Chapter 2870 — Growing Worse by the Day

No wonder Tianchan was so astonished. Most cultivators began training in childhood; few took it up midway through life. Barring some extraordinary stroke of fortune, a person's meridians and bones had already set firm—and even if they swallowed elixirs like the Foundation Establishment Pill to make cultivation possible, they would never achieve much.

"No, I didn't. Why would I lie about something like that?" Wei Zhao shook his head.

"Then how did you cultivate? Did you take pills?" Tianchan could scarcely imagine that Wei Zhao had reached the late Earth rank in only about ten years.

"Yes—I took one Qi Gathering Pill. I used it when I broke through from the peak of the late Mystic rank into the Earth rank, but it was wasted on me." Wei Zhao spoke with some regret. "I wasn't an alchemist yet back then. I had no idea how precious a Qi Gathering Pill was, and I didn't know there was such a thing as a Minor Qi Gathering Pill."

"Pfft—cough, cough..." Tianchan burst into coughing at once, Wei Zhao's words leaving her utterly speechless. "You took a Qi Gathering Pill and you could still keep cultivating?"

"I could..." Wei Zhao nodded. "Haven't you noticed how fast I cultivate? Especially when it comes to recovering my physical strength and true qi."

"That much is true. You really are a freak." Tianchan sighed. "Compare yourself to others and you want to die; compare goods to goods and you want to throw them away! If you were in my sect, you'd probably have reached the peak of the late Heaven rank long ago—maybe even have entered the Great Perfection and ascended to the heavenly way..."

"Heh..." Wei Zhao smiled. "I'm already content. A lone cultivator can't be compared to a sect's core disciple."

"Oh, you're content all right. When I was your strength, I couldn't even instant-kill an expert of the mid Heaven rank." Tianchan had been thoroughly bruised by Wei Zhao's example.

"Don't you have the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm?" Wei Zhao asked, startled.

"I do have the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm, but even it can't instant-kill a mid Heaven rank expert from the late Earth rank!" Tianchan looked at Wei Zhao with some puzzlement. "Don't tell me you thought the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm was that powerful?"

"Isn't it?" Wei Zhao was slightly taken aback.

"The Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm has only ten forms in all. At the Earth rank you can unleash the first five; at the early Heaven rank, the latter five!" Tianchan shook her head and explained. "Although each form is worth five times an ordinary martial skill, that's only in theory. Given the limits of a person's physical strength and true qi, and their mastery of the skill, it's already remarkable to draw out three times the power—and the further you go, the smaller the multiplier, because the physical strength and true qi required is enormous. So at the early and middle Earth rank, the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm has a huge advantage; at the late Earth rank the advantage shrinks greatly! That's why I say that at the late Earth rank, even if you could unleash the fifth form, it would be worth only about twice—equivalent to the power of the tenth Earth rank martial skill. How could that possibly instant-kill a mid Heaven rank expert? And as for me now, I can draw out only a little more than twice the power. My final tenth form is equivalent to only about the twenty-fifth form of an ordinary skill..."

"What? Only ten forms in all?" Wei Zhao was dumbfounded to discover what a cheat the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm he had been looking forward to was—only ten forms! And after Tianchan had cultivated it to the utmost, the final tenth form amounted to only the twenty-fifth form. In other words, if Wei Zhao simply kept cultivating as he had been, the twentieth form, the Frenzied Fire Eight Trigrams Palm, would be fully its match. He needn't have bothered learning the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm at all!

Still, on reflection it made sense. A cultivator's physical strength and true qi were limited; a martial skill could not unleash more than the cultivator himself possessed. So Wei Zhao did understand why the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm had only ten forms—any more, and no cultivator could unleash them.

Of course, Wei Zhao was only comforting himself. The power of the Five Elements Eight Trigrams Palm in Tianchan's hands and in his own hands were absolutely not to be mentioned in the same breath!

"Right. If there were twenty forms, wouldn't that be defying heaven? Wouldn't I be invincible under the sun?" Tianchan shrugged.

"That's true enough," Wei Zhao nodded.

From martial skills, the two drifted on to other matters of cultivation. Both had five-element constitutions, so they had no shortage of topics to discuss...

……………………

In Yanjing, Liu Tianli had been living very comfortably these past few days, smoking each day the cigarettes Boss Lang sent him and dreaming of how much profit he would reap from this big deal. Though the Liu family had come a long way since attaching itself to Wei Zhao—even some hidden clans now treated them with the utmost respect—in the end they still leaned on Wei Zhao. But Wei Zhao was Wei Zhao, and the Liu family was the Liu family. While the bond between Liu Tianyi and Wei Zhao held, the Liu family sailed smoothly along. But what about a hundred years from now, after Liu Tianyi was gone?

Liu Tianyi was no cultivator and certainly could not live overly long. Once he was gone, could Wei Zhao still help the Liu family as he did now? Obviously Liu Tianli thought it unlikely, and so he had long been looking for a chance to turn the Liu family into a great clan that could stand on its own without Wei Zhao.

Now the chance had come. If they could keep working with Boss Lang indefinitely, the Liu family's company would have no choice but to grow big.

He was gloating over this when his phone rang. Seeing Boss Lang's name on the screen, Liu Tianli was delighted and picked up at once. "Boss Lang, how goes it? Any good news?"

"President Liu, this is Little Cui—Cui Mianshi!" The caller was not Boss Lang after all, but his secretary and henchman, Cui Mianshi.

"Oh, Secretary Cui. What can I do for you?" Liu Tianli asked.

"It's like this—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity has come up. Boss Lang is right now in negotiations with several local tobacco growers and a few merchants. One of the merchants, because of investment problems, has his funds tied up and can't turn them over. The tobacco he'd already bought for one and a half billion—he doesn't want it anymore and wants to sell it off cheap, for just one billion. Everyone's a bit tempted right now, but after all, one billion is a lot of money. Boss Lang and the other merchants are all having their people call around to partners or consult at home, to see whether they should take this shipment." Cui Mianshi said, "Boss Lang wants to ask President Liu—are we interested?"

"A one-and-a-half-billion shipment for just one billion..." Liu Tianli was immediately tempted, but the money he had already put out was the most he could bear. Raising another billion—where on earth was he supposed to scrape that together?

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