Chapter 10 : Chapter 10
Chapter 10: Don’t Believe in the Fifth Shock of Flowing Cloud? Then Watch the VCR!
Qin Zhanye let out a rare hearty laugh.
He actually found Li Mu refreshingly straightforward. Whatever he thought, he said it plainly, without any affectation.
With someone like Li Mu, how much effort he put in would depend entirely on whether the reward was worth it.
Otherwise, even if Li Mu showed up, if he did not truly put his heart into it, there would be no point.
“Leaving aside what will happen if this can truly be improved and later implemented on a large scale—you’ll earn quite a bit of merit from that alone!”
“And as for my personal promise, as long as you help sincerely…”
“One premium Blackblood Warhorse, one premium Spiritual Treasure, one premium weapon, and one set of high-grade techniques!”
By the time Qin Zhanye finished speaking, Li Mu’s heart had practically stopped beating.
That whole package was worth at least over a million.
“Kid, I know I can’t morally blackmail you into serving the nation.”
“But even putting aside those material rewards…”
“For every person who survives because the Flowing Cloud Triple Shock has been improved…”
“…that is a deed of merit.”
Qin Zhanye used both approaches at once. After laying out the material rewards, he still did not forget to make a detour through the spiritual and moral side of things.
Li Mu nodded, deeply moved.
“Alright… the high-grade technique is my choice, right?”
The veins at Qin Zhanye’s temples throbbed, and he nodded speechlessly.
At that moment, noisy voices came from inside the meeting room.
The assistant quickly said to Qin Zhanye,
“Wolf Guard Qin, please go in.”
Qin Zhanye immediately pushed the door open and entered.
Inside the plainly furnished meeting room stood a long conference table.
Several dozen attendees were just preparing to leave in an orderly manner through the back door.
A few middle-aged men in civilian clothes seated at the very front were also packing up their things.
The moment Qin Zhanye entered, he shouted, “Leaders, please stay a moment!”
At once, everyone in the room turned to look at him.
“Director Song, I’ll speak plainly.”
“Just now, this young man used the Fifth Shock of Flowing Cloud. I specially brought him here for you to meet.”
The moment they heard the words “Fifth Shock of Flowing Cloud,” everyone in the room looked at one another in astonishment.
The middle-aged man called Director Song also looked toward Li Mu.
“Wolf Guard Qin, what did you just say?”
“There’s no point talking too much. Please watch the surveillance footage.”
Qin Zhanye directly connected his phone to the large screen in the meeting room.
Then he began playing the footage of Li Mu breaking Red-Hair’s right leg.
As Li Mu used the Fourth Shock and then the Fifth Shock, the entire meeting room instantly erupted!
When it ended, an older professor nearby hurriedly said, “Play it again!”
Qin Zhanye played it again, and the professor grew even more excited.
“Again!”
Li Mu was speechless. Was the old professor really that fond of watching VCRs?
Qin Zhanye also said, “Professor Xu, if you want to see it, we can go outside and have Li Mu spar with me. Wouldn’t that be clearer?”
The old man rushed up at once and grabbed Li Mu by the arm.
“Child, you… you can use it again??”
Director Song and the others were staring too, their eyes full of anticipation.
Li Mu found it rather amusing. So the reason these people had been replaying the footage over and over was because they thought his Fifth Shock of Flowing Cloud had only been a moment of sudden inspiration, a fluke that would be impossible to reproduce.
“Yes.”
Li Mu nodded.
“Good! Good, good, good! Xiao Liu, hurry and notify all the teachers from the spear-and-staff division!” Director Song said joyfully as he gave the order to his assistant.
Soon after, Li Mu and Qin Zhanye were escorted out of the Research Department by the crowd and brought to an open area.
Not long afterward, a huge throng of people came pouring out of the Research Department.
Many of them were actually disheveled and unkempt, and some even wore clothes so old the colors had faded out.
There were at least sixty or seventy of them.
Most of them looked to be around thirty years old. On the way over, they had already heard the whole story from Assistant Liu.
The moment they came out, they crowded forward excitedly.
“You’re saying this young man can use the Fifth Shock of Flowing Cloud?”
And when they learned that the person in question was Li Mu, all of them froze.
After all, none of them had seen the footage from just now.
“The Flowing Cloud Triple Shock has already been refined as far as it can go.”
“Are you sure what he used was really the Flowing Cloud Spear Technique?”
These people all possessed extremely advanced understandings of martial techniques, and they knew the potential of the Flowing Cloud Spear Technique better than anyone.
The great experts of the past had long since compressed and refined it until there was almost nothing left to refine.
There should not have been any more superior way to present it.
“There’s no point talking. Li Mu, make your move!”
Qin Zhanye handled things with clean decisiveness.
He could not be bothered to waste another word. Drawing a long blade, he spoke directly to Li Mu.
Li Mu did not hesitate in the slightest either.
Pinching and pulling at his ear with his fingers, he produced a Black Iron long staff in his hand with a soft pop.
Then he swept it straight at Qin Zhanye.
A staff and a cudgel were not the same thing.
A staff was straight and even in thickness from end to end, emphasizing agility and lightness.
A cudgel, by contrast, had one thick end and one thin end, or else thick ends with a narrow middle, or even metal fixtures attached to both ends.
A cudgel gave off a fiercer, more overbearing feeling, and placed more emphasis on explosive power.
Unfortunately, weapons of the cudgel type were very rare.
Even in his uncle’s blacksmith shop, there were only two staves. As for cudgel-type weapons, there were none at all.
Qin Zhanye stepped lightly beneath his feet, and the long blade in his hand cut out with perfect precision, knocking aside Li Mu’s sweep.
With Qin Zhanye’s level of cultivation, even three Li Mus tied together would not be enough to matter.
Clang!
When the first strike missed, Li Mu swept out the second staff strike, faster and fiercer than before.
Blocked again.
Then came the third strike.
By this point, every spectator’s eyes had widened abruptly.
Forget the Fifth Shock. Even these first three shocks already far surpassed the ordinary Flowing Cloud Spear Technique.
Because at its core, what Li Mu used was still the Flowing Cloud Spear Technique.
And yet the flexibility of his transitions lay far beyond what they had ever imagined.
The power of his Second Shock had already reached the level of an ordinary practitioner’s Third Shock.
And when Li Mu swept out the fourth staff strike—
“Hiss—!”
The sight of everyone present drawing in a sharp breath together was truly spectacular.
The key point of the Fourth Shock of Flowing Cloud was not whether or not you could throw a fourth strike.
It was whether that fourth strike could still carry the accumulated momentum of the previous staff art.
With ordinary use of the Flowing Cloud Triple Shock, by the fourth strike, people simply could not preserve the earlier momentum anymore. It would all be exhausted in the third strike.
No one could truly use a fourth strike.
And when Li Mu brought down the fifth strike—
Everyone’s pupils dilated sharply!
Clang!
Qin Zhanye was actually forced back half a step.
Qin Zhanye’s eyes lit up, and the hand gripping his blade tightened slightly as he praised, “Good boy! Let these fellows see it one more time!”
Since Li Mu was already standing here under the promise of a reward, he could only perform it again.
This time, Professor Xu, who was already around sixty years old, actually raised both hands high in an exaggerated manner.
“Open your eyes wide! Look carefully! Look carefully!!”
More than half of the teachers from the Research Department actually rubbed their eyes hard before staring at Li Mu with widened eyes.
The sight of it was even a little… comical.
For a moment, Li Mu lost himself in thought.
The Flowing Cloud Triple Shock was only a Mortal-Grade technique.
These people definitely knew far more than just this one technique, and this definitely was not the most important technique among them.
So why had it driven a military professor—someone even a Senior Wolf Guard had to treat with respect—into such a loss of composure?
Suddenly, from Professor Xu, Director Song, and all of these teachers, Li Mu felt a single word.
Obsession.
They truly were like a flock of diligent hens laying eggs, pouring everything they had into making each egg just a little better in quality.
They had truly given it their all.
So Li Mu let out a soft sigh and decided to give them a little gift.
With Li Mu’s current level of understanding, he could actually perform as many as seven shocks.
But to avoid sending these old men’s blood pressure through the roof, and because he was also afraid it would be too much for them to digest all at once—
Li Mu decided to let them see the Sixth Shock…