Chapter 35: Ashen Palm

Translator: CKtalon Editor: CKtalon

“What Sun Strafe Art?” Zhou Lingfeng asked in surprise.

“Didn’t you get An Jing to send me the Sun Strafe Art?” Zhou Wen was also taken aback.

“It’s not like you don’t know that I have zero interest in cultivation. I don’t know much about such matters,” Zhou Lingfeng said.

Zhou Wen fell silent in thought. If the Sun Strafe Art wasn’t given to him by Zhou Lingfeng, then why did An Jing claim that it was given by Zhou Lingfeng? Matters had seemed to become somewhat complicated.

What is An Jing up to? Is the Sun Strafe Art real or fake? Zhou Wen was momentarily unable to figure things out.

Zhou Wen had no means to figure out the authenticity of the Sun Strafe Art. The average person had no means of coming into contact with the Sun Strafe Art, so it was even more impossible to determine its authenticity.

Meanwhile, Zhou Lingfeng continued, “If it was given by Little Jing, it might be some well-meant. Just keep it for now. I’ll ask her when I meet her again.”

“Alright.” Zhou Wen didn’t continue. Zhou Lingfeng’s impression of the An family siblings seemed pretty good, so it was pointless to say anything else until he figured out the truth.

Everyone had their independent thought processes. It was impossible to force someone to view things from your own point of view, even the person closest to you. Only reality had convincing power. Zhou Wen had understood this reason from a young age.

After hanging up, Zhou Wen composed himself. He didn’t game but instead began practicing his palm techniques.

He had tried many times but had failed to use the force-exerting principles of Inch Punch on Vigor Divine Fist. Therefore, he went for second best in a bid to fuse Skeleton Palm and Inch Punch together as a reference.

With complete focus, he used the techniques of Inch Punch when delivering Skeleton Palm.

Skeleton Palm’s uniqueness was indeed compatible with Inch Punch. This process was a lot smoother than Zhou Wen imagined. The first few palm strikes were somewhat rough as he failed to fuse the two together correctly.

However, it didn’t take long for Zhou Wen to grasp the trick. The fusion of the two attacks became increasingly better.

After striking out about ten times, Zhou Wen’s Primordial Energy was completely drained. All he could do was go in-game to grind on Vigor Ants to use the Primordial Energy Crystals that appeared to replenish his Primordial Energy for further practice.

Shortly after he entered the game, Zhou Wen was astonished to discover that his Primordial Energy had already recovered a little before a Primordial Energy Crystal dropped.

Back when he cultivated Ascetic Meditation, it would take him about an hour to recover one Primordial Energy point. Now, only a few minutes had passed for him to recover one point of Primordial Energy. The speed at which the recovery far exceeded his imagination.

Is this the outcome of Lost Immortal Sutra? Zhou Wen felt the Primordial Energy slowly coursing through his body as he felt some delight.

To achieve such Primordial Energy recovery speeds at the Mortal stage was unprecedented according to what Zhou Wen knew.

Ignoring whether the Lost Immortal Sutra had any other uses or not, just this one trait alone was sufficiently shocking.

While grinding in-game with the blood-colored avatar, the mysterious phone was purely controlled by a touch-screen. However, the control of the blood-colored avatar didn’t require any contact with the screen. Most of the time, just thinking was enough to control it. There was some psychic connection between the two.

Thoughts and feelings were synchronized, so all the battle experience the blood-colored avatar received in-game was shared with Zhou Wen.

Upon seeing a Mutated Vigor Ant crawl over, Zhou Wen controlled his phone’s angle and used his thoughts to control the blood-colored avatar. He wanted to attempt to see if he could fuse Skeleton Palm and Inch Punch together.

When the blood-colored avatar struck the Mutated Vigor Ant on the head with its palm, the carapace on the Mutated Vigor Ant’s head remained undamaged. However, after lunging forward a few steps, the Mutated Vigor Ant staggered before collapsing onto the ground.

On the left corner of the phone’s screen: Killed Mortal Mutated Vigor Ant.

The first line wasn’t of anything to take note of since Zhou Wen had seen it countless times. Besides, this Mutated Vigor Ant hadn’t dropped anything.

It was the second line that left Zhou Wen somewhat surprised.

“Acquired Skeleton Palm’s high-level skill. Skeleton Palm has evolved into Ashen Palm.”

Zhou Wen glanced at the blood-colored avatar’s stats and found that the Skeleton Palm in the Primordial Energy Skill row had vanished. Replacing it was a Primordial Energy Skill known as Ashen Palm.

Primordial Energy Skill: Vigor Divine Fist (Rank 9)

Primordial Energy Skill: Ashen Palm (Rank 10)

Rank 10? Wasn’t Skeleton Palm a Rank 1 Primordial Energy Skill? How did it become Rank 10 after it evolved into Ashen Palm? Zhou Wen was somewhat puzzled.

Ashen Palm at Rank 10 required expending 5 Primordial Energy points with each use. Its cost was the same as the Rank 9 Vigor Divine Fist.

From the Primordial Energy cost, a Rank 10 Ashen Palm likely has the same potency as a Rank 9 Vigor Divine Fist. Zhou Wen had the intention to test the potency of Ashen Palm, but ordinary Vigor Ants and Mutated Vigor Ants were unable to withstand this single strike. It didn’t matter if it was Rank 1 or Rank 9.

After some thought, Zhou Wen decided to leave the Ant Nest dungeon and switch to entering the Ancient Imperial City dungeon.

As long as the blood-colored avatar didn’t die, leaving a dungeon and re-entering or switching dungeons didn’t require him to waste blood.

However, if the blood-colored avatar didn’t die, the game dungeons wouldn’t refresh, so the creatures in the dungeons wouldn’t be refreshed either.

The blood-colored avatar had previously died in the Ant Nest, so after entering Ancient Imperial City, the dimensional creatures in Ancient Imperial City had already reappeared. The blood-colored avatar rode the Mutated Vigor Ant as it stormed ahead and soon found the newly spawned Skeleton General.

Like previously, he made the blood-colored avatar jump off the Mutated Vigor Ant and charge at the Skeleton General.

Using his positioning techniques to circle around the skeleton horse, it took him less than twenty minutes to find an opportunity. He got the blood-colored avatar to leap up and ride on the skeleton horse’s back, sitting right behind the Skeleton General.

However, this time, Zhou Wen didn’t get the blood-colored avatar to strike the Skeleton General’s weakness—the eye sockets. Instead, he directly struck at the back of the Skeleton General’s skull with his palm.

This palm didn’t injure the Skeleton General’s head at all. However, the blood-colored flames in the skull seemed to splatter out like a crushed watermelon.

Due to the momentum of the strike, the Skeleton General lunged forward on the skeleton horse before his bones scattered, turning into a pile on the ground.

“Killed Legendary Skeleton General. Discovered Skeleton General dimensional crystal.”

Zhou Wen looked at the dimensional crystal that had dropped in-game, feeling a pleasant surprise.

Ashen Palm could destroy the Skeleton General even without striking its weakness. Its potency was clearly above the Rank 9 Vigor Divine Fist.

A Rank 10 Primordial Energy Skill is indeed powerful. I wonder if Ashen Palm has a chance of killing the Silver-Winged Flying Ant. Zhou Wen had the urge to immediately storm to the Silver-Winged Flying Ant to give it a try.

Vigor Divine Fist was too slow when it came to throwing a punch, preventing him from touching the Silver-Winged Flying Ant. However, Ashen Palm didn’t have such a weakness. It was extremely fast when delivering a palm strike.