Chapter 224: The Price Of Growth
Midsummer month was precisely the time when it was hot during the day and cool at night north of the Great Wall, the best period for countryside life, the moment when food was most abundant on the wasteland, and the most comfortable time for the over forty thousand people of Yun Clan Villa.
Only sick people would think of leaving this wonderful place with beauties, hot springs, food, and servants attending them.
Doggy was sick; he threatened Yun Ce that if he didn’t go out and bring back some powerful lost souls, he wouldn’t be able to help the geniuses discovered in the children’s home with Qi induction.
Mad Ox Knight was a standard Thousand-man General; the internal breath in a Thousand-man General’s body could help at least twelve children with Qi sensation achieve Qi induction, smoothly transforming from ordinary people into warriors.
It was only from this year that Yun Ce learned that warriors in this world were actually very rare; in the entire Yun Clan Villa, only Yun Ce, Zhang Min, Qin Shu, He Qingfang, Zuo Chong, and Zhou Da were true warriors, while the rest could only be called soldiers.
Yun Ce’s martial art was currently hard to measure; Zhang Min’s martial art was just a bit better than a Hundred-man General, belonging to elite Hundred-man General level, where one could fight two ordinary Hundred-man Generals without being at a disadvantage.
Qin Shu’s martial art was slightly better; he could kill two Hundred-man Generals in battle, and he had already done so.
He Qingfang was about the same as Zhang Min, just with less rich combat skills than Zhang Min.
The remaining Zuo Chong and Zhou Da were just two ordinary Hundred-man Generals.
Last time, Doggy had helped six children including Lei Ming with Qi induction at once, setting them on the path of warriors; this time he had discovered twelve more seedlings, and Yun Ce was truly very joyful.
1 At this rate, in less than two years, Yun Clan would have nearly a hundred self-trained warriors; in less than ten years, Yun Clan would be the foremost prominent family in the Northern Territory; and in another twenty years, Yun Ce could tell Cao Kun that his Cao family was nothing!
1 Thinking of how he would have the opportunity in the future to lead a Thunder Smoke Beast heavy cavalry of three thousand warriors from his own family rampaging across the world, Yun Ce unconsciously laughed out loud.
1 Warriors… three thousand… riding Thunder Smoke Beasts… and dropping bombs…
1 It was only when the Red Date Horse’s big tongue licked his face that Yun Ce snapped out of his daydream; warriors could be trained, but where to find three thousand Thunder Smoke Beasts?
1 Moreover, Yun Ce didn’t want those Thunder Smoke Beasts modified by the beast supervision; Red Date Horse was the best kind of Thunder Smoke Beast, not just a mount but a true partner; those people erased the Thunder Smoke Beast’s sentience for so-called loyalty, which was truly a brainless act of throwing away the pearl for the box.
1 “Where is your home? I remember you were a foal caught by people back then.” Yun Ce asked, stroking the Red Date Horse’s long face.
1 The Red Date Horse naturally couldn’t understand what Yun Ce was saying and thought he liked being close to it, so it wanted to jump into Yun Ce’s arms; after all, Yun Ce sometimes held the dog pup in his arms and petted it a couple times, and it wanted Yun Ce to treat it that way too.
1 The Red Date Horse weighed nearly two tons, but Yun Ce could still handle it; as for holding the Red Date Horse and petting it, that would at least have to wait until Yun Ce cultivated the Heaven and Earth Law Manifestation skill.
1 No one knew what the strongest person in this world looked like, but judging from the few known experts, the Great Han World probably wouldn’t allow someone that awesome to exist.
1 Guided by Doggy, Yun Ce went to the children’s home and met the twelve young geniuses: eight boys and four girls; each child was very spirited and clean; after over a year of raising, their temperament had improved, though their appearances were still somewhat indescribable.
2 E Ji was in charge of looking after these children; she held a just-ten-year-old little girl in her arms and reached out to touch the head of another slightly older boy, proudly saying to Yun Ce: “The best performer is Ai Ji; A Lou is a bit slower, but Zhang Min said these twelve children are all excellent.”
2 “Ai Ji? Who gave her that awful name?”
2 Seeing the little girl in her arms start to look aggrieved with the naked eye, E Ji yelled at Yun Ce: “I gave her the name; I love this little one, so what? Not satisfied?”
2 Yun Ce shook his head and said to the little girl in E Ji’s arms: “You deserve a better name.”
2 He thought the little girl would seize the chance to ask him, the patriarch, to rename her, but unexpectedly the little one gritted her teeth and said to Yun Ce: “I’m called Ai Ji.”
2 Yun Ce immediately felt this little girl was a fool; after all, at ten years old, he had already been adept at wandering among various big shots’ legs to seek benefits, but this little girl couldn’t.
2 The twelve children indeed had Qi sensation as Doggy said; what they lacked now was someone injecting a small portion of qi into their bodies, guiding that qi throughout their bodies, and leaving it in their bodies to be consumed again and again until it finally dissipated into their muscles and bones as the most basic nourishment; then, new qi belonging to them would appear.
2 It was not easy for a warrior to cultivate a wisp of qi, because qi was the excess energy automatically dissipated when the body became strong enough; warriors could collect this dissipated energy and circulate it in their bodies to make the body stronger, with greater strength and more agility.
2 There were actually quite a few people with Qi sensation; the problem was that too few were willing to infuse their own qi into others and guide them through Qi induction to become warriors.
2 The consumed qi was gone for good and would absolutely not return; to recover to the original level, one could only continue training.
3 So, except for fathers and sons as close kin, no one was willing to do this; after all, it was a real expenditure of gold and silver, and not guaranteed to yield returns.
3 Most importantly, Qi induction had to be done willingly for it to work well; if someone was forced to induce qi for another, that recipient would be in trouble, because the process of Qi induction was handing one’s life over to another; leaving some hidden issues for them was all too easy.
3 Therefore, very often, only fathers would do this to make their sons grow quickly; sons would only accept it when their fathers personally did it.
3 Otherwise, they would rather spend years tempering their bodies, waiting to accumulate more qi before breaking through on their own; of course, this took a very long time, and some people never achieved self-breakthrough in their lifetimes.
3 This was no problem for Yun Ce; his own qi was all infused into him by Doggy after thoroughly researching internal breath, plus Shehuo helped him refine the Dragon Arm, turning the Dragon Arm’s excessively vigorous nourishment into qi to sustain his body, making him a killing god who could behead three thousand on the battlefield.
3 Besides, it was Doggy infusing internal breath into the children, and Doggy storing the internal breath; in other words, it was actually Doggy helping the children with Qi induction, as Yun Ce himself couldn’t perform such delicate work.
3 Yun Ce checked the twelve children—actually, Doggy checked them; after understanding the children’s physical conditions, Yun Ce needed to go to Iron Enclosure Pass to find suitable qi for the children to take in; it was very troublesome.
3 After returning home, Yun Ce took the dry rations prepared by E Ji and rode off on the Red Date Horse.
3 Knowing full well that Yun Ce would face fierce battles this time, E Ji didn’t show more worry; by her words, there was nothing to worry about—weren’t hunters in danger when going hunting?
3 Would a wife stop her husband from hunting just because it was dangerous?
4 This was the true face of life, beyond anyone’s control.
4 This time, Yun Ce didn’t go to Iron Enclosure Pass; he disliked that military fortress filled with sorrow and despair; before the war even started, they were already placing themselves in the position of losers or martyrs, which could only mean that the city was inhabited by a bunch of cowards.
4 What was a warrior?
4 Hearing change without alarm, hearing the drum and forgetting death, in a deadly place then striving for survival.
4 They would use their lives, weapons, hands, or even bodies to turn desperate straits into smooth paths and deadly grounds into traps for killing the enemy; only thus could they be called true warriors.
4 Yun Ce pitched his tent by Ghost King Lake.
4 Ever since Ghost King Lake appeared, no one wanted to approach this lake; they all said that near the lake, one could hear the sighs of the lost souls in the lake water.
4 Yun Ce felt there shouldn’t be many lost souls in Ghost King Lake; after Shehuo detonated Coal Mountain, only a little over two thousand Gui Fang people were killed, not even reaching three thousand, which was less than his battle record in Xiangcheng.
4 That said, Ghost King Lake really didn’t look great, mainly because the lake water was black, which made sense since it was originally a huge coal mine.
4 He picked up a few black stones from the lakeside, examined them carefully, and joyfully said to Doggy: “Look, washed coal. The top grade in coal.”
5 “This is a battlefield; it can’t become your coal washing plant.”
5 Yun Ce felt Doggy’s joke was not funny at all.
5 “Is helping your wife cut the corn on her foot funnier?”
5 Hearing Doggy say that, Yun Ce didn’t want to talk to it anymore; he gathered a lot of washed coal from the lakeside and built a large hollow coal tower on an open ground.
5 He put a lot of hardwood at the bottom; after lighting the hardwood, the coal tower started burning too, possibly due to the washed coal, burning very vigorously.
5 It was getting late, and the vast ground was black; the fire Yun Ce lit started like a star on the horizon; as the sun fully set, the fire’s true form revealed itself, lighting up a large swath of black land.
5 “Doggy, guess whether the wandering knights come first or the Gui Fang people come first?”
5 “The corn on your wife’s foot comes first.”
5 “Can we still talk properly?”
5 “No, unless another corn grows on your wife’s foot.”
6 “What good does a corn on her foot do you?”
6 “What do you know? Like this, I can delete the record file and pretend I never helped your wife cut the corn.”
6 “What has existed must leave traces; how can you delete it cleanly?”
6 “I can shred the file, reinstall the system—how could it not be deleted cleanly?”
6 In a typhoon, wailing outside like ghosts and gods, inside wearing headphones typing, and behind there’s
