City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)
Book 6 - The Beauty Of Smoke And Fire Chapter 59

Strength

Richard clenched a fist and his muscles immediately bulged, the change immediately visible. Just that action told him that he was at least twice as strong as he had been before; as someone who had never really trained physically or with internal energy, this immediately brought him up to the base strength comparable to a level 14 human warrior or a level 12 barbarian.

And that wasn’t even the greatest gain. His regeneration had been strengthened as well, something that was extremely difficult given how high it already was. At this point, he could already compare to a greater demon.

The durability of one’s body and recuperative ability were both quite significant in planar exploration. High-powered offensive bursts were good during the invasion, but to actually survive within harsh environments required resilience more than anything else.

This increased recovery also directly affected his fight against the poison. The Tree of Life currently had sixty motes of light flying around it at any time; they were still pathetic compared to the thousands of pale blue dots all around, but his recovery was at least a third faster than before. He could stabilise at level 12 instead of 10 now, and his level would only go back up over the upcoming days.

Another auxiliary benefit came from the way the Beast God’s Potion worked. It was extremely vicious, combining constant destruction of the body with healing, but this was accomplished partly with the power of laws. Richard wasn’t even at the level to begin modelling a system for the power of destruction yet, but having experience with the laws of life his progress in deciphering them would be improved in the future. Even casual thought about it brought him up to nearly fifty laws understood; in total, this increased his control of life energy by a third.

Now focusing on the restoration trunk once more, he started pouring the converted astral energy into it. Dozens of lights immediately flew out from the tree and joined the others, starting to purge the toxins. Focusing on this for the entire day, he could even manage to return to level 13 by the next battle. That was enough to use Mana Armament with some decent speed.

Suddenly remembering how the Beast God’s Potion had reworked his body, Richard threw some of his truename’s power towards an edge of his mana pool where a lot of the poison was concentrated. Purging the area completely, he then sent a steady flow of life energy to the place to regenerate what had been destroyed. The process had great effects, with the region returning to life with even more power than it had before, but the process was extremely slow and intensive. After an hour of trying, he opened his eyes and shook his head; it was better to use the restoration trunk for now.

He sighed with disappointment, knowing that his comprehension of the laws of life was far from high enough to make the process feasible. Of course, he wasn’t considering his age or level at all.

……

The next day passed rather calmly in meditation and the drawn-out fight against the poison. While he couldn’t comprehend even a hundredth of the 65,536 laws of life, his rate of comprehension was growing. The most difficult parts of deciphering any system were the start and the end; one because you had no direction, and the other because any minor mistakes on the outer rim would be amplified as one approached the core. He had managed to deduce that the system of life, in the Forest Plane, at least, had sixteen core laws. Analysing any one would be a huge leap.

In stark contrast, the day had been quite exciting for the barbarians. The internal battles to determine the Azuresnow Shrine’s entrants to the top eight had been run in the public, and Zawu and Kunzhi had both smashed past their opponents comfortably. However, the big surprise had once more been the Norlander of the bunch. Uriel had lugged a four-metre-long lance into battle, sweeping away both of his opponents in one strike each.

It was made quite obvious that he was the most powerful of them all.

……

The next morning, Richard finally arrived at the arena once more to meet his first opponent in the final eight, Kunzhi.

Kunzhi was nearly three metres tall with long limbs, but his figure was lithe and clearly geared towards speed. However, as he came face to face with Richard, this renowned warrior of Klandor felt like he was facing not a person but a primal beast.

Kunzhi roared the moment the battle began, a gigantic image of a six-armed ape forming behind him as he charged towards Richard instantly. Richard froze for a second before reacting, giving him enough time to approach and enter melee immediately.

This battle was quite like Richard’s last, but nobody dared laugh anymore. Kunzhi was much closer to hitting Richard on multiple occasions, raining down a barrage of attacks that gave Richard no room to breathe. Lightning crackled on Richard’s body as he dodged every attack by a hair’s breadth, looking very pathetic.

The situation continued for fifteen straight minutes before a bolt of lightning fell from the sky, paralysing Kunzhi for a moment and giving Richard room to breathe. The barbarian immediately looked up, only to find the cloud Richard had showcased before floating in the sky.

“WHAT?!” he was both shocked and angry; the last battle with Muzha had shown just how powerful this cloud could become. However, he couldn’t understand one thing; when had Richard found the time between all the attacks to cast that cloud?

After this, the battle turned into a straight replay of that with Muzha. Kunzhi didn’t dare to attack the cloud directly— that would give Richard an easy attack and even casual nicks from the blade had shown to be frightful— but that left him with only one option, to continue attacking and hope he could land a strike.

“Let’s see how long you can dodge!” the barbarian youth roared, unleashing another flurry of attacks.

These words echoed the thoughts of many of the audience; Kunzhi was widely acknowledged to be faster than Muzha. However, an hour quickly passed without Richard making any mistakes. Everyone was right in their thinking; Richard would eventually make a mistake at some point, but that point would be well after Kunzhi collapsed.

……

In the quarterfinals, Richard had defeated Kunzhi as a level 13 mage. More precisely, he had won the battle of attrition. He saw that the battle between Uriel and a barbarian he didn’t know was about to begin, but while scouting enemies was important it was more of a priority for him to clear more of the poison in his body.

However, just as he was at the edge of the audience he suddenly turned around. Uriel had just lit aglow, his golden armour, hair, and the lance as bright as the sun in the sky. The barbarian warrior charging towards him was sent flying dozens of metres with one blow, unable to get up ever again.

Richard’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the person who had caused all of these problems, and the Sixth Prince’s gaze coincidentally met his. Richard felt a searing heat from this enemy’s glare, but he was an Archeron who commanded abyssal fire; it felt like nothing more than a tickle. He shrugged and just turned back once more, distinctly feeling the piercing glare on his back as he walked away.