It has come to the writer’s attention that last chapter, Zhen Liu exercised some abilities that could be misconstrued as an "asspull" on his end, so we will now be interrupting the chapter to explain what Zhen Liu did exactly, alongside more backstory stuff that occurred during the time-skip training sessions.
You don’t have to read this part, but it helps explain some things.
The long and short of it is that Zhen Liu realized that rolling up to the ancestral homeland with what was essentially super strength and an incredibly durable body, despite being publicly known as an Aether Master, was probably a good way to get a target painted on his ass.
Zhen Liu deemed it necessary to practice some more "subtle" martial art moves that would allow him to put up a fight and leverage his freakish strength that was a bit more complicated than "run up and punch a guy in the face" or "smash their face in with a club".
As such, he had been practicing moves that mostly consisted of grapples, take downs, wristlocks, throws anything that technically didn’t require a lot of force but definitely benefitted from it.
It was during the process of practicing these moves that our protagonist learned that he could technically "touch" aether arts to a degree with fire aether arts being the easiest thanks to the [Will of the Salamander] that was inscribed in his soul all those weeks ago.
As a trade-off, however, he could only stall arts for a set amount of time due to it feeling like a million pins and needles piercing his skin whenever he held an art for too long.
Think your hand falling asleep and multiply that sensation by about a thousand.
It was also during this period that he learned how to better concentrate that [Chaos] distortion thing he does when dealing with aether arts, namely focusing the effect on a single point as a opposed to all over his body, which allowed him to better counter/negate certain attacks.
He never came up with any formal names for these tricks, it was just...gut feeling.
Anyways, we now return to your regular chapter, thank you.
You seriously couldn’t think of a place to slide this chapter in?
|Not without breaking a lot of flow, no.|
Couldn’t even fix it in post?
|We don’t have that.|
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<> the old man (Zhen Liu) asked Zhen Ba Yin, point blank.
(Un)surprisingly, Zhen Ba Yin didn’t answer first.
It was Zhen Ren Fa who opened her mouth first.
<> Zhen Ba Yin interjected, <>
<> Zhen Ren Fa yelled while gesturing towards Lei Zhong and Gou Huang, <>
’Huh...such waterworks.’
A part of Zhen Liu wanted to interject at some point in order to get Zhen Ren Fa to shut up, but another part was too busy benefitting from this interaction.
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=Powerful desire detected, begining the core consolidation process now.=
=Core consolidation complete, [Core of Pride] has been created, please use at your earliest convenience.=
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<> Zhen Ba Yin immediately called out, <>
’Huh... looks like I was right about this guy being one of those stiff back types.
This may have been another world, one where the order of the day was usually "might makes right", but even Zhen Liu knew that lawmen in general tended to go for the option that lead to the least amount of conflict.
Whether that meant turning a blind eye or using excessive force, really depended on the lawman in question.
In the case of Zhen Ba Yi, from the moment Zhen Liu laid eyes on the man, he could immediately tell he was the straight-laced type of law enforcemer, as in the ones who know every law and misdemeanor violation by heart and would actually de-escalate whenever possible.
Then again, it also probably helped that a certain voice in his head had an announcement to take when they began to talk in earnest.
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It was a good thing that Zhen Liu was wearing a long black robe while in this particular disguise, otherwise he’d have to be a lot more careful with his movements at this moment.
Regardless, shortly after this argument between niece and uncle, Zhen Liu was finally given an answer about whether or not they could leave.
An answer that could best be described as "reasonably annoying".
Off to the side, two groups of five people each made their presence known as they quite literally entered into this conversation to answer Zhen Ba Yin’s question.
<> old man(Zhen Liu) said with somewhat forced delight, <>
One group consisted of Zhen Liu’s other cousins, Zhen Tai, Zhen Xing, Zhen Guo and Zhen Feng, alongside the unconscious slave girl still on Zhen Guo’s back. Once they saw that Zhen Yue and Zhen Hai were okay, they immediately over to where they were standing, taking a moment to observe and ask who the old guy was before, learning that he was their "master"...sort of.
There was a quick exchange of information before they settled in, but once they learned what the situation was, Zhen Xing and the others immediately started playing along.
As for the other group, it was bit more...interesting.
<> Zhen Ba Yin said while rubbing his eyes in stress.
Composing this second group was five individuals, two of whom were Fan Ying and Ao Tang, who were being held captive by the other three people, all of whom were young women that could best be described with the term...built like a brickhouse, albeit, they all had very different styles of dress.
One was the mysterious warrior woman with red hair and a leather jacket, who had shown up earlier to save the other Zhen Clan cousins from being kidnapped, and was noticeably the tallest of the trio. As of this moment she wasn’t holding anyone captive, that honor went to her two other associates to her left and right.
The one to her left was the stereotypical definition of the word "amazon", complete with tanned skin, leather armor and dark, long hair. She was busy holding Ao Tang in a chokehold...he didn’t look displeased about it.
On the right was a girl who looked the most petite of the trio, in fact she looked like a native Roaring Tide child, but it didn’t change the fact that she was also surprisingly muscular for someone of her build. Fan Ying was locked in her arms, and she didn’t look at all pleased at this moment.
The trio of women, along with their captives, walked over to the large gathering and proceeded to stop short of joining either side. However, they did turn to bow their heads slightly in the old man’s direction.
<> the old man said with a smile and a wave of his hand, <>
<> the tallest of the trio answered.
<> Zhen Ba Yin asked.
<> the old man answered without missing a beat, <>
<> Zhen Ba Yin nodded in understanding, <>
The moment the trio of women released Ao Tang and Fan Ying from their grasp, the two of them scurried over to rejoin Zhen Ren Fa’s side.
As they did, the trio went over to the old man’s side, causing the Zhen Clan scions to part as they took up positions at the old man’s flanks.
<> the old man said while gesturing at everyone, <>