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TOSDAG Chapter 11: It Seems that the Night is not Over Yet
🕑 Added 2024-11-14 20:04:09 +0000 UTCLeek P.O.V
"So…" I started once Lanruo released me. "Can I ask what you talked about?" I said, looking at both girls.
Xiao Ning'er seemed embarrassed, crossing her arms under her chest and looking away as red colored her pretty face.
In contrast, Lanruo smiled and nodded. "You can." She said, and although her tone seemed to contain a bit of mocking defiance as if daring me to dare to ask, I decided to take the risk.
"Well, what did you talk about?" I asked the pink-haired girl.
Lanruo raised an index finger to her lips and winked at me. "That's a girl's secret"
I blinked in surprise a few times. "But you said I could ask".
"Yes, but I didn't say I would answer, did I? Or do you want to embarrass poor Ning'er to death?" The cheeky girl wagged her finger, pointing towards the younger one, and when I followed the direction she was pointing I saw how Xiao Ning'er had completely turned around, not letting us see her face, although I could clearly see that the tips of her ears were red.
Now, was I careless? Yes, a little absent-minded? Probably, someone unable to read the environment? Sometimes.
But still, I wasn't oblivious enough to not realize that if I continued, poor Ning'er could suffer an arrhythmia or run away in embarrassment, so I decided to forget any attempt to find out what they had been talking about.
"Okay, I won't ask about it anymore, but I do want to know why you came to look for me today, did something happen?"
"Ah, with all this situation I almost forgot it." She said as she clapped her hands together in silent applause.
This seemed to dispel Ning'er's embarrassment a bit while also drawing her attention, because, after a few seconds, she turned her head to look at Lanruo.
"The truth is that my father received a message today, it seems that the meeting with the city lord will be in 2 days, he wanted you to know"
"I see, so it will finally happen, huh?" I said as I put a hand on my chin and thought, although Mr. Xiong had assured me that most likely nothing bad would happen, I was still a little nervous, after all, I would prefer a thousand times to stay in this city, at least for the moment, than to go outside and have to fight a horde of demonic beasts stronger than me at any random moment, I was a fight fanatic, not a suicidal idiot.
"Don't worry, my father will be with you all the time, the city lord is not someone unreasonable, I'm sure everything will turn out well." Lanruo assured me upon seeing my expression.
"I think so too, when I was younger, I often visited the city lord's mansion, he is a serious man, but he is not a bad person." Ning'er added.
"Eh? Really? Did you get acquainted with the city lord's family? I also visited his house a few times with my father when I was little, and I had no idea." Lanruo happened to look at Ning'er curiously.
"Eh, well, that was a few years ago"
"Come on, you have to talk to me about that, ah, I know, why don't you stay at my house tonight? So we can keep talking"
"Wait, didn't you finish talking a while ago?" I asked quite surprised.
"That was just a quick chat, there are several things we haven't talked about yet, what do you say? Do you want to come too?" She asked with a slightly suggestive smile and look.
I thought about this for a few seconds, but in the end, I shook my head a few times. "Not today, think I'd be in the way if I accompanied you two, we can meet tomorrow, and I can stay at your house the night before meeting with the city lord"
Lanruo seemed to be sincerely trying to become friends with Ning'er, so to make things easier for both of them, I decided to take a step back.
"And Ning'er, don't worry about what we wanted to try, we can do it tomorrow, even Lanruo could participate"
"Eh? What are you guys talking about?" The pink-haired girl seemed curious.
"It's an idea I had after helping Ning'er with her problem, if I'm right it could help her get stronger much faster than she's been doing so far, it wouldn't hurt if you tried it too, don't you think?"
"A way to advance our cultivation faster?" Lanruo said thoughtfully as she touched the corners of her lips. "It sounds incredibly suspicious and dishonest, I LIKE IT!" She finished saying with a smile and a happy tone.
"I assumed it would be like that." I said with a small smile.
"And what is it about?" Ning'er asked.
"Well, you'll have to wait until tomorrow for that, because I think you should be heading back now, if your previous conversation was just a 'short talk'." I said, emphasizing with my fingers. "So if you stay here any longer, then the night won't last long enough for you to have a proper conversation"
"Well, that may be true." Lanruo said before shrugging her shoulders. "Since you say it like that, then we'll leave for today, I'll come back to find you tomorrow, we can go eat and get you some new clothes for your meeting with the city lord"
"Clothes? Can't I just go wearing my armor? It's a little damaged, but I made sure to leave it very clean." I asked, wanting to escape the torture that shopping could be.
"It's a matter of respect, meeting the city lord in proper clothing will give a good first impression, even I have to dress up a little more than usual when I attend important meetings." The girl replied apologetically.
"Lanruo is right, the few times I had to go to these kinds of meetings, I also had to wear overly showy clothes, in your case, you just need something that is normal." Ning'er supported the pink-haired girl.
And with the request of both, I had no chance to refuse, so in the end, I agreed to go get new clothes to avoid offending the city lord in any way, I wasn't very fussy about clothes, so the only thing I asked Lanruo was that it was something relatively comfortable and that did not obstruct my movements.
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Third Person P.O.V
Once everything was agreed upon, Ning'er and Lanruo left the clearing, leaving Leek alone, who decided to train a little to calm his nerves for the upcoming meeting.
As he moved back and forth, going through footwork, attacks, and defenses, Leek seemed to be fighting an invisible enemy, memories of the fight with Mr. Xiong and Ning'er replayed in his mind.
Both fighting styles were oppositely different, while Mr. Xiong's was direct and brutal in his attacks, with a solid defense, Ning'er's seemed more refined and traditional, something that somehow reminded him of the Kung fu and karate he had seen in the movies of his old world.
Leek implemented both styles as best he could, copy someone's fighting style while fighting them was something he had found relatively easy, through blocking, deflecting, and exchanging blows, the saiyan could feel not only the power and speed, but also the intention, the movement of the opponent's body, their breathing and many other details, so the more he fought with that person, the better he could "mirror" that fighting style instinctively.
But doing it consciously was proving to be a bit more complicated, and combining more than one style with the things that suited him best, thus creating something completely new, was going even several steps further in difficulty, especially with such different styles.
'Well, nobody said it would be easy, if I really want to be strong, I have to create something of my own, I feel that the Huyan family and Ning'er styles, while they have good points, are not completely compatible with me, I need something specially made by and for me.' He thought as he continued to move.
Time continued to flow, the minutes passed quickly until, without Leek noticing, the Saiyan spent a little over an hour and a half practicing his martial arts.
"Uff." He sat quietly in the clearing, feeling the breeze hitting his sweat-dampened skin as he drank some tea that Lanruo left him in the basket before leaving.
'I feel like I'm missing something.' He thought, biting into one of the few sandwiches left. "Oh, this tastes like chicken." He said curiously, looking at the bitten sandwich. "Although I would put some ketchup, does something like that exist here?"
Leaving aside his questions about condiments and sauces, Leek came to the conclusion that he needed to observe and learn more fighting styles, because what he was trying to do now by creating his own style was like taking parts from some damaged cars to build a new one, to complete the puzzle he needed more parts from other cars, the engine would come out of one, the windows from another, the seats from a different one and so on.
With that in mind, he decided to move on to the next part of his training, meditation, and control of his own energy in order to use it more efficiently and in more creative ways in future techniques, but also to be able to properly help Lanruo and Ning'er, because the idea he said he had basically consisted of expelling his ki in the form of a concentrated sphere of energy, energy that would be absorbed by the demonic spiritualist at the same time that this person cultivated.
Of course, doing both at the same time could be incredibly difficult, or even impossible at first, but that was where Leek's ki control came in.
So far, thanks to the experience of helping Ning'er, he had found that the so-called spiritualists could absorb his energy, it was thanks to this that the orange-haired girl had advanced so much during her healing session, managing to advance to what she called the first bronze star.
So, taking that into account, Leek had the idea of controlling the energy of the ki spheres he would produce so that the energy would enter the person's body at the same time as the soul force did, in that way, the person could be strengthened thanks to Leek's energy while he would practice his ki control even more, a win-win situation.
Although this would only be possible if he was good enough to properly control the energy, because otherwise, instead of helping, the ki could get out of control and harm whoever Leek was trying to help.
It was a bit ironic that he had to be good at the exercise in order to do it and thus improve even further.
It was fortunate that Ning'er had absorbed his energy earlier, so perhaps her body could now accept it a bit more easily and less violently than before, after all, he didn't feel like flying away again.
With Lanruo he might have to be a bit careful, at least during the first time they did this experiment.
Putting aside all unnecessary thoughts, Leek sat cross-legged and focused on the energy within his body, feeling it and moving it back and forth, sometimes concentrating it on a specific point, and other times, just letting it flow as he directed it carefully and delicately.
Ki control training was a curious thing, one would think that controlling a metaphysical energy would be a process full of intricate or curious training at the very least, but the truth was that it was not, directing his own energy, at least within his own body, was like playing with a ball, although more intuitive, you had to learn to kick it with the right force so that it would advance at the speed and in the direction you wanted.
It was like juggling fist-sized balls, where the more energy you controlled would equal adding more balls and shaping that energy in more complex ways, would be similar to doing tricks while juggling, like putting a plate on top of your head and trying not to let it fall, or riding a unicycle.
It was a bit of a rough explanation, but it was the closest equivalent Leek could think of, his mind had to be focused and paying full attention to the exercise, otherwise the "balls" would fall, which would make him deserving of receiving something like an electric shock, but one that came from his internal energy for getting a little out of control, it wasn't really harmful, at least as far as he could tell, but it was just as painful as stubbing your pinky toe or stepping on a lego piece with bare feet, in short, it wasn't pleasant at all.
Thus, seconds turned into minutes, and those minutes piled up to accumulate more than an hour of practice.
Occasionally, energy could be seen coming out of Leek's body in the form of short, semi-transparent bursts of ki that gathered in some parts of the Saiyan's body, but other than that, his hair moving with the wind, and the rise and fall of his chest, there was no other movement.
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Third Person P.O.V
"Beeeehhh!!". A horned sheep screamed when an arrow hit it, and immediately after that the demonic beast fell to the ground unable to move.
"Alright guys, we're keeping a good pace." The orange-haired boy, Nie Li, said with a smile, lowering his crossbow and turning to look at his friends, stopping and blinking a few times when he noticed the tiredness on his friend's faces.
Everyone was smiling, but he would have to be blind to not notice the signs, he guessed that he was being a bit demanding, these were children, who, although they were preparing to be powerful spiritualists, were not yet.
With that in mind, an idea came to Nie Li's mind, so he clapped his hands once to get everyone's attention. "Hey guys, we're doing well, so I think we can take a short break, what do you say?"
"A break? Yes!" Lu Piao, always a scoundrel, stretched out his arms and dropped onto the grass the moment he heard the proposal with no intention of listening to the opinion of others, after all, he was happy to be able to stop being the bait for the horned sheep.
"Are you sure about that Nie Li? I think we can keep going for a while longer." Du Ze seemed a little doubtful, not completely refusing the idea but still wanting the group leader's opinion.
Nie Li shrugged with a smile, Du Ze's diligent attitude seemed commendable to him, but he had an idea he wanted to check out. "Well, we can't do anything with our bait now transformed into a sack of inert rice on the ground, right?" He said pointing at Lu Piao.
Du Ze looked at his lying companion, noticing how he seemed to have already fallen asleep, there was even a bubble coming out of his nose that grew and shrank every time he breathed.
"Ah well, I guess you're right." The boy nodded with the others laughing at Lu Piao before they moved closer to dismantle the horned sheep.
Once the task was completed, everyone moved, climbing up the thick branches of the trees so they could have a nap without being attacked by a horned sheep.
"Alright, you can sleep for a couple of hours, then we can hunt some more." The orange-haired boy said as he stretched a little.
"Nie Li, aren't you going to rest?" One of his companions asked.
"I'm not really sleepy, I'm going to go explore a bit, you guys can stay here and rest, don't worry, I'll be back before an hour passes." He assured to calm the doubtful gazes of his group members, who, due to the trust they had in their leader, let him do whatever he wanted, and once the last of them closed his eyes, Nie Li nodded and jumped away between the branches of the trees.
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Third Person P.O.V
Time passed, and as the night grew silent, Nie Li sharpened his senses to the max, there was something that had caught his attention these past few days.
Ever since he started this horned sheep hunt, he had felt something strange in this training camp, a presence that seemed to appear and disappear intermittently.
Every night, without fail, he could capture this feeling several times for a few seconds, so, following his instincts, he decided to investigate a little to satisfy his curiosity.
And it was right at that moment that his senses picked up something once again.
If sensing a spiritualist's soul force was like sensing the heat of a campfire, this was like trying to sense the heat given off by a hot piece of metal.
The heat was much more concentrated in the thing that produced it, making it much more difficult to sense to the point where Nie Li was sure that unless one was particularly good at detecting presences, whoever wanted to sense it would have to be so close to whatever was emitting this energy in order to sense it that the exercise of sense would be meaningless, mainly because the source would already be in sight.
But he wasn’t just anyone, even to existences like top-level cultivators and spiritualists, he was an anomaly.
Having reached unimaginable heights in his past life, and accumulating all sorts of knowledge, Nie Li was certain that if anyone could understand or figure out what this strange energy was, it would be him, after all, it couldn’t be crazier than his time travel, right?
And as the time traveler felt the sensation fade away once again, in front of him, he managed to see the beginnings of a clearing, so he slowed down, stopping behind some bushes and poking his head out.
There, Nie Li saw a young man with spiky black hair, sitting in the lotus position with his eyes closed while short bursts of semi-transparent energy shot out from his body around him.
X-X-X-X-X
Well, another chapter, the past two weeks I've been feeling strange, I wouldn't say depressed, but a bit "slow, tired and bored", is strange, mainly because nothing really important has happened.
But I didn't feel like writing, I apologize for that, but now I'm, while not 100%, considerably better, I'm even going out for a run for about 45 minutes every afternoon, so I guess you could say I'm active once again.
Anyway, this chapter sets things up for our MC's future interactions, whether it be with Nie Li, the city lord, and so on, how will those encounters turn out? I hope we find out sooner rather than later, see you in the next chapter.
