Applied Immortality

Wang Qi held hands out, one above the other, as he gripped the air. “Take this, Wind King Hammer!”

[What’s with the weird name?]

Geng Peng spared a moment to search his memories for the move Wang Qi shouted out in his charge. His instincts had him raise a finger to break the typical wind art. 

Only to find it stinging with pain.

Geng Peng’s heart sank and jumped to avoid the ‘hammer time.’ “There’s nothing windy about that strike! It’s just ripples! Why even call it that?”

“Ha-ha-ha, an invisible blade like this can’t be called anything else but Wind King Hammer.” Wang Qi cackled as he poked at Geng Peng with the ripple-formed sword.

Before the battle, Geng Peng withdrew excess spiritual power to his Dantian, leaving enough spiritual power level in his meridians to be considered an early Qi Refining cultivation. As the average home’s electric circuit failed to supply the required power for a supercomputer, Geng Peng’s yin-yang diagrams couldn’t fire on all cylinders. Nevertheless, he made up for it in computational skills, trumping Wang Qi’s many times over. The feedback he got from the spiritual power in his body provided a quick grasp of the size of Wang Qi’s ‘longsword.’

[One meter long, ten centimeters wide; not a standard one-handed sword.]

Geng Peng shivered on the inside. The ripple blade was tangible but without mass, not affecting Wang Qi’s center of gravity. Not even an obscenely sized greatsword the size of a door would change that.

Geng Peng shifted back a few steps. Wang Qi waved his sword, stabbing for his heart, forehead, and throat.

“Average sword art, Pheonix’s Three Pecks—wait, there’s also a fourth one.”

Geng Peng dodged around. Phoenix’s Three Pecks was the bottom of the bottom of the barrel, of no threat whatsoever. The move reminded him of Su Junyu’s words.

“His math is beyond his martial skills and it’ll take time to connect them. Seeking high sword arts in his state is pointless since he can’t use them. He accepted it, so he started with the crude sword arts to build experience…”

[I but a few day you grasped the math behind average martial arts and even made your own deductions?]

Wang Qi changed his grip to two hands and slashed. The Argent Mountain Hack was another crappy skill, but amending it helped Wang Qi use it in a two-handed style without being out of place.

Geng Peng was so familiar with it that he went up to break it. He advanced from the left and raised his right leg.

Wang Qi read him like an open book, raising the longsword instead. Geng Peng thought Wang Qi found the motion familiar and took a half-step back in vigilance.

“Take this, Wind King’s Boundary!” Wang Qi shouted.

[Those are just ripples. Why so fixated on wind king?]

Geng Peng was perplexed while adjusting the spiritual power shield covering his hand. Ripples were hard to train, but until the user’s grasp of Grand Ripple Enigma extended to matter waves transitions, breaking it was easy. Geng Peng gathered all the date on Wang Qi’s ripples from their last fight, adjusting his shield to counter them. He placed one hand on the longsword while the other swiped at Wang Qi’s throat.

He noticed in the corner of his eye how the ripple sword twisted the light.

[Wait, ripples have no substance so how can the light refract?]

He didn’t got the chance to solve the mystery as his hand was assaulted by a strong force. Geng Peng’s palm stung hard as Wang Qi used the force to swing around at him.

Geng Peng evaded by a hair’s breath, Wang Qi’s snicker reaching his ears. “Like I said, this is the Wind King’s Boundary, wrapping sharp winds around the blade to enhance its power. People these days, they won’t buy it even if you shout out the name of your moves. Tch, people’s hearts aren’t what they used to.”

A spectating Foundation Establishment teaching assistant finally recognized Wang Qi’s DIY Wind King’s Boundary. “Turbulent sword energy, the Deluge Art!”

Su Junyu popped out of nowhere in front of the teaching assistants to shake his head. “Overambitious and specious. Shabby, just like his Shifting Step.”

Another teaching assistant hesitated. “Senior Brother Su, going by the rules, Geng Peng lost. Maybe…”

“Let them fight. The fight has more meaning for Junior Brother Geng.”

Geng Peng stared at his palm, lost.

[I… lost?]

Wang Qi shouted, “C’mon, I’m barely warmed up!”

[Just one Navier-Stokes equation infused sword strike and you call uncle? I’ve got plenty of deduced variations to this sword art left! There’s Bernoulli’s equation, Green’s theorem, and many more. Don’t give up now! Why did I toil prepping so much for then?]

Geng Peng’s eyes flash with savagery at his mocking smile. “Don’t think being a bit sharper is going to help you, you dickhead!”

His aura spiked.

A teaching assistant cried out, “Geng Peng’s using mid Qi Refining spiritual power!”

Su Junyu stared at the fight with gravity. “Be careful there, Junior Brother Su, cross that line and there’s no going back.”

Wang Qi was ecstatic at Geng Peng’s blowout. “Wah-hah-ha-ha, attaboy! The perfect validation for yours truly’s power!”

“Screw your validation!” Geng Peng roared as he lunged.

Grand Ripple Enigma trampled anything in its league. Not even an unhinged Geng Peng could take it head on, unless he used ten times more spiritual power to wear it down. At the mid Qi Refining level of spiritual power, Geng Peng could employ more yin-yang diagrams, boosting his calculation speed by ten times. He was running the math on Wang Qi sword art’s trajectory in hope of finding its weakness and thrash this obnoxious pest.

The quirky thing about this fight, besides being skewed in Geng Peng’s direction, Wang Qi went toe to toe with him!