Volume 3 – The Place Where My Heart Feels At Peace, Chapter 11: Returning to Old Haunts

“Yes, there is a mission that suits you very well. Yingnan has already gone out to negotiate with the other party. In my opinion it will most likely work out, so all you need to do is to wait for the news.”

“What kind of mission?”

“You’ll know when the time comes.”

Qianye frowned. He disliked Old 2’s secretive attitude. He said, “But why should I accept this mission?”

“Because you’re suited for it. Plus, why leave money on the table? It’s a huge sum of money; the kind of reward that not even top grade hunter missions will get.” Old 2 waved the list in his hand and continued, “Furthermore, this is good work that gains you many things in one move. The things on this list are very suitable for your current condition. You will be able to obtain huge improvements in a short time, whereas I will be able to prove the Home of Hunters’ strength by consuming this shipment of goods. I will then be qualified to order more from this channel in the future. Those meds especially can attract top rank hunters six stars and above for the Home of Hunters. Also… this mission, is good for Yingnan.”

Qianye frowned. It was only until a moment later that he finally nodded and said, “Alright, I will agree to take up this mission. But how long is this mission going to take?”

“Half a year maybe. Could be even longer than that.”

Qianye nodded. Now things sounded a little more reasonable. If someone said that a mission that could earn someone several thousand gold coins at once only had a time requirement of one month, then it was either a racket or a trap. There was no way a mere two star hunter like him could receive such a mission anyway.

After sending Old 2 away, Qianye got ready to cultivate seriously in the house for several days. His body felt a little strange and was unusually weak for some reason.

During the same night, Old 2 sent his men to bring a total of five meds to Qianye. The material of the medicinal box that encapsulated the medicine was special, and the interior of the box was inscribed with an origin array to ensure that the medicine’s power would not be lost. Once the medicinal box had been opened, all syringes must be used up within a week or they would lose their effects.

Qianye had purchased some food stocks, and after re-inspecting the outer courtyard and indoors of Yu Yingnan’s house, laying down the traps and preparing everything, he then opened the medicinal box and took out a syringe. He injected it into his upper arm and began cultivating the Combatant Formula.

The medicine quickly worked, and Qianye could visibly feel that his reaction toward origin power had become much more acute. It had also became easier to absorb origin power from the three nodes. The medicine itself would discharge origin power within the arteries and veins, and not only could this power cause the origin tides to become much more livelier and turbulent, it could even be absorbed directly into the wave itself.

Qianye’s origin power was already much more robust than another Fighter of the same rank. After opening up the most difficult aura sea node, it would not longer be as difficult to activate other nodes. However, he still needed almost twice as much origin power to break through the barrier successfully.

Under the medicine’s effects, the cycles of origin tides was more turbulent, more powerful, and easier to form than before. In the blink of an eye, he had already reached the twentieth cycle. When Qianye counted down to the last number, he suddenly noticed that it was unusually easy and quick to reach twenty cycles tonight.

He paid brief attention to the internal condition of his body, and it was only then he realized that there were only two normal blood energies that were intercepting the origin power non-stop. Originally, there were a total of seven blood energies that intercepted the power, whereas the two special gold and purple blood energies weren’t moving at all. Qianye suddenly had the absurd notion that the two blood energies had a mind of their own, and that they had decided to leave these two normal blood energies behind as seeds because there were too few normal blood energies at the moment.

Another moment passed, and his heart shuddered and released yet a newborn normal blood Qi. By now the origin tide was about to hit thirty cycles.

Qianye’s constitution was now incomparable to before, and the toughness of his innards and his body were growing in spades. The shockwave and pain caused by thirty cycles of origin tide was now almost the same as it was during the twentieth cycle. Qianye gritted his teeth and smoothly went past the great mark of soldier king. He no longer injured his innards like the first time.

Under the double effects of the medicine and his greatly improved constitution, Qianye attacked all the way up to the thirty third cycle of origin tide during this cultivation process before he finally could hold on no longer and withdrew the art, resting.

Now, Qianye had attested with his own body why the heroes in the empire were graded by the number of origin tide cycles they could endure. At the thirtieth cycle, the cultivation efficiency of a soldier king was twice as much as a twentieth cycle greenhorn of an elite corps. After passing through the thirtieth cycle, every additional cycle one could endure would increase the efficiency of one’s cultivation by about ten percent.

The average art emphasised on steady progress and well preparation. The further one cultivated, the more they were affected by their innate gift. Those with slightly weaker potential would find themselves running into bottlenecks everywhere and be unable to take even a single step forwards. On the other hand, the Combatant Formula was the direct opposite. From the very beginning the Combatant Formula was a fierce martial art formula that forged ahead vigorously, and its increase in efficiency did not slow even after the thirtieth cycle. There were almost no bottlenecks at all for anyone beneath champion rank.

If the Combatant Formula could be considered a first-class art formula in terms of its speed of completion pre-twentieth cycle, then post-thirty fifth cycle the speed of its ascension could probably be matched by only very, very few secret arts in the entire empire. It was just that most people could not endure over twenty cycles at all before they were killed by the rebound shockwave of the origin tides.

Right now, Qianye’s blood Qi was still at an unusually weakened state. When a total of seven blood energies had been regenerated, they would protect his innards on their own accord. When that happened, he might be able to attempt the thirty fifth cycle of origin tide. In that case, his cultivation speed would not be much weaker than a Fighter King even if the origin power he cultivated were to be consumed by the blood energies.

After he had ended this round of cultivation, Qianye was given a pleasant surprise in the form of the vaguely emerged barrier at the origin node in his left hand. Obviously, this meant that his origin power savings was about to reach a critical mass. What would follow after this was the process of continuous accumulation and barrier battering. It would not be long before he ignites his fourth node.

And so, Qianye spent the next few days cooped up in the house. As long as his body could take it, he would constantly put himself in a state of cultivation. Every syringe’s effects lasted a whole day, so he absolutely must not waste them.

Several thousand kilometers away from Darkblood City, Yu Yingnan was walking down a military use air vessel. The airship base had strong militaristic style, and civilian use freight ships were all cooped up at a corner at the northeast corner. A majority of the region was covered in rising and landing airships, running cars, and all kinds of corp insignias that dazzled the eyes.

Yu Yingnan stood at the same spot for several minutes. She wasn’t unfamiliar with the myriad of military insignias, and she could easily name without thought more than half of the corps they were attached to accurately. However, she quickly moved her gaze away and walked towards a military depot near the base’s entrance.

She passed a metallic nameplate to a sentinel and said, “I’d like to see Miss Qiqi.”

After the sentinel had inspected the origin engravings on the nameplate, his expression immediately turned respectful as he saluted Yu Yingnan, saying, “Please wait for a moment. I need to report this to the commanding officer.”

Yu Yingnan nodded and said, “Never mind, I can wait.”

The sentinel immediately ran into the military depot like the wind. A moment later, a light off-road vehicle was driven out of the military depot. There was a captain in the driving seat, and he beamed at Yu Yingnan from ear to ear and said, “Please follow me. Miss Qiqi is already waiting for you.”

Yu Yingnan jumped into the off-road vehicle’s back seat and looked outside the window wordlessly. The captain plugged in a flag at the head of the car, then started the engine and sped away. The wind blew open the flag to reveal the striking symbol of a standard gold-colored soaring serpent.

This was the military insignia of the Empire’s main corps. The car they were riding on plugged in with this flag would possess grade two military privileges, and on the Evernight Continent grade two privileges meant that they could ignore traffic rules in most cities.

As expected, the captain drove the off-road vehicle so fast that it felt like it would take off the ground. Although it had already entered the city center, he still drove like he was charging on the battlefield. Wherever the off-road vehicle went there was chaos and passersby barely dodging out of the way. Because of this, there were even several car accidents caused by cars yielding the way.

The expressions of the people looking at the off-road vehicle were one of anger, but not daring to take any actual action against it. Even though some had suffered light injuries, they could only treat it as bad luck. On the Evernight Continent, the firearm and bloody bayonet military insignia of the expeditionary forces alone allowed the soldiers to run amuck, much less the main corps of the Empire.

Yu Yingnan looked outside the window. It was the same familiar scenes as ever, and most of the shops even looked exactly the same as they were before; when she had just stepped on the Evernight Continent and arrived at this city for the first time a few years ago.

This Xichang City was less than three hundred kilometers away from Weiyang, the empire’s biggest city on the Evernight Continent. It would take only a few hours to reach by airship, and a day at best by long-distance bus.

Weiyang City had a transcontinental airship base that led to the Empire’s native land, the Qin Continent, whereas in Xichang City, there was another small-sized airship station other than the military base Yu Yingnan just arrived at that provided transcontinental airship service as well. Weiyang was controlled by the Empire, and Xichang and a few other similar cities were controlled by upper level aristocratic families. The biggest power in this place wasn’t the military, but the big aristocratic families.

In fact, Qianye had also landed on the small-sized airship station at Xichang City the first time he arrived at the Evernight Continent. As long as there were gains to be made, these aristocratic families were capable of overlooking many things. The airship Qianye came on was obviously used for illegal immigration, but as long as the port tax was paid, not even their passengers would be interrogated.

There were only too many such things happening within the aristocratic families’ power of influence. The area directly controlled by the Empire was not as bad, as there were many things that required at least some semblance of credibility. But in these aristocratic families’ domains, even this bit of show was unnecessary.

The off-road vehicle barged along the entire way. It was obvious that he had even veered slightly off course. The captain seemed to enjoy this unbridled feeling by a lot, so he was purposely trying to drag out the process just a bit longer. In the end though, the off-road vehicle ultimately stopped in front of a vast side courtyard at the suburbs.

The building complex before her eyes had many tall buildings, and were sprawled with spiraling corridors and kiosks. It was obvious that this was the private courtyard of a certain aristocratic family, but surprisingly the two rows of soldiers standing guard in and outside the entrance were all imperial soldiers. In fact, looking at the color of their uniform and their insignia, they were not members of the expeditionary forces, but the Empire’s main corps.

The captain jumped down the driving seat, walked to the back row to open the door solicitously for Yu Yingnan, and sent her up the entrance’s stairs. A smart-looking middle ranking officer welcomed her with a smile and said, “Miss Qiqi has been waiting for a long time.”

This side courtyard was employed the most common courtyard layout on the upper continents. The door building, the palace, the flower walls and the moon gates were all arranged systematically to the central axis. However, perhaps it was because the Evernight Continent lacked sunlight, but there were almost no trees among the decorative plants of this courtyard. Many of them were shrubberies. This actually constructed a unique, masculine style of beauty instead.

Yu Yingnan followed the middle ranking officer, and before long they had left the main building of the central axis and turned into a series of corridors and kiosks. Knowing that her destination was right in front of her, she couldn’t help the slight tenseness in her heart. Immediately after, the scenery before her grew more and more winding and serene, exquisite and elegant.

Suddenly, she saw that there were more than ten imperial soldiers standing straight at the two sides of the corridor ahead of her. They shared almost the same height and they all looked handsome and tall. Although their individual strength wasn’t anything impressive, their looks did stand out as first grade. This was the classic Qiqi style of things. Yu Yingnan wasn’t sure if she should be angry or humored by this, but her tension faded away to faint sadness instead.

The middle ranking officer leading the way suddenly stopped. Before them, there was a moon gate covered full in wisteria. Looking at the furthest distance, behind the openwork of spirit screens was a lotus pond no much smaller than an actual lake. Above the water, long bridges could be vaguely seen leading towards two waterside pavilions connected by short corridors.

The middle ranking officer with a gentle smile stopped here and refused to take another step further. He simply said that Miss Qiqi was waiting inside.

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