Chapter 278: Competitive Advantage
Yang Xiu was having a bit of trouble with the rank four beast she was fighting, an armadillo. More like an armor-dillo. The thing was encased in a thick, qi-enhanced bone shell that her arrowheads simply could not penetrate. Even its eyes were armored, and while not fast, it was quick enough to be able to move its head so that her shots hit the armored eyelids instead of the eyes as she intended.
Obviously, she could have used any of the arrows Master had created for her to solve the situation, but using a limited resource to defeat such a relatively low level creature would have been a waste. The special munitions gave her great power and versatility, but they took Master’s precious time to create and should be used for actual emergencies.
Her lack of power frustrated her, especially after seeing her brother execute the new use of his technique in actual combat. He still wasn’t fast enough with it to counter her arrows, but that was only a matter of practice and experience. She could easily see how powerful that tactic would make him in the future.
Between that addition to his skillset and his overall build favoring strength and toughness, he was sure to go far in the tournament. In contrast, her Body Cultivation helped in those two areas, but it mainly enhanced her speed.
Which was fantastic. With each new minor realm in Silver that she achieved, she felt like a part of her had been freed, like she had always been meant to move that fast and the baths just unlocked it. The advancement felt right.
Adding too much strength and toughness would have conflicted with her aspect, a matter that, after much research and meditation, she much more thoroughly understood. Any improvement that ran counter to who she was at core was no improvement at all.
She was, “Perfectly smooth ice balanced on the razor edge of freezing and thawing.” Adding, say, “with lightning” at the end of that sentence wouldn’t give her the ability to use Lightning qi. Instead, it would almost definitely create a horrible feedback loop where the Ice and Lightning conflicted with each other, severely messing up her cultivation.
Still, she needed a way to increase her personal power and had been thinking of the best solution ever since she’d first approached Master about changing her aspect. After watching Yang Ru the previous day, her resolve regarding finding that solution firmed.
Not for the first time, she repeated the phrase in her mind as she shot more arrows at the armadillo, keeping it away from her as she literally ran circles around it.
Perfectly smooth ice was fine. Not anything to be messed with. Her entire cultivation and combat style was based on those three words.
And therein laid the problem. She didn’t use the rest of the phrase, the majority, nine words, at all. And there was a lot in there.
For example, Balance. Depending on how she fixed the meaning of that word in her mind, there could be some interesting applications for it. The element could definitely enhance her movement techniques, making it more difficult for her to fall. It could also be used offensively, like making her opponent lose their balance. Or more esoterically, she could creatively bring a fight more in balance. If her opponent were stronger, she could balance her and their respective strength.