Rise of the Alchemy God

Chapter 81: Poor Combat Skills

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Seeing that everyone had arrived, the head of the family began the meeting.

Turning his gaze to the tall young man standing in the center of the room, he spoke:

"Shu'er, it's been a while since you last visited the family. Tell me, how is your cultivation progressing?" he asked Da Shu, in an affectionate tone.

"It's going well," Da Shu replied.

He wasn't in a hurry to bring up the main issue just yet.

It had been over a year since Da Shu had left for the sect, and he hadn't returned to the family manor since then.

The head of the family wanted to catch up with him a bit before addressing the matter that had brought everyone together today.

As he sensed Da Shu's current cultivation level, he couldn't help but smile slightly.

'Already at the sixth level of Body Refining. If he continues at this pace, then in a few more months, he'll reach the peak of this stage,' he thought.

The other family members didn't mind the conversation between the two.

They knew the patriarch adored Da Shu, and they also couldn't help but have a good impression of him.

After all, at such a young age, he was already showing great talent for cultivation, and with the recent incident, their impression of him had only improved.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, the patriarch finally brought up the matter of the pills.

"Your recent achievements in managing the shops under your name have been very good, almost excellent.

You've even managed to alert those old foxes from other families," he said with a chuckle, before returning to his calm tone.

The previously relaxed atmosphere was now replaced with a more composed and serious one.

"Your performance this year will surely surpass that of previous years, perhaps even becoming one of the best," he said, nodding, thinking that maybe the desire to do more business, which runs in the blood of every Peng family member, had finally awakened in him.

"That being said, the speed at which you're supplying the shops with pills is faster than anyone expected, catching everyone off guard.

I assume there are some rather capable alchemists behind all of this," he said, finally starting to discuss the reason they had all gathered here today.

Da Shu had already prepared himself in advance to respond to this, so he sighed internally and said, "It was unexpected for me too.

I thought I was dealing with an ordinary alchemist, but he turned out to be more skilled than I anticipated."

At the mention of these words, many eyes narrowed as they noticed a particular detail in them.

"Hm? An alchemist? Not a group?" asked the patriarch.

Although he expected there might be one person behind this, rather than a group, it was still difficult to accept, so he was still uncertain and emphasized the point.

Da Shu nodded in agreement.

It wasn't that he didn't understand their confusion.

Even he was shocked when he saw that Ethan had managed to increase his daily production several times over, and he even asked if he had found some skilled helpers.

But Ethan simply replied that he had just improved his efficiency, without saying how.

Da Shu knew this was only the beginning of what would be a barrage of endless questions, so he had already agreed with Ethan in advance.

He didn't want to hide anything from his family, but he also didn't want to involve Ethan if he didn't want to be involved.

Not only because Ethan was his friend, but also because Da Shu could tell that Ethan's potential wouldn't stop here.

His business sense told him that if he continued trading with Ethan, he would surely earn much more in the future.

So, he agreed to Ethan's request to remain anonymous.

While Da Shu was busy handling the issue of Ethan's pills, Ethan was currently in his sea of consciousness, lying on the ground with a smoking bruise on his head.

"You didn't hold back at all," he said as he got up from the ground.

Bai Yu, who was calmly standing on the other side, spoke as she looked at his battered appearance.

"Believe it or not, I used a simple basic technique to attack you.

It's just that with your nearly nonexistent combat experience, you couldn't even defend yourself against it," she said nonchalantly, her words piercing through Ethan like sharp knives.

'This woman is heartless,' Ethan thought, regretting asking her to spar with him.

That morning, as Ethan finished his cultivation and usual training routine, he wondered how effective his actual hand-to-hand combat skills were.

Over the past year in the sect, he had almost no real combat experience, and the only thing he did was learn various techniques by fighting against a straw dummy.

With his cultivation issue, he hadn't bothered to go and train like, well, practically everyone else.

He had thought he would deal with it after entering the first stage of cultivation.

But once he did, he had no time for anything else, as he became an alchemist and started refining pills to begin earning money immediately and leveling up.

Now that his dimension had arrived, giving him more time, he decided to finally address this problem.

Although he thought he had learned normal combat techniques well, he had no real experience to base them on.

The fight a few months ago with the mid-stage Body Refining monster didn't really count since he hadn't engaged in proper combat, but instead used a calculated long-range attack to avoid close-quarters fighting.

The monster was simply too strong for him back then, so he couldn't challenge it directly.

He decided to ask Bai Yu if she could help him with this problem.

Who would have thought he'd end up getting beaten by her without mercy?

According to her, being in his sea of consciousness, these injuries wouldn't be anything for him, as he could heal them with just a thought.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for the pain.

If what she said was true, then didn't that mean his combat skills were borderline poor?

The more he thought about it, the more depressed he felt.

'Haaa, why does everything have to be so difficult?' he thought as he started drawing circles in the air and reflecting on his life.

Bai Yu, seeing him, couldn't help but shake her head.

She had already noticed that although he was making great strides in terms of cultivation, his combat skills were almost nonexistent.

'It seems there's a lot of work to be done,' she thought, sighing.

She had agreed to spar with him because she wanted to assess his combat abilities and see how much he was lacking.

But it seemed he had hardly ever been in a real fight, and as a result, he didn't have the necessary experience to make the best use of the techniques he had received from his sect.

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FRANK_LEE_JUNIOR:

Here's today's chapter. I hope you enjoyed it.

As usual, if you have any comments, suggestions, or errors to report, don't hold back from doing it below.

See you tomorrow, with another chapter.