Training the Fist, Training the Sword!

Looking at the massive teleportation array before him, which spanned nearly a hundred zhang across, Li Guanqi was truly astounded. Chu Menglan looked at the young man with a complex gaze, sighing inwardly. In a gentle voice, she said, "Many thanks for your assistance this time, Young Master Li. I will say no more, but you are welcome to visit Xuanfeng Palace often in the future—treat it as your own home." On the surface, Qi Rongxuan beamed at the two of them, but inwardly he muttered, *She certainly knows how to play her cards.* With a flick of his sleeve, a flash of light radiated from the old man's hand, and more than a dozen completely purple crystals flew out. Li Guanqi raised an eyebrow. To his perception, the spiritual energy contained within these purple crystals was many times richer even than that of high-grade spirit stones. As the crystals embedded into the array, the surrounding space warped slightly, unleashing an incomparably powerful spatial fluctuation. Immediately after, a pitch-black passage ten zhang wide tore open before Li Guanqi! Li Guanqi cupped his hands and said softly, "Seniors, days ahead are long. We shall meet again." With that, he stepped into the teleportation array without looking back. *Buzz—!* The grand array remained active and would not shut down until Li Guanqi reached the Taiqing Domain. Qi Rongxuan said in a solemn voice, "Keep a close watch on the array. Nothing must go wrong." With an inscrutable look, Chu Menglan nodded. She understood the consequences all too well. If the passage of a cross-domain teleportation array collapsed, the sheer destructive force... Li Guanqi could never survive it. "Rest assured, Elder Qi. I will personally arrange for Elder Zhao to stand guard here." Qi Rongxuan nodded. "Good. I still have some business to attend to back there. Hopefully, that girl can seize control of the grand array in one go." *Buzz—!* Feeling the immense stability of the spatial tunnel around him, Li Guanqi relaxed slightly. Just as he crossed his legs to enter cultivation, the sword spirit suddenly appeared before him. Seating herself gracefully in a cross-legged position, she looked at Li Guanqi and said softly, "You currently lack methods to temper your physical body, so I've decided to increase the weight of the sword coffin." Li Guanqi frowned slightly, asking in confusion, "The sword coffin currently weighs five hundred jin, which hardly affects me. But... can its weight really be increased?" The sword spirit smiled faintly and lightly snapped her fingers. Li Guanqi, carrying the sword coffin on his back, suddenly tilted backward violently! *Boom! Boom!* The Dragon Elephant Prison-Suppressing Art surged into motion instantly. Li Guanqi's face flushed deep purplish-red, the veins on his neck bulging violently. Only then did he slowly force himself upright under the weight of the coffin. Trembling slightly, he looked at the sword spirit and gasped out with great effort, "Ten thousand jin?" Her smile was captivating, her fox-like eyes curving into crescents without a single wrinkle at their corners. "From now on, you must carry the sword coffin at all times," she said softly. "And when confronting enemies... try to wield the sword coffin as your sword. Adapt to this weight as quickly as possible." Li Guanqi's brows furrowed, and then a spark of realization flashed through his mind. Delighted, he exclaimed, "Could it be..." The sword spirit nodded with a smile and said gently, "That is only part of the reason. The other is that your physical strength has yet to reach its absolute limit. In addition, I remembered a fist technique that I can teach you." Hearing this, Li Guanqi grinned broadly. Even with his face flushed red, he could not conceal the sheer joy in his eyes. Ever since he began cultivating, he had rarely needed to worry about manuals or cultivation arts. With the sword spirit by his side, almost every technique he learned was of the very highest caliber. Li Guanqi suddenly said with a touch of distress, "I feel like I'm still falling a bit short on the final stance of the Heaven Breaker Sword Art." The sword spirit broke into a radiant smile and leaned in close to Li Guanqi. It happened so abruptly. Staring at her peerless beauty mere inches away, Li Guanqi instinctively puckered his lips. Yet who could have expected that the smiling sword spirit's expression would instantly turn frosty? *Smack!* A palm struck his lips. Prodding Li Guanqi's chest firmly with a jade finger, she said coldly, "Focus your mind!" With that, she rose abruptly. Before Li Guanqi could offer an excuse, an ancient manual was slapped against his face. Her figure vanished. With a slight smirk tugging at his lips, Li Guanqi looked down at the manual in his hands. *Void Nether Five Thunders Fist*. His eyes flashed with sharp light as he began to flip through the pages. The fist technique explained within the manual was extremely obscure. It lacked even a single diagram, containing nothing but mnemonic chants. Li Guanqi closed his eyes slightly. Beneath his white robe, nearly half of the blood-red patterns on his skin had already faded. The Great Sumeru Nine Palaces Immortal-Slaying Sigils had been inscribed onto him stroke by stroke over eight whole years by Su Xuan. Li Guanqi did not know Su Xuan's true motive, but he could sense one thing: as his cultivation realm advanced, the blood patterns no longer suppressed his Ethereal Dao Body, and his comprehension grew accordingly. And so, after an unknown amount of time, Li Guanqi suddenly opened his eyes! *Whoosh!* Two bolts of lightning shot out from his eyes as awe filled his gaze. "Good grief! Five tiers to completion, and it actually requires drawing lightning into the meridians to unleash even greater power. What kind of madman came up with using lightning to stimulate the physical body?" Even the first tier required clearing thirty-three meridians, channeling lightning into them, and circulating it according to the method recorded in the fist art. Li Guanqi calculated that only half a day had passed so far, and reaching the Taiqing Domain would take at least half a month. That gave him just enough time to cultivate this fist art. However, when he began using primal energy to dredge and batter open the meridians, he realized things were far from as simple as he had envisioned. The newly dredged meridians were remarkably thin—slender as strands of hair. Let alone stimulating them with the full fury of lightning... A look of ruthless resolve flashed in Li Guanqi's eyes as he opened them. Gritting his teeth, he mobilized the primal energy within him to wildly batter open the remaining meridians! "Hiss—! Ahhhhh!" Li Guanqi let out agonized howls as his entire body convulsed. Kneeling in the void of the passage, his fists pounded frantically against the empty air! His stark white eyes instantly became bloodshot, and his gums bled profusely! Yet even so, he remained unyielding, driving his primal energy through the first meridian to slam into the second. Ten shichen later, Li Guanqi lay on the ground foaming at the mouth, his eyes rolling back as his body twitched involuntarily. His body temperature was scorching, waves of heat radiating off him... Once he regained consciousness, he rested for a moment, then circulated his cultivation technique to rapidly absorb energy from spirit stones before resuming his assault on the remaining meridians. During this process, he also discovered a way to distract himself from the agony: swinging the sword coffin to practice his swordplay like a madman! Sitting off to the side, Pengluo snapped off a segment of his own arm and set it down. Looking at the dozen or so arms already stacked beside him, he finally stopped. Watching the distant figure, he couldn't help but sigh in marvel. "What a ruthless bastard... Not only is he talented, he's also so damn ruthless to himself!" Half a month flew by in the blink of an eye. Drenched in sweat, Li Guanqi lowered the sword coffin, then swung it onto his back. This time, his posture did not sink in the slightest. Looking at the light in the distance, Li Guanqi surged the primal energy within him, purging every trace of grime from his body. Gazing ahead with resolute eyes, he murmured softly, "You dog bastard... I'm coming for you!"