Chapter 150: New move.

Chapter 150: New move."Lee! Lee!"

Before He Zhenzhu could say more, Xiao Lian’s shout interrupted her. The guy noticed Lee sitting up and was madly rushing over. He probably was the only one so emotionally invested in Lee being alive.

"I’m fine, I’m fine!" Lee said, stretching his hand out, indicating for Xiao Lian to stop, "Don’t touch me! Senior Sister, you were saying?"

"Right! I already mentioned this to Xiao Lian, but it’ll be good for him to hear it again." She said, "Edward’s situation is so unique you have to keep it a secret. Elemental mutations happen on occasion, but often they are useless or sometimes people even regret they ever started to cultivate."

It sounded dramatic, but she continued, "There are some strong ones, like Li Hanchen’s – you probably noticed him in the tournament. But they are incredibly rare. And the lightning ... I have no clue what potential your friend has and what are his limits. Fire already is the most destructive element, you know? But lightning ... anyway. Before we all speak to Elder Wang, no information is to be leaked!"

"Good! You’re the secret weapon now, Edward!" Lee joked, "I expect you to protect us all in the future!"

"It’s a promise!" Edward said.

Lee didn’t mind his seriousness, but it wouldn’t hurt him to have at least some bits of sense of humor. Or maybe the loss of it was the side effect of getting struck by lighting.

***

Lee and Xiao Lian stayed only one more day before leaving Edward in Hu Zhenzhu’s care.

It was impossible to tell whether she was more interested in him as a freak of nature or it were Edward’s good looks that caused the interest. But to the two youths it didn’t matter. Lee intended to get away from anyone as soon as possible so they wouldn’t pick up on his otherworldly recovery ability.



Before they left, Senior Sister Hu Zhanzhu said, "During the following months you two pay attention to your cultivation. In theory, being in the proximity of a Heavenly Tribulation might have incredible effect on you own progress."

Obviously those were good news for Xiao Lian, but from the moment Lee woke up, he knew there was something wrong with his own situation. The flow of elemental energies was somehow disrupted and the two sparks were disturbingly active.

And not only that. It felt like the water one was boiling and the earth one was melting at the same time. It didn’t hurt as the two kind of compensated each other, at least that was what Lee guessed. The worrying part was that they generated or attracted large amounts of elemental particles.

Because of that Lee felt constantly bloated, similar how he was while helping Edward. Mentally it took him few days to calm down, but intensity of the elemental energies within only grew, thus causing unnecessary physical tension.

Surprisingly it was Xiao Lian who found the solution.

He Zhenzhu’s words turned out to be correct. Witnessing Edward’s advancement or the proximity to the Heavenly lightning somehow triggered something within him and the boy felt similar to Lee, except maybe not as extreme.

On the fourth day after they left, during a fight with brown dreadtalons, all of the sudden one of the raptors directly exploded. Well, not all of it, only the head.

"It worked!" Xiao Lian was thrilled by the shower of brain matter raining over him.

"What did you do?" Lee asked.

He didn’t see the move itself, but the effect was impressive.

"I tried to use the combat technique we bought back then." Xiao Lian said, "I mean, in full effect, not only the stabbing part. For the past days I feel almost bloated from the excessive elemental energy and was trying to release it."



After copying hundreds of basic combat techniques for over a year, Lee almost forgot the first one he got. On its own it wasn’t anything special, but Xiao Lian’s discovery reignited his passion for the revenge again.

Victoria, being an elemental master, was miles ahead of him and almost endlessly more powerful. But if he landed such explosive hit, it would be nice to see her head blow up.

The best part about it was that in order to practice the move he didn’t need to use the sparks. He, similar to Xiao Lian, would only use the excessive energy.

The concept behind the move wasn’t hard to grasp. The difficult part was the release in a form of burst of the elemental energy through the weapon.

To Xiao Lian it came naturally since he used the fire particles he sensed within and his stabs were accompanied by occasional sparks of actual fire. The boy had either natural talent that allowed him to sense the fire element or had gone through serious training back at home during the past year. Or maybe both.

Lee, on the other hand, had to manage two different energies, water and earth, at the same time.

At first he tried to release them simultaneously in a form chaotic mixture of particles, but the only result he got was a stinging pain in his sword hand. Apparently one couldn’t randomly mix two elemental particles, or at least he didn’t know how to, thus he had to form a stream of either water or earth particles.

The problem was that if he used only one element to form an intense burst of energy, the other began to dominate within him, causing a stinging pain in his abdomen. It confirmed his theory about the two sparks balancing each other, but didn’t help with the task at hand.

The best solution Lee could come up with was to form two different streams of elemental particles, and release them at the same time, thus creating two bursts instead of one. The execution was several times more complex compared to Xiao Lian’s natural application of fire, especially considering one had to do it during a fight.

To focus on the abdomen while guiding elemental particles, but at the same time attacking, evading and paying attention to the surroundings was incredibly taxing both physically and mentally. But the result of occasional blown up dreadtalon’s head was impressive.

The application of elemental energies resulted in a similar effect Lee witnessed when Valen Sunwell destroyed several elemental warriors in one move. Back then they were ambushed on the cliff near Elsdon, and the emperor’s move made it seem that his sword had a much longer reach than its physical form.

Finally everything began to make sense. One couldn’t see the wind particles the emperor released, but they were there. Similarly how in their new move Xiao Lian and Lee released the particles through their weapons, but the effect happened not at the tips of their swords, but an inch or two further.



The only thing that annoyed Lee was once again his stupid decision of swallowing the spark back then.

To see how effortlessly and naturally it came to Xiao Lian to release the fire particles was already enviable, but the fact that even if Lee managed to control the two streams of elements and achieve the blast effect, it wasn’t close to being as destructive as Xiao Lian’s moves.

He didn’t got depressed over the fact, though. He’ll have the next life to fix the mistakes he did in this one, thus the main focus lie in learning and practice.

***

From then on the journey completely transformed, and the only thing the two lacked was water to wash off the dreadtalon remains from their bodies and clothing.

They still ran through the desolate plains, looking for rock formations that could house Purple spirit roots, but the previously tedious fights with dreadtalons actually became fun.

It took a while for both of them to get the hang of the proper usage of elemental particles in combat, but several days later, when during an encounter with a pack of eight brown dreadtalons, all eight of them died in colorful explosions, both Lee and Xiao Lian realized they had discovered something beautiful.

Obviously their moves, especially Lee’s, were never as flashy and effective an elemental master or even a warrior was capable of, but it didn’t matter. Currently Xiao Lian was confident on going against any outer disciple in arena, but Lee finally saw the light at the end of the revenge tunnel.

All he had to do to deal with Victoria was to perfect this one move and land it once.

***

The vast tundra-like fields finally ended and were replaced by a thick pine forest. The greenery was a pleasant change to the eye and gave them hope to find decent water source like a lake or a river.

The downside was the limited visibility that allowed the dark green dreadtalons ambush them every step of the way.