Chapter 337: Upper-level Qi Pulse Flow (8/8)

Li Xuelian: There are a few civil engineering clients. Should we take them? You might run into acquaintances.

Yu Xinghan: Take them.

Li Xuelian: You wouldn’t want your classmates to know you’re doing underground massages, would you?

Yu Xinghan: Understood. I’ll hide my identity.

Looking at the message from Li Xuelian, Yu Xinghan thought to himself that the civil engineering sector held a huge market for massages, and there was no way he would give it up easily.

Yu Xinghan recalled practicing shape-shifting techniques with Zhang Yu under the guidance of Grandmaster Xinghuo on the first level. He now sighed, “Master truly had foresight, knowing that up here, one would eventually have to do some shady things.”

Yu Xinghan speculated, “Maybe he also started his career by giving massages.”

As he looked at the address of the next client sent by Li Xuelian, Yu Xinghan’s body shifted, transforming him into the appearance of a stranger.

“Ah, it’s a pity Senior Sister doesn’t like massages.”

When he was learning at the massage parlor, Yu Xinghan had always wished Senior Sister would give him massages.

Now that he had become an underground masseur, he only wanted to massage Senior Sister to repay her.

Yu Xinghan thought this might be a sign of a man’s maturity.

He arrived at the destination, started the session, finished the job…

Finally, Yu Xinghan smiled at the client and said, “Brother, if you’re satisfied, call me again next time.”

After finishing his part-time job, Yu Xinghan rushed non-stop to the underground tomb to continue his overtime work at the construction site.

This time, he and Zhang Yu were assigned to the same area. From a distance, he saw a human-shaped aura moving back and forth, working.

“Zhang Yu’s aura manipulation is becoming more and more refined.”

Just as Yu Xinghan was marveling, the human-shaped aura suddenly charged towards him.

Zhang Yu said, “It’s rare for us to meet. Let’s spar for a bit, brother.”

Yu Xinghan chuckled and said, “You want to fight me with just one strand of aura? Isn’t that a bit overconfident?”

Yu Xinghan felt he had made immense progress during this period. His part-time massage job had increased his income, the Three-Eyed Divine Ability had significantly boosted his training efficiency, and the work at the tomb allowed him to cultivate within the spirit veins for extended periods.

Seeing Zhang Yu’s human-shaped aura attacking, he let out a low roar, brought fierce aura to his right palm, and struck out.

With a loud boom, the human-shaped aura shattered.

Just as Yu Xinghan thought his palm strike had shattered the human-shaped aura, a skeleton radiating chilling coldness emerged from the broken aura, also striking towards his chest with a palm.

“Hmm?”

Yu Xinghan was slightly startled by this sight.

In his impression, Zhang Yu’s human-shaped aura, although capable of redirecting force, was not sturdy and could often be easily shattered, requiring constant expenditure of magic power to generate new human-shaped auras.

However, the human-shaped skeleton attacking him now displayed a different level of sturdiness.

Amidst crackling explosions, Yu Xinghan clashed with the skeleton multiple times, finding it not only incredibly hard but also imbued with a bone-chilling coldness.

After several moves, rolling aura was again reinforced by Zhang Yu onto the skeleton, filling it back into the original appearance of a human-shaped aura.

After this round of sparring, Yu Xinghan roughly understood what was happening.

“That guy Zhang Yu froze his aura, filling it in as a ‘skeleton’ to increase the overall sturdiness of the human-shaped aura.”

“The exterior of the ‘skeleton’ is then filled with ordinary aura, forming a layer of ‘flesh and skin’.”

“With ordinary attacks, even if the outer layer of ‘flesh and skin’ is shattered, the underlying ‘skeleton’ structure remains unbroken.”

“Then, by simply refilling the ‘flesh and skin’ with aura, it can be restored.”

“His tactics are becoming more and more mature…”

Yu Xinghan immediately understood that to destroy Zhang Yu’s human-shaped aura, he would have to smash both the ‘skin’ and the ‘bones’ in one go.

“Heh, let me show you the martial art I recently advanced to Level 15.”

He suddenly activated his cultivation, unleashing the Dragon-Elephant Vajra Palm, which was in the same lineage as the Dragon-Elephant Mountain-Shattering Palm.

Unlike the Dragon-Elephant Mountain-Shattering Palm, which could be powered solely by physical strength, the Dragon-Elephant Vajra Palm relied on explosive aura to augment the burst of physical power.

When striking, the aura did not leave the body but remained contained within, enhancing physical strength and power. It was a pure close-combat martial art and one of the cultivation techniques Grandmaster Xinghuo planned for Yu Xinghan to practice.

Yu Xinghan let out a low roar, and streams of aura filled every muscle fiber of his right arm, dyeing his entire arm with a golden hue.

The next moment, as he struck out with his palm, strong winds howled, and the air before him seemed to be sucked dry by the blow.

The human-shaped aura also unleashed a palm strike, its palm containing the power of Yu Xinghan’s previous strike.

With a resounding boom, their palms slammed together.

Under Yu Xinghan’s palm strike, the ‘flesh and skin’ of the human-shaped aura shattered inch by inch from the point of impact, erupting and scattering throughout its body.

The ‘skeleton’ beneath the ‘flesh and skin’ also creaked, with countless cracks appearing, as if it would shatter at any moment.

Just as Yu Xinghan was about to deliver another palm strike to shatter the human-shaped aura in one go, the fractured skeleton raised its right arm, about to unleash a Dragon-Elephant Vajra Palm strike of its own.

Sensing the explosive aura contained within the opponent’s palm, Yu Xinghan quickly retreated, exclaiming, “Stop, stop, stop!”

“Continuing this fight would be too damaging. Let’s stop, let’s stop.”

Yu Xinghan certainly didn’t want to receive a palm strike imbued with his own Dragon-Elephant Vajra Palm power; any slight injury would be too much of a loss for him.

He sighed, “Your Nine Heavens Cloud-Void Force is already quite troublesome.”

“Now, combined with this human-shaped aura tactic, you can fight to the death with every move, redirecting power, while your main body remains safe and hidden.”

“It’s a pity you’re not a security guard.”

At the same time, Yu Xinghan could imagine that if anyone were to fight Zhang Yu, thinking they could defeat him by shattering or bypassing the human-shaped aura…

“They would find this guy outrageously tough. They might as well just directly clash with the aura.”

Yu Xinghan secretly thought, “The only drawback might be Zhang Yu’s fighting style… maintaining the human-shaped aura continuously consumes a lot of magic power.”

He secretly summarized, “Fighting his main body is less effective than fighting the human-shaped aura. And when fighting the human-shaped aura, you can’t use powerful moves, or you’ll easily get your force redirected and injure yourself instead.”

“In other words, the most suitable way to fight this guy… is to slowly wear down his human-shaped aura. Any aggressive, wild attacks will only increase your medical bills and dharma-skeleton repair costs.”

“But it’s time-consuming… He loses aura magic power, while I’m risking my physical body. So I’d still have to use my aura to fight him, which would also result in significant aura depletion for me.”

“Furthermore…” Yu Xinghan thought of another point: “This guy also made some dirty deal with Le Mulan; now, both of them can produce a chilling aura when they attack.”

“If I want to wear him down, fighting him for too long would make me worry about the accumulation of cold energy within my body…”

“Disgusting.”

The more Yu Xinghan thought about it, the more his head hurt, and the tighter his brows furrowed. He felt that fighting Zhang Yu was a losing battle no matter how he approached it, seeing only deficits and various expenses. Just thinking about it made him feel uncomfortable, completely losing any desire to fight the other party.

“Thankfully, he’s my good brother, someone I’ve lent money to and spent money on.”

“From now on, if I want to annoy someone, I should just make them fight Zhang Yu.”

Zhang Yu was very satisfied with today’s test. He thought, “Excellent, excellent. My human-shaped aura, after being frozen, can now withstand Yu Xinghan’s full-strength palm strike.”

From the initial aura arm to the human-shaped aura, and now to this frozen aura forming a skeleton within the human-shaped aura, his work efficiency has continuously increased. These are all results of Zhang Yu’s continuous experiments in recent days.

Because it was formed from the Formless Cloud Aura, he called the simple human-shaped aura a “Formless Warrior.”

And the human-shaped aura that created a skeleton with the aid of the Deep Cold Dharma Vein was called a “Deep Cold Warrior” by Zhang Yu.

Among them, the Formless Warrior had faster movement speed, but lower aura conduction efficiency, poor power endurance, and was relatively easy to shatter and dissipate, though it could be generated instantly.

The Deep Cold Warrior, on the other hand, had higher aura conduction efficiency and stronger power endurance, but slower movement speed and greater magic power consumption, and its generation was slow, taking at least 5 seconds to create.

Zhang Yu secretly calculated, “With my current magic power, if fully released, I can probably create 6 Formless Warriors or 2 Deep Cold Warriors.”

“But those would merely be for show. To operate at full capacity, I can only maintain at most 1 Deep Cold Warrior or 3 Formless Warriors.”

“However, once the effect of the Qi Pulse Flow improves, this number should increase.”

While contemplating, Zhang Yu looked at Yu Xinghan and smiled slightly, saying, “If you’re afraid of getting hurt, let’s change our training method.”

“I’ll help you stimulate your spirit root. Your spirit root hasn’t reached 100% integration yet, has it?”

Zhang Yu then expelled some aura, forming a Formless Warrior, and once again engaged Yu Xinghan in combat.

However, this time, just like their previous sparring sessions, he continuously stimulated Yu Xinghan’s body and spirit root to enhance his cultivation effects.

In the following days, taking advantage of working in the same area as Yu Xinghan, Zhang Yu seized the opportunity to occasionally help him improve his spirit root integration.

One day, Yu Xinghan let out a fierce roar, and the third eye in his mind vibrated, causing muscles all over his body to twitch continuously.

“My spirit root integration has reached 100%!”

Yu Xinghan felt his body, sensing an unprecedented clarity in his control over his entire flesh and blood. Both his physical and magic power mobilization were over ten percent faster than before.

Zhang Yu nodded in satisfaction, thinking, “To advance the Three-Eyed Divine Ability to Level 2, besides 100% spirit root integration, the remaining requirement is over 500 magic power.”

“Yu Xinghan will definitely achieve that before the end of this semester.”

Zhang Yu’s only regret was that accumulating magic power primarily depended on Yu Xinghan himself; at most, Zhang Yu could feed him a little blood.

As for giving money to Yu Xinghan? Giving money was out of the question; he didn’t even have enough for himself, so how could he give it to Yu Xinghan?

As time gradually approached the end of June.

The tomb project officially concluded, and Zhang Yu’s Qi Pulse Flow finally reached the 8th level.

Upper-level Qi Pulse Flow (8/8): The more breathing techniques mastered, the lower the additional loss of magic power and its derivatives during operation.