Book 4, Chapter 86: The Submission Force
Book 4, Chapter 86: The Submission Force
Qi Qianyang lay prone on the bird and flew eastward out of Central City. After flying above the ocean for a little over an hour, he arrived above an island.
The bird slowly went down. When it was a few dozen meters away from the ground, Qi Qianyang stood up and jumped down.
There was a person standing on a large coral reef facing the ocean. He was less than forty years old, and judging by his face, he was Swamp Training Camp’s other instructor. After sizing up Qi Qianyang’s arm, he asked, “Did you succeed?”
Qi Qianyang took a look at his arm. Cracking sounds came out of his limp limb. The skin and the bones started mending themselves. A few minutes later, his arm recovered.
As he flexed his fingers, he immersed himself in sensing the mutated tissue in his arm. Then, he nodded. “Yeah.”
He practiced one of the three secret techniques of the purity faction—the Submission Force. This refined force allowed him to make adjustments to every part of his body. Once he reached mastery, he could coordinate even the tiniest bundle of mutated tissue in his body to draw out his entire potential without drawbacks.
The truly unique part about the Submission Force was that if he took a hit from his opponent’s refined force or was hurt by it, but managed to recover within a certain amount of time, his mutated tissue would be able to withstand that refined force from that moment onward.
Hence, if he faced that opponent again and they used the same refined force, the damage it would deal to him would be greatly reduced. It might even be completely ineffective.
It might look like he had gone off to provoke Chen Chuan, but in truth, every step had been calculated. His goal was to take a hit from Chen Chuan’s refined force so that he could win against him in the future.
Even though some scheming was involved, Qi Qianyang didn’t think that it was wrong. After all, martial artists needed to stop at nothing to win against their opponent. Besides, the refined force he practiced made it so that doing this was suitable for him and improved his chances of winning.
“You might have succeeded, but you left behind far too many clues. Your opponent might figure out what you were up to based on your actions,” the other instructor said.
“Even if he knows, what does it matter? I’ve already gotten the upper hand. What’s he going to do? Practice another refined force?” Qi Qianyang was completely unbothered and lowered his arm.
The other instructor agreed, but he still thought that Qi Qianyang’s actions were crude and that he should care a little more about refining the process.
In order to coordinate with him, they had sacrificed a Third Limit martial artist. The other two hadn’t managed to break free either.
Third Limit martial artists were hard to train up, and they had only produced a few of them over the past fifteen years. If they had sat down to plan this more carefully, they could have come up with a more logical plan that would have had fewer losses. But Qi Qianyang always did whatever he wanted. In order to achieve his goal, he never cared about the price the people around him had to pay.
“I need to say this: You should be careful. Our teacher is the one who trained up the people in the camp. Even though he handed the camp over to us to teach the trainees and manage them, you need to treasure them. Don’t treat them as leverage you can throw away at any moment,” he warned.
Qi Qianyang scoffed at that. “He trained those people up to use them. I admit that they might run into danger, but why should I worry about them? I’m their leader, and they have to listen to whatever I tell them to do.”
“Our teacher isn’t going to accept that,” the instructor said with a shake of his head.
At the mention of their teacher, a hint of reverence appeared on Qi Qianyang’s face, but he soon said in frustration, “Don’t even think about using our teacher to keep me in line. While I was studying under him, you were off frolicking somewhere.”
He didn’t want to continue talking to the other instructor, so he turned around. As he started walking away, he remembered something. “Just you wait. Once I chase away the purity faction’s branch, our teacher will acknowledge my actions.”
The other instructor watched him leave and shook his head before mumbling, “You don’t understand, Instructor Qi. Our teacher has never cared about these things.”
***
After stepping out of the Resolution Department, Chen Chuan drove to Majestic Light District to meet up with Chang Dong and Gao Yanjun so that he could tell them about his encounter.
“He caused such a big fuss just to challenge you to a duel?” Chang Dong marveled.
“I thought about it. The site he chose for our duel seems to be in the merged space,” Chen Chuan said.
“Then, he wants home advantage.”
But after some more thinking, Chang Dong said, “No. That’s not right. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have come to see you personally. He would have used some other method to contact you.”
Suddenly, he noticed something he nearly overlooked, and his expression changed. He faced both Chen Chuan and Gao Yanjun. “I think I know what he’s up to.”
Then, he sucked in a deep breath to compose himself before saying, “That person learned a lot of our secret techniques, and his main refined force was called the Submission Force. It’s a secret technique that can carry a martial artist all the way to becoming a martial arts master and has other training methods connected to it that a martial artist can learn after mastering it. He might have taught Qi Qianyang this refined force.”
He told the special characteristics of the refined force and gave Chen Chuan a warning. “I think he has already adapted to your refined force. If you run into him again, you need to be careful.”
Chen Chuan finally got his answer. It was no wonder why Qi Qianyang had gone through so much trouble to challenge him and then run away. Everything finally lined up.
What concerned Percival, perhaps his death was truly a coincidence. Chen Chuan could tell that Qi Qianyang was the type to do whatever he wanted. Everything about him screamed, “I can do whatever I want, and you can’t stop me.”
If that were the case, it was really Percival’s fault for showing up at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chen Chuan wasn’t all that worried about Qi Qianyang’s refined force. The All-Encompassing Force could simulate multiple refined forces, so it was the least vulnerable to being countered by a single method.
Besides, no matter how mysterious the Submission Force was, there was a limit to how much damage a person could sustain. If two people had different strength and speed, the power they displayed would be different even if they used the same refined force.
“A secret technique from the purity faction, huh? I’d like to see it.”
***
It was 4:40 p.m. when Xu Chan walked out of the elevator leading to an underground parking lot in Grand Morals District. He turned to the subway beyond the underground parking lot while carrying a luggage bag. Three people were walking behind him wearing special protective overcoats.
The higher-ups had assigned three squad captains to him for his merged space mission. Each squad captain brought with them two team members, so they formed a ten-man team.
One of them was from the Resolution Department, and the other two were from the World Ring Defense System. All of them, including the other team members, had a wealth of experience fighting in the merged space.
The three squad captains had learned the Heartborn Force too. As for spirit sense, that was something only those with incredible talent could learn. Right now, only Xu Chan had it.
But they were just the main fighting force. They also had a team supporting them from the rear. The higher-ups had assigned a large number of their elites for this mission.
Once they reached the military base in the merged space, a military squad would escort them for a while and logisticians would provide them with support.
They didn’t have to worry about anything in the beginning, but once they went deep into the merged space, things would be different. They would no longer receive any support, and they would have to rely entirely on themselves.
Upon entering the train, the group sat down in their seats.
Xu Chan checked the time. There were still ten minutes before the train departed. His Realm Pass chimed, and he tapped on it. “Sir?”
Liang Guanghai’s voice came through. “Lao Xu, I sent a message to the development squad ahead of you. If they received it, they might be able to help you.”
“Thank you.” Xu Chan was grateful.
The members of the development squad were strong martial artists and intimately familiar with the merged space, but deep within the merged space, it was hard for them to receive any messages from the rear. Besides, they had their own missions, so this was really just a backup plan.
“Be careful, Lao Xu.”
“I know,” Xu Chan said.
Soon after the call ended, the train let out a few short whistles and started moving slowly to the merged space.
***
Near the harbor of Oceanway District was a motorcade. It was going down an exclusive road on a seawall. Lead Investigator Wen sat in his limousine and looked outside while receiving information from various parties.
It had been four days and nights since he had last slept. Feeling a little tired, he took a few tubes of nutritional paste and used his breathing technique to get himself back to optimal condition.
Ever since he became a lead investigator, he hadn’t had to work to such an extent for a long time.
But he had to do it. While he was officially in charge of the Linacrox Union’s safety, he was actually supposed to monitor and keep them in line. The higher-ups had told him to do everything he could to stall and stop them from entering the merged space.
The Linacrox Union was different from the Union. It had always been on bad terms with the Great Shun Republic, so they only had a few operations departments and bases in the Central Cities and no proper tunnel to the merged space.
They could only go through secret paths.
It was impossible to lock down all the tunnels, though, because while they could seal off all tunnels within Central City, they couldn’t control the tunnels under the ocean. Those were under the municipal government’s control.
As long as the Linacrox Union offered them sufficient benefits, the municipal government would open up those tunnels for them.
Lead Investigator Wen massaged his forehead. He had to increase the monitoring over the bottom of the ocean. Due to the tension between the two countries, the municipal government wouldn’t dare to do such a treasonous thing out in the open.
The municipal government and companies were putting massive stumbling blocks in his way, though, and sometimes, he needed to go forward to face the pressure himself.
He had to endure it. If he sealed off the paths to the tunnels, he would be able to stall them and buy more time for Xu Chan.
Suddenly, the motorcade slowed down.
“What’s going on?” he asked with a frown.
“Lead Investigator Han’s car is ahead.”
“Oh?”
A motorcade approached them. When they passed by, the car windows wound down.
Lead Investigator Wen looked at Lead Investigator Han and smiled. “What a coincidence, Lead Investigator Han.”