025 Elemental Power

The next day, after classes Liam was out in the sect's perimeter forests, where creatures up to the fifth human realm roamed. "There is no time for rest." He thought. Liam also thought that it was best to learn in a real situation. Fighting against beasts would be the best way for him to learn how to fight and use his elemental qi to fight.

He envisioned how swamp qi left his hands to form a small puddle on the ground. Once it was formed, he stood back behind a tree and he waited for a creature to come.

After about half an hour, a small beard landed on the puddle, Liam instantly jumped towards it and the little bird flew away before he could get to it.

"I didn't expect a third human realm creature to be so fast." Liam said and then he went behind the same tree.

After another 10 minutes, an orange tiger appeared, it was big ang vicious , but it calmly walked up to the murky puddle and tried to take a sip from it.

"I have to be stealthier." Liam thought. He slowly walked towards the tiger; half crouched. Either way, the tiger noticed him immediately and it bared its teeth towards him. Liam stood in his step and was unsure if he should continue or not.

Liam thought that he could attack the tiger at a distance, if he can hit the tiger, but the tiger could not hit him. He was sure to win right? He imagined how he gathered water qi and concentrated it in his palms, then when he was ready, he let go of all the pressure that he had built up in the last few seconds.

A stream of water traveled from Liam's palms towards the tiger. The tiger did not move away and the stream hit him directly in his body. To Liam's surprise, the tiger did not let out any sort of cry, nor did it move. The tiger was left without a scratch, the only thing Liam's attack did, was make the tiger angrier than it was.

The tiger's paws turned on fire and it started chasing after Liam and the only thing he could do was run. Liam compared himself with Kyle and Owen, they were both at the fifth human realm, just as him, but their power was so many times greater than his. In the end, he couldn't think of any way to defeat the tiger.

"Dam it! I don't know any darkness qi attacks, and I don't know how to poison it with the swamp. I only learned the water torpedo while messing around and it did absolutely no damage to it. I guess I will run towards the sect and hope an elder or inner disciple helps me." Liam though of ways to save himself now.

Luckily if there was one thing Liam knew, was how to run fast. The tiger was pretty fast too, but it wouldn't catch him anytime soon.

Liam was getting annoyed with the tiger. He wasn't tired, cultivators could run for days and not be, but he was wasting his day and the precious two weeks he had left before the expedition.

Suddenly, he heard a cry come from behind him. He looked and he saw that there was a big icicle impaled into the tiger. It looked to be about 1.2m long and 10cm thick.

"You aren't made for this. Get out of this forest before you kill yourself." A man said to Liam, before he threw the icicle in his hand at the tiger, which was the same as the other one.

Liam was stunned, how could his attack do no damage to the tiger, while this guy was able to impale huge spikes of ice into it. Either way, he knew he could do nothing to the tiger, so he decided on going to the training valley.

As he was heading out, he saw the man impale a spike in the tiger's head, killing it.

"Don't come back." The man shouted at Liam. "We don't want the reputation of our hunter's guild to be ruined because some newbie decided to kill himself."

Liam did not bother with the man's words and he only continued walking. A short while later he got to the training valley. As mentioned before, the training valley was huge and there were lots of different areas for students to train in. Liam specifically went to the dummy area.

It was a field with a dummy placed at every few hundred meters. There were a few different types of dummies. Normal ones that could just take a lot of attacks, there were ones that showed how much strength there was in the attack, there were ones that showed how powerful the element in the attack used was. The last dummy type mention was what Liam was going to use.

"If I understood it correctly, on these dummies it doesn't matter how much qi I put into the attack, only my element power." Liam pondered. They had learnt about element power a few days ago and it was a weird property. The stronger the person's element power, the stronger his elemental attacks would be. If someone had a high cultivation but a low element power, his attacks without his element would be stronger than if he used his element.

The best way to think about it, it was like multiplying your strength times your elemental power. For example, if someone at the first human realm, had an elemental power of 0.5 and multiplying it by his strength, for example 10, You would get 5. That's how a weak elemental power lowers the strength of your elemental attacks. But if someone had an elemental power of 2 and strength of 5, you would get 10.

"Using numbers to understand it. How easy it would be, if there were numbers to cultivation. Everyone would know how far away they were from a breakthrough, or ho's attack was stronger." Liam thought, as he used some numbers to imagine better how the elemental power worked.

There were only a few things the dummy could tell him, by flashing a few different colors. The flashing of dark green, meant you should only use your physical strength, as it went towards light green, that meant that you were better of using your physical strength. As the dark blue went over into light to dark blue, that meant that it doesn't really matter if you use your physical or elemental abilities. On pink, it would be suggested that you use your elemental abilities over your physical strength and as it went to violet, it meant that you had a pretty good element power and you should probably always use your element abilities. There was only one-color left, red. On red, it meant that you had an incredible element power, the difference between your physical strength and your elemental abilities was at least one realm apart.

Liam remembered everything that was explained in the book that he and Ralph read, when they got into the sect. "Let's see how good is my elemental power." Liam said before he gathered his qi in his palms again, as he prepared to launch a water torpedo at the dummy.

He released all of the built-up pressure, and an even stronger stream of water came out, than the one that Liam used to hit the tiger. The stream hit the dummy straight in the head. After a few seconds, the dummy flashed a darkish green color. Liam's elemental power was incredibly weak.

"I guess it is explainable, as I haven't ever really used my elemental abilities. This is my first." Liam said to himself, as he prepared to train until midnight.

Elemental power was trained by getting accustomed to your element and ability. You can have a different elemental power on different abilities. But if, for example, Liam trained and got a really high elemental power on his water torpedo, if he was to learn a new technique, it would also have an okay elemental power.

"I have to focus on imagining the qi's path in the attack, then I have to imagine it's destructive capabilities." Liam rehearsed what one of the elders had said in a previous class of theirs.

Liam prepared to throw another water torpedo at the dummy, but this time, he imagined how the qi left his dantian and traveled through his whole body, all to gather at the palm of his hands. Then he imagined the buildup of the qi, the destructive pressure from within and how it would destroy everything in its path.

When he was ready, Liam released the pressure again and a water torpedo shot from his hands. Liam watched as it quickly hit the dummy and the dummy flashed a slightly darker green color.

"Yes, I am improving. I only need to continue like this. If I can get my elemental power to dark blue, by the time the expedition starts, it would be amazing." Liam said, not knowing how impossible of a feat, he had set as his goal. If it only took two weeks, to get an elemental power of dark blue, everyone would have violet or even higher.

"Let's train until I have it!" Liam said to himself excitedly, as he went back to improving himself and his elemental power. He was a very dedicated cultivator, one that was sure to succeed, right?