The man’s expression changed drastically. He snarled, "Kid, don’t push your luck! The young masters are not people you can afford to offend."
"Scram, or don’t blame me for what happens next." A sliver of icy chill radiated from Ye Xuan, forcing the man to back away repeatedly. Ye Xuan then strode toward the nearest cultivation room.
The commotion immediately attracted the attention of the other students nearby.
"Who is that? He even dares to use the cultivation rooms the young masters have a standing reservation for. Is he trying to get himself killed?"
"Huh, it’s Ye Xuan. No wonder he’s so bold."
"Ye Xuan? You don’t mean that piece of trash Ye Xuan, do you? Is he trying to get himself killed?"
"Shh, keep it down. I heard that in the cold-faced instructor’s cultivation class yesterday, Ye Xuan taught Young Master Zhou Yan a brutal lesson. Snatching a few cultivation rooms from the young masters is nothing to him."
"For real?"
The crowd broke into a flurry of discussion.
"Hmph, that must be fake. How could a piece of trash like him have that kind of strength? Daring to snatch the young masters’ cultivation rooms... he clearly has a death wish. Let’s just sit back and watch the show."
A lower-class student standing by the entrance to the hall sneered with jealousy.
"Oh? Someone is snatching our cultivation rooms? I’d like to see which brat has grown a spine."
Just then, a cold voice rang out as a trio of young men walked in from outside. All three carried themselves with extreme arrogance, their noses pointed to the sky as if they were looking down on the entire world.
"Brother Wang, that kid is snatching your cultivation room, number 08!"
"Damn it, is he looking for death? Brother Wang is gone from the academy for a few days, and someone already thinks they can turn the world upside down."
"Kid, stop right there! Take one more step into that cultivation room, and I’ll break your damn legs."
The two lackeys roared furiously.
"It’s Young Master Wang Yue of the Wang family."
"Oh, this is going to be good. That kid is in for it now."
Some of the onlookers, unaware of the full story, grew secretly excited.
Wang Yue’s brow furrowed. The figure’s back looked a little familiar, but he was too blinded by rage at his cultivation room being taken to think much of it. "Fucking hell!" he cursed. "Turn around and let me see what kind of bastard dares to snatch my, Wang Yue’s, cultivation room! Are you tired of living?"
The figure stopped and slowly turned around. A cold smile touched his handsome face as his calm voice echoed through the hall. "Were you calling me?"
WHOOSH!
It was as if a bone-chilling wind swept through the hall.
The two lackeys, who had been charging forward furiously, stopped dead in their tracks. The look of rage on Wang Yue’s face froze, and a flicker of terror replaced the fire in his eyes.
"Ye... Ye Xuan... It’s you!"
Wang Yue stammered, his body trembling. His knees went weak, and he nearly collapsed to the ground.
Ye Xuan said coolly, "Wang Yue. It’s only been a few days and you’re already back on your feet. It seems you recovered well at home. I can’t even tell your face was swollen up like a pig’s head. It’s even gotten a bit fairer. Not bad, not bad at all."
His voice was gentle and refined, but to Wang Yue and his two cronies, it was the voice of a demon. It scared them out of their wits. The events in the training hall a few days ago still replayed in their minds like a persistent nightmare. ’To think we’d run into this God of Slaughter right after we recovered and came back to school,’ Wang Yue thought. ’The heavens must really have it out for me.’
The legs of all three were trembling. Wang Yue forced himself to take a breath and feign composure. "Ahem, so it was you, classmate Ye Xuan, who wanted to use my cultivation room! Haha, I, Wang Yue, love nothing more than helping others. Especially a fellow classmate! Please, take the room. Don’t stand on ceremony with me. Uh, well, I have some other business to attend to, so I’ll be going now."
The three of them turned to make a dejected escape.
The crowd, who had been ready for a show, was completely dumbfounded. ’What is this? This isn’t how it’s supposed to go! Since when is the notoriously arrogant Wang Yue so easy to talk to?’
Ye Xuan snorted coldly. "Stop. Did I say you could leave?"
In a scene that stunned everyone, Wang Yue and his cronies actually stopped. Wang Yue turned his head with great difficulty and said, trembling, "Uh, classmate Ye Xuan, is there something you need me to do?"
Ye Xuan said casually, "How is it that I just heard someone say I was looking for death?"
"Who said that? Which bastard said it? Step forward right now! How dare you say that about Young Master Xuan! See if I don’t beat them to death! You bastard, was it you?" Wang Yue kicked one of the lackeys who had spoken earlier. The lackey frantically waved his hands. "It wasn’t me, Brother Wang, it wasn’t me! Some bastard must be trying to frame me! I’ve admired Young Master Xuan my whole life! How could I possibly say anything bad about him?"
Ye Xuan narrowed his eyes. "Oh, is that so? But I could have sworn I also heard someone say they were going to break my legs."
"What? Someone else dared to say that about Young Master Xuan? Damn it, step forward right now! See how I’ll deal with them! Was it you?" Wang Yue kicked his other lackey. The man was so terrified he nearly wet himself, and he started to wail, "Brother Wang! Young Master Xuan! I swear to the heavens, it wasn’t me! You know me, I’m a loyal and honest man. How could I say something like that? Forget breaking a person’s leg, I wouldn’t even dare break the leg of a cat or a dog, or even a blade of grass!"
"You heard him, Young Master Xuan. It wasn’t us. Some bastard must be trying to frame us! Don’t you worry, we will definitely help you find the real culprit," Wang Yue declared with an air of righteous indignation.
Every student in the hall was petrified. ’They were the ones who said all that just a moment ago, but now they’re denying it in the blink of an eye and even cursing along? What in the world is going on?’
Since when was Young Master Wang Yue of the Wang family so agreeable? This was the kind of fiend who would break a person’s leg just for accidentally stepping on his foot.
The vast majority of the students were completely bewildered; not all of them had heard about what had happened in the training room a few days prior.
"Good, as long as it wasn’t you," Ye Xuan said coolly. "Since this cultivation room is yours, go ahead and insert your Token. You can’t expect me to pay for your room, can you?"
"This..." Wang Yue’s face twitched violently. ’I just deposited a thousand Profound Coins in that Token, enough for ten days of secluded cultivation!’
’After the brutal lesson Ye Xuan taught him a few days ago, he had resolved to learn from the painful experience. The moment he returned to the academy, he planned to cultivate desperately, get his revenge after breaking through to the Five Veins. He never expected to be extorted by Ye Xuan again before he even had a chance to begin.’
Ye Xuan’s gaze turned cold. "What? Do I have to do it myself?"
"No, no." Wang Yue, ignoring the pain in his heart, hastily inserted his Token into the slot. With a CLICK, the stone door opened, revealing a cultivation room of several square meters before Ye Xuan.
Wang Yue backed away cautiously. "Young Master Xuan, if there’s nothing else, we’ll be on our way."
"Scram!"
With a low shout, Ye Xuan walked into the cultivation room without a backward glance and shut the stone door.
’Bastard,’ Wang Yue cursed inwardly. Amid the buzzing gossip of the crowd, the three of them, faces flushed with shame, rushed out of the hall with their heads lowered, leaving everyone else gaping in astonishment.
After entering the cultivation room, Ye Xuan scanned his surroundings.
The entire cultivation room was less than ten square meters. It wasn’t spacious, but for a single person’s cultivation, it was more than enough.
On the walls of the cultivation room were complex Spirit Patterns that glittered with a faint light. These Spirit Patterns pulsed once every ten seconds, and with each pulse, an extremely dense wave of Profound Qi seeped in from the surrounding walls, maintaining the room’s Profound Qi concentration at a constant three times that of the outside world.
’A Profound Qi concentration three times that of the outside world,’ Ye Xuan thought. ’This means it’ll only take one-third of the time to condense the same amount of Profound Qi.’
Ye Xuan nodded to himself. With this cultivation room, he could recover the strength of his past life even faster.
’The plan for now is to break through to the Tier One Warrior Realm,’ Ye Xuan thought. ’Only when a Martial Artist reaches Tier One can they truly unlock the potential of their Martial Soul. Only then can they be considered to have truly stepped onto the path of the Martial Dao.’
Unlike other students, Ye Xuan didn’t rush to begin cultivating. Instead, he started examining the Spirit Patterns on the walls.
After just a few moments, a smile touched Ye Xuan’s lips. ’So it’s a Second Level Spirit Gathering Array. It uses the Array to draw Profound Qi from the Profound Vein below to ensure the concentration in the room is high enough. I suppose the only difference between the intermediate and advanced rooms is the gathering strength of their respective Spirit Gathering Arrays.’
With his past life’s mastery of the Dao of arrays, Ye Xuan could discern the intricacies of the Spirit Patterns on the wall with just a few glances.
He quickly retrieved a few materials from his Storage Ring and, with a few deft movements, concocted a mysterious liquid. A glittering silver Spirit Pattern Pen then appeared in his right hand. He lightly dipped the pen into the liquid, and his hand moved like a soaring dragon and a dancing phoenix, adding several new strokes to the walls.
The strokes were delicate, graceful, and exquisite. With just a few light touches, he perfectly modified the complex Spirit Patterns on the wall. It was like a stroke of divine inspiration.
HUMMM!
As Ye Xuan finished his final stroke, the Profound Qi in the cultivation room, originally at three times the concentration of the outside world, began to grow denser.
Four times!
Five times!
Six times...
It continued to rise until it reached eight times the outside concentration before finally stopping.
"This should be enough." Ye Xuan nodded in satisfaction. ’Eight times the Profound Qi concentration is more than sufficient for me, currently a Three Veins Martial Artist. Increasing it further would be unnecessary and wasteful.’
If the academy’s instructors or the Array Masters from the outside world had witnessed this, their eyes would have popped out of their sockets in shock. To upgrade a Second Level Spirit Gathering Array from three times the Profound Qi concentration to eight times with just a few simple strokes... such mastery of Arrays was so incredible it seemed inhuman.
To put it in perspective, when this cultivation center was first built, the first headmaster of Xingxuan Academy had paid an immense price to invite an Array Master from the Royal City just to inscribe these complex Spirit Gathering Arrays.
The cost to build an advanced cultivation room was over twenty times that of a basic one. Yet now, with a few meager strokes, Ye Xuan had upgraded the array in a basic room to the level of an advanced one. If word of this got out, the Array Master who had designed it—long since dead—would probably be shocked enough to rise from his coffin, only to die of shame all over again.