Innate Skill

Water crashed against the stone walls, the loud rush echoing in his ears until it sounded almost like the skeleton's mocking sneer. It was downright eerie. The space was cramped, merely two or three square meters; stepping inside brought him virtually face-to-face with the skull. Liang Qu squatted down, finding no carved writing. The skeleton, however, was as lustrous and translucent as jade—clearly no ordinary mortal. Furthermore, every bone throughout the body was fractured, indicating anything but a natural death. There was no telling how long the person had been dead. An ordinary corpse usually decomposed into bare bones within three hundred days, even faster in a damp environment. Yet martial practitioners fell outside the ordinary category, and Liang Qu had never seen a systematic account outlining decomposition times across different realms, leaving him with nothing to compare against. The Tianshui centipede swam over to a thick leg bone and emerged from a hollow opening. "Are you saying what you ate was inside the bones?" Liang Qu picked up a leg bone and found it completely hollow, realization dawning on him at once. The flesh had rotted away long before A-Wei arrived, as had the ligaments connecting the joints. The skeleton had only stayed together because it hung suspended in the vines, and all A-Wei had eaten was a bit of powdered marrow inside the bones. Perhaps anxious that Liang Qu was about to leave, or perhaps because his intrusion had disturbed the delicate balance between the vines and the remains, the skull suddenly tumbled down. It scattered the skeleton and revealed the rock wall behind it. By the dim light, Liang Qu immediately spotted characters engraved beneath the vines. Most were blurred and illegible, but a small portion could still be deciphered. "I am... vanguard general of the Great Gan naval forces... crushed and powerless to resist, gravely wounded, drifted here... ashamed before the imperial favor, I end my life here." A vanguard general of the fallen Great Gan dynasty? He had been dead for quite some years then—at least sixty. Still, if he had drifted here... Could there be an old battlefield nearby? Not finding a martial arts manual was a letdown, but the information revealed was far from useless. If it was a naval battlefield, there ought to have been high-ranking generals. He dared not dream of an Ascendant Dragon, but there had to have been Tiger Hunters or Attaining Elephants, right? The armor they wore and the weapons they wielded could not be ordinary. Fine weapons submerged in water could easily remain uncorroded for a century, especially those made for naval forces. This was worth keeping in mind. Liang Qu took mental note of it. In the past, he had dreamed of stumbling across sunken shipwrecks to make a quick fortune. But Jianghuai Zeye Marsh was far too vast, and the shores around Yixing had little commercial traffic. There were no grand vessels nearby, only rotten fishing boats turned to mud. Even if there were, finding them would be an ordeal. In modern times, even with advanced radar and detectors, locating such wrecks was excruciatingly difficult. For him alone with a few water beasts, it would be harder still. A battlefield, however, spanned a massive area, which offered a sliver of hope. "Whatever. Even though you didn't leave me anything, I'm a kind master. In a bit, I'll carry you out and bury you beneath my lotus root patch to let you rest in peace." Liang Qu clapped the dust from his hands. Resting in peace in the earth was all just decomposition anyway, and decomposing anywhere was the same. Whose grave didn't grow grass? Overgrowth was a fine thing; it showed the geomantic vitality was flourishing. Growing a treasure plant was even better—prosperity piled upon prosperity. He would just need to demarcate a dedicated plot so that any lotus roots grown from that spot would only be fed to his four beasts as rewards. Though there was nothing truly wrong with them, eating them himself would feel a bit unsettling. Sliding back out through the rock crevice, Liang Qu used a sharp stone flake to slice off the water lingzhi, leaving only the rootstock behind so it could continue growing in the future. Liang Qu measured with the stone blade, hesitating for a long moment before cutting off a third. From that third, he split it in half, and then halved one of those pieces again. A sixth would serve as Cannot Move's reward, while the remaining two twelfths would go to Fat Catfish and Fist. As for the newly joined A-Wei, Liang Qu's heart still ached just looking at the remaining rootstock. So much of it had already been devoured by the Tianshui centipede; what was there left to divide? With the water lingzhi apportioned, he ate his share raw. Though it was called a water lingzhi, it was not as tough as wood like ordinary lingzhi; its texture was more akin to a mushroom. [Essence of the waters +21.6] Phew, magnificent! Liang Qu felt invigorated. Per unit, the water lingzhi was worth more than the great crab roe he had eaten before. Without hesitation, he channeled it into increasing his fusion. Once this round of progress concluded, he would be only thirty points away from full fusion with the marsh spirit! What would a cyan marsh spirit look like? Joy welled within him, and warmth began to spread through his stomach as the energy from the water lingzhi surged forth. Without wasting time on idle thoughts, Liang Qu immediately launched into his exercises. Half an hour later, flush red all over like a boiled prawn, Liang Qu exhaled a plume of white vapor and stretched his limbs. The qi and blood in his chest had grown to two cun thick and a chi long. Another half-cun of growth, and he could begin flesh tempering. Things were flourishing on both land and water, advancing side by side. Once the River God Sacrifice was over, he would head to the martial hall to see Senior Brother Hu and patch up his biggest shortcoming—his fighting method. That way, he would become a truly formidable martial practitioner capable of real combat, rather than someone who possessed only physical toughness. Furthermore, nearly ten days had passed, and Senior Brother Lu's forging of his weapon was in full swing; it was time to check on its progress. As Liang Qu looked forward to what lay ahead, the Marsh Cauldron in his mind suddenly blazed with brilliant light. [Water monkey marsh spirit fusion surpasses half. Innate skill unlocked—Water Leap. Bestowed with river favor, it may evolve into the divine ability—Waterborne Thousand Li.] Liang Qu was overjoyed. His intuition had proven true; crossing the halfway mark in fusion really triggered a transformation! As insight struck him, a wondrous sensation washed over his mind. He leaped into the water and activated the feeling. In an instant, the currents around him shifted violently. The water resistance in front of him seemed to vanish entirely, while the currents flanking him and pressing from behind acted like giant hands steadying his body and thrusting him forward. Light and shadow blurred past. By the time he regained his senses, Liang Qu slammed violently into the rock wall at a corner. "Cough!" Jolted by sharp pain, Liang Qu choked on a mouthful of water and scrambled hastily back into the dry hollow. Water Leap was actually a displacement skill that consumed stamina! Upon activation, a portion of his stamina vanished abruptly, and before his nerves could even register what happened, he had crossed ten meters and crashed into the stone wall. By his estimate, it drained roughly a fifth of his stamina. Did that mean if he unleashed Water Leap at full power, he could flash fifty meters through the water in an instant? Liang Qu's heart pounded furiously as he stared at the mention of the divine ability—Waterborne Thousand Li. Could it literally mean traversing a thousand li in an instant? That would be utterly incredible—roaming the Northern Sea at dawn and Mount Cangwu by dusk? The concept of river favor had become tangible for the very first time. In the past, it had merely sat idle on the Marsh Cauldron's panel, and Liang Qu had never known what purpose it served or how to acquire it. Now he finally knew its use, yet how to obtain it remained a mystery, leaving him scratching his head in frustration. Perhaps his strength was still insufficient to reach the threshold required for river favor. After all, judging by its name, winning the favor of an entire river was no minor feat. Suppressing his excitement for the moment, Liang Qu inspected his other abilities. His water manipulation had gained another three hundred jin, reaching eight hundred jin—a massive leap forward. Next, he checked the two beasts. Cannot Move required only twenty-eight points to evolve, and Fat Catfish needed thirty-two. There was no need to check Fist; its evolution remained a long way off, though it would already be fearsome once it came of age. Wait, the numbers didn't add up. Liang Qu paused. He faintly remembered that the last time he checked, it had still required more than forty points. A whole water lingzhi yielded a little over thirty points of essence. Even allowing for uneven slicing, it shouldn't have reduced Cannot Move's requirement by ten points—it had only eaten a sixth, which amounted to barely five points. Did their points decrease naturally over time? After pondering for a while without arriving at an answer, Liang Qu could only attribute it to natural growth. Regardless, needing fewer points for evolution was always a good thing. Liang Qu cast a final glance around the cavern. This was an exceptional sanctuary, not too far from the lotus root patch. He could use it as an outpost in the future and renovate it over time. Before that, he needed to carry the bones out and bury them in the lotus root patch, or it would feel too creepy. How could one let another sleep beside one's bed—not even bare bones! Having finished the deed and allowed his stamina to recover, Liang Qu decided to test a full-power Water Leap. The currents buoyed him up and all resistance dissolved. Fifty meters flew by in the blink of an eye. His stamina seemed to drain completely in a single instant, leaving him thoroughly exhausted, without even the strength to paddle. Liang Qu urgently had Cannot Move hoist him up, and he hauled himself aboard the black-awning boat. It seemed this skill had to be used with extreme caution in battle, lest he end up like fish on a chopping block. Having figured out the skill, Liang Qu rested for a while, then took A-Wei along and headed back for a long, sound sleep.