Chapter 20: Goliath

After this short greeting, Grace took out a little crystal clear gem from her robes and handed it to Jessy. “This is the testing stone. We only have two in the Clan, one of them I have and the other one is in Elder Jeng’s possession. Just hold it and pour a little power into it. It will change colour and brightness to show how far your spirit power cultivation has progressed in the barrier realm.”

Jessy held the stone in her hand and looked it over. Then without hesitation injected some spirit energy. The moment her spirit energy touched the stone, she felt a strange foreign warmth spread through her body, after a second it returned to the little gem.

Skay’s eyes were shooting light he was so excited. Something that can measure refined spirit energy, of course, the old madman was excited. This object was something they needed to get their hands on. As soon as possible!

James to was slightly intrigued as well, and having worked with Skay for a while now he could tell the crazy old bastard might just swallow that stone in an attempt to steal it. He cupped his chin and watched the stone as it slowly lit up.

The gem itself changed colours several times until finally settling on a dark blue. After it’s colour settled down, a luminescent glow slowly came into existence filling nearly a third of the gem.

Grace’s hand was shaking as she reached it out and took the gem to examine it. She then gave it a few shakes, and it returned to crystal clear. She then poured in some spirit energy and the gem took on an incredibly bright yellow shine.

James wasn’t too sure what to make of all this. ‘For starters, what does the colour mean? Doesn’t it just need to shine a certain amount to show how much we’ve filled our barrier?’

Skay had already flipped out his black-pad and started making notes on everything.

After a moment of inspection, Grace gave the gem another shake allowing it to turn clear, and handed it to James. Then as if James didn’t exist she completely ignored him and turned to Jessy with an expression of having just found a diamond in a cat’s litter box.

“Little Junior Jessy, I should tell you that you have an incredible aptitude for cultivation. There are seven shades of colour, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue and purple. In that order, they represent a person’s potential based. You’re the first blue reaction I’ve ever seen from the testing stone. Actually, you’re the only blue reaction I’ve ever heard of in the entire empire.”

Meanwhile, the crazy duo was busy doing some experiments while Grace was distracted. Skay was busily writing things down, and James looked like he was placing some electrodes onto the gem. When they were ready, Skay glanced at James and started hitting some buttons to record everything. They both gave each other a nod and James slipped a little bit of energy into the gem.

The moment his energy entered, a strange warmth flowed through his body. Then after going everywhere it could, it returned to the gem. At first, the gem had no reaction at all. For a whole 4 or 5 seconds, it just sat there like nothing had happened at all.

Then finally it rapidly began changing colours ... and then didn’t stop. It just kept changing endlessly and cycled through faster and faster, until the entire crystal looked black as all the colours merged together. At this point, a bright rainbow light started filling the insides of the gem until it had filled almost a third of it.

Seeing this James had a very strange look on his face. He closed his eyes to check his spirit realm. When he came out his face was even stranger.

“Boy, what’s going on? I thought you said you had nearly half your realm full now.”

Skay seemed to be simultaneously excited and disappointed at these results. Most likely because he’d already expected something else only to have that expectation blown away.

James looked at the stone in his hand then cupped his chin again. “Well, I can tell you right now old madman. My spirit realm is half full. My spirit energy covers half the area inside the barrier. I’m definitely not wrong about this.”

What James said was true. His spirit realm looked just like it normally did. Half the dome was filled with his wind nebula, inside of which was his lightning nucleus and on the ground remained his whirlwind of plasma. All together these things took up almost half of his spirit barrier.

As he tried to process what was going on Grace had turned back around and was frozen on the spot watching the black crystal with rainbow colours inside of it. She then actually rubbed her eyes. Then she pinched herself. Then she looked at the other shell-shocked disciples to make sure they saw it too.

“Black? It’s fucking turned black? What did you do to it?!” Before Grace had the chance to move forwards and snatch it James gave it shake and it turned clear again.

“Hmm, sorry I might have been operating my breathing technique while I did it. Let’s give it another try shall we?” Saying as much, James made a conscious effort to stop his breathing technique.

After stopping his breathing, he injected some energy again and the stone turned purple. After that it slowly glowed until half of it was filled.

Skay’s eyes glittered, and James’ face grew a triumphant proud grin. He looked to Skay. “What did I tell you. Breathing techniques can change everything. The more powerful it is, the more we can force into our barrier.”

As the two started a discussion on the implications of this experiment, Grace just stared with a bitter face. It was truly absurd. One of them with blue and one of them purple. What kind of freaks were these people?

After a short discussion, it was Skay’s turn. Amusingly Grace’s face just became even blanker, as Skay used the gem and got a light blue colour. His light only filled about a quarter of the gem. This was because he spent more time focused on research and rarely took the opportunity to train spirit energy like James or Jessy did.

After a moment of congratulating each other, they reluctantly returned the gem. Just to be sure, Grace tested it again. Then shaking her head with a dry smile, she placed it back into her robes.

It was finally time. Their first training session with Grace involved some basic tests to determine how strong they presently were. Grace was aware that regarding martial techniques and energy cultivation, there wasn’t much she could help then with. Instead, she was here to cultivate their battle experience.

For starters, she allowed them to sit in and watch some sparring between the disciples she brought with her. This way they could get an idea of what battle between cultivators was truly like.

Over on the other side of the arena things proceeded slowly, and thousands of commoners gradually cycled through the system. Everyone there would occasionally glance over to the Gau Clan disciples and sigh in awe as they fired off martial techniques left and right. They could only hope to one day reach the stage they could freely use techniques like that.

The first few battles were pretty exciting for the Brotherhood members, and they managed to get a good idea of just how much punishment a person could take when they used spirit energy to protect parts of their bodies and how much they could doll out with techniques.

After a few fights, one of the Sword Hall disciples walked up to the centre of their training area. For someone so young he was a big guy. He looked even younger than Harvy had when they first met. The only glaring exception was his size and colour. He stood at nearly 7 feet, and his body was covered from head to toe in rippling bulging muscles. He had a head of short white hair which contrasted significantly with his dark skin. Most interesting was his fire red eyes. He constantly looked like he was holding back his anger at ... well, pretty much everything.

His first opponent was a young man from the Hall of Forging who was so short and skinny, he made this battle look like a re-enactment of David and Goliath. Naturally on this world that battle ended differently.

David made a polite bow and gave a “let’s have a good spar, I hope to learn a lot.” in a quiet, humble voice. Goliath just stood there with his arms crossed arrogantly looking down his nose at David. He made a harrumph in reply then before Grace even gave the signal to start he stomped down onto the ground.

The earth seemed to ripple out towards David forcing him up into the air. Before David could even get his bearings, Goliath had approached and swung out one of his massive arms. A sickening ‘crunch’ rang out, and David shot through the air landing and rolling nearly 15 metres away.

James was rather surprised. He knew things could often be brutal for Clan members when it came to grudges and resources, but to him, it seemed like this pair hardly even knew each other and furthermore, this was just training.

Jessy seemed to take exception to the manner in which Goliath had won this spar, and while running forwards to check the injured David, she began to rebuke him. “Just what the hell are you doing? This is only a sparring match! There was no need to use so much force and you sure as hell didn’t have to use petty tricks. The fight hadn’t even started yet!”

Goliath just looked on with cold and indifferent eyes. “Little girl, fists and feet have no eyes. I don’t take any chances in any battles. Training, sparring or a true battle to the death. I don’t care. Fighting is for proving your strength and beating down your opponents. If you feel so heartbroken for the boy, then come up here and challenge me.”

James’ eyes squinted slightly as he watched Goliath giving Jessy a verbal beat down. In all honesty, he was perfectly correct. In this world, what use is having a weak fist? If you train yourself to fight with half power, then it will become a limit to your development. In his opinion, he totally agreed with Goliath.

Suddenly his face lit up into a huge smile. There must be some story behind all this. More importantly than that, some other thoughts were running through James’ head at present.

‘Him! I’ve found him. He will be perfect. Now the question is ... how do I get him to join us? He looks like he probably isn’t even planning to stay in the Clan much longer. He’s probably the same as me. He’s too proud to let something like the Gau Clan hold him back from reaching the limits of this world.’

Thinking this far James turned to Grace, who seemed entirely unperturbed by this matter, and with a small smile on his face, like he was just distractedly asking, he started an inquiry on the Goliath.

“Elder Grace, who is that young man?”

Grace just let a small sigh slip out then eyed the ... man-boy, in the arena. “That is Haungshu. His father and mother were killed in the city when he was young, and he witnessed the whole incident. At the time, there was a rather depraved character moving about who would find couples with a child and force them to do some unspeakable things to each other in exchange for the child’s life.”

Her eyes moistened slightly, as she remembered back to those incidents, she stared off into the distance as if looking back through time. James wasn’t sure why, but he felt Grace must have a history with this serial killer as well.

After a short second of being lost in her memories, she cleared her throat then glanced back to Goliath, who was now just standing there like a tower of muscle and looking at the yelling and screaming Jessy.

“Well, ever since then he’s been somewhat uncontrollable. The clan isn’t going to make an effort to change that because eventually, it will become his strength and drive. It will make him stronger, and by extension, strengthens the clan.”

Finished speaking on the matter she went to stand up because Jessy was moving to engage Goliath. James waved a hand in front of her, then gave a gentle shake of the head.

“She has to learn sooner or later that her element isn’t all-mighty. She’s had it easy up until now because it’s rather powerful against normal individuals, but now she’s about to meet an abnormal with a powerful will. I suspect this battle will be good learning experience for her.”

Grace made a bitter smile. To think she was being lectured on how to train someone from a fresh little barrier realm practitioner. She had to accept he was right and she soon changed her mindset somewhat.

In her head, she was already thinking of Jessy as her personal disciple that she would train up to greatness. However, as an extension of that feeling, she’d also become a little more protective of her than normal disciples. If she allowed that to cloud the girl’s training, it would only limit her.

In the training area, Jessy shot towards Goliath. Before she even got into striking distance, he through another earth ripple out with his foot. Jessy somehow kept her balance as the earth rose up in a wave under her feet. As she reached to the crest of the wave, she bent her legs and used the earth ripple to propel herself forwards.

Before she could get close enough to grab out or throw a punch a huge hand descended towards her as if covering the sky. Having the experience of numerous battles as a mortal martial artist, she adapted quickly and managed to spin her body in mid-air. As the palm passed through the space her head had once been in, she grabbed out and latched onto Goliath’s arm.

The moment she made contact a savage grin spread across her face, and she began to pump as much spirit energy into his body as possible. That grin very quickly turned sour as she only felt the arm continue to descend with unstoppable force, and she was smashed into the ground.

The air was forced from her lungs, and her body was wracked with pain. She curled up into a ball onto the ground as she tried to gain control of her breathing. As she curled up protectively, a dirty great big boot came towards her, and she was launched into the air.

James could tell at a glance that Goliath was going easy on her, despite what he’d said earlier. If he’d put some force into that kick, then Jessy would surely travel further than a few metres and the sound of things breaking would most definitely have been heard.

James just sat and watched. He made no move to help Jessy, and he didn’t even show any signs of concern. He just stood there with his arms crossed observing.

Grace looked like she was about to run out again but somehow mustered enough willpower to stop herself. As everyone else watched on with their mouths agape, Jessy started to crawl up from the ground. Her cheongsam was dirty and ripped in places. Her red hair was a frazzled mess, and her face was flushed red with embracement and rage.

To think that she had taking an ass whopping twice since coming to this world. As someone who rarely lost, she simply couldn’t accept it. Furthermore, her trump card didn’t even phase the guy. Well, technically that’s not true because the evidence of its effect was visibly protruding out from his body.

Jessy was stunned when she saw this. It looked like he was holding his body up with pure force of will alone. He was definitely affected by her lust element but managed to overcome it with sheer willpower. What kind of twisted mind did this guy have?

Eventually, Jessy had crawled up from the ground and managed to stabilise her beaten and sore body. Instead of bowing out like most people expected from her, she lowered herself into a backwards leaning martial arts stance and raised her hands in front like two knives.