Chapter 9 Training, Skills, and Hunting

After this day, their parents continued to educate the two of them more thoroughly about the outside world.

They taught him how to survive in the world outside of the clan. He learned the average prices of many things and ways to earn money so he could get cultivation resources. They also said that if something were to happen in the future he could try to get into a cultivation sect or look for a master to accept him. They said, “As long as they don’t know that you aren’t able to break through, almost any place should be willing to accept you with your cultivation at your age.”

Although he was confused why his parents were teaching him all this stuff he still learned diligently as it was his parent’s wishes.

There was nothing they could do about teaching him an occupation, but they knew Yun Tian eagerly wished for a way to become stronger. So, they then taught him how to fight. They taught him the basics of combat and sparred with him to train.

They taught him how to fight so that even if he couldn't break through he could increase his battle skills and increase his fighting potential.

Even though he had great talent and was very suited for cultivation he was still young so they hadn't trained him in combat or any fighting skills before. He had never even used a weapon let alone fought before.

Yun Tian had never been in any danger and had never had to fight before. Even so, under the training of his parents he learned quickly. He may have been young, but just from his cultivation speed alone and determination to keep on cultivating after not being able to break through you could tell how well he would do in learning things.

So thanks to his parents and his talent he very quickly developed a great battle sense and thanks to sparring with his parents who were stronger than him he had started to find ways to adapt even when your opponents are stronger than you. Of course his parents held back  otherwise there would be no way to spar with him, but they were still stronger than him.

After he had gotten a good sense for battle his parents decided it was time for him to learn some skills. Yun Tian's parents were not some great figures, but they were still elders of the clan so it was easy for them to get some low level skills from the clan for Yun Tian to practice.

Or it should have been. Skills were important for a clan so you naturally have to give a reason to take them. With their status it still should have been easy for them to get the skills, but when the two of them stated their reason of having Yun Tian learn the skills, the clan leader, Yun Tian’s Grandfather Yun Chen denied saying, “No, what’s the use, can he even use the skill now or in the future either?”

It was only when the Grand Elder who was also in the clan’s meeting hall stood up for them and said, “As Elder’s they have the right to borrow skills from the clan,” that Yun Chen finally agreed.

His parents thanked the Grand Elder for his help and also told Yun Tian and Shen Yu of what had happened to cement their opinions of the clan and to make sure they knew how much the Grand Elder was helping them.

After this, Yun Tian and his parents decided on what skills he should learn. His parents had taught him some stuff about skills along with showing him some of the ones they had learned and from their training so far he had learned how to fight well enough to figure out what style he liked and was best at.

Still, he knew that his parents would pick whatever skills would be best for him so he mostly just let them decide his skills while adding some comments here and there.

They discussed for a long time what skills he should learn and in the end they decided on some skills that were good for normal face to face fights, but could also be used for quickly killing the opponent from stealth.

His parents pushed him towards this since they were going to teach him how to hunt after he learned the skills well enough. Yun Tian followed their judgement and was especially convinced when his father said, “Since you won’t know any occupation and won’t get resources from the Yun clan, you will need a way to get cultivation resources. Hunting beasts is a good way to do that. Beast corpses, especially the corpses of demonic beasts and the demonic cores within them, are worth a lot. It’s just that it is dangerous. In the future when you break through, me, you and your Mother will hunt demonic beasts together.”

He learned a palm technique called Cloud Palm, a movement technique named Fleeting Steps, and a sword technique named Deadly Flash.

With the palm technique he greatly increased the power he could express and could offset extreme force with softness, especially as he grew more proficient with the skill.

Like the name of the movement technique, the Fleeting Steps skill allowed him to mask the sound of his steps while also granting him increased speed and agility if he learned it well enough.

Deadly Flash however was special but it suited the movement technique extremely well. It was a technique mostly useful for assassination as it focused on delivering one powerful strike and quickly killing your opponent. That was why it was named Deadly Flash. One flash of the blade and your opponent would already be dead. Besides that, the sword technique focused on speed with other forms that were not only for assassination but also for face to face combat.

He had learned earlier from his parents the grading system every item and skill went by. Most Dantian Building Realm experts used skills and other items, including weapons, in the spiritual grade.

He of course asked his parents, “What is beyond the Spirit grade Mom?” 

However they could only tell him, “We don’t know either.”

But they could teach him about the grading system for mastery of a skill.

The level of mastery for skills went Grasping Form, Mastering Form, Grasping Spirit, Complete Mastery, and the legendary Perfected. In Grasping Form, you had a basic grasp of the forms described in the skill. In Mastering Form, you completely understood and could perform all of the forms in the skill exactly as described. You reach Grasping Spirit when you start to understand the intent and spirit of the skill. Complete mastery is where you can perform the skill exactly as described in the skill and understand everything about the skill completely.

Perfected is where you have gone even further and have improved upon the skill therefore performing even better than initially described in the skill. There is nothing beyond Perfected because that is basically creating a new skill at that point. Almost no one can reach Perfected though. It is much harder to create a skill or even just to improve one than to learn an already created one.

The skills he had were all low grade spiritual skills. He trained them daily while still not giving up on cultivating. He learned the skills very quickly and under training from his parents he got an even better understanding. They made him dodge, block, and send attacks using the skills he learned to get practice with them and increase his understanding of them.

He reached Grasping Form within only a few days and under daily training he eventually reached Mastering Form. To reach further you usually needed moments of enlightenment. There was also the fact that these skills were meant for Dantian Building Realm experts so he could not express their full power. This also made it harder for him to learn the skills. He could learn all the forms, but he could not use qi to surround his feet like in the Fleeting Steps skill or unleash qi in a palm attack so it was hard for him to completely understand the skills.

Yun Tian would train his skills every day, but his dad also taught him about demonic beasts and hunting. He learned that the most basic animals in the wild with a hint of spirituality were wild beasts around the strength of Meridian Opening Realm humans. His father also taught him how the Demonic Beast Realm was the equivalent of the human’s Dantian Building Realm.

These strong beasts had demonic beast cores that could be sold along with the rest of their body. Their bodies and demonic cores had many uses and were valuable, but demonic beasts were very strong, usually stronger than humans of an equivalent realm.

His father spent a lot of time teaching him how to hunt. Yun Tian learned how to follow tracks, be stealthy, kill his prey, and how to properly disassemble his prey. He would go out into the wild and practice hunting wild beasts with his dad. He went on many hunts and used his skills regularly getting a better grasp of them.

He was stronger than basically all wild beasts, which was the equivalent of the Meridian Opening Realm. Since he was at the very peak of Meridian Opening, had great battle capabilities with his mastery of his skills, and a good battle sense it naturally it wouldn’t be too difficult for him even when other Meridian Opening Realm experts have difficulty.

So even when he went on his first hunt he killed his first prey, a boar, with a single strike of the Deadly Flash’s ultimate technique before it even realized what was going on. His Fleeting Steps skill provided him great stealth abilities, so he just got as close as possible and went for the kill with one extremely strong and fast strike. There was no great battle, it was just him easily and carefully instantly killing it.

This repeated continuously for a while until he eventually no longer killed his prey from stealth and fought them openly to train. Even then it was still no problem for him.

His father knew he wasn’t ready for demonic beasts, but he also knew regular wild beasts weren’t a problem so he would supervise while Yun Tian fought multiple at once. Thus, Yun Tian got to experience threatening battles and quickly increased his mastery of his skills while also training his battle sense and ability for fighting multiple opponents.

He spent his days training his skills, hunting, cultivating, and spending time with his family.