Wei Zhao felt a flicker of embarrassment. True enough—his own master had long since gone on his way; Old Man Wei had taken up an internal mental art only as a supplement, a purely auxiliary discipline, to say nothing of practicing any martial techniques; and the one man who could have guided him along the martial path, Old Jiao, was a phantom with a broken memory, whose recollections were so often incomplete that they had to be recovered first... All of which left Wei Zhao feeling that his lot was a bitter one.

"Then the reason the ten stances of the Frenzied Fire Fist after the eleventh cannot be brought out is also that there is not enough true qi in my own body? My strength has not reached that level, so I cannot supply the quantity of true qi needed to trigger the technique?" Wei Zhao asked.

"You could put it that way, though in truth it is not quite the whole of it. If you exhausted every drop of true qi in your body, you ought to be able to force out the next stance above your rank—but that is usually a measure taken to preserve your life at the brink of death," Uncle Qing said. "Because the true qi needed to trigger the next stance is more than your present strength can bear. Once you trigger it, not only will your whole body be drained and left in a terribly weak state, but your true qi will never fully recover either—the next stance converts it into a form that the mnemonic formula of your current grade of internal art cannot convert back. In plain words, you drop a rank..."

But having said that much, Uncle Qing stared at Wei Zhao in great astonishment, his eyes full of surprise and envy.

"What is it?" Under that look, Wei Zhao felt his hair stand on end.

"Theoretically speaking, you should already have collapsed!" Uncle Qing said with a bitter smile. "At early Earth-rank, triggering the first stance of the Frenzied Fire Fist is normal; at the very most you might barely manage the second. But the third stance—that is what a cultivator at the peak of early Earth-rank can trigger. And here you are, bringing them out in one unbroken run, without so much as fainting... So the theory I laid out before may not apply to you..."

"Actually... I am a little tired..." Wei Zhao said, breaking into a sweat. Could this be the effect of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art? He did feel he had used up a good deal of true qi, yet he had none of that limp, strength-sapped exhaustion.

"..." Uncle Qing was speechless.

That evening, before Wei Zhao entered the jade pendant space to cultivate, he could not wait to tell Old Jiao everything that had happened that day.

"Old Jiao, I am not some kind of genius, am I?" After recounting the day's strange happenings, Wei Zhao added smugly.

"Pfft—" Old Jiao had been about to explain, but burst out laughing instead. "Young Lin, you really can flatter yourself! What sort of genius cultivates the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art for ten years and still has not brought the first layer to perfection?"

"Uh..." Wei Zhao was rather embarrassed. "I was only saying it offhand. Today, when I practiced the Frenzied Fire Fist, it flowed like clouds and water, one breath from start to finish, without the slightest hitch. It felt as though the Frenzied Fire Fist had been made to measure for me!"

"That much is true, though not quite accurate. Properly speaking, it is you who were made to measure for the Frenzied Fire Fist!" Old Jiao said.

"What does that mean?" Wei Zhao asked, taken aback.

"Over this time my memory has been slowly recovering, and though it is still incomplete, it is enough to answer some of your questions at this stage," Old Jiao said. "Is there anything you want to ask?"

"Did I not just ask?" Wei Zhao said.

"Oh, you mean about practicing martial techniques—that is perfectly normal," Old Jiao said with a nod. "The Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art can produce universal true qi; in other words, it is a universal mental art, and where martial techniques are concerned, it can practice any technique at all! So it is not that the technique was made to measure for you—it is that you were made to measure for the technique!"

"What? No way!" Wei Zhao was shocked, and then wild with joy. Did that mean that whatever technique was powerful, he could practice it, without ever fretting over the need to deliberately seek out techniques that matched his mental art? "Just so," Old Jiao nodded. "Now do you see the advantage of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art?"

"Then... why could I not do it before?" Once he had calmed down, Wei Zhao was puzzled again. "I rehearsed the Frenzied Fire Fist countless times before, and not once did I get it down—it was always stiff and clumsy..."

"That is because you had not cultivated the martial techniques and the second layer of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art. Neither will do without the other," Old Jiao said. "The first layer of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art applies only below Earth-rank—the so-called Foundation Establishment stage. For a cultivator, everything before Earth-rank is the stage of laying foundations; only at Earth-rank can one practice martial techniques. That is the turning point."

"So that is how it is!" Wei Zhao said in sudden understanding. "In other words, it is only by cultivating the mental art of the second layer of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art that one has a mental art that can work together with martial techniques?"

"You could say so. But though the mental art is universal, it can only convert into universal true qi; to practice a martial technique, you must convert the mental art into the mental art that corresponds to that particular technique. So a separate conversion formula is needed here," Old Jiao said.

"Is it... that martial technique?" Wei Zhao thought of the "martial technique" he had practiced before, the one he had brought out of the cave.

"Exactly. That martial technique may also be called a universal martial technique. Once you have cultivated this universal martial technique, then no matter what technique you practice, it will automatically convert your mental art into the mental art best suited to cultivating that technique, so that the technique can display its greatest effect," Old Jiao said. "And that is also why you are stronger than the technique's original masters—because their mental arts, though tempered and matched over a very long time, were never so made to measure as an art that converts itself."

"...That is simply outrageous..." Hearing Old Jiao's words, Wei Zhao could find no other words to convey how he felt at that moment. What a phenomenal martial technique this was! He had once taken it for a useless auxiliary mental art, never imagining it could be so formidable!

It was a long while before Wei Zhao let out a long breath.

So it meant that not only could he use the Frenzied Fire Fist—as long as he had the corresponding martial technique manual, he could practice it. At the thought, Wei Zhao felt his blood race.

"Outrageous it may not be—but young Lin, let me remind you of an old saying: the heart of man is never satisfied, like a snake trying to swallow an elephant. Bite off more than you can chew, and you will never get it down! Do not imagine that the more techniques you practice, the more invincible you will be. A powerful technique—to learn one thoroughly and master it finely is already no easy thing!" Old Jiao said earnestly. "Today you brought out those three stances of the Frenzied Fire Fist so quickly; it looks like the work of the second layer of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art and the universal martial technique, but was it not also the fruit of the thousand and hundred times you turned it over and rehearsed it in your mind before? Without those thousand rehearsals, how could you have triggered it without the slightest hitch? You would need time just to grow familiar with the formula, would you not?"

For the fastest updates and pop-up-free reading, please visit.