After spending time at the bar, Qing Shan then spent the rest of the night in the Primal pocket Dimension training his movement technique. It seemed that even with that he had his a bottleneck. He could not improve his explosive speed no matter how many times he tried.
Once morning came, Qing Shan immediately ran out of Dusty Heights; he was excited to learn about the world that he was living in. He would finally expand his knowledge of the world beyond the Silent Plains and Rising Sun City!
Unfortunately, Qing Shan immediately felt that something was not write one he arrived at the old man's weapon shop.
Qing Shan immediately filled with anger.
'That old man… There is no way he accepted my money and left, right?'
Although Qing Shan did want to believe, this, he could not help but let his mind jump to the worst-case scenario.
Looking around the shop in a fit of anger, Qing Shan still could not find the old man, or his money.
Finally, Qing Shan burst into the area behind the shop counter. This was the one area that Qing Shan had not yet searched. To his surprise, the door opened into a room with an open ceiling. This area also had a large furnace. The area seemed to be the place where weapons where forged. Surprisingly enough, the old man that Qing Shan had been searching for.
Qing Shan immediately walked over to the man, who was looking over a newly-forged blade. Qing Shan ignored the blade, instead looking directly into the old man's eyes.
"We still have a deal, right?"
The old man did not take note of the threating tone of Qing Shan's voice and replied that he was not someone who easily reneged on deals. The old man then set down his newly=forged blade and walked with Qing Shan back to the main shop.
"Okay, I will now tell you what I know about this corner of the world. We currently reside in the Vermillion Bird continent, the southernmost of five continents that make up our world. In this continent, the leading rule is the Huo Dynasty. This continent has a very different format from the others. While there are still many different regions spread throughout the country, The center of the country has a different power dynamic than the rest.
"The Huo Dynasty is located beneath the earth more than ten thousand meters down. In the area of the continent that we are currently in, the deeper into the earth someone is symbolizes the amount of strength that they have. As far as I am aware, there are nine full levels going downwards, and the Huo Dynasty lies beneath all of these levels. As you may have noticed, here, in the second layer, cultivation is very rare. This changes once you descend to the third layer, where there are even a few different schools of cultivation.
Qing Shan cut in.
"This is the second layer?"
"Surely you have heard of the Highlands, correct? While that area seems so high up in the sky to us, that is actually the common ground level of the rest of the world. I am told that the surface of the Highlands is more than ten times the area of all ten levels into the ground. However, cultivation in the Highlands is very rare, and children borne from there are usually those with inferior talent."
Qing Shan kept asking questions and eagerly listening to the answers that he was provided with. The world was so much larger than he had expected. Listening to the old man in front of him, Qing Shan truly realized just how hard it would be to gain his revenge on the Huo Dynasty. Just accessing them would most likely take him decades. According to the old man, once you got deeper into the earth, the temperatures got hotter and hotter, to the point of being unbearable. You had to advance to a certain cultivation level just to live normally the deeper you went.
Considering that Qing Shan was still 1st level Formation Soul, he definitely had a long way to go. While he had finally reached the starting line, he still had to run countless marathons before he was even qualified to speak of revenge against the Huo Dynasty.
After the conversation ended, and the old man had shared as much as he could about his knowledge of the world, Qing Shan still had a question to ask.
"Senior, what is your name?"
Qing Shan addressed the old man politely, after all, he had given Qing Shan far more information than his money could have paid for. He felt that he should at least be aware of the man who had first allowed him to understand the world.
"My name is Teng Zhihui"
"Qing Shan greets Senior Teng."
After the two men had finished talking, the day had already faded away.
"Senior Teng, I would like to come by tomorrow as well, if that would be alright with you."
The old man smiled amiably.
"Of course, boy. But I do hope you actually buy something…"
Qing Shan laughed at that.
"I would if I could afford it. I guess Senior Teng knows that already though. Your prices are a bit, shall we say, absurd?"
Qing Shan fled the shop before he could be chased out, leaving a chuckling Senior Teng behind him.
That night, Qing Shan got drunk with Yuan Long and Su Yuesha once more. Usually, he would be the most sober of the three by the end of the night, but Qing Shan really wanted to forget his worries for one night. While he was glad to know the truth about the size of the world he was in, sometimes it was refreshing to think that you could see the whole world, instead of just a small bit of sky that could be seen from the bottom of a well.
Qing Shan drank an amount that stunned both of his drinking partners. Before they even knew it, Qing Shan had fallen to the floor, blacking out drunk.
"Ugh…"
When Qing Shan awoke, he was met with an unpleasant surprise.
The worst hangover that he had ever had.
Luckily, upon noticing that someone had moved Qing Shan back to his room, he immediately activated his locket and moved into the Primal pocket dimension. He quickly took a dip in the Primal Water to heal his liver and get rid of his hangover.
'If Master knew that I was using his gift like this, he'd spew blood…'
Qing Shan exited the Dusty Heights and moved around the city toward the Market District once more. Even though yesterday's revelations had done a number on his confidence, he had come to enjoy talking to Senior Teng.
Once he arrived at Senior Ten's shop, he found the old man working in the back once more.
"Oh, boy its you again. Don't you know that talking to you has caused my production rate to go down drastically over the past two days? Today you will have to settle for half of my attention while I work on Runic Forging. Afterall, I my worst fear is people coming into my shop with abundant money and being met with an empty shop; if that were to happen, when would I get paid?"
Although Qing Shan was not quite sure if Senior Teng was entirely serious, he understood the old man's plight.
"Okay, I understand."
"What did you want to ask me?"
'Oh, good point. There is so much I need to know. What should I ask first…?'
Even though Qing Shan's thoughts ran through his mind at unimaginable speeds, by the time he was done with this thought and had thought of the first question he wanted to ask, Senior Teng had already resumed Runic Forging.
Seeing this, Qing Shan's words died in his throat. For some reason, he felt as though interrupting the old man's work would be some kind of crime. Although the old man was only starting out by forging a simple pauldron, Qing Shan felt as though he was watching something incredibly profound. This feeling only affirmed itself as Qing Shan watched Senior Teng continue to forge.
Every single one of Senior Teng's movements seemed as though it held some sort of deeper meaning; each and every movement looked like it had been practiced thousands–no, hundreds of thousands of times. Simple movements such as melting the metal, or using the anvil to create the base shape of the pauldron seemed to be executed perfectly. There were no extra movements taken, and everything was done at the exact same speed. This was truly a master at work.
Soon, Qing Shan was again stunned. Once Senior Teng got to the point of tempering the pauldron in a final form, he began doing something with the half of his body that was idle. He pulled a small cauldron and different containers filled with different ingredients. Senior Teng opened a few of the vials with one hand while keeping his vision on the tempering metal. Somehow, the old man seemed to know what each vial contained without looking. He poured the contents of the uncorked vials into the cauldron and started to beat them into a paste with his fingers.
Once he had created the paste, Senior Teng once again did something that seemed illogical to Qing Shan. He softened the metal once more and brought the pauldron to his eye level with a pair of tongs. He then lifted one finger and touched the metal.
Just as Qing Shan was about to yelp, thinking that Senior Teng had done something wrong, he saw something that made him rub his eyes in disbelief. Senior Teng's finger was covered with the distinctive light of Qi. Opening his Third Eye, Qing Shan noticed that the Light that symbolized Qi was quickly gathering around the tip of the old man's finger. In order for the old man to be able to do this, he must be at least a cultivator in the Origin Soul realm!
Senior Teng's figure began to cut through the metal like a knife through butter. However, the old man did not cut all the way through the pauldron. Instead, the finger was making a trail of impressions in the metal. To Qing Shan, the pattern being made greatly resembled the runes that he had seen on the completed weapons and armor in the display of the shop. However, unlike those runes, these ones had no glow radiating from them.
Just then, the old man poured boiling water into the cauldron with the paste. He stirred the paste into the water until the water turned to a greenish color. Then, very carefully, Senior Teng poured this substance into the grooves made by his finger. The old man then covered the surface of the pauldron with Qi, preventing any of the water from leaving the pauldron.
Surprisingly, the moment that the peculiar water came into contact with the pauldron's empty runes, the runes began to glow the same greenish color as the water. Then, as the water distributed itself throughout the runes, it began to harden, creating protruding lines over the once-empty runes. Once this happened, the Qi energies in the room began to rush toward the solidified substance over the runic imprints. Surprisingly, the substance changed color yet again, becoming the signature muddy brown of earth attribute Qi.
The energies in the room began to stabilize, and the pauldron began to emit the same faint light as the other runic objects Qing Shan had seen before.
Qing Shan, still in a daze, looked to the now tiredly smiling Senior Teng.
"W-what… was that…?"
"That, young friend, was the Runic Forging of a pauldron imbued with a simple strengthening rune, that increases the power of the arm it is equipped on by twenty percent."
'You call that simple!?'
Qing Shan just mutely nodded. He truly could not understand what he had just seen. There was absolutely no way anything about that process was simple.
"Anyways boy, you had wanted to ask me a question?"
Qing Shan shook himself out of his stupor.
"Ah, yes. What cultivation level should I strive for before I descend to the third level? And also, what is the best way to increase my cultivation fast without access to a teacher of cultivation techniques?"
The old man nodded his head thoughtfully. He had anticipated this question since he had decided to tell Qing Shan about the world, but he was unsure what he wanted to do now. He had been pleasantly surprised by the rapt attention his Runic Forging had gotten from Qing Shan.
'Well, It wouldn't necessarily be a lie…'
Senior Teng opened his mouth.
"Well, you should be at least middle-stage Origin realm before you descend to the third level. As for increasing your cultivation base..."
The old man put a reluctant look on his face before looking at Qing Shan.
"Well, I do know one way for you to increase your power quickly, but I'm not sure if you–"
"I'll do it!"