Cheng Hao looked up, only to flinch at the glaring rays of sunlight: he and Xiao Wu had just passed the last two hours or so talking, which meant the sky had already brightened up enough for it to be considered morning.
The water clock in the small hut should be making it out to be roughly seven to eight in the forenoon.
Nevertheless, it was still pretty early, and Cheng Hao had a few preparations to focus on in order to acquire the high-grade Aura Manipulation Manual he had found in some abandoned ruins. The traps there might stumble even him if he were to tackle them in his current state, and charging straight through could end up with some tragic results such as the tome being caught up in the chaos and being destroyed. As such, before he could head off to get his hands on the manual, he would have to buy some supplies in order to prepare for a long stay outside the Mysterious Light Shadow Sect.
Then again, before going to one of the cultivator bazaars in the Vacant Sect, he needed to help Xiao Wu begin to gain enlightenment of the four scriptures, as well as slay some Spirit Beasts to feed to Goldy. In order to kill two birds with a single stone, Cheng Hao chose to bring the girl to the Beast Forest with them and have her slay the beasts herself. As such, the beast-infested woods had turned into a training ground for Xiao Wu and Cheng Hao… and into a satisfying banquet for Blindlight.
As, of the four Deifications, Xiao Wu could only use one at the moment, Cheng Hao would often be helping her out by providing her with his understanding of the technique, both in theory and practice. As such, at the moment each of the two youths had a blade hovering behind them, roughly a palm away from their backs, one palm below their right shoulders.
One such blade was the Black Dragon Blade, a triangular, pointy dao three-feet-and-some long, engraved with the motifs of a roaring dragon.
The other was a sword that would have been indistinguishable from a Black Dragon Blade, were it not for its golden color: it was, of course, a weapon Cheng Hao had created from the drop of Supreme stage blood, modeled after Xiao Wu's Martial Way.
Considering her young age, Xiao Wu was actually no pushover when it came to battle experience. At least when it came to battling against non-cultivators, she would most likely always have the upper hand. After all, she was the main descendant of a renowned Battle-Clan, and had evidently also passed the test for the Mysterious Light Shadow Vacant Sect even without a cultivation base; the requirement for that had been to slay a monster comparable to an Inferior Stage cultivator!
Even if in the end she might have needed the aid of a treasured item to slay the Spirit Beast, she still would have had to be able to survive until she could unleash the object at the right moment. In a fight against cultivators, every instant could prove to be fatal. Surviving long enough and achieving victory against a higher ranked opponent, no matter the means, went to show that she was clearly not a complete novice. This acted as a fantastic foundation for Cheng Hao to work around in order to quickly yet steadily increase her battle prowess.
The result was that, within a few hours, on top of that foundation had also been erected the first few building blocks of a tall and sturdy palace: during that time, by slowly increasing the difficulty level of her opponents, Xiao Wu had come from being able to fight, and just barely defeat, a fierce yet cultivation-less beast, to facing multiple such opponents at once. Eventually, the bar was even raised from common cultivation-less monsters, to actual Spirit Beasts.
During the whole morning, Xiao Wu was accompanied by Cheng Hao, as they took turns in battling the beasts and Spirit Beasts he would fetch out: during the boy's turn, the purple-haired girl would analyze his movements and later on she would try to replicate them during her own battles. With each fight she would improve, albeit slightly. If she were to continue training in such a way, then surely in the span of a few months - let alone the four years Cheng Hao had set as their limit - even if she failed to reach the Ageless Realm by then, all that fighting would still have given birth to a terrifying battle instinct.
At first, while dealing with common beasts, only Xiao Wu's Black Dragon Blade had been needed. Later on, when her enemies had eventually turned from mortals to Inferior Stage cultivators, Cheng Hao allowed her to take out another one of her Martial Ways... the Purple Moon! With the aid of her Purple Moon and I See A Purple Moonlit World, it only took a bit of practice before she was able to read her opponent's movements.
Fighting against someone able to see the way your Spiritual Energy moved was extremely annoying, as it was akin to broadcasting in advance what you would be doing next.
After all, what made cultivators so dangerous were the abilities and reinforcements that came from manipulating Spiritual Energy through Qi. Now what if... someone could see which parts of the body one imbued with Spiritual Energy?
Gathering Spiritual Energy around... the left leg and waist?
A sweeping kick will be coming from the right!
Waist and right fist?
A punch must be underway from the left!
Both legs?
A dash attack, maybe? Oh, right shoulder as well? Then... it ought to be some kind of shoulder-ramming technique, a body blow!
In Xiao Wu's field of vision was a world lit by purple moonlight, with bright violet rays that revealed to her eyes the streams of Spiritual Energy surrounding her. To her, it was as if she had suddenly developed a sixth sense similar to sight. It was a sense that allowed her to "see" Spiritual Energy fluctuations.
And soon, Xiao Wu had grown mostly used to associating the fluctuations of Spiritual Energy of her opponent, to the movements of their bodies. After that came the process of associating those same movements to a response, which would take much longer; a muscle memory acquired through relentless repetition.
For Xiao Clan cultivators wielding Purple Moons, their specialty would often lay in exquisite dodges, followed by sudden, vicious counterattacks. Although 'I See A Purple Moonlit World' wasn't available to common Xiao Clan members, as it required a Martial Way to function, they still had similar, inferior techniques that allowed them to read the flow of energy within their surroundings.
Things would be different however when the Clan went to war. At that time, the Great Purple Moon, a gigantic Purple Moon Martial Way laying dormant within the Ancestral Mansion of the Xiao Clan, would wake up and share skills on the same level of 'I See A Purple Moonlit World' for all Xiao Clan cultivators with a Purple Moon Sensed Qi to use. The enhancement provided by it alone had allowed Xiao Wu's Clan to establish itself as one of the strongest powers within the Nine Heavens, and later, one of the greatest trump cards in the Evil Saint's arsenal.
To a wielder of a Purple Moon - which allowed for the most superior and exquisite dodges - a countering technique such as the First Deification - Black Dragon's Vengeful Talons - would be a heaven-sent scripture that could allow their battle prowess to soar to untold levels. Xiao Lan had been like a ghost in the battlefields he had fought in, untouchable and as thorny as a rose. Seeing how everything was going so smoothly, Xiao Wu would be blooming into a spectral rose too very soon!
After an extended practice that lasted for the rest of the morning, Xiao Wu had yet to truly achieve the effectiveness Cheng Hao had shown in the usage of the Black Dragon Blade, but was rapidly growing accustomed to reading the flow of Spiritual Energy. At least, it was enough for Cheng Hao to increase the difficulty of her training from facing a single Inferior stage opponent to battling two. He was hoping that within the following two weeks she would be able to handle at least a dozen cultivators of the same stage without relying on her Pseudo-Core, and instead using solely her Black Dragon Blade's 'Black Dragon's Vengeful Talons', and her Purple Moon's 'I See A Purple Moonlit World'. That was mainly to get her accustomed to the objects she would end up relying on the most later on (unlike the Pseudo-Core's initial cultivation base boost which would eventually fade at the Advanced Stage).
One more thing: sometime in the close future, Cheng Hao would get his hands on an Aura Manipulation manual. This would allow Xiao Wu to craft a fourth and a fifth Martial Way from an Aura Construct. By placing either in her Pseudo-Core, she would be able to summon out her third 'original' Martial Way, the White Tree, as well! And with that, the fearsome combination of the sturdiest shield, sharpest blade and mysterious moon would allow her to be essentially unrivaled within her stage!
At that time, the more she had knowledge of her Martial Ways, the more efficiently she would be able to replicate them. Xiao Lan's number of Black Dragon Blades and White Oak Shields in particular had reached a staggering amount, numbering in the tens, hundreds of thousands! Theoretically speaking, had he not been occupied by the fight against Tian, that number could easily have exceeded a million, because of how sharp and refined his Will and Aura Refining had grown.
As the two children played around with the feral natives of the Spirit Forest, Goldy was also having fun: whenever Cheng Hao or Xiao Wu slew a Spirit Beast, he would proceed to eat it and absorb the spiritual energy inside it. Furthermore, he would also snack on a few low-level treasures from Liu Biao's Heaven&Earth Pouch from time to time. By noon, Blindlight had broken through the low level Inferior Stage, stepping into the middle level. As a result, he had grown a few inches longer and just slightly wider. His jaws had grown sturdier and the horns growing from its nape pointier. At the same time however, his presence had clearly changed, causing even Xiao Wu to tremble and not dare to ascertain whether, without her Pseudo-Advanced stage cultivation, she would be confident in taking on the mere foot-long dragon.
Either way, when that happened, Cheng Hao finally told Xiao Wu to stop: now that Blindlight had broken through, there shouldn't be too many beings within the forest that could pose a threat to the golden dragon. If worst came to worst, he could run away. Therefore, they left the golden dragon at the Spirit Forest to hunt and increase its strength some more, while they went back to their hut, had a relaxing bath, and ate a yummy lunch...
"Alright! Let's head to the bazaar now! Who knows? We might even find some riches to die for over there!"
Later…
"Now, now..." Cheng Hao smiled bitterly as he looked around, "I promise this wasn't what I meant by riches to die for..."
"Dear brother..." Xiao Wu glared at him, speaking through gritted teeth, "These guys look hostile enough by themselves... Don't provoke them!"
Ten men hiding their faces underneath the hoods of the sect robes had suddenly blocked their path: they were holding a multitude of weapons, which they would occasionally swing around to intimidate the two children that were trying to get into the bazar, just a few hundred feet away in the distance. The figure at the front had the fluctuations of a cultivation base around him. Xiao Wu could tell it was a lot stronger than the ones Goldy had emitted earlier after he had broken through to the mid level Inferior stage: the man was therefore likely of the late or peak Inferior stage... perhaps higher.
A man's voice rang out from beneath the hood of a Vacant Sect Disciple. "Hey there! What are two young children such as you two doing all alone by yourself... or something." He waved his hand dismissively, "Blah, blah, I don't like lengthy conversations! I'm sure you must have figured out just what kind of situation you are in by now... So just hand over your valuables. Let's not turn such a fine day into a day of mourning!"
"Woah boss!" One of the hooded figures behind the one who seemed to be the leader of the group of bandits lowered his weapon. "That was so much better than last time!" The voice of a young boy rang out for the second time, as the male, hooded Vacant Sect Disciple exclaimed in genuine shock.
"I know right?" The voice of a slightly older man, another of the hooded bandit cultivators, interjected. He raised his hand theatrically, "Your pouch may not belong to you any longer... but my heart will, your graceful figure deeply embedded in my mind! I get that the girl we were robbing at the time might have been a beauty, but even setting the sexual harassment aside, what you said had been just flat-out laaame!"
"Ah, as expected of our boss..." A third cultivator, a woman, nodded and spoke dreamily, "He sure is improving quickly!"
"These... are supposed to be bandits?" Watching the scene play out, Xiao Wu couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. She then turned and told Cheng Hao, "You guys might just have gotten along had it been any other occasion."
"Mm? Why do you say that?" the boy asked, widening his golden eyes in 'shock'.
"Just a gut feeling," was her stark response.
Meanwhile, just as a fourth hooded Vacant Sect Disciple was about to intervene and praise their leader's growing prowess in the usage of one-liners, the boss of the ten bandits shouted "S-Shut up you group of idiots! How are we supposed to maintain our reputations if you keep spouting off like that? How many times did I tell you to just stand there silently and look intimidating?"
"But Big Boss Kunzi, how are we to do that?" A fifth hooded man, scratched his chin in confusion. "Since I'm too young, mom only gave me a prop blade..."
"P-'Prop'… You're thirty-five! How are you 'too young'???" The first bandit, the one referred to as Big Boss Kunzi, massaged his temples, "Just... I don't know! Smile evilly! Stick your tongue out! These two are KIDS for goodness' sake! A few weird facial expressions should be more than enough!"
"But Big Boss Kunzi... our faces are covered! We are even wearing masks under the hoods, just to be sure we don't get recognized..."
"..."
"Boss?"
"T-Then cackle! It's all about the bandit's aura! The AURA, understand?" The first Vacant Sect Disciple, Kunzi, felt his figurative headache growing worse and worse.
"Aura?" The other bandits muttered skeptically. "What do you mean?"
"I mean... this!" Suddenly, Kunzi's presence skyrocketed! The fluctuations he was emitting also began to change as it turned from late Inferior stage pressure, to the pressure of a Basic stage cultivation base! Indeed, after he unleashed his cultivation base, Xiao Wu's pupils constricted as the hooded man turned into an even greater threat in her eyes.
"But boss, that's no bandit's aura! That's just your cultivation base!"
"..."