charged at him from different direction.

A katar on his left, a gladiator's scissor to his right and a heavy hammer coming straight on. The old Zhen Liu and the old Thomas Lee, would be rather panicky by now. The current incarnation of the two was surprisingly calm as he formed a hasty plan of action.

The one armed with the gladiator's scissor was the first to get within striking distance of Zhen Liu, so she proceeded to try and slash downward to cut open Zhen Liu's chest. Unfortunately, the bandit's swing was a bit too wide, giving Zhen Liu an opening.

Zhen Liu rushed forward and punched the bandit straight in the stomach. Shockwaves of pain reverberated throughout her body as she felt as if a bighorn sheep had rammed itself into her stomach. Her face paled as she fought the urge to vomit. If she wasn't a cultivator, her stomach would be flying pass the tree line by now.

Seeing his blade wielding ally momentarily stunned by the interloper, the katar-wielding bandit rushed forward and tried to jam his blade into Zhen Liu's back. A strange feeling in the back of his head alerted him to the encroaching danger, so Zhen Liu grabbed the stunned bandit in front of him by the arm and spun her around and into the charging bandit, sending them both flying away.

Zhen Liu was rather giddy about his newfound strength, before noticing the third one swinging a rather large hammer at his head. Zhen Liu quickly dodged before it could make contact.

"Stand still and die!" The bandit decided to make use of his miss swing into fueling a spin that came flying towards Zhen Liu once more.

"You know that line never works right?", Zhen Liu exclaimed as he flipped backwards to avoid the human top.

"Then you should be the first to do so!" The human top yelled as he spun faster and faster. Evidently, this particular art came with the added bonus of not making him dizzy, Zhen Liu mentally noted.

Zhen Liu thought for a moment as he kept flipping to avoid the spinning strikes, coming to a plan of action once they reached another jade tree. Stopping mid-flip, Zhen Liu launched himself off the ground just as the spinning hammer slammed into the jade tree behind him. While the bandit paused to pull his hammer-hand out of the jade tree, Zhen Liu used the pillar as a platform to launch himself onto the man's shoulders.

"What the-."

"Gorilla Clap!"

Zhen Liu proceeded to slap a pair of open palms on both sides of the bandit's ears followed up with a double hammer fist to the top of his skull. The burly bandit let out a groan while he lost consciousness, the aether art around his arm dissipated. Zhen Liu hopped off the man before he fully fell to the ground.

At this moment, Zhen Liu was feeling pretty good about himself.

"Alright bitches, who's next?", he loudly declared, only to realize the he just tempted fate...again.

A behemoth of a man covered in blood-red leather armor came walking from the direction the rest of the bandits came from. He gazed upon the unconscious bodies around, growing angrier at each casualty, until stopping on Zhen Liu.

"Me", the man answered with a voice akin to rusty knives being dragged across glass.

"Oh...shit", Zhen Liu thought to himself as he looked up at the guy who was at least three heads taller than him.