Lou Ben walked through the forest and peeked through the rock branches to take a look at the knight dao masters.
Meanwhile at the Xiao Tavern, Wu Gen was filing stacks of paper when Kai Yang appeared and sat down to talk to him.
Wu Gen sighed as his gaze went from the papers on his desk to Kai Yang: "Yeah how can I help you, brother Kai?"
Kai Yang poked his head around the stack of paper: "have you heard from brother Lou Ben recently?"
Wu Gen shook his head: "No, he told me that he was going to be inside the undead trench for a long period."
Kai Yang gasped: "Brother Wu Gen! Did he not tell you the reason why brother Su Sheng and myself had to stay and recover?"
Wu Gen looked at him with a tilted head, completely abandoning the pile of papers that required his attention.
"Brother Kai Yang, what do you mean?"
"What dangers are there for brother Lou Ben?"
"He advanced to the peak of the atmospheric condensation realm!"
Kai Yang opened his eyes because this was news to him, not long ago everyone slowly advanced to the middle, Lou Ben skipped the high realm and went straight to peak?
"Brother Wu Gen! There was an insanely large monster that almost took our lives!"
While these two were discussing the last venture into the undead trench, Lou Ben was risking his life against his first undead knight!
*Slash!
Lou Ben dodged left while the blade sparkling with destructive energy plunged into the ground.
The attack created a crater in the earth, but when Lou Ben looked back, the attack was not done!
There were after effects, the earth trembled, the crater collapsed and what remained was a lump of ground that was grinded into grain.
Lou Ben swallowed his saliva and raised his hand into a knife: "Space technique - Gravity Knife!"
The blade reached the blazing skull of his opponent and sizzled at the dark flame encased around the boney head.
"Space technique - Gravity Hands!"
Lou Ben put both his hands aimed at the head of the blazing knight and tried to crush the skull with all his might!
The undead knight groaned: "Gruhh!"
But the struggle was not won, the flames dimmed and turned to nothing, the skull cracked and became dust under Lou Ben's space technique.
Lou Ben looked around, he chose the only undead knight that wandered too far from the crowd, he took his chances and saw what they were made of.
"It was a hard fight!"
"Not as hard as the large undead that was the floor boss, but that's to be expected."
Lou Ben walked toward the unmoving body of the undead knight and picked up the blade.
It was a long blade with a straight guard and circular end of the hilt, on the circular end there was an imprint of the sun blazing.
Lou Ben looked at this in disdain: "Looks like I was right, this whole dungeon was created by that sun spirit…"
What piqued his curiosity more was the ability to use a weapon as a way to carry dao energy and be released explosively.
The undead knight only got one attack off and it was able to affect the land around him, causing a crater then finely chopping it into dust!
Lou Ben wanted this sort of ability so he racked his brain and thought about what it means to be a dao master.
Dao masters use glyphs to focus the heaven energy and mix it into crystals or other mediums that contain earth energy, Lou Ben thought that if he treated the blades as a crystal then it should give him the result he wanted.
"I'm pretty sure I won't be the only one in this world who was able to attain this understanding, but I'm sure that it's a level up from my original power output…"
"Look at the technique - Gravity Knife! I form my hand into a blade and use it to chop forward, in this technique I use my hand as the form of earth energy and the power goes outward slowly drawing energy from earth and exploding with power into a finely thine blade!"
"If I use the long sword then it would already cover the medium, and since its a material from earth…"
As Lou Ben was thinking about his attainments in the knowledge of techniques, a crystal caught his attention.
This crystal was on the hilt of the blade, it was also dark purple!
That means the techniques the undead knight were using were probably space techniques!
This made no sense because all Lou Ben knew was that space techniques were unique to the Xiao family because they safely guarded it ruthlessly.
So why would this be here?
Lou Ben squinted: "No, dark purple crystals have existed long before the Xiao family, it's just that the Xiao family took the peak of power and prevented the others from learning how to properly use this power!"
"That means there have been countless underground wars and battles to safeguard these techniques and have the Xiao family monopolize the dark purple crystals!"
Lou Ben understood just how far his father Xiao Weizhe was now willing to go in order to be in power.
He didn't know how far this influence went but he didn't think it was only around the village, his father must still be using these unknown forces to keep his reign of space techniques!
Lou Ben had many thoughts go through his mind, he no longer thought that this place was meant for him, but instead it was a place created in desire to take revenge against the Xiao family!
He looked at the distant knights and finally understood that the blazing fire on their skulls was a sense of desire, the desire for revenge against his bloodline.
"Then why did lord Xiao Weizhe bury the use of weapons? The technique is beautiful and well executed."
"When I saw Lord Xiao, he only used his hands to use his own powers…"
Lou Ben's eyes lit up at the realization: "Unless the problem is not the man himself but the situation!"
"Why would Xiao Weizhe need to take out a medium that was meant to cause destruction when he was inside the village?"
"He wouldn't need to!"
Lou Ben's eyes were darting back and forth as if he underwent uncovering a dark side of history, his hands rubbed the sharp blade and his eyes pierced the dark purple crystal lodged inside the eyes of the sun on the hilt.
The weapon in his hand felt light but felt as if he held onto the next stage of power!
He thought of the techniques that he has learned so far and how they strongly relate to weapons, he gathered his thoughts on the technique Gravity Knife and instead of drawing the heaven energy from the glyphs inside his mind, he pointed it towards the blade in his hand.
The long blade started to vibrate and Lou Ben knew that his conjectures were correct!
"Space Technique - Gravity Blade!"
Lou Ben raised his long blade and swung it towards a nearby metal tree.
*Swoosh!
The attack went through the base of the trunk and went all the way through!
He didn't know what attack the undead knight used to cause it to have an explosive impact, but now he stepped into the next stage of power!
"If I could store the attack or inscribe onto this crystal then I wouldn't need to concentrate on the technique. I would be able to focus on the fight more."
Lou Ben looked at the crystal and thought about how there are consumable crystals, he thought he would need to learn more about crystals in general. There had to be a kind of crystal that didn't break as soon as the technique was used.
Otherwise why bother putting a crystal into a weapon?
This single fight with the undead knight brought a lot to Lou Ben, he took a step forward in his power, and gathered evidence for his next step, even more so, he felt the yellow energy he gathered when he entered the peak of the atmospheric condensation realm strengthening!
Lou Ben looked outside of the forest at the army of the undead knights and gripped his long blade: "With this level up I think I can start taking small groups of them! As long as I keep focused then I should be able to handle them with confidence."
Lou Ben wanted to run down the path he was creating but it wasn't as simple as answering the desires in his heart to the sun spirit.
Instead it was a slow climb with many shadows that hindered his sight of where to grab onto next.
Lou Ben swiped his long blade and stored it inside his space sleeve.
He was only able to take care of this undead knight because he wandered from the pack. If he wants to make progress towards the tower then he's gonna have to plan carefully.