In the remaning day before she attended the Myriad Heaven's Sect's banquet Murong Xue Meng decided to stop cultivating. She had already reached peak 3rd layer Harmonisation realm, there was no need to continue cultivating. Instead, continuing could bring more harm than good and damage her foundations. Thus she decided to consolidate her foundations and go out to train, this jump in cultivation meant that her rock solid foundations were now weakening. Without consolidating her current realm and comprehending enough truths behind the techniques used at this stage Murong Xue Meng would be putting her future at risk.
So she first headed toward the Markets situated at the centre of Jade Mist City. Because she didn't want to be noticed by others, she wore a veil and put on some servant's clothing and entered a nondescript weapon store near the edges of the Market Square.
"Greetings to this stores Weapon's Master, this one is here to buy a sword for my young miss, are there any that are suitable?"
An old man walked out from the back of the store. He looked normal and rather poor but one could see from the aura and the light in his eyes that he was definitely a cultivator.
"What kind of sword are you looking for?"
"Emmm....Since young miss isn't too strong something light, but the 'material and craftsmanship needs to be of good quality' is what she said."
The old looked around his shop and brought over three swords.
They were simple but they had the lustre of a good sword. Although the materials were fairly cheap and easy to get, they were of good quality and the craftsmanship didn't even need to be mentioned. All in all, they were perfect swords for what she was after.
However, out of the three one of the swords drew her in, it was all black with a jade white stripe in the centre of the sword. It was rather thin for a sword but it was incomparably sharp compared to the other two swords. It didn't have any embellishments but rather a simple handle with carvings running across it. It gave off a very elegant and mysterious air.
"Hmmm..... I'll take this one, Weapon Master. How much is it?"
"5 silver coins."
Murong Xue Meng was a little surprised at how expensive it was, all her savings added up til now was only 6 silver coins thus to buy this sword she felt a little bitter.
Seeing her slight hesitation the old man gave his word that she'd not be disappointed.
"This sword I crafted in my younger days, it was one hell of a masterpiece for me back then! Spending this money isn't wasted."
"Of course, thank you, my young miss will be very pleased!"
Throughout the entire exchange Murong Xue Meng tried very hard to maintain a childish aura as a normal 10 year old child wouldn't be acting so mature let alone a servant child. So she quickly thanked him and left the shop.
This old man, however, was quite sharp and realised very quickly that there was something a bit strange about this girl. Her reactions, although were mostly rather child-like and indeed had the bearing of a servant her aura, the way she held herself indicated the complete opposite.
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A stick incense of time later, Murong Xue Meng arrived at another store that sold martial techniques. Although they were of fairly low grade, if one looked hard enough there might be a diamond in the rough. But this rarely happened Murong Xue Meng walked through this store and browsed some of the available martial techniques. Most of these were of the lowest tier, yellow tier low rank. These techniques some mortals could even practice! Murong Xue Meng naturally didn't even spare a glance at these techniques. Her intuition seemed to draw her in to the far left corner of this store, she paused at a tattered black book at the end of a shelf. It was called the Mystic Heaven Ascension Technique. It had three parts, the first part was a cultivation technique, the second part was a sword technique and the last one was a defence technique.
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At the Jade Mist Forest, to be honest she felt quite awkward. All the people around her were looking at her with strange gazes, some were pity others were astonishment. But thinking about it further it sort of did made sense, a 10 year old girl showing up here was really a little odd.
After she spent a 50 copper coins buying the martial technique, she spent a further 10 copper coins to get a carriage to get here. Along the way, Murong Xue Meng didn't try to study the new technique, even if it was a yellow rank low tier technique she still needed at least two days to reach perfection. She had a feeling that this technique is at least a silver grade low tier martial art, a whole two tiers above a a yellow rank low tier art. Most of people in her generation at Jade Mist City trained bronze rank martial arts. The people from powerful backgrounds trained bronze rank high to peak tier martial arts, normal people trained low to mid tier ones.
Murong Xue Meng could be considered to come from quite a powerful background, albeit in name only. However the Murong family still had to keep some face and gave Murong Xue Meng a bronze rank high tier sword technique and a peak tier cultivation technique. The Murong Xue Meng before Ling Yue came has almost reached perfection on the sword technique and cultivated to the ninth layer out of the thirteen layers of the cultivation technique. She had a few trump cards hidden too, a technique called one-line sword. It was a bronze rank peak tier sword art, although it only had one move, this one move could rival silver rank mid tier sword arts. But the side affect was that she would be unable to move for a day due to the overuse of yuan qi.
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After a stick incense of time* Murong Xue Meng had left the carriage and was in the outer layer of the Jade Mist forest. She quickly changed out of her servant's clothing into something a little more like something martial artists would wear and hanged her sword at her waist.
With this getup she looked more like a young disciple from some martial school sharpening her skills in the Jade Mist forest, which is what she was looking for.