novelraw Chapter 10 : Chapter 10
Chapter 10 : Chapter 10
Chapter 10: Flowing Cloud Five Tremors—Do You Not Believe It? Then Watch the Footage!
Qin Zhanye let out a rare hearty laugh.
He rather liked how open and straightforward Li Mu was. Whatever came to his mind, he said it plainly, without putting on airs.
For someone like Li Mu, how much effort he was willing to put in depended on whether the reward was good enough.
Otherwise, if Li Mu merely showed up and did the work perfunctorily, there would be no point.
“Let alone the fact that if it really can be improved and later put into practice, you will earn no small amount of merit!”
“Just speaking for myself, as long as you genuinely help us.”
“I personally promise you one Premium Black-Blood Warhorse, one Premium Spirit Treasure, one Premium Weapon, and one set of High-Grade Cultivation Arts!”
While Qin Zhanye was still speaking, Li Mu’s heart had practically stopped beating.
That whole package was worth at least a million.
“My boy, I know I cannot use morality to pressure you into serving the country.”
“But setting aside all these material rewards,”
“every time one more person survives because Flowing Cloud Three Tremors has been strengthened,”
“that is a measure of virtue.”
Qin Zhanye came at it from both angles. After laying out the material rewards, he still did not forget to circle around and appeal to Li Mu on a spiritual level as well.
Li Mu nodded, deeply moved.
“All right… the High-Grade Cultivation Art is my choice, right?”
The veins at Qin Zhanye’s temples twitched, and he nodded speechlessly.
At that moment, a burst of noise came from inside the conference room.
The assistant quickly said to Qin Zhanye,
“Wolf Guard Qin, please go in.”
Qin Zhanye immediately pushed open the door and entered.
Inside the plainly furnished conference room was a long conference table.
Several dozen attendees were just about to leave in an orderly manner through the rear door.
The several middle-aged men in plain clothes seated at the main seats in front were also gathering up their things.
The moment Qin Zhanye entered, he shouted,
“Leaders, please wait a moment!”
At once, everyone in the room turned to look at him.
“Minister Song, I will speak plainly.”
“Just now, this young man here used Flowing Cloud Five Tremors. I specifically brought him here for you to meet.”
The moment the words “Flowing Cloud Five Tremors” were spoken, everyone in the room looked at one another in shock.
The middle-aged man addressed as Minister Song also turned to look at Li Mu.
“Wolf Guard Qin, what did you say?”
“There is no point in saying more. Please watch the footage.”
Qin Zhanye directly connected his phone to the large screen in the conference room.
Then he began playing the footage of Li Mu breaking Red-Hair’s right leg.
As Li Mu used the fourth tremor and then the fifth tremor,
the entire conference room instantly exploded into an uproar!
When it ended, an older professor at the side hurriedly said,
“Play it again!”
Qin Zhanye played it again, and the professor grew even more agitated. “Again!”
Li Mu was speechless. Was this old man really so obsessed with watching replays?
Qin Zhanye also said,
“Professor Xu, if you want to watch, we can go outside and let Li Mu exchange a few moves with me. Would that not make things clearer?”
The old man rushed forward and grabbed Li Mu by the arm in one swift motion.
“My boy, you… you can use it again??”
Minister Song and the others stared as well, their eyes filled with anticipation.
Li Mu found it rather amusing. So this group had been rewatching the footage over and over because
they thought his Flowing Cloud Five Tremors had only been a moment of inspiration, something he had somehow stumbled into and would never be able to use again.
“I can!”
Li Mu nodded.
“Good! Good, good, good! Xiao Liu, hurry and notify all the teachers in the spear-and-staff category!” Minister Song cried out in delight, giving an order to the assistant.
After that, Li Mu and Qin Zhanye were escorted out of the research department by the crowd and arrived at an open area.
Not long afterward,
a great mass of people poured out from the research department.
Many of them were actually disheveled, and some of their clothes had even faded from wear.
There were a full sixty or seventy of them.
These people were all around thirty years old. On the way over, they had already heard Assistant Liu explain what had happened.
The moment they came out, they crowded forward excitedly.
“You are saying this young man can use Flowing Cloud Five Tremors?”
And when they learned that the one who had used Flowing Cloud Five Tremors was Li Mu, everyone froze.
After all, none of them had seen the footage from earlier.
“Flowing Cloud Three Tremors was already refined to the point where there is nothing left to improve.”
“Are you sure what he used was the Flowing Cloud Spear Art?”
These people’s understanding of cultivation arts was extremely advanced. No one knew the potential of the Flowing Cloud Spear Art better than they did.
The great experts of the older generation had long since compressed it as far as it could possibly be compressed.
There could not possibly be any better way to present it.
“There is no point in talking. Li Mu, begin!”
Qin Zhanye was decisive in his actions.
Too lazy to waste another word, he drew a long saber and spoke to Li Mu.
Li Mu did not hesitate for even a moment.
He pinched and pulled at his ear with his fingers, and with a pop, a Black Iron long staff appeared in his hand.
He swept it horizontally toward Qin Zhanye.
A “staff” and a “cudgel” were not the same thing.
A staff was straight from end to end and uniform in thickness. It emphasized agility and lightness.
A cudgel, on the other hand, could be thick at one end and thin at the other, or thick at both ends and thin in the middle, or even fitted with metal at both ends.
A cudgel gave a more rigid and ferocious impression, placing greater emphasis on explosive power.
Unfortunately, cudgel-type weapons were very rare.
At Uncle by Marriage’s blacksmith shop, there had only been two staffs. There had been no cudgel-type weapons at all.
Qin Zhanye strolled lightly underfoot, and the long saber in his hand swept out with precision, knocking aside Li Mu’s horizontal strike.
With Qin Zhanye’s level of cultivation, even if three Li Mus were tied together, they still would not be enough to matter.
Clang!
When the first strike missed, Li Mu swept out a second strike, fast and fierce.
Another block, then another slash, and the third strike came.
At that point, every spectator’s eyes suddenly widened.
Never mind five tremors. Li Mu’s first three tremors alone had already surpassed ordinary Flowing Cloud Spear Art practitioners by far.
Because although Li Mu’s foundation was still the Flowing Cloud Spear Art, the flexibility of his follow-up variations had gone far beyond anything they knew.
The power of his second tremor had already reached the level of an ordinary person’s third tremor.
And when Li Mu swept out the fourth strike—
“Hiss!~~”
The sight of everyone present drawing a collective breath was truly spectacular.
The key to Flowing Cloud Four Tremors was not whether one could swing out a fourth strike at all, but whether that fourth strike could still carry the accumulated force of the earlier staff techniques.
In the ordinary use of Flowing Cloud Three Tremors, by the time people reached the fourth strike, they simply could not retain the previous momentum any longer. The force was already fully spent in the third strike.
No one had ever been able to use a fourth strike.
And when Li Mu slashed out the fifth strike,
everyone’s pupils suddenly contracted!
With a loud clang,
Qin Zhanye was actually forced half a step backward.
Qin Zhanye’s eyes shone brightly. He tightened his grip on the saber and praised,
“Good lad! Let these fellows watch it one more time!”
Since Li Mu had accepted the promise of reward, he had no choice but to perform it again.
This time, Professor Xu, who was already sixty years old, actually threw both hands high into the air in an exaggerated gesture!
“Open your eyes wide! Look carefully! Look carefully!!”
More than half of the teachers from the research department actually rubbed their eyes hard.
Then they stared wide-eyed at Li Mu.
The sight of it was even a little… comical.
For a moment, Li Mu lost himself in thought.
Flowing Cloud Three Tremors was only a Mortal-Grade cultivation art.
These people definitely knew far more than just this one cultivation art, and this was definitely not the most important cultivation art they had.
So why had it made a military district professor, someone even a Wolf Guard had to treat with respect, lose his composure like this?
All at once, Li Mu sensed a single word in Professor Xu, Minister Song, and the group of teachers.
Obsession.
They really were like a flock of diligent hens laying eggs, all for the sake of making their eggs a little better in quality.
They truly had poured everything they had into it.
So Li Mu let out a soft sigh and decided to give them a few gifts.
With Li Mu’s current understanding, he could fully perform seven tremors.
But to avoid sending these old men’s blood pressure through the roof, and because he was afraid it would be too much for them to digest,
Li Mu decided to let them have a look at the sixth tremor…