West Mountain Entrance, Misty Mountain.
Scattered corpses lay in a mess.
The mountain became more and more desolate as a burst of chilly wind blew. In the coldest time of winter, corpses were frozen to become hard objects and any blood that was above the ground was frozen by the chilly wind in just half a day. All of a sudden, a burst of gloomy and cold wind blew over.
That burst of strange wind was extremely cold. When it blew across the corpses all over the ground, the frozen corpses that were made slight cracking sounds like breaking sticks.
All of the corpses in the entrance of the West Mountain were cracked by that sudden frigid wind. As the wind blew, the corpses were being eroded. Finally they broke apart.
While the corpses were eroded by the frigid wind, the body of the Elder which was thrown away by the mysterious youth underwent an amazing change.
The Elder's body made cracking sounds as the frigid wind blew over it. But with the last sound, the skull of that body suddenly broke. A puff of black smoke came out of the skull. This black smoke became thicker and thicker and darker and darker until the point that it was about to be coagulated. In the entrance of the mountain, the wind was blowing mightily. The black smoke was nearly blown away into dust. It was carried off by wind for several feet and then seemed to exert a force around it which caused the wind to stop.
There were blasts of cold wind, blowing back and forth incessantly. Tough as the wind was, it couldn't resist the unchanging natural force. In this endless cold wind, the black smoke dissipated to a large extent. Finally it rode down the mountain on the cold wind.
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The crack of the morning sun slowly peaked over the towering ridge and shone down on that little village at the foot of Misty Mountain.
Like a baby's face, the weather in the mountain changed with uncertainty. Yesterday, dark sky covered everywhere and the wind blew all around. From time to time, there was even a snowflake falling down from the sky, but today's weather is as if the bright sun is about to rise.
Little Shiba woke up very early. He had been lying in the bed for many days due to the wound and felt uncomfortable because of not being a martial arts. What unpleasant days!
Today his fever finally dropped. He felt refreshed after a sound sleep and all constraints were relieved in one moment. Softly Little Shiba got up and went to a vacant space under the cliff in his courtyard to play Taiji Fist.
Different from the past, he played the simplified Taiji Fist twice, but neither was unhindered. There is an old saying that 'Heart goes with consciousness and consciousness goes with Qi'. Anyhow, he couldn't combine his consciousness with Qi. It was not because of too many distracting thoughts, but rather because he could clearly feel the Qi and blood flowing in his tendons and vessels when playing.
In other people's opinion, Little Shiba was heavily injured with a terrible fever and in a coma. As a matter of fact, he did not sleep at all for two days. His whole spiritual mind and soul was in a wired state which was caused by his eyes.
When Little Shiba was going to be killed by that black bear, his eyes underwent mysterious and even marvelous changes. He was not able to detect anything special when he was in danger. However, when he was in the coma, he felt like he was in a dreamland. He floated up to a hollow. This place was like a universal image he watched in the previous life which was filled with darkness and emptiness, nothing but one eye.
Later he realized that this eye was very likely to be his eye.
A huge eye was floating in the hollow. It was golden. In the bottom of the eye, there were several wisps of strange black lines which emitted golden light. The golden light was the only illumination in the hollow.
At that time Little Shiba felt like he had become a ball of mist floating in the hollow. He could take control of his 'body'. The body could move at his will to some degree but it could only move around for a bit.
He had tried to move to that huge eye once. But no matter how hard he tried, the huge eye kept hanging above his head and a constant distance remained. He doubted whether he managed to move at all in the mysterious hollow. The so-called movement was only an illusion in his consciousness.
Surely there were some kinds of abstruseness which he couldn't explain. Not knowing how much the time went by, he felt a shock suddenly. Then, the eye disappeared and so did the hollow. He woke up and returned to reality.
It seemed it had been over. While in the following days he realized some changes had taken place in his eyes.
When Little Shiba focused his consciousness on the eyes, a series of changes would soon appear. First of all, they would turn to be lightly golden, together with some indistinct black lines which were the same as the huge mysterious eye hanging above his head in the hollow.
With such eyes, he could see clearly not only things in front of him but also objects behind him. That was to say, when his eyes turned to be light golden, a 360-degree perspective would be formed. There would definitely be no blind spot in his view.
In addition to this, his vision and insight increased in strength. Now he could see far away objects that were previously vague. The scope of his vision became larger, and so did his sensitivity.
Above were purely changed in his eyes.
Except for those two parts, there was one more important thing. He had an Inner Vision now. As long as he turned his eyes to red, he could observe his inner condition clearly. From blood flowing, skeleton constitution, route of Internal Qi in the tendons and vessels to even his metabolism, nothing could escape from his amazing eyes.
Except for Inner Vision, what he paid more attention to was his multiple times' improvements in his ability to control his Internal Qi. Now he had fine control over his Internal Qi. In the past, he could only operate his Internal Qi according to a fixed working flow by feeling. To avoid from being possessed by the devil, he did not dare to go a step beyond his prescribed limit. With all under his monitor, he could stop his operating Internal Qi or slow the speed or do some reverse on an acceptable scale at any time. More importantly, this control had great benefits for him to practice Ignis Skill.
Though fire cultivation method was a little more profound than Unusual Strength Qigong, it was a kind of advanced rudimental method of Internal Strength. There were lots of delicate and intricate points. Especially the point of absorbing a typical attribute of fire from nature into his body and refining it into Internal Qi while expelling attributes of other properties which were absorbed by mistake. So the fire cultivation method had an essential difference from Unusual Strength Qigong which absorbed everything. The progress of refining and expelling nature attributes required a fine control of the Internal Qi. It was just that this ability made it so that Little Shiba could not practice Ignis Skill, even though he had practiced the method for so long. Now, that this challenge was solved.
Of course, this didn't mean that Little Shiba wasn't grateful for the free gifts. He also realized that it was demanding for him to keep such a state. Not only was his spirit consumed, his body also suffered great burden. The maximum his current body could handle would enable him to maintain this state for at most 15 minutes.
What did maximum mean?
It meant to be tired out and sluggish. He had fallen into a sound sleep as soon as he went to bed and slept for one day. However, he still hadn't completely recovered the next day. Subsequently, Little Shiba had never maintained that state for too long at one time after the first experience. He would maintain that state for at most 10 minutes. With this 10 minutes, he could get some knowledge about his inner body and prepare for practicing the fire cultivation method.
He dared not to practice for lacking enough control on the Internal Qi before. With his newfound adaption and observation, however, he was confident in practicing Ignis Skill safely even if he didn't maintain that special state. Under such circumstances, he couldn't wait to practice.
"Ooo~" Little Shiba exhaled deeply. After playing a set of non-standard Taiji Fist, he felt quite helpless.
"No wonder people always say that 'the one who knows nothing fears nothing'. I thought I had gotten some achievements in playing Taiji Fist previously. I see now how disappointing it was. I have a deeper knowledge of Internal Qi flowing, Qi, and blood operation now. I suppose I can strive for further improvement but I didn't expect to create an imbalance between Internal Qi and movements. This isn't because of Taiji Fist but because of me. I only figured out the operation of Internal Qi, Qi, and blood but haven't mastered it yet. There's still a long way to master it and combine it with Taiji Fist's consciousness. Well, codes of Taiji Fist I recited in the previous life are of significance actually. I used to pay no attention to them, but as I played just now, some reactions inside my body seem to confirm some of the codes. I must write them down before I forget them. Just as the saying goes that 'the palest ink is better than the best memory'. It would be a huge loss if I forget them!"
Little Shiba stood up straight, thinking about all the things that happened in these past days. He kept exploring functions of his eyes and took few other things into account.
"My eyes are kind of similar to the Sharingan. Is this a Naruto world that I've arrived at after time traveling?" "Nope. There are no Chinese characters in the Naruto world. And there are no ninjas in this world either. Maybe it's a coincidence. I wonder if this pair of eyes has the capability of copying other's martial arts?" Thinking of this, Little Shiba couldn't help licking his dry lips. He was immensely interested in this idea all of a sudden and eager to give it a try.
But soon after, he was depressed that there was no one for him to test on whether his eyes could copy martial arts or not in this remote village.
The strongest man in this village was his brother-in-law, Wang Tianlei, from whom Little Shiba had learned all his martial arts. Actually, Little Shiba was more proficient in some details than his brother-in-law. As for other people who were taught by Wang Tianlei, they couldn't match him at all.
"Ah...! "
Suddenly, Little Shiba thought of a man.
"Wu Qinglong is the best man among those who know archery. It's said that his father is also skilled in archery. I wonder If it's true that they've practiced ancestral archery. People say they won't let anyone observe their practice and the only chance to do that is when you're hunting together with them. It's really a pity that I'm too young to go hunting with him. Or else I'll have the chance to observe him shooting." Little Shiba thought in his heart.