Puberty-Edition Hegemon Body!

"That's it, Senior Brother. These traits of yours are the vigorous qi and blood unique to a Hegemon Body. Others only take them for restless blood and qi, and kidney water running too strong, never knowing that they are the very signs of a Hegemon Body!" Liu Xiu went on. As he spoke, he paused, then continued, "Senior Brother, afterward, did you often toss and turn at night, unable to sleep, yet feel muddled and greedy for sleep by day, and at the slightest matter have fire rise in your heart and your temper flare?" "This... I did!" Shi Shaojian thought back to when he was fourteen or fifteen and nodded hard. In his heart, he was beginning to feel that what Liu Xiu said was true. He really was a Hegemon Body! For no other reason than this: Liu Xiu had been far too accurate! Seeing this, Liu Xiu went on, "Senior Brother, you match every one of the typical signs that come before a Hegemon Body awakens! A Hegemon Body has always prized unrivaled dominance. Qi and blood crashing through the meridians were what threw your days and nights out of order back then. Add the overbearing baleful qi unique to a Hegemon Body, hidden in your bones and blood, and that is why your mood would not settle, and why you could not fall asleep..." He paused, then said, "If this junior brother hasn't guessed wrong, back then, though fury surged in your chest, you forced yourself to endure it every single time, pressing a whole chestful of restless fire down into the bottom of your heart, and never willfully took your anger out on anyone else, right? If that's right, then there's no mistake. This is precisely a trait unique to the Hegemon Body!" "Really? Am I truly a Hegemon Body?" Shi Shaojian still did not believe it. Shi Jian not only did not believe it; he even faintly felt that something about what Liu Xiu said was a little off. But he could not think of exactly where it was wrong. He only carefully recalled how Shi Shaojian and he had conducted themselves while slaying demons back then. He thought it over—and froze! Shi Shaojian had indeed been just as Liu Xiu said, holding fire he dared not vent. But... that was because Shi Jian would raise a hand and beat him! You little brat! You're deceiving my son! Shi Jian's eyes widened slightly as he stared at Liu Xiu! Liu Xiu pretended not to see Shi Jian's expression, and went on nodding with a solemn face as he said to Shi Shaojian, "Of course it's true. Rest assured, Senior Brother. Once you have fully awakened the Hegemon Body, thunder will naturally submit to you of its own accord..." Here he paused, then continued, "Senior Brother, you may not know how a Hegemon Body differs from an ordinary constitution. The 'hegemon' of the Hegemon Body is the hegemon of overbearing dominance, the hegemon of a hegemon-lord..." "...What a hegemon means is unrivaled might, and a domineering temperament from birth. But cultivating thunder arts calls for comprehending the thunder arts, experiencing heaven, earth, and nature, and yielding to the Dao-rhythm of thunder. And here's the problem. A Hegemon Body is born unwilling to bow beneath all things. How could it submit to the power of lightning? That is why you, Senior Brother, find it so hard to comprehend methods like palm thunder, the sort that draw down the thunder of heaven and earth!" "R-really? I really am a Hegemon Body!" Delighted surprise showed on Shi Shaojian's face, a joy like dark clouds parting at last to reveal clear sky. Shi Jian was another matter. Brows knit, he said, "Where did you see this talk of a Hegemon Body!" "It comes from an object I once saw. Strange, to speak of it. Square on all four sides, about a palm in length. At night it could glow on its own without any candle flame. Inside were not only thousands upon thousands of stored books, but astronomy and geography, mountains, rivers, and the stars, the profound workings of the cosmos. And what's more, the thing could manifest the light and shadow of living things, as if it were the Grand Void Illusion Realm..." Liu Xiu spun it out the moment he opened his mouth. Shi Shaojian listened in shock. "There is actually a magic treasure like that in the world? Where is it?" It was not only Shi Shaojian who looked toward Liu Xiu. Shi Jian looked at him too, and was beginning to suspect that what Liu Xiu said might actually be true! Liu Xiu sighed. "I don't know where that thing is now, either!" "You don't know?" Shi Shaojian stared wide-eyed at Liu Xiu. He had meant to keep asking, but one glare from Shi Jian drove him back. Shi Shaojian stopped pressing about the object, though he still looked at Liu Xiu with a trace of disbelief. "Junior Brother, am I really a Hegemon Body?" "Senior Brother, don't you think you're very resistant to electricity?" "This... Hahaha, I'm a Hegemon Body, I'm a Hegemon Body..." Shi Shaojian wept with joy, then burst into loud laughter. Only Shi Jian watched with the corner of his mouth twitching without cease. He looked at his own foolish son, then at Liu Xiu, who had come up beside him, and said, "Is there really... a Hegemon Body?" "I am an Innate Dao-Body Holy Embryo!" "......" Understood. There was no Hegemon Body at all! But if there was no Hegemon Body... Shi Jian felt something was wrong, because he had found that the things Liu Xiu described were very accurate. At fourteen or fifteen, Shi Shaojian really had been like that. As he thought, he saw Liu Xiu looking at him with an odd expression and saying, "When I was fourteen or fifteen, I was the same as Senior Brother!" Liu Xiu finished in a low voice. Seeing Shi Jian blank for a moment, he silently retreated half a step. He meant nothing else by it. He was only afraid that, once Shi Jian figured out the business of the puberty Hegemon Body, he would beat him! Fortunately, though, Shi Jian did not beat him! "You... were thoughtful!" Looking at Shi Shaojian, who was still laughing, Shi Jian reached out with a complicated look and patted Liu Xiu on the shoulder. It made Liu Xiu want nothing more than to roll up his sleeve and see whether there were any black lines or the like... The recollection ended! Still the west wing of the Yizhuang. Liu Xiu stopped thinking any further about the Hegemon Body. He rolled up his sleeve, made sure there were no black lines on his arm, and looked at the attribute panel he had handwritten on the paper. Aside from the three kinds of immortal-aspect pills, which he had not yet refined. The alchemy furnace, though, he already had! Shi Jian had given him an alchemy furnace! The two methods for assisting immortal-aspect cultivation had also been successfully cultivated by him. The Yin-Soul Locking Dream Art, however, he still had not gotten any handle on. It made him feel this Yin-Soul Locking Dream Art might truly be just what its name suggested: a method for ghosts called yin souls to cultivate. "I can't very well go and die once, can I?" Liu Xiu muttered inwardly, his gaze shifting to the Profound Abyss Weapon-Condensing Water Method that Shi Jian had specially taught him. This was a method of controlling water and condensing weapons, founded upon one's own Kan-palace Gui Water thunder qi. It spoke of drawing the cold abyssal water qi of the Four Rivers—not raising sky-toppling waves, nor pale and soft like a clear brook, but using deep, heavy yin water to cast arms and armor. In a single sentence, it meant he could use water to clad himself in armor that increased his defense. Though, for now, all he could put on himself was a layer of water vapor that evaporated in no time. There was a little defense, but not much. Still, the means of healing injuries and restoring blood contained in the method made Liu Xiu think it was excellent. Besides that, Liu Xiu also felt this method had a virility-boosting effect. For no other reason than this: ever since he had started cultivating it, that morning prominence had become even more prominent. That was pretty strange! "Strange. This old coot couldn't have divined something and be trying to make me a stand-in for his son..." Liu Xiu pondered with a show of malice. As he thought, he unconsciously recalled Shi Jian's none-too-good temper and the Muchun Great Art he cultivated, and could not help lifting a brow. "Same-qi replenishment?" Liu Xiu's gaze went to the Gui Water thunder he had written on the paper, the one that had reached forty percent progress—that is, the thunder seed of the water-viscera thunder he had cultivated by touching the electric socket. He had not forgotten the bolt of cyan-green thunder Shi Jian had blasted out the day before yesterday, when an evil ghost angered him while he was catching ghosts. It was nothing like the deep-blue thunder Shi Jian ordinarily used. Deep blue belonged to kidney Gui water. And cyan-green belonged to liver Jia wood! "Same-qi replenishment... cyan-green belongs to Jia wood... the Muchun Great Art... so what my master mainly cultivates isn't actually Gui Water yang thunder?" Liu Xiu found it strange. He instinctively thought of Shi Jian's bad temper, and then, by association, of the Muchun Great Art Shi Jian cultivated. "Strange. Why replenish the very place that's already thriving? Shouldn't it be about draining, transforming, and guiding it off? Could it be for the sake of greater control..." Liu Xiu thought it over, and suddenly felt his master treated him pretty well after all. At least, having him walk the path the man himself had walked made him feel it was quite good. His thinking done, Liu Xiu tore off the handwritten attribute panel, stuffed it into his mouth, added a piece of candy, and chewed and swallowed. He had money now. No longer reduced to chewing it dry! "Next, I ought to think about another matter!" Liu Xiu circulated the Celestial Circuit Mercury-Cooking and Stone-Refining Formula, which he had cultivated to the Entry realm. Honestly, he felt this method could stand a few changes. It could be expanded further in depth. Since it could already refine elixir toxin, there was no reason he could not refine elixirs directly by means of the human body. Right. He wanted to refine a great elixir. A human-body great elixir! He felt that, since the method itself took one's own body as a furnace cauldron to refine elixir toxin, he ought to be able to treat his own body directly as an alchemy furnace and refine elixirs in a living body! "It ought to be possible, right?" Liu Xiu felt it should not be much of a problem. Elixir toxin was an elixir too. There was no reason this elixir could be refined while true elixir pills could not. "I'll try once the medicinal herbs arrive..." Liu Xiu quietly made up his mind, ready to bite straight into them the moment the herbs arrived. Speaking of herbs, he felt the herb shops were truly slow at gathering them. Those scarce medicinal herbs—after he had given Shi Jian the names of the ones that could not be bought, Maoshan had delivered them the very next day. And sent them by spell, at that. By contrast, the herbs from those few shops still had not arrived after all these days, which could not help making Liu Xiu think a little further. "They wouldn't have taken my money and run, would they?" Liu Xiu thought it over and felt they probably would not. Ever since the matter of the Tan household and the electromagnetic cannon had ended, Shi Jian's renown had shot up at a tremendous pace. Especially once the townspeople learned that the affair of the Tan household had left Daoist Sun's party of master and disciples, three in all, with one dead and two wounded, business had come to the door every day during the days Shi Jian stayed at the Yizhuang. Business was so good that people had even started seeking Shi Jian out to catch black ghosts. Liu Xiu felt something was a little off, but after thinking it over he felt it was quite reasonable. Those black-ghost things were a lot filthier than ghosts! Although Shi Jian had not gone out himself to catch black ghosts, Liu Xiu had taken Shi Shaojian to catch them. To be fair, black ghosts could take quite a beating. Ahem. That was a digression. Thanks to the Yizhuang's good business these past few days, Liu Xiu had learned quite a lot following Shi Jian. Including, but not limited to, drawing talismans and the like. It was just that some of them he had only learned a little. On this point, Liu Xiu knew his own measure very well! After all, he did not consider himself the protagonist! At most, he was a Child of the Plane! Just a joke. Finding that no one laughed, Liu Xiu gave two dry chuckles himself, muttered that if those herb-shop bosses dared, he would curse their whole families to death, then took the finger-length magic treasure, the Heavenly Thunder Sword, from his pocket and began to examine it again. He had shown the Heavenly Thunder Sword to Shi Jian. Shi Jian had indicated... that he did not understand artifact refining all that well. But Shi Jian had found someone to confirm for him that the changes in the Heavenly Thunder Sword were, on the whole, good. They still had not learned exactly what this change actually was. They could be sure, though, that the change was not dangerous! "This couldn't be my Xiu-Hegemon Sword, could it?" Liu Xiu thought, and put away the Heavenly Thunder Sword, which had begun changing when he cut down the white monstrous worm and still had not finished changing. Honestly, he suspected the transformation had frozen up. Aside from gaining one more layer of white frost, the Heavenly Thunder Sword had nothing else. Just as he was about to do the evening liturgy, the tea in the teacup on the table suddenly rose into the air out of nothing, making him lift a brow in surprise. "Huh? Master's Thousand-Li Voice Transmission?"