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After getting back to the city i got back to the hotel i was staying, research informed me on the state of my Qi during the fight, it appears that it will change form according to what am i doing since i never had a fight before i didn't know that would happen.
After a bit digging i found out that the "way of walking and breathing" stuff can cause mysteries without even knowing magecraft and mixing that alongside with the state of my Qi during the fight, it manifests in that way seeing the correlation between the names of the moves and the manifestations chuuni side of me decided to make attack names like "White Tiger Slash", "Phoenix Descend" "Flood Dragon Jumping on The River" ect. not like i am going to scream out the names of the attacks, might as well have fun naming them.
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It took about 2 months to find this guy, killing him even less but i don't think the other guy is going to be this easy to find, this guy is Chinese and he also lives in China, so he got home advantage, it also has been sighted that he has dead familiars.
So after thinking, i decided to settle in a Taoist temple, Tai Chi comes from Taoist teachings anyway, i can get in after showing off a little then set out my bird familiars again, might pull out a Taylor and get some bugs as well although it reminds me of Zouken i should kill him during the 3rd war no need to wait for him to live until the 4th war.
Gathering my thoughts i set the goal of finding a better cultivation technique on the top just above the combat armor and gone to find how i can go to China, my hopes lie in the civil war to draw out my target they need blood, doesn't matter how much and this is the prime time for him to collect.
Turns out there's a train going there and boy am i glad to have learned both Chinese and Japanese, i could get away with English in India but can't really expect English speaking people in those countries.
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Okay, i forgot how slow trains were at this point of history, running with reinforcement would have been faster but i decided to work on the armor while riding the train, to be honest i wanted to make something like Iron Man suit and write an AI with runes then i realized that it's not viable with my current knowledge and resources, *sigh* taking a page out of Sigurd i decided to make a armor similar to his, without the collapsible parts of course i don't have any idea how that shit works, so i will have to make the helmet separately.
The main material i am going with is Ether Clump, yes like Touko Aozaki's suitcase puppet but i need to find a way to make the ether clumps stick around since they disintegrate once they ran out of mana or at least infuse their characteristics to the metals through alchemy, i thought mixing metals with it but that doesn't make sure they will stick, can i infuse pure ether with metals ? but doesn't ether materialize alongside other elements ?
By the time i got to China i already had two methods that i can try so after getting a hotel room and setting off new birds to collect information, i went to try out my methods.
First one involves mixing the clumps while the metal is in liquid form with a alchemical ritual and the results weren't what i expected, the material i used was steel but turned into putty like substance that retained the steel's color, it's moldable enough to shape with hand and stays in shape after cooling(Yes i shaped it with my hand while it was hot reinforced mittens for the win) but when i infused my mana through the material half of it got hardened and the other half gotten soft like plastic while rippling before the two sides broke off, in depth analysis revealed that the clump i used took after the fire and wind element during the process and half of it sucked the heat from the other half resulting it's current state very interesting.
The second attempt was the same but i also dropped some of my liquid Qi inside to see what would happen and boy i wasn't expecting this. The metal that came out was golden colored metal that was harder than the steel i used but also much more brittle, it cracked under my hands even before running mana in it, which doing so turned the metal into dust.
Trying the same process with gold produced much better results, gold is more malleable it's not hard like steel so it didn't crack after the the process while gaining the same hardness of the one made with steel and bended instead of breaking this is what i am looking for the moment, the plan is shock and stab resistance armor like Black Panther.
Unfortunately i have no way to turn the kinetic energy to mana and use it but the current materials i am using are capable of absorbing blunt force elastic enough to stop stabbings, fire spells can be absorbed by the material and i can revert the heat back to the armor to defend against cold attacks but i am also making holsters that will gather heat and transfer it into two pistols i am designing, pistols will gather the heat and compress it to make heat bullets or cover the bullets upon fire, it's still in design process might change later.
During the rest of the year i used up all my metals i had in my person to finish the armor i didn't have a working design on the pistols, i don't think armor made with steel and gold even after alchemy will protect from someone really strong but i can make this stuff with better metals when i go back to Clock Tower i might have to go in the Spiritual Tomb Albion but it's worth it.
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The end product used the Gold Qi metal inside with runes inscribed on it to transfer the heat to the mystic codes to the holsters on my thighs i decided that if someone is going to attack they would go for my vitals not that attacking my thighs would make it explode but i put a extra mystic code to on the back store anything that escapes the holsters..
The outer layer made of the kinetic putty metal that i got from the first method after i found a way to set up how they work, the part that will face the inner layer set to absorb kinetic energy from the outer side causing that side to harden, whenever something hits the outer armor, it becomes elastic and the attack sticks for a while until it gets it's kinetic energy or heat absorbed, but the inner side broke off the outer side when there was no kinetic energy or heat to absorb, so i had to make the heat circulate, creating a circuit that will lose some heat all the time unless i am constantly on the move but will get more power with increased movement, so i had to keep it charged all the time, gotta find a way to solve that but nothing comes to my head at the moment other than wearing it all the time.
Since i made it to have heat at all times the end result looked like black - gold spandex with runes on it, i guess i got influenced by Black Panther too much and the thing is that a normal person can't move wearing this since the inner side is made of malleable gold qi alloy even if it's malleable it's still solid gold but my E+ Strength is enough to bend the metal as i move and it's malleable enough to not break off after bending over and over again, the heat generated by the bending gets absorbed, anyway it's ready for action but how am i going to wear this thing it's a closed circuit ? and i didn't really put any zippers or something like that. *Facepalm*
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By the time i turned the armor into six connected pieces and made sure i didn't lose protection it has already been quite some time, the armor is now usable and wearable and the individual pieces can function on their own with their own heat storage units, also i covered the insides with velvet(I didn't have that, buying that took a good chunk out of my balance) so i can actually wear the stuff over my underwear and not get uncomfortable.
Now that i finished this one and set the designs for the guns on the board it's time for me to find a temple i can reside while my familiars scourge the whole country looking for my target.
Why the temple first you might say, well i didn't really thought about how to withdrawal from my account when i left, now i have millions of £'s sitting in my account and i can barely afford my hotel room since i don't want to sell my resources i am going to a temple since it's on the to so list i can just harden my skin and shamelessly ask to stay.
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Well when you say Taoism and Tai Chi, one of the most memorable places that comes to mind is Five Immortals Temple that accepts anyone as long as they want to learn "The Way" although i don't know if i need to pay to get lessons.
This place has everything i need to learn about Tai Chi, Kung Fu, Taoism even Internal Alchemy i don't know what that means but it was on the advertisement so i am down.
One of the main reasons that i am doing this is because the only knowledge i had was the moves i looked up on the internet in my past life and the extra stuff that my Research came up with, i am hoping for a breakthrough once i learn the proper ways of Tai Chi.
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I was actually surprised of the terms they presented, apperantly this temple is the only one "Foreigners" can come and learn Taoism and you just have to obey the rules, know basic Chinese and do your chores like lightning incenses or sweeping the temple grounds, the lodging and the food is free which suits my needs on the other hand there are Kung Fu classes alongside Tai Chi so i took them as well.
These people here aren't effected from the civil war that's raging down the mountain but they will heal anyone that comes and seeks aid, they're all about compassion and love, i never thought i would cry like a baby after one of the masters hugged me saying i must've had bad parents, not even i knew i needed such a warm hug, looking back all my life ever since coming here was learning, keeping an eye on my back or swimming in the river full of shit that is politics.
I never even gone and try to make friends not that i avoided people, i had many people that i talked but my Purification would kept warning me who's genuine or not the only person in the whole Clock Tower that didn't treat me like a possible pawn was Zelretch maybe i could have find someone to befriend if i had gone past the initial bias of Magi are savages outlook, so coming here in a place where i can't even find a shred of evil intent was a big shock that came with me finally relaxing for the first time in years.
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During the first two days of lessons, the first change that i have noticed was that i started to be able to project myself in my dantian and the liquid Qi i had started congealing, to be honest this place looks more like space than a human body but who am i to judge.
The second chance was that there are now four little balls of different colors that are orbiting the Qi ball and sucking it for themselves. The internal martial arts technique was a god send to make this happen thanks to it Research was able to come up with a meditative practice that's basically a cultivation technique but i keep getting sore all over my body whenever i use it.
I didn't notice any injury but still i am looking into it from the looks of it i can solidify the Qi in a year but before that i have a Dead Apostle to kill, there are three days trial, i just said that i have one more thing to take care of before being able to give myself into it, they just accepted my reason without questions, such good people.
Wearing my normal clothes (With my armor underneath except the helmet) i called my birds they have just found the place. They have been looking over three unidentified bounded fields but the last one had a large cases of missing people over the year that stopped alongside with the Civil War and sighting one of his familiars was the final nail to his coffin.
Chris: Time to hunt some vampires.
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