The Ancient Strengthening Technique

AST 1141 - Nine Yang Golden Flame, Black Tortoise Golden Scaled Battle Armor, Battle Skirt

Tantai Xuan's gorgeous and beautiful face turned completely red. Unfortunately, no one had been able to witness such a scene. It was only when Qing Shui's side calmed down that her feelings gradually subsided. Furthermore, she was now able seal away her spiritual consciousness and sense.

She did not know what was going on. She was confused to the point where she even started blaming herself. She was afraid that it might have had something to do with herself and could not calm down. When a virgin saw such a scene, it felt just the same as her standing inside their room. The impact given to her was something that she would not be able to wash away for the rest of her life.

Qing Shui was unaware of all of this. If he had known, he would definitely guess that it had to do with the Portraits of Beauty somehow. Other than that, there was no other reasons to explain the situation. It was just that no one knew how he would feel if he had found out that someone else actually saw a live stream of "erotic pictures" of himself…...

Yu Ruyan was already deep in her slumber. She was simply too tired. On her face, there was a content and happy smile. It felt good to be protected and spoiled by someone. No matter how strong she may have been, she was still a woman at the end of the day. Anyone would fear being alone.

Thinking of loneliness, Qing Shui remembered some of the things that had happened in his previous incarnation. An old man had been sick, and when he was hospitalized, he saw many family members of other patients visiting them. Even though the old man was rich, no one had bothered to visit him.

After recovering from his sickness, the old man had chosen instead to commit suicide by feeding on sleeping pills. Normally, when one managed to recover from a major sickness, they would bless the gods for being able to stay alive. This old man, on the other hand, had chosen to commit suicide the day before he could leave the hospital.

Only from his suicide note did people eventually discover why he had committed suicide. He was too lonely. Not only did he not have a son or daughter, his partner had also passed away. Being alone, his house lacked a kind of liveliness. There was no longer anything in the world which he had truly cared about.

The reason why he had brought Yu Ruyan along this time was precisely because he was afraid she would feel lonely. Not only did she leave Duanmu Clan, her daughter had established a family of her own as well. That was why Qing Shui decided to bring her along and further improved his relationship with her. He did it forcefully so that he would be able to establish a position in her heart and make her remember him. One would no longer feel lonely when they found someone which they cared about. Now, she would have someone to think about from time to time.

Qing Shui bent his body and kissed her forehead. After that, he quietly walked outside and immediately entered the Realm of the Violet Jade Immortal. He still had a bit of time left, and he wanted to investigate the Black Tortoise Shell.

It has been said that the Black Tortoise Shell was a shell on the back of a Black Tortoise. Black Tortoise was supposedly a kind of demonic beast that possessed the legendary black tortoise bloodline. Based on its bloodline, the Black Tortoise Shell was also divided into three qualities. Even though the one Tantai Xuan gave him was not that big, it was considered decent in terms of its qualities. The quality of the Black Tortoise Shell was not decided by its size.

Qing Shui saw both the Black Tortoise Shell and the Spirited Snake Turtle inside the pond at the same time. The latter was a Spiritual Type of Heaven and Earth, yet it was unlikely for the Spirited Snake Turtle to be as strong as the Black Tortoise.

Qing Shui prepared some armor while inside the Realm of the Violet Jade Immortal. Among them, there were battle armor and battle skirts. These armor were all forged with the best materials Qing Shui currently possessed. There were Seal Formation carved on all of them.

What Qing Shui intended to do now was to use the Black Tortoise Armor to refine these armor. As to how many of them he could refine with it, he himself was not clear about it. He was planning to test it first to see if it would really work.

Qing Shui had never been too satisfied with the armor. For someone at Qing Shui's level, the potential of this armor was like icing on the cake.

First off, Qing Shui used the Heavenly Vision Technique to look at the properties of the Black Tortoise Shell.

The shell of a Black Tortoise Turtle possessed formidable physical and spiritual defensive capabilities. It could be used to forge materials, but it could not be used directly from its unrefined form. It had to be smelted and forged at the same time to be used.

The main function about this armor was to help increase one's physical defense. It only provided a minor boost in spiritual defense. Despite so, Qing Shui felt that this armor suited him really well, the reason being that he himself had the Arhat Rosary Beads and Spirited Snake Turtle. All of the spirit energy which attacked him would be weakened by seventy percent. In other words, he would be able to withstand spirit energy attacks used by a low grade State Master.

As Qing Shui thought up to this point, he became unusually excited. This time, he wanted to forge a powerful battle armor for himself and use it alongside with the Nine Continents Mountain. With his own strength, he would definitely be able to use it extraordinarily well. That being said, he would finally be able to battle against a lot of the warriors who were only slightly above him. After all, he was still quite confident with his own battle techniques.

Qing Shui picked out a few of his armor and started forging them. The three armor which Qing Shui picked were all slightly harder than average. They belonged to the kind of armor with soft scales. When mixed together, such a type of armor was said to have the best quality.

It was made of Golden Scaled Beast Leather, one of the best beast leather found in the Interspatial Silk Sachets that he had collected thus far. He left one behind for each of the girls in the five continents. Yu Ruyan also had one. This time, however, Qing Shui was attempting to add in some Black Tortoise Shell to see what would happen.

Once the armor started taking shape, Qing Shui mixed the Black Tortoise Shell into it. This process would still require one's abilities to a certain extent. For example, it would not be easy to smelt the Black Tortoise Shell, as it possessed spiritual nature. It had the ability to neutralize spirit energy attacks.

This explained the reason why many blacksmiths were unable to forge Black Tortoise Armor. Across the continents, powerful blacksmiths have all been powerful warriors, just like how powerful alchemists were powerful warriors. This was because they needed their own Original Flame of Life.

Qing Shui's Original Flame of Life was originally the Primordial Flame. It was only until his Nine Yang Golden Body reached small success stage that he had realized some of the changes. The Primordial Flame transformed into the heart of the fire whereas the flame surrounding it turned into Nine Yang Golden Flame.

Golden Flame was an incomparably powerful flame, it was especially strong when it was part of the Nine Yang Golden Flame. This actually caused the strength of the Primordial Flame to, once again, take another leap ahead. It was a kind of fusion, the result of two energies combining together. After all, the center of the fire was the Primordial Flame, a flame that could harmonize with all living things. Living things were originally formed by primal chaos to begin with.

As time passed by, Qing Shui smiled. He could begin to see the Black Tortoise Shell slowly becoming loose. As long as it was able to get loose, there would be hope. The Yin-yang Image within his sea of consciousness was spinning rapidly to increase the power of the Primordial Flame.

At the blink of an eye, a week had passed. The Black Tortoise Shell had melted into a layer of dull moisture, slowly flowing into the armor. It was a really incredible and unimaginable sight.

Qing Shui was a bit panicked at first, but he very quickly realized that he needed to use spirit energy to control the moisture and blend it into his armor. The process had a high spirit energy consumption.

Qing Shui's eyes were really bright. This was a brand new way of smelting, one that involved the Black Tortoise Shell. Even though it was Qing Shui's first time trying this, he seemed like he was already used to it. He was able to control them as he wished, even though it consumed a lot of spirit energy. For Qing Shui, he was able to deal with the energy consumption. After all, he had the Arhat Rosary Beads. Thanks to that, he managed to reduce the consumption of energy.

Ding!

It was a delicate ringing noise, followed by a magnificent multi-colored light that shone out of the bright, gold armor. The duration in which the light lasted was very short, so much so that Qing Shui was unable to accurately tell how many colors there were.

He enthusiastically moved his sight towards the armor that had just been forged.

Black Tortoise Golden Scaled Battle Armor, increases one's physical defense by a fold and 20% of spirit energy defense. Additional battle technique, Black Tortoise Armor.

Black Tortoise Armor, activated with spirit energy. Energy consumption would increase by one fold. Simultaneously, the wearer would be able to experience a boost in their basic defense by one fold as well as a 20% boost in their defense against spirit energy.

Qing Shui was really satisfied with it. As of now, he was able to comprehend some of the things up to a certain extent. For someone of his level, the weapons and armor were both very rare material, particularly those that helped boost the user's strength by one fold. These items were definitely regarded as an extremely powerful existence. Back then, when his strength was still quite low, some of his armor could provide boost in defense up to several folds. But now, if he were to wear them again, it would immediately lose its effect. There was no denying that there were still items which could help increase the user's defense by a number of folds for someone at his level. But those were just too precious, so precious that they were considered to be at the legendary artifact grade, or perhaps even more divine artifact grades.

Qing Shui's Big Dipper Sword was not just any kind of ordinary object. As of now, the Violet Star Thunder God was already considered to be used officially as a forging hammer. In addition to that, it was also used as a weapon by Qing Shui to cultivate the Thousand Hammer Technique.

Now, he felt really satisfied. The only thing was that he did not have a clear idea of whether a warrior with the strength of a State Master would still be able to boost their strength by one fold if they put on the Black Tortoise Armor. Armor and types of weapons all had their limits. For example, a person with formidable strength would be able to destroy his target's battle armor.

Forget it, let's test it out first!

Qing Shui put the armor on. The armor itself wasn't that heavy. Additionally, he was able to feel an abundance of energy rushing into his body. Even though he did not experience any significant boost in terms of his strength, it felt really similar to when he was holding his own breath. Under that situation, his body's ability to resist attacks would increase by a tremendous amount. Other than that, his mind seemed to feel slightly more refreshing than before.

"Splendid!" Qing Shui didn't hold back with his compliments.

Seeing that he still had a bit of time left as well as plentiful amounts of Black Tortoise Shells, it would not be a problem for him to forge out another two armors. He immediately set off with his task and forged out another two Black Tortoise Golden Scaled Battle Skirts.

The battle skirts had exactly the same ability as the Black Tortoise Golden Scaled Battle Armor, except they looked more beautiful than the battle armor. Previously, both the Golden Scaled Battle Armor and skirts looked really glamorous and unusually gorgeous. But once the Black Tortoise Shell had been blended into it, the armor became different. Not only had its abilities changed, even the outer appearance looked a bit different. To put it in another way, it looked a little less gorgeous but, instead, had a more noble look to it.

This made Qing Shui unusually satisfied.

It was almost time for him to exit the realm. The sky was already bright and it was past the time when he usually did his morning exercise. After washing himself, he immediately exited the realm only to find that the sun was already in the sky. The time for his morning exercise was nearly over.

There was no one inside the room, as both Yu Ruyan and Tantai Xuan were doing their morning exercises. Qing Shui was able to tell with his spiritual sense. He went out and coincidentally ran into the two girls returning to the house.

Yu Ruyan looked radiant and graceful. She tried to avoid direct contact with Qing Shui's eyes, the reason being it would remind her of all the things which had happened yesterday. At the same time, Qing Shui unintentionally spotted Tantai Xuan who was standing by a corner. She had an extremely complicated expression while looking at him.

If he ever managed to find out that she had seen live erotic scenes of him, he would most likely be able to figure out why she looked so complicated. Qing Shui could also sense that her eyes looked a bit tired.

"Go wash your face and rinse first. I'll get you guys something to eat." Qing Shui smiled and said to the girls.

For some reason, Qing Shui felt really weird seeing Tantai Xuan's complicated look. It has always been said that what a man was thinking could straightaway be told from their facial expression when they looked at a woman. Similarly, the same thing might also happen when a woman looked at a man. It was just that it would feel a bit different. It would not be as obvious as when a man did so. Despite looking a bit weird, one would still be able to feel it just like how Qing Shui was feeling now.

"This is just weird." Qing Shui muttered while eating.

It was quite late by the time they had finished dinner. Qing Shui took out a set of Black Tortoise Golden Scaled Battle Skirt and passed it to Yu Ruyan: "I'm giving this to you. I'll be leaving in a while."

Yu Ruyan smiled as soon as she saw it was a skirt. She received it and asked, "Is Sister Xuan getting one too? It wouldn't look nice if I'm the only one wearing it."

"Yes, gift this to her then. She will definitely reject it if it comes from my hand." Qing Shui passed Yu Ruyan another set of armor.

Yu Ruyan received the armor and immediately squeezed it into Tantai Xuan's hand. She held her hand, "Let's go and get changed."

Tantai Xuan followed Yu Ruyan and went on to get changed. Qing Shui felt a bit upset. He thought that Tantai Xuan's change happened a bit too quickly given that they had not seen each other for only a night. He just could not figure out the reason for the change...

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