Free Web NovelBook 4, Chapter 28: Improvement
Talu’s movements were exaggerated, her goal was obvious, and she wasn’t fast. Chen Chuan could dodge it easily. If this were a proper duel, this could be considered a probing strike.
But Chen Chuan didn’t dodge the attack. The refined force flowed from Talu to her staff smoothly and completely. It was much better than what she had displayed during their first spar.
He took a step forward and used the back of his saber to block the attack.
Clang!
He blocked the staff.
“Hah!”
With a shout, Talu drew the staff back and thrust it forward. Chen Chuan repositioned his saber and pushed it aside again.
Then, they heard a whistle that caused their scalps to tingle. Talu started attacking from all directions.
While Chen Chuan blocked the attacks, he could sense that while Talu hadn’t gotten much stronger, her refined force had obviously changed. She was no longer using just a two-tier refined force. Instead, it kept coming like an eternally flowing stream.
Chen Chuan had witnessed Single Flow School’s techniques before, so he could tell that this was the school’s two-tier force, but she injected the staff’s impact into it, which allowed her to chain them and create an endless wave.
Chen Chuan believed that Talu had drawn upon Serene Radiance School’s secret legacy to execute this chain of attacks.
This wasn’t just a staff-type refined force. Both Serene Radiance School and Single Flow School targeted mutated tissue with their refined forces, so if Talu stacked her refined force like this, she could impact and damage her opponents’ mutated tissue.
Her staff was highly effective for this. With the mutated weapon in hand, her combat prowess rose quite a bit.
If they were fighting to the death and Chen Chuan wanted to get out of this situation, the best way for him would be to fight refined force with refined force. He would need to overpower her with stronger Heartborn Force and dissolve her refined force.
They were only sparring, though, so fighting technique with technique was the most appropriate move.
Chen Chuan switched to a body hardening-type refined force. The refined force coming into him kept resonating with his mutated tissue, causing it to become numb and swollen, and he felt like he couldn’t gather it together. Talu’s refined force could even target body hardening-type refined forces.
If he only defended with a body hardening-type refined force and didn’t attack, he would be able to keep the refined force intact for a short amount of time, but as time passed, it was highly likely that his refined force would disperse. Chen Chuan praised the ingenuity of it.
Since he had to hold back, he needed to stop Talu’s offense to interrupt her stream of refined force. It was enough blocking.
Chen Chuan brandished the saber and let the staff hit his shoulder. While using the simplest body hardening-type refined force to block the attack, he pushed forward at a speed that was about the same as Talu’s. Then, he swung the saber at Talu.
The moment Chen Chuan chose to endure the refined force, Talu regulated her breathing and retreated to maintain the distance between them.
Then, she shifted her grip over the staff, and with her lead hand, she swung the staff sideways, seemingly to block and push the saber away, but before the saber reached her, she suddenly shouted, pressed down with her lead hand while pushing her rear hand up. The exposed end of the staff struck the blade of the saber.
Crack!
The saber snapped, and the broken blade flew away.
This was Single Flow School’s unique two-tier Blade Breaking Force, and it was created specifically to target Serene Radiance School’s saber techniques. The practitioner would gather all their power at the end of the staff, and with a light tap, they would snap the weapon they struck.
Once Serene Radiance School disciples lost their sabers, they would be unable to use most of their techniques.
This technique was perfectly suitable against Serene Radiance School disciples, but Chen Chuan didn’t rely solely on saber techniques, so he wasn’t affected in the slightest. When the broken blade flew away, he closed on Talu. Then, he used the broken blade like a short saber and thrust it forward.
The moment someone got close to a staff user, the staff would become useless, but Talu switched tactics again. With a blast of refined force from her hands, the staff folded in half and turned into two short staffs. She turned her wrists and blocked the broken saber before thrusting forward with both short staffs.
When Chen Chuan avoided her attack and moved back, she turned on her feet and swung the short staffs, with one coming from above, and the other coming from below. The two staffs caused the wind to howl. She swung them upward, downward, and from all other angles to either parry or block.
Chen Chuan maintained the same level of strength and speed as her for around ten moves. At this point, he began to realize that as Talu built her refined force’s momentum, the refined force from the staff also grew stronger.
This wasn’t because Talu was getting physically stronger, but because she was getting more accustomed to using her refined force, and she found a better way to generate power. Certain groups of mutated tissue in her body might have also grown and changed minutely.
Chen Chuan may have been holding himself back, but he couldn’t just turn off his fighting experience. Soon, he found a gap in Talu’s breathing rhythm. It might have happened because of her being unable to properly adjust a certain part of her rhythm while attacking or because there were some flaws in the merging of the two schools’ refined forces.
In any case, this was a weakness.
Chen Chuan believed that Talu had requested a spar with him not just to get a better grasp of her refined force, but to also find weaknesses in her offense. Without any hesitation whatsoever, he swung his saber during that brief pause in her attacks, pushed away one of the staffs, thus breaking her defense, switched to offense, closed in, and started swinging the broken saber.
Talu was unable to bring back the staff that he pushed aside in time to defend herself, so she could only use the other one to block, but after figuring out the way she generated power and linking it to her breathing pattern, Chen Chuan was able to attack at crucial points of her power generation, causing her to be unable to generate it well. Because of it, whenever she parried an attack, she was forced to take half a step back, and her originally tightly connected refined force started going lax.
After more than ten attacks, Chen Chuan noticed that Talu was severely lacking in power to continue defending herself. With a swift upward slash, a short staff was sent flying out of her hands.
Chen Chuan had a feeling that Talu had let go of that short staff at the final moment to tilt back and avoid the broken saber. Then, she spun on her feet and closed in.
Chen Chuan pulled his refined force back with ease and brought the saber down to push it down on Talu’s shoulder, but she ignored it. She turned again, and the remaining short staff went straight for Chen Chuan’s ribs.
With a slap, he struck the short staff away, only to find no power in that strike. Talu shouted and grabbed his elbow with her free hand.
Single Flow School prioritized fighting with bare hands, and their strength lay in Sanshou, but they also had some grappling techniques. The practitioner could use Single Flow School’s Injury Reflection during crucial moments to turn the tide.
Just like before, this would have been terrifically effective against Serene Radiance School, but it was useless against Chen Chuan. With a flip of his wrist and a grab, not only did he block Talu’s hand, but he also seized her wrist. A grappling-type refined force entered her body, and Talu felt half of her body go numb.
Before she could adjust herself, the broken saber was pointed at her neck. When she saw this, she gave up on continuing the fight.
Chen Chuan saw the tension leak from her and took a few steps back.
Talu exercised her numb side. Once she could straighten her back again, she bowed deeply to him and said earnestly, “Thank you so much, Mr. Chen.”
Chen Chuan gave her a fist-and-palm salute in return. “You’re welcome.”
Talu didn’t seem dejected from losing, but even more motivated. During the spar just now, she had learned many things she believed she wouldn’t have been able to figure out on her own. Once she let everything sink in, she was sure that she would become much stronger than before.
Chen Chuan gained something from it too. Some of the ways Talu used her refined force had given him a lot of inspiration, especially how she had grown much stronger after merging her own refined force with her staff-type refined force.
It taught him that his own refined forces shouldn’t be independent entities. To a certain degree, he should merge them with his weapon, so it would display even stronger power than when he was fighting barehanded. That was the only way to bring out his weapon’s advantage.
Once the Frost King Saber woke up, he should do a deep dive into this.
Since it was still early, Chen Chuan didn’t stay in the gap. He left with Talu and returned to the island.
This time, in order to thank him for defeating Serene Radiance School, Gan Guo set up a bonfire party and got a lot of the island’s delicacies ready for him.
Chen Chuan might have wanted to train, but he wasn’t in that much of a hurry to improve, so he only returned to the gap to continue training after enjoying all the nice food at the bonfire party.
Now that he didn’t have anyone interrupting him, he returned to his previous training rhythm. At night, he focused his mind, and during the day, he went to the lotus flower seat to relax. He also practiced some other things.
Sometimes, he even taught Single Flow School disciples.
He had seen quite a number of their secret techniques. While he wasn’t going to use them, it wasn’t hard for him to understand them with his breadth of experience. He could tell which disciple was at which stage of learning and where their problems were.
Since his guidance produced immediate results, many disciples approached him for lessons.
He didn’t find it annoying, since there were only twenty disciples in Single Flow School, and most of them were children. Only about four of them could truly benefit from his guidance.
Besides, he already had a teaching license and was a lecturer at Martial Valor University. To receive the resources from the university, he was going to have to teach some students, so he might as well use the chance to get used to teaching.
A few more days passed, and the ten-day-long storm plaguing the island finally stopped.
When Chen Chuan returned to the cliff from the gap and looked around, he saw a clear, blue sky and white sails scattered on the surface of the ocean. Gray-white smoke rose from the island into the sky.
It was the end of July, so there wasn’t much time left. Chen Chuan needed to leave at the end of August.
He went back and saw the disciples receiving guidance from Gan Guo as they practiced, but Talu was nowhere to be seen.
Now that he thought about it, it had been some days since he saw her.
That was abnormal.
He went up to Gan Guo and asked, “Gan Guo, where is Talu?”
“I was just about to tell you,” Gan Guo said and asked the disciples to continue training on their own.
“Some employees from Ocean Development Corporation arrived on Luowang Island and invited Talu over. They wanted to talk about the continued existence of the martial arts school.”
