Chapter 396: Not Playing by Martial Ethics

"Golden Finger?" Wu Di's breathing quickened. The name alone suggested something extraordinary. He planned to capture Zu An and seize this combat technique manual.

Cultivation methods were hard to come by in this world, and combat techniques were just as rare. He had served the Wu family tirelessly for so long. Besides receiving some elemental stones and medicinal supplies, he had only acquired a few mediocre combat technique manuals, which were completely useless to a sixth-rank cultivator like him. Consequently, for years he had been limited to using the Blazing Blade, a technique he had acquired through an early fortuitous encounter.

Now that he was older and his cultivation realm had stagnated, the only way to enhance his combat power was to practice more combat techniques. He had been fretting about not finding any, and then Zu An unexpectedly appeared at his doorstep. Heaven was truly kind to him. It knew his needs, not only delivering his enemy directly to him but also including high-tier combat techniques and even two Grandmasters' storage bags. He felt that all the luck he had accumulated over the past century or so didn't compare to what he had today.

His heart burning, he attacked Zu An again, his blade swinging impenetrably, leaving a series of blade energy afterimages. He was very satisfied with his performance today, believing he had unleashed about 120% of his strength. He felt confident that, at his current level, almost no one in Brightmoon City could match him, with the exception of the City Lord, the Headmaster, and a few patriarchs of prominent families.

Zu An dared not be careless. He quickly employed the Sunflower Phantasm movement technique, dodging while looking for an opportunity to counterattack. The two exchanged blows for nearly a hundred moves. During this process, Zu An not only adapted to his current speed and strength but also thoroughly mastered the various finger techniques of Sunflower Touch.

Wu Di, on the other side, grew increasingly alarmed as the fight progressed. Initially, he had a clear advantage, but Zu An stubbornly persisted, like an unkillable cockroach. As the fight continued, Zu An's finger techniques visibly improved in proficiency, gradually turning the tide. Wu Di, in contrast, found himself increasingly struggling. The more he fought, the more he was unnerved, finally realizing that Zu An was using him to practice his moves.

Wu Di's Rage value: 513!

He knew he couldn't continue like this, or he might genuinely suffer an unexpected defeat. So, he changed his strategy, opting to overpower skill with raw strength. He plunged his long blade directly into the ground, and a surge of scorching flames erupted from him as the center, spreading rapidly outwards. The flames resembled fiery serpents, consuming everything in their path.

"You rely on your movement technique to dodge, don't you? Let's see how you evade this indiscriminate attack!" Wu Di sneered.

Zu An's expression changed. Seeing no escape, he quickly summoned Taia and activated Snow Blossom Divine Sword. Although it lacked Chu Chuyan's power to freeze everything around her, snowflakes began to fall, and the intense cold was sufficient to counter the encroaching flames.

"Snow Blossom Divine Sword!" Wu Di's pupils constricted slightly. He remembered this technique vividly, as he had once been defeated by Chu Chuyan's Snow Blossom Divine Sword. "Hmph, I don't believe you possess Chu Chuyan's level of cultivation! Besides, even if Chu Chuyan were here, I wouldn't lose to her again."

Wu Di's heart surged with indignation. The flames on his long blade intensified, and he roared: "Sweeping the Army!" He then raised his blade overhead, forming a several-dozen-meter-long flaming greatsword, which he brought down fiercely upon Zu An.

Zu An swiftly activated Sunflower Phantasm (Modified), instantly splitting into two figures that dodged to either side. A cold sneer flashed across Wu Di's lips. His move wasn't that easy to evade. He channeled his elemental energy, and the descending flaming greatsword instantly split into over a dozen blades, all slashing downwards simultaneously. If the initial strike was a linear attack, then these dozen or so simultaneous slashes created a fan-shaped assault. No matter how profound Zu An's movement technique, he wouldn't be able to escape.

With a deafening roar! A large section of the ground before them had turned to scorched earth. The green grass was gone, revealing the bare yellow soil beneath, scattered with various broken rocks. The air was filled with a burnt smell.

"Reduced to ashes?" Wu Di sneered, "He got off easy." He secretly felt a pang of regret that he wouldn't get the "Golden Finger" manual. However, considering the astonishing combat power Zu An had displayed, Wu Di hadn't dared to hold back in the slightest.

"You're not playing fair, are you? You yell 'Sweeping the Army,' but what you actually use is 'Cleaving Mount Hua'?" Just then, an exasperated voice suddenly came from behind him.

Wu Di was greatly alarmed. He quickly spun around to strike, but his blade was only halfway up when a finger jabbed him in the back. Immediately, his entire body went limp, and his vision turned to darkness. His last thought was: "How did this guy get behind me?"

Zu An was panting heavily at this moment. A sixth-rank cultivator was indeed formidable. If not for Queen Sister's intensive training, which allowed him to conjure a third illusory figure, he might truly have been killed by that last move. Thus, he didn't dare hold back, seizing the opportunity to strike Wu Di's vital point directly with "Sunflower Touch." He hadn't expected Wu Di to be so fragile, dying instantly from the blow. If he had known, he would have used less force; he could have slowly accumulated more rage points that way. However, considering that Wu Di had served his purpose for practice and was no longer valuable, Zu An quickly felt much better.

As Zu An regulated his somewhat disordered breathing, he recalled the details of the recent battle. He had fought powerful opponents before, but those encounters largely relied on unexpected advantages provided by the keyboard system's various cheats. This was the first time he had genuinely defeated an opponent through his cultivation and martial skills alone.

After a long while, having recovered, Zu An approached Wu Di and retrieved Elder Mi's and Wei Dan's storage bags. Suddenly, his hand brushed against something hard in Wu Di's embrace. He pulled it out to see it was a bundle containing several bottles and jars. Wu Di did not possess a spatial storage bag. Spatial artifacts were quite rare in this world; even as a sixth-rank cultivator, Wu Di wasn't qualified to own one.

He opened the bundle and found that the hard objects were indeed medicinal bottles, clearly containing common-grade healing potions. Having seen Divine Physician Ji's spiritual medicines, these were completely unremarkable to him.

Zu An continued to search his body, whistling and muttering to himself, "Brother, you don't want your corpse to be exposed in the wilderness, do you? Just hand over all your silver notes. If you have a few hundred, I can even let you be neighbors with the two Grandmasters. What a great opportunity! Underground, you can ask those two big shots for advice on cultivation."

"Huh, none? Even one would be fine! One silver note can save you from loss or being cheated! My goodness, not a single one? You pauper!"

"Huh, what's this?" Zu An's face showed his indignation, but he eventually found two tightly wrapped books. One of the booklets had three large characters: "Blazing Blade."

My goodness, what's your connection to Jiumozhi?

It had to be said, while Wu Di wasn't much of a person, his martial technique was quite impressive. If Zu An could cultivate it to the point of wielding the Blazing Blade bare-handed, that would be even cooler. In this line of work, the power of a martial technique wasn't as important as how cool it looked!

He eagerly flipped it open, only for his heart to sink halfway. To cultivate this combat technique, one had to be an awakened fire element ability user. Zu An did not possess fire abilities, so he regretfully gave up on it. Suddenly, he noticed the manual mentioned that it was a growth-type cultivation method. The power of its moves was directly correlated with the user's fire ability: the stronger and rarer one's fire ability, the greater the power of the same move.

Zu An thought, no wonder Wu Di, that unlucky fellow, always lost. His fire was just the most common type. If Pei Mianman, with her special black flames, were to use this technique, its power would undoubtedly be many times greater. "Alright, I'll keep it. Even if I can't use it myself in the future, I can give it to Big Manman." Zu An put the Blazing Blade manual into the Glazed Orb.

Next, he looked at the second book, which had four archaic characters on it: "Elemental Gathering Ancient Scroll."

"Huh?" Zu An opened it and found that the book was about how to refine pills. Unfortunately, it was an incomplete scroll, with a large portion of its content missing from the end. However, the initial sections covered the basics of alchemy and how to refine a pill called the Elemental Gathering Pill, which could enhance a cultivator's elemental energy and accelerate their cultivation.

He recalled Mi Li having just told him that to speed up his cultivation, he needed to find rare treasures and various pills to consume. He hadn't expected to find something so quickly! Relying solely on rage points to obtain elemental fruits was indeed too slow. If this Elemental Gathering Pill could boost his cultivation, then with both methods combined, wouldn't he be soaring?

However, as he continued to read, Zu An's heart grew colder. To master this ancient scroll, the entry requirement was still being a fire element awakened user. Moreover, the rarer the flame, the better the quality of the Elemental Gathering Pills produced, and the more beneficial they would be to the cultivator. While he had previously felt indifferent about whether to cultivate the Blazing Blade, now with the addition of the Elemental Gathering Ancient Scroll, he realized he absolutely had to find a way to awaken fire-elemental abilities.

The sheer number of pills he needed for cultivation and advancement was immense; he couldn't rely on others, only himself. But fire-elemental abilities weren't something one could awaken simply by wishing for it. After all, he had reached the fifth rank, yet he hadn't awakened a single elemental ability.