It was extremely late now, but I was still full of energy. Plus my fox demon form was still too cute. I needed something more. I looked through the techniques I had swindled, I mean, righteously acquired from Fred. A demon fox absolutely needed fire!
I paused on one named Burning Palm. I liked this one more than Blazing Punch. The punch would only light up my hands with fire just before contact. The burning palm would keep my hands lit for the entire duration that I sustained it. A bit wasteful, but I loved the intimidation factor. Maybe my fox demon form would finally look menacing instead of like a cute plush toy. Honestly, the fox demon form wasn't the problem. It was being built on my slender and small frame which made it adorable. Why did I have to be so short?
I sat down and quickly learned the technique. It didn't take much effort or time. Compared to the other techniques, this one was child's play. All I had to was summon fire qi from my heart meridian, channel it down to my hands, and keep it burning just above my palms.
I did as the technique instructed and soon had blue fire floating above my palm. Wait? blue? The technique said it would be orange. Also, it was cold. Why was fire cold? It didn't take me long to figure out what was wrong with my technique, or more accurately my roots and meridians. The yin that tainted the fire lotus before I consumed it altered my meridians and roots. My fire was now strongly yin-aligned. I worried for a bit, before testing it out.
I found some old worn-out robes and touched the corner of them with the fire, the robes still burned. Cold-fire, interesting, this completely broke my understanding of physics, but we were dealing with qi now. Things were bound to get weird eventually. I suddenly remembered my heating technique and worried I might freeze myself at my next bath. Fortunately, it still worked as normal. I checked my new technique.
Frostburn Palm (Legendary-Spirit Grade) [Initial Success]: Coats user's arms in a freezing fire. +10% yin damage, +10% fire damage, 10% chance of inflicting freezing condition, 10% chance of inflicting burning condition. 50% chance of inflicting frostbite.
Cost: 4 qi/minute
Now I looked much cooler with blue flames dancing on my arms. Wait, was cool what I was going for? No, it was fearsome. Oh well, cool worked too.
After rapidly increasing my power over the last day it was becoming painfully apparent that I wasn't adapted to my strength. I kept breaking things, nothing important, but I was worried about hurting something or someone important to me eventually. I needed to train before I did any more power-ups. Maybe I'd be tired enough to sleep afterward.
I found a robe that would fit my fox demon form's arms and put it on. I may need to adapt all of my robes to have larger armholes. These robes were sleeveless, but I couldn't always go without sleeves, I would probably need to put a slit into the sleeves that would normally be unnoticeable, but allow my second set of arms to pass through. I activated my muted presence technique and trotted right past the guards outside the room before running on all six to the training yard.
Coordinating all six limbs was a difficult task. I didn't really get the hang of it until I was close to the training yard. I practiced all of my martial arts and sword arts for the next two hours. I remained in the fox demon form while using the frostburn palm technique to be at near-peak performance. At first, I tripped over myself or exerted too much power and destroyed half the training yard; I might need to spend some of my allowance to fix the yard. Gradually I controlled my strength and soon I could be powerful and sturdy or graceful and delicate as the situation demanded. To be sure I was fully in control of my strength, I deactivated my fox demon form and palm technique then completed another two hours of practice.
Sweat was dripping off my body and steam was rising off my skin in the cold winter air when I was finished, but I was now confident in the control of my strength. I suddenly heard clapping ring out in the pre-dawn air.
I looked to the source and saw Li Kai walking towards me. I never deactivated my muted presence technique, how did he notice me? I looked closer and realized his eyes kept shifting away from me. He knew I was there, but he was actively straining to maintain focus on me. So he must've been tipped off to my presence. Since it was useless right now, I deactivated the technique. It wasn't just Li Kai's eyes that relaxed when I deactivated the technique, his whole body slumped. He was really straining to see me.
"Good morning Li Kai, how did you notice little ol' me?" I asked cordially.
"Oh I don't know, maybe it's because the guards were spooked when half the training yard collapsed without apparent cause in the middle of the night." Li Kai snarkily replied.
Oh, this Mister was bold this morning. My personality must be rubbing off on him, and not in a good way. "So you knew there was a commotion, but how did you notice me specifically? It's better that I know the weaknesses of my stealth technique now than later when the one trying to find me is an enemy." I calmly replied in return.
"Fair enough. The technique Gregory found for you is quite good. It doesn't have weaknesses per se, it's more like I was stubborn and persistent. When I first arrived, all I could see was the destruction. It took a long time to notice that new wear and tear kept being added to the field. Divine sight is useless against the technique, it might even be a hindrance. I thought I might find a void in my perception with it, but somehow you were completely invisible to the technique. So instead I followed the trail of destruction with my eyes. Eventually, I caught the edge of your robes and from there I was able to pull my eyes onto you. But it was really hard to focus on you, and I kept forgetting you were there whenever I lost sight of you. It was exhausting keeping eyes on you, even at my level," Li Kai narrated his experience.
I winced at the mention of Gregory but continued as if I hadn't heard the name. "So to summarize, the ability won't be useful in direct combat, but it may be useful in hit-and-run combat so long as I don't expect it to fully conceal me. In non-combat applications, commotions I cause may expose me if I stick around too long or the opponent is too powerful. Suppose I don't cause commotions though it may be nearly impossible to find me or even know to find me. Does that sound about correct?" I narrated the findings back to him.
"I concur. Since I humored you, will you humor me? How does it work? Not the details obviously, you've got to have your trump cards. I've just never encountered a stealth technique that has caused me so much difficulty before. If you had left the field, I would've lost sight of you. In truth, the technique has defeated me, I only managed to brute force my way to a temporary solution." Li Kai seemed to be dripping with curiosity. It reminded me of my parents when they encountered something they didn't understand yet. I'd never seen Li Kai so vulnerable.
Although it was probably in my interest to stay mum on the technique I couldn't help but throw him a bone. "Any sense of me that reaches you will tell you to ignore me," I explained briefly.
Enlightenment appeared on Li Kai's face, "So the more I see of you, the less I see of you. Which is why I couldn't focus on you, the directions to ignore you would accumulate and eventually succeed. That explains why divine sight was so useless, there was no hole in my perception, but the part of my perception that contained you would've been screaming to ignore you. So switching it off and relying on weaker organs allowed me the chance to catch a glimpse of you before the command to ignore you kicked in. You are clever. You've satisfied my curiosity, but you haven't given me anything I can use to overcome your ability, the solution is still the same and it still isn't ideal. That's still a powerful suggestion ability. I'm surprised the qi of a qi-gatherer can cause such an effect."
"Thank you for the rare compliment. How about the concealment technique, are you able to see through my false late-stage cultivation with 7 open meridians." I asked.
Li Kai focused on me for a minute. His brows furrowed, I could feel his divine sense wash over me, and I could feel him using large quantities of qi. "No, even with my most advanced techniques, I couldn't see anything other than the seven meridians you've allowed me to see. I even focused on the meridians I saw open yesterday and now they appear sealed shut. I thought the technique your father found was trash, I was still intending to find you a better technique. Did it turn out to be a hidden gem?" Li Kai asked.
"Nope, it was trash," I said succinctly
"Then how?" Li Kai was dumbfounded.
"I used the information in the technique to craft my own," I said proudly.
"You what?!" Li Kai shouted.
"I craft-," I started to repeat.
"I heard you the first time. It's just insane. You just started cultivating and you're already authoring your own techniques. Two days ago, I felt good about the talent rating I was going to give to the sect for you, but now I'm going to have to lie my ass off. If I tell them of your real talent you'll get eaten alive." Li Kai took a deep breath to settle his thoughts, "Okay, I normally wouldn't pry into your techniques, but we need to make sure there are no errors in your technique that could cause qi deviation."
"Fair enough," I stated, "It's super simple really. In the qi vessels that I want to be concealed, I restrict the qi to flow only within the vessel, not letting even the smallest amount of qi leak out. Since we detect open qi vessels by the qi they leak due to the vessels themselves being near impossible to see through, that's all that's needed to deceive the senses. The drawback is that the body and aura are weakened to the false level, but offensive abilities can still be used at full power."
"So no complicated patterns like I presume the stealth technique has?" Li Kai inquired.
"Oh nothing like that, that's way too complex for me. I don't understand why the patterns are the way they are, so I can't make my own." I waved Li Kai off, but my mind drifted to the vortex pattern I created for my cultivation technique. I was lying.
"That's a relief, there's no danger in using your concealment technique then. You seem to have achieved an efficacy that's among the top-tier concealment techniques even without using patterns. The trade-off with losing defensive strength is on par with them too. Maybe you could create a concealment technique without those tradeoffs one day, but, please pass it by an elder or myself before using it next time." Li Kai explained with a sigh of relief.
"I don't think I can keep that promise," I said deadpan.
"Well, at least you're honest ... sometimes. Have you got even a wink of sleep tonight?" Li Kai asked with concern as he looked to the brightening horizon.
"I cultivated for an hour, does that count?" I teasingly asked.
"You know it doesn't. Go sleep" Li Kai commanded while flicking me hard on the forehead.
I ran away from Li Kai while rubbing my forehead. I turned back and stuck my tongue out at Li Kai before disappearing into the villa. I snuck back into my bedroom. Vivian and Rosie were still out cold. Now that I trusted my strength, I carefully squeezed myself between them. Big Sis was still the best weighted blanket.
Just before I drifted off to sleep I realized that Li Kai probably saw my fox demon form. Dammit, I thought I kept it secret this time.