Archery

"…You see Zixu, although there are plenty of readily available cultivation techniques and whatnot, the best are naturally safekept, by influential clans, like the Elt or Xing, by the rulers of nations, by the heads of sects et cetera! Hold on, where was I going before trailing off?" Ku Xing pressed her index against her cheek in a cutesy manner, trying to remember.

This action caused her to rub some blood against her face, but she didn't mind, otherwise, she would have dropped the warm entrails in her hand before doing that.

"We were speaking of my choice of cultivation techniques" casually reminded Edrick as he watched her wrapping his guts around her forearms, although it looked horrifying, one's intestines didn't actually radiate that much pain at all when handled like this, it was more so the incision used to allow for his disembowelment that was a cause of pain right now.

Though, being eviscerated and seeing one's insides was supposed to cause mental damage more so than anything, because when your guts were experiencing the outside's fresh air, something was definitely, very wrong.

"Ah yes! That's right… Well, as I was saying, Mountain Sasquatch Body is a somewhat unpopular one, due to the rather excessive hair growth and foul body odour it causes even if cultivated just for a short amount of time… Sasquatches in general are rather odd creatures to begin with, they are awfully stealthy despite their size but if found out, will turn into the most obnoxiously aggressive bastards of the land, they start stinking like they're skunks and throw rocks they literally can't anymore-"

"-Sorry, I trailed off again… I just hate these apes… But as far as the cultivation technique goes, from what I saw, it is a solid foundation, easy on beginners and you do have a somewhat similar build to them, sort of" the elder was reaching inside and poking at stuff that should definitely not be poked.

"Since you lean the most toward body cultivation, it is only natural to begin with a body cultivation technique and this one seems proper as long as you don't mind the side effects"

"No worries, my second wife will know how to deal with the extra hair and smell" it was Linmin that was in charge of cutting everyone's hair after all, and he did a very good job of it, also being the one that was in charge of keeping Edrick's other areas free of hair.

"Very well then- When it comes to the Guardian Hippopotamus Physique, it is also a fairly solid choice, I encountered a few cultivators who practised it, the defensive boons looked pretty good even if none of them was truly that talented in it… Considering that you are already awfully thick-skinned, you might actually have an affinity for it"

Ku Xing kept on as she spoke, even though Anoteros knew that she was a professional fuelled by what was once considered supernatural to him, it certainly felt odd to feel someone probe at his organs so casually, especially when she just wrapped her hand around his heart, that was a most bizarre sensation.

"I suppose you know about the advantages of body cultivation? You know, how you can turn this technique into a physique, rendering it completely passive and all? Well, you might not have known this, but the cultivation itself was only focused on certain aspects of one's body…"

"...For example, the hippo one focused on the skin and flesh, to imitate the toughness of the beast and all- But when you acquire the physique yourself, it won't be limited to the scope of the technique, it will allow you to reap the benefits of the creature as a whole without the downsides, not only will the effects the technique wanted to emulate be better, but you"ll gain a bunch of other stuff as well… Now, earning a physique is supposed to be both difficult as you need to cultivate hard and long, and is also very much luck-based, but I trust that you will manage it with at least one"

She smiled and stopped messing around inside his chest cavity, returning everything where it belonged before healing everything back up.

"I knew about physiques… But how does one obtain a bloodline?" asked Edrick.

"Well… Technically speaking, bloodlines could be earned in the same manner, I am sure the geezer didn't bother to precise, but there are many types of cultivation, body, mind, soul, spirit are the big four, here people focus on weapon cultivation instead, most use all-cultivation methods and just don't choose, but there are more focused cultivation methods as well… They would probably still fall under the other categories as they relate- But earning bloodlines through cultivating is done by practising blood cultivation techniques, but they are unpopular as except for a select view, the entire point is to try to obtain the bloodline and there is no other benefit, and since it's even more unlikely that with physiques, everyone naturally ignores these techniques"

"Although they never fall into obscurity due to how attractive the possibility is" Ku Xing shrugged "The easier method is just to find it, you wouldn't believe it, but bloodlines are sometimes just lying around for some reason, or you get them when eating something from a corpse, I guess"

"I wouldn't recommend it, I knew a guy who found a tomb and ate the cadaver buried there, he died of dehydration after suffering from explosive diarrhoea for two whole months… It was pretty funny" she tried to not laugh but couldn't contain herself when the memories were brought back up, like it had happened yesterday.

Edrick looked at her contorting around and being nearly brought to the ground out of sheer hilarity.

"Oh my…" she cleared her throat, producing a most unholy clump of mucus before turning back to him.

"Now that that's out of the way… We can finally stop with the demonstration- Behold" she led the way out of the torture chamber and to another, which had been made into an indoor firing range.

Others tended to forget, but Ku Xing was a bowmaster, her weapon cultivation with a longbow was second to none, mostly because few actually favoured the bow as their main weapon but that didn't change the fact that she was good enough with it to place herself as an elder of the Myriad-Arm Sect.

She presented to him a large bow, alongside appropriately sized arrows and a quiver amongst the other typical gear archers needed, such as protection for the forearm and special glove.

"Although you could probably use the regular ones, it would be a shame to waste that arm length, or rather, those things are so freaking long that I feel more inclined to call it a wing span- With all that room to pull back the string, you should be capable of firing very powerful shots, go on, give it a try"

Ku Xing hadn't expected much at first, she had thought that Edrick wouldn't be very interested in her weapon cultivations, considering that she was only truly proficient in shooting a bow and swinging a whip, the latter being more in use for activities other than fighting.

But like the good little dear that Anoteros was, he showed interest.

'Huh… That's a pretty good posture… Did he manage that just by watching me firing?' she had shown him a few times before, always feeling very proud of her skills.

After all, even if people despised Ku Xing for it, shooting an arrow to the back of someone's head was much more effective than engaging in a sword duel, and you could easily murder people stronger than yourself with minimal effort too.

Honestly, she believed that everyone should know how to handle some form of ranged weaponry, but both the old fogeys and ignorant youngsters seemed too captivated by how 'cool' and 'impressive' close quarters combat was.

Sure, it was an intricate dance, both when the same style clashed and when two different techniques clashed, but it was just a shame that they were too focused to see the advantages that just shooting someone dead from three hundreds meters away whilst hidden in bushes had.

Edrick let loose of the arrow and hit the target, not a bull's eye, but a very good shot nonetheless, especially for a beginner who had claimed to have never held a bow in his life, or this life at least.

"Nice!"