Linjiang City, Jiangshan Imperial View Community.
As one of the most luxurious residential areas in the city, Jiangshan Imperial View not only boasts an imposing name, but its property prices are even more imposing, with the current average price per square meter soaring above sixty thousand, rivaling those in the major cities of Dongji Kingdom.
Given these prices, those who can live here are either wealthy or distinguished.
Ye Qingzhou, an ordinary young man, naturally can't afford a house here, but that's not a problem—his biological father's ability to buy it suffices.
House number 168, a two-story villa covering 270 square meters, this was Ye Qingzhou's next place to stay.
It has to be said, Ye Xiangyang still fares quite well. At a young age, he demonstrated extraordinary martial arts talent, passing assessments to become a professional martial artist before even graduating college. After graduation, he married his childhood sweetheart, leading a smooth life, and his luck in the early explorations of the secret realms was quite good, earning substantial benefits several times and effortlessly amassing a fortune in the tens of millions.
This is also why, despite his disappearance for so many years, Ye Qingzhou could still live well on his own. Now, though alone, he lives in a luxurious villa, receives monthly financial subsidies, and lacks for nothing.
Looking at the expensive villa in front of him, Ye Qingzhou couldn't help but stroke his chin in thought: "This house seems valuable; selling it could likely buy lots of precious ingredients to rapidly enhance my foundation and cultivation... Forget it, I should act like a person, let's not sell the house for now."
Opening the food box, the martial meal from Xu Lan was still warm, and the entire salt-baked iron feather chicken was substantial, weighing at least two pounds.
Sitting alone in the dining room, Ye Qingzhou started eating heartily, savoring the salty and fragrant chicken meat, which was chewy and delicious. He soon devoured it all, leaving only the bare bones.
Burp~
Ye Qingzhou let out a satisfied burp and subsequently felt his dantian heat up, his whole body seemed filled with endless energy. He immediately understood that this was the body's reaction to absorbing a large amount of primordial qi, likening himself to a fully charged lithium battery.
No time to waste, Ye Qingzhou immediately got up and went to the backyard, drew his sword amidst the cool evening breeze, and began practicing.
Xu Yuebing's sword, Flying Frost, crafted by a renowned artisan with materials from the Grotto Heaven Secret Realm, is extraordinary, capable of amplifying the power of primordial qi and converting inner breath into frost attribute attacks.
As the sword light flowed, small snow began to fall in the courtyard, with condensed water vapor forming fine ice crystals that drifted in the air, soon accumulating into a layer of white snow on the ground.
Ye Qingzhou stepped on the frost and snow, his movements like a flood dragon soaring, soon mastering the essence of inner breath technique, controlling his moves freely, forming an almost perfect rhythm with the breathing and inner breath, layering power upon power, with momentum gradually rising.
Upon reaching the peak, sword shadows flew with snowflakes, with evening glow blending with the lamplights.
Zheng~
At the moment when Ye Qingzhou's whole body energy reached its zenith, the long sword moved as swiftly as a streaming light, quick and urgent, accompanied by the thunderous roar, showcasing his long-established signature technique, Dragon-Pointing.
Painting the dragon refers to the backbone dragon, emphasizing force throughout the body, and that the sword comes out like a soaring dragon.
Pointing the eye refers to the divine intention's eye, emphasizing instant eruption, and that the sword moves like lightning.
When Ye Qingzhou completed a set of swordsmanship, he suddenly entered an epiphany state, instinctively blending the technique of Wind Force into his Dragon-Pointing Swordsmanship, slashing out a perfectly harmonious sword!
An invisible sword qi then swept out horizontally!
Crack~
The cherry tree with a bowl-sized trunk behind him fell with the sound, being sliced in half by the emitted sword qi.
"To compress the flowing wind and then slash it out, such power?"
Even Ye Qingzhou found it unbelievable, his gang force had achieved great success, the force exploded to the extreme, yet could only strike distance of an inch in the air.
But the sword qi slash in front of him could sever a cherry tree several meters away with a bowl-sized trunk in one strike, the power was incomparable.
Then Ye Qingzhou remembered, the cherry tree here seemed to have been planted by Ye Xiangyang and Chengg Yurong together, as a record of their once beautiful love.
"Breaking it is also good, with the old gone the new comes."
Just a cherry tree, Ye Qingzhou wasn't overly worried about it. Instead, he sat down on the ground, closed his eyes, thoughtfully reflecting on the gains from that last sword strike.
"The martial arts in this world are indeed incredibly wondrous, especially where inner breath can adjust the rhythm of breathing to trigger the resonance of primordial qi, evolving natural phenomena."
Ye Qingzhou's thoughts surged, constantly capturing various fleeting inspirations.
The technique in the last sword strike was his self-created Dragon-Pointing Swordsmanship in terms of force application, while the inner breath was Wind Force from the Six Military Techniques. Through specific inner breath techniques, he successfully harnessed the power of wind with the primordial qi in him, slashing out a meter-long sword qi.
This shows that the combination of these two kinds of power has an extraordinary effect.
Ye Qingzhou is a person who likes to plan ahead. Since he decided to participate in the Cyan Wave Sword Fighting Competition, he certainly aimed for the championship.
Since he aims to win the championship, of course, he starts preparing early to cope with the opponents that might appear in the match.
Currently, Ye Qingzhou has limited knowledge of the strength of other competitors, so he decided to first strengthen himself: "My advantages are talent aptitude and experience skills; my weaknesses are lack of foundation, with an enormous gap in physical qualities compared to the seed competitors."
Ye Qingzhou learned from Xu Lan that on Blue Star, second-generation cultivators have mostly been preparing from a young age, eating exotic beasts and immortal ganoderma daily. Even a pig can be trained into a master, let alone a living person?
These second-generation cultivators not only eat well but are also guided by famous teachers. If they themselves possess some talent and put in arduous effort, their strength is absolutely terrifying.
The only thing they might lack is possibly technique and experience.
Ye Qingzhou made an immediate decision: "With too little time, it's impossible to make up for foundational inadequacies, the only way to increase winning odds is by maximizing and exploiting my existing advantages."
With the decision made, the next step was contemplating strategies.
In the Six Military Techniques, Wind Force enhances reaction speed, Fire Technique strengthens muscle power, Mountain Technique increases bone strength, and Forest Technique optimizes force wielding techniques.
As for Yin and Thunder Techniques, they focus on inner breath's convergence and explosive force.
"Currently, my financial resources are limited, daily primordial qi intake is restricted. Rather than getting all six techniques to entry level, it's better to specialize in one technique first to quickly boost combat strength."
Ye Qingzhou's mind was still clear, aware that the martial arts path requires steady steps to go far.
The training cost to nurture a martial artist on Blue Star is indeed high, and even those with talent one in a thousand face spending at least ten million yuan to become professional level martial artists.
This expense isn't really high, as modern society spends over thirty million on training a qualified air force fighter pilot, and that's pure spending, almost generating no income.
In comparison, martial artists are qualified bulls and horses, capable of bringing huge income to the country after entering the professional level.
Thus, many martial artists take loans to practice, like Ye Xiangyang who displayed talent after graduating high school and was able to apply for state subsidies and bank loans, breaking through in his sophomore year.
Ye Qingzhou now, unless he sells his house, definitely can't scrape together that much money.
"Wind, Fire, Mountain, Forest, Yin, Thunder— which technique should I choose?"