19: Chapter 19 Profound Rank Martial Skills

"So."

Lin Xiaoxiao looked at Su Yu, a mischievous smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"You can only compete for the remaining spot."

"Which is to say, second place."

Su Yu looked at her haughty appearance.

He didn't retort.

He just nodded in cooperation.

"Okay."

Seeing Su Yu so obediently admit that he was inferior to her, Lin Xiaoxiao's vanity was greatly satisfied.

She snorted triumphantly, picked up the teacup by her side, stood up, walked around the large rosewood round table, pulled out the chair next to Su Yu, and sat down unceremoniously.

The distance between the two closed instantly.

That faint, elusive fragrance once again lingered at the tip of Su Yu's nose.

In order to display her dignity as the "Big Sister" and to hide the subtle palpitations in her heart caused by being too close, Lin Xiaoxiao turned her head.

Suddenly reaching out, she pinched Su Yu's arm, which was right within reach, with extreme naturalness.

"Rest assured."

"Once we get to the actual combat arena, Sis will show mercy..."

The last word, "mercy," stuck firmly in Lin Xiaoxiao's throat.

Her voice came to an abrupt halt.

Her whole body seemed to have been pressed with a pause button.

She froze in place.

In the private room, there was a deathly silence.

Lin Xiaoxiao widened her eyes.

She stared fixedly at the hand she was pinching on Su Yu's arm.

Her brain went momentarily blank at this moment.

The tactile sensation.

An incredibly unbelievable tactile sensation!

Through that thin layer of cotton short sleeves, what she was pinching didn't feel like human muscle at all.

Instead, it felt like a piece of refined steel that had been tempered a thousand times and compressed to the extreme!

Hard.

Tight.

Even when her fingers exerted a slight force, attempting to press down, the surface of the muscle actually emitted an extremely subtle yet incredibly overbearing force of counter-shock!

It directly pushed her fingers away slightly!

"How is this possible?!"

Lin Xiaoxiao's heart skipped a beat.

Her breathing became rapid instantly.

Who was she?

She was an Intermediate Martial Artist with a Qi and Blood value as high as 406!

Her perception of Physical Body strength was sharp to the extreme!

Even with just a light pinch, she could clearly feel just how terrifying an explosive force was hidden beneath Su Yu's seemingly lean body!

This was absolutely not the Physical Body strength that a Qi and Blood value of 10.4 should have!

Even for those Martial Artists in the Great Xia Kingdom who specialized in training the Physical Body, at 10 points of Qi and Blood value, their muscles couldn't possibly be this tight, as if cast from steel and iron!

"This muscle..."

Lin Xiaoxiao screamed wildly in her heart.

"So firm!"

"And... it feels really good to touch!"

A strange, electric sensation instantly spread throughout her body from her fingertips.

Lin Xiaoxiao's ears turned red in a flash.

But immediately after, an absurd guess grew wildly in her mind like weeds.

"This sense of power hidden under the skin..."

"How does it feel not the least bit weaker than mine?"

"Could it be..."

Lin Xiaoxiao's pupils constricted slightly.

"Could his true Qi and Blood value already be over 400?!"

As soon as this thought popped up, it was slapped dead by Lin Xiaoxiao in her heart without hesitation.

"Impossible!"

"Absolutely impossible!"

Lin Xiaoxiao shook her head wildly in her heart, trying to use reason to convince herself.

Who was she?

The top wealthy heiress of Jiangcheng!

How she attained this Qi and Blood value of 406, she knew better than anyone.

From the time she was in the womb, her mother drank the highest-grade exotic beast bone soup.

After birth, she had a ten-thousand-year medicinal bath to cleanse her marrow once a month.

Starting at age three, she cultivated the Family's secret body-forging Cultivation Technique.

Every day she ate the most essential flesh and blood of high-grade exotic beasts and drank nutrient solutions containing vast Spiritual Qi.

Countless precious resources that ordinary people wouldn't even dare to imagine.

Coupled with her own extraordinary martial arts talent and over a decade of diligent cultivation, only then did she manage to stack up this earth-shattering 406 points of Qi and Blood at the age of eighteen!

This was a miracle created by throwing mountains of gold and silver at it!

And what about Su Yu?

An orphan.

Living in a leaky rental house in the old district.

Usually having to carefully budget even for the synthetic meat in the cafeteria.

Even if he had gotten lucky in these three days and obtained some kind of Heaven-Defying Opportunity, picking up a thousand-year-old Ganoderma or accidentally eating the inner core of a high-grade exotic beast, being able to forcibly raise his Qi and Blood value from 0.8 to 10.4 was already the limit of such an Opportunity!

The tempering of the Physical Body requires time to settle.

No Opportunity can allow someone to raise their Physical Body strength to a level comparable to an Intermediate Martial Artist within three days!

This violates the basic common sense of martial arts!

"Illusion."

"It must be an illusion."

Lin Xiaoxiao explained in her heart.

"Maybe it's just dead muscle he built from doing odd jobs, moving bricks, and carrying cement."

"Right, that must be it!"

"Children from poor families mature early, so it's normal for his muscles to be firm."

Forcibly suppressing the shock and that inexplicable palpitation in her heart, Lin Xiaoxiao withdrew her hand as if electrocuted.

She gave a light cough.

Covering up her panic, she picked up her teacup and took a big gulp.

And Su Yu, sitting opposite her, from start to finish, didn't say a word.

He just quietly watched Lin Xiaoxiao's unpredictable face.

Watching her go from shock to suspicion, and then to self-denial.

A flash of extremely subtle amusement crossed Su Yu's eyes.

Four hundred Qi and Blood?

Su Yu muttered in his heart.

This girl's imagination is still too conservative.

If she knew that hidden beneath the Qi and Blood lock in his body was over 1000 points of Martial Master Qi and Blood, I wonder if this arrogant Young Miss would be scared enough to jump right out of her chair.

However, Su Yu didn't intend to explain.

With the perfect disguise of the Breath Concealment Technique, even for a Martial Artist of Lin Xiaoxiao's level, as long as he didn't actively explode with power, she would absolutely not be able to detect his true Realm just by pinching his arm.

"Ahem."

Lin Xiaoxiao put down the teacup and forcefully brought the topic back on track.

"Um..."

"Where were we just now?"

"Oh right, that remaining spot."

Lin Xiaoxiao took a deep breath, and her expression became serious again.

She looked at Su Yu.

Her tone carried unprecedented gravity.

"Su Yu."

"If you want to get this last spot."

"You only have one biggest competitor."

"Zhao Ze."

Hearing this name, Su Yu's gaze didn't have the slightest fluctuation.

He didn't even pause in his action of picking up food.

"I know there is some grudge between you and Zhao Ze."

Lin Xiaoxiao, thinking Su Yu was pretending to be calm, continued.

"In this morning's Qi and Blood test, he scored 10.3."

"Only 0.1 lower than you."

"But, Su Yu, you must not underestimate him just because of this 0.1 gap!"

Lin Xiaoxiao leaned forward slightly, her tone extremely serious.

"Qi and Blood value is just the foundation."

"What truly determines the outcome of actual combat is the Martial Skill!"

"And Zhao Ze, he holds an incredibly terrifying trump card in his hand."

Lin Xiaoxiao lowered her voice, as if afraid of eavesdroppers.

"He has learned a Profound Rank Low Grade Martial Skill."

"The Rock-Crushing Palm!"

Profound Rank Martial Skill.

Once these four words were spoken, the atmosphere in the private room seemed to become a bit oppressive.

In the Great Xia Kingdom, what ordinary high school students can access is only the Yellow Rank Low Grade Five Elements Fist.

Even the top students in key high schools, at most, only learn one Yellow Rank Medium Grade martial art.

And Profound Rank Martial Skills.

The starting price is five hundred thousand!

Those are advanced Cultivation Techniques that can only be accessed after reaching Kyoto Martial Arts University or the military's elite units!

The power is immense.

The difficulty of cultivation is as hard as ascending to heaven!

The Meridians' circulation routes are incredibly complex, and the requirements for controlling Qi and Blood are extremely high.

Even if an ordinary person gets the Secret Manual, they might not be able to get started even after practicing for several years.

"In order to get him into Kyoto Martial Arts University, the Zhao Family spent a large sum of money to specially buy this Rock-Crushing Palm, which has a low cultivation difficulty and decent power."

Lin Xiaoxiao told Su Yu without reservation the information she had found by using her Family's intelligence network.

"Moreover, Zhao Ze has been soaking in medicinal baths since he was a child, and his Meridians are much wider than ordinary people's."

"He forcibly... this Profound Rank Low Grade Martial Skill."