The current Southern Blue was flourishing. With the help of all those mercenary experts, the construction work progressed at a rapid rate. It seemed like a new building was popping up every day. The materials were hardly able to catch up to the demand despite all the major trade companies bringing them in day and night.

Expansion led to good business in the city. The mercenaries needed to eat, the traveling merchant caravans need lodgings and food, and the new factories meant the arrival of more craftsmen. Everyone, from the bottom to the top, was happy. Even Ji Rui, who had been hiding in his residence, was now wearing a radiant smile.

After some detailed calculations, the fatty realized that his income had almost doubled despite the fall in his authority as city lord. At this rate, he would be receiving three times his usual cashflow once Song Zining’s plans had all come to fruition. Additionally, he found his days fairly enjoyable—no longer needing to pay attention to trivial matters or tiptoe around the major powers. All he needed was to lie down and wait for the money to come in. He even found the leisure to feed his pet birds.

Leisure wasn’t a bad thing, naturally, but Ji Rui still worried about one thing—how the surrounding powers, especially the Wolf King, would treat Dark Flame and Southern Blue.

This threat was plain as day, but the three youths who had established Dark Flame didn’t seem to be aware of this danger. They went about their own business as usual, almost as though they were entirely thoughtless. This was especially true of Qianye who had set his heart on doing manual labor, even throwing aside his cultivation. Could it be that he could beat back the Wolf King just by moving steel beams?

Ji Rui wasn’t the only one with doubts.

At this moment, Qianye was preparing to lock a steep beam onto one of the building roofs. This was the last beam in the framework, beyond which the construction would progress fairly quickly. Nonetheless, it was no easy feat to install this steel beam perfectly since it was dozens of meters long and several tons in weight. Usually, it would take five powerful warriors a fair length of time to fit one in.

To Qianye, though, this was a relatively easy chore. With a shake, a push, and a subsequent click, the beam was accurately embedded within its slot. The remaining work no longer required his help—all that was left was for the engineers to fix and weld the metal in place.

Just as Qianye was patting the dust off his clothes, he saw a pair of combat boots in front of him. Qianye followed the boots upward and came face to face with Ji Tianqing, who was looking down at him with folded arms.

“Is this kind of work fun?” she asked.

Qianye shook his head. “Not exactly.”

“Then why are you doing manual labor instead of cultivating or managing the corps affairs? Is this your future life from now on?” Ji Tianqing was intent on getting to the heart of the matter.

“At least it can stop me from thinking about certain things, makes me feel better.”

Qianye’s answer stuffed Ji Tianqing’s questions back down her throat. She felt something stopping up her chest, an unbearable discomfort that she couldn’t cough out.

“Is it worth it?” Ji Tianqing couldn’t help but ask.

Qianye looked puzzled as he shook his head with a wry smile. “I don’t know, I really don’t.”

“Then why…” Her words stopped midway.

Qianye shot her a glance. “You’re still young, you don’t understand.”

This evaluation seemed rather effective on Ji Tianqing, but she wasn’t quite satisfied with the latter part. “What do you mean I don’t understand? Where, who, and what do I not understand?”

Laughing and shaking his head, Qianye soon arrived beside a pipe. Here, he opened the tap and used the powerful current to wash the mud off of himself. The cold water also refreshed his spirits and lightened his ashen mood.

Soon afterward, there was a momentary flicker of scarlet flame.

The water drops on Qianye's body evaporated and then recondensed into their original forms under the exquisite sunlight.

He was just about to put the pipe back in place when Ji Tianqing caught his wrist and pressed on. “Make it clear, what do I not understand?”

Qianye broke into a laugh as he applied strength to his wrist.

Ji Tianqing glared back at him, her grip tightening with a force that was grossly out of proportion with her build. Apparently, it was yet another high-grade secret art.

Qianye didn’t shrink back, however, and sent wave after wave of terrifying power raging toward Ji Tianqing.

The first wave hadn’t died out when the counteracting force was already in play, increasing the power relentlessly.

In the blink of an eye, Ji Tianqing’s face became somewhat pale and small beads of sweat hung on the tip of her nose. This was really the first time she had revealed signs of reaching her limit.

Secret arts—no matter how powerful—were supported by origin power. Ji Tianqing’s energy reserves weren’t infinite after all, so she soon fell into a disadvantage and had no choice but to let go.

Qianye’s body jolted briefly as soon as the girl let go—crackling thunder rang out in the air, as well as the sound of rolling tides. He put the pipe back gently, almost as though nothing had happened just now.

Ji Tianqing couldn’t calm down. The phenomenon just now was likely caused by a release of Qianye’s stored power, but how strong was he to be able to produce thunderous sounds just from a pure release of power? She might have been injured had she resisted until the very end.

“What secret art is that?”

“Secret art?” Qianye was surprised. He gave it some thought before replying, “It’s the Combatant Formula.”

“Combatant Formula? You think I’m a child? It’s fine if you don’t want to say it!” Ji Tianqing was furious, breaking out into a shout toward the end.

“It really is the Combatant Formula.”

Ji Tianqing didn’t believe it at first, but seeing Qianye so serious, she thought back to the exchange just now. The overlaying pattern of his power was indeed quite similar to the Combatant Formula.

The pattern was similar, but the essence was simply too different. For instance, a person with boundless strength could theoretically uproot mountains and fill oceans—but how could there be such a powerful person?

The wild torrent of power Qianye had blasted apart Ji Tianqing’s peerless secret art. Just how powerful was this? Not to mention the fact that Qianye’s origin power was a ways off from a divine champion’s, he wouldn’t be able to withstand this level of impact even if he was one. The recoil would injure him within moments. It was even worse for ordinary champions—they might explode within a few breaths.

A human trying to move a mountain would result in the person being pulverized.

Hence, Ji Tianqing simply refused to believe that it was the Combatant Formula. What she had used just now was one of the Ji family’s superb secret arts, capable of raising all aspects of the practitioner’s power. It was like temporarily raising the expert’s cultivation by three levels without any shortcomings. Such a secret art could be considered terrifying. No one would believe that it had actually lost to a common cultivation art like the Combatant Formula.

Nonetheless, Qianye had shown her so many miracles that she couldn’t quite dismiss his claim immediately. Besides, Qianye had never lied to her before—what he wasn’t willing to divulge, he would usually refuse to say, instead of lying.

Ji Tianqing suddenly thought of something at the mention of the Combatant Formula. “How many cycles have you reached?”

This question touched upon the core secret of his cultivation. Qianye hesitated for a good while before saying, “Fifty.”

“Fifty!?” Even a knowledgeable person like Ji Tianqing couldn’t help but exclaim in shock. She eventually calmed herself and suppressed her awe. “Doesn’t that mean you’ve reached the level of the Martial Monarch and Prince Greensun?”

“Their level back in the year, yes.”

Ji Tianqing glanced at Qianye with a complicated expression, sighing secretly in her heart.

This was a sigh of admiration for Qianye’s talents and how such a genius was forced out of the empire. On the other hand, it was also about the Combatant Formula’s limitations. Both the Martial Monarch and Zhang Boqian had switched to a different primary cultivation art after reaching the fiftieth cycle.

Both of these experts were from celebrated families with great foundations. They possessed dozens if not hundreds of cultivation arts, making it relatively easy for them to find a suitable one. The same couldn’t be said of Qianye—he had been forced out of the empire at such a young age, so how could he find a suitable art? His cultivation must’ve been delayed for the greater part of the year now.

This served as a good explanation for Qianye’s devotion to manual labor. How was he to cultivate after the fiftieth cycle? No matter how talented and powerful he was, could he surpass the Martial Monarch and Prince Greensun? One would be hard-pressed to make any progress without sufficient purity of origin power.

At the thought of this, Ji Tianqing’s gaze toward Qianye became much more gentler.

As a knowledgeable person who had met countless experts, she was never impressed by these ordinary geniuses. There were thousands of talented people in the empire’s younger generation, but those she could remember were limited to a handful of people like Zhao Jundu, Zhao Ruoxi, Li Kuanglan, and Song Zining. Even Wei Potian couldn’t hope for a place in her heart.

As for people like Nangong and Xu Lang, she would simply overlook them even if they were standing right in front of her.

It was precisely because of her high standards that she cared more about the people she remembered. As she saw it, such a talented person being forced to bide his time due to a lack of cultivation arts was the most wasteful thing in the world.

Her expression became as gentle as the spring rain and her cheeks grew noticeably flushed as she gazed at Qianye.

At this moment, Qianye was feeling quite nervous at heart. He hadn’t stopped at the fiftieth cycle of the Combatant Formula but actually took the next step to obtain the Profound Combatant Formula that Martial Ancestor had left behind.

What he had told Ji Tianqing wasn’t a lie, but it was undoubtedly a deliberate misdirection—something even more serious than deceit. Qianye was definitely not an expert in this aspect, so he felt increasingly guilty under Ji Tianqing’s gaze.

The Profound Combatant Formula was the Martial Ancestor’s inheritance, and it was no trifling matter despite being an incomplete version. As thick as Qianye was, he knew that this news would cause an even greater uproar than his attainment of the Black-Winged Monarch’s inheritance. At the very least, the imperial family would take action to seize it back. Ji Tianqing wasn’t close enough that he would share such a secret.

Surprisingly, Ji Tianqing patted Qianye’s shoulder, saying, “Don’t be sad, it’s just a follow-up cultivation art, right? Leave it to me!”

Qianye opened his mouth briefly. He really wanted to say that he could keep on cultivating the Combatant Formula for many years still.