Destiny in Cinders

To think that he figured it out from my habitual use rather than an actual demonstration, Ming Guangchen thought. "Did you really understand it?"

Ming Guangchen heard An Jing's explanation and suppressed his doubts. "Try to reproduce it. Let me see how much you really got from it."

"Yes, Master." After witnessing the swordsong stance, An Jing was more than willing to call Ming Guangchen his master. When he reproduced the movements of the swordsong stance, the sage almost forgot to keep his composure. Not only had An Jing really noticed it, he even managed to learn it!

However, he didn't use a sword. Instead, he performed a set of barehanded forms. His fists moved incredibly slowly. He pulled it back from his chest to his waist and repeated the punch, each cycle taking twenty seconds. It was so slow that even an eighty-year-old man could throw a faster punch, yet An Jing's fists left rippling trails in the air. The force and qi centered at his fists visibly spread out in all directions. It looked like ripples on a water surface after raindrops fell into it; An Jing even reproduced the crown-like splashes that resulted from the momentum of a falling droplet!

He gathered his aura to strengthen his body and exerted force in fluctuating pulses, causing his body and the air around him to resonate. Throughout, he ensured that his soul and body were as unified as possible. The stance consumed lots of energy to the point that he had expended a third of his aura pool with those simple movements, double the amount he had spent killing the four Fortification Realm demonic cultists!

An Jing wasn't merely punching the air. Instead, his target was a tree at the edge of the forest of around twenty years of age. His punches slowly landed on the tree. Then, he exhaled and pulled his punch back. The bark where his punch landed turned into ash and dissipated. The trunk beneath it collapsed and melted, causing sticky resin to leak out of the fist-shaped hole. Once the resin flowed out completely, a hole through the other side of the tree could be seen.

Given An Jing's power, it wasn't hard for him to punch a hole through a tree with Armorpierce Impetus. Yet, the punch he had just used was incredibly slow. The force didn't come from his physical body. Instead, it was all achieved by aura alone. A punch that was as loud as thunderclaps, light yet heavy. This was an application of the internal-force principle!

That wasn't the end of it either. An Jing seemed to have figured something else out when he finished his punch and used a palm strike on a different tree. The strike didn't even result in a gust of air, yet the shapeless force seemed to gradually stretch across space and left a palm imprint on the bark. This was a no-contact palm strike.

He then went to the riverbank and punched the water. The punch didn't disturb the surface of the water in the slightest, but the pebbles under it fractured and turned to ash. The force seemed to transfer through water as a medium without dissipating in the slightest.

Then, An Jing picked a leaf off a free, infused it with aura, and tossed it out. The leaf hummed as it cut through the air before slicing off a branch like it was metal before disintegrating into nothing. He just made leaves into blades with aura!

It was as if he had found a new toy or a long-lost friend to play with. The more he ventured, the happier he became. It didn't look like martial practice in the slightest. Instead, it was pure curiosity, experimentation and play!

Though An Jing was having the time of his life, Ming Guangchen's expression was grim. All those applications of aura that An Jing displayed were things he had wanted to teach him a few days later: applied force, gentle force, hidden force, rock crush, metalcarve, metalform, thunder grind, armorpierce and touchless strike.

An Jing had playfully executed every uncommon application of aura. He had used metalform to turn a blade of grass into actual blades that cut through pebbles. Then, he used gentle force to throw the pebble and make it skip across the water's surface, reaching hundreds of meters away. He also used touchless strike on the surface of the water, resulting in ripples that knocked out a large fish. He picked up the fish and gave it a tap, causing it to slump lifelessly. Then, red liquid leaked out from beneath its scales. The fish's bones had been crushed by thunder grind and turned into a mushy mess.

"It's no wonder one can advance along the martial path through cooking. This will make it so much easier to make smooth meatballs or fishballs. I see, these are the foundational principals of Armorpierce Impetus and Profoundstep. They're just applications of aura!"

An Jing was utterly elated. He had learned the applied methods long ago through the Imperial Sky and Earth Arts. Armorpierce Impetus contained the principles of applied force, armorpierce, thunder grind, metalform and rock crush. Profoundstep used the principles of hidden force and gentle force.

While An Jing already used aura to strengthen his body and maintain his stamina, he had believed that those benefits stemmed from the martial techniques he was using. However, his new insights allowed him to understand that martial techniques weren't immutable and stiff applications. Instead, they were combinations of finer and more fundamental principles of aura manipulation that were completely divorced from mundane logic. Aura could be used to apply force without need for direct bodily contact, strengthen the weak, fleshy body until it was as tough as metal or rock, pierce through armor to deal damage and even increase one's speed without causing turbulence in the air. As long as he was able to master all ways of applying aura, he would be able to learn any kind of martial technique in very little time and some practice. This was how certain geniuses managed to pick up martial techniques just by witnessing someone perform them.

"What in the world is this kind of talent..." Ming Guangchen could no longer smile at the sight. An Jing gradually discovered all the typical ways to use aura over the course of the hour. In fact, he used them like a master rather than a beginner who had just begun to grasp it. If Ming Guangchen hadn't personally witnessed the fight and saw how rough An Jing's aura manipulation was, he would've thought that An Jing had been hiding his mastery the whole time.

"How is it, Master?" An Jing turned around and had almost exhausted his whole aura pool. Yet, he didn't seem worn out in the least and felt rather relaxed. He excitedly said, "After mastering all this, I should be able to learn any kind of wonder. That means I can advance to the Fortification Realm, right?"

"Fortification Realm? That's an understatement. You're a starchild born with the Spark, aren't you?" Ming Guangchen said after some thought. Seeing An Jing nod as if it was the most natural thing in the world caused him to sigh in relief. "An Jing, you were no doubt a really impressive martialist in your past life. Perhaps you're the incarnation of some immortal or god!"

"Huh? Are there divine-arc bearers who aren't incarnations of immortals or gods?"

"How would there be so many to incarnate from?" Ming Guangchen shook his head. "The humans of Void Embrace descend from the divine subjects that Great Immortal Void Embrace brought here in primordial times. Everyone's descended from some divinity in a sense. People who awaken divine arcs are typically those who awakened the divine bloodlines they inherited from their ancestors. They are incarnations, in a way, but it's not the same as incarnating from the soul of the same being. I'm not really sure how, An Jing, but your talent for the martial path is definitely not something that a first-timer can display. What you have is talent that approaches that of divine beings."

An Jing was in fact a follower of the martial path in his past life, but he only practiced typical martial arts and weapon techniques. However, his constitution in his past life hampered him considerably. There were quite a few people in his dojo that were more capable than he was.

"Oh well. You can indeed try to break through to the Fortification Realm." Thoughts were still racing through Ming Guangchen's mind, though it wasn't from shock. He was completely rethinking An Jing's education plan after seeing him shatter it so cleanly with his own eyes. This kid's like a monster. No wonder Mingjing trusts him so much... If it were me, I'd trust him even more than she does!

"Let's go back for now." Ming Guangchen looked up and saw that it was daybreak. He sighed and said, "Soon, the official from Keensight will visit you. Once you've dealt with him, I'll teach you the secret core teachings of Voidsight Mountain."