Ye Mo skimmed through the manual, the Wind Flow martial art was a battle skill that emphasized using the force of the wind to move faster.
You had to grow attuned to the wind currents and understand them, moving along until you felt no resistance anymore. At its completion, you would be like an air current, moving with the wind, unobstructed.
Beside this battle skill, the rest were only women's clothes and cosmetics. Ye Mo stored everything inside the pouch then left to take a meal.
He was sated when he left the restaurant and returned to his house where he cultivated for the rest of the day.
He wouldn't make much progress in the Nine Revolutions Fiend Body technique by absorbing qi in his flesh, but it helped him relax and stay energetic.
When night fell, Ye Mo set out.
He knew very well the importance of laying low, he couldn't let anyone see him practice. He was a starving orphan wandering the streets not too long ago, it would be suspicious if people were to see him use martial arts out of nowhere. People were no idiots and would quickly grow dubious seeing a mere mortal with no connections use the art of cultivators, they would dig out the truth and after their suspicion was confirmed, Ye Mo would be in a bad situation.
Since he broke through the first revolution, Ye Mo wasn't afraid of ordinary men anymore, what he apprehended instead were cultivators and he didn't wish for them to set their eyes on him yet.
That's why he left through the south gate of the city and walked in a circle until he made sure no one was following him before he ran to a desert patch of land far from town.
"This place should be good enough." Ye Mo commented looking around him.
Because this place was devoid of any life and vegetation, he could easily spot anyone approaching from the distance, but outsiders that would for some reason pass by this place would also be able to see him from afar, though they wouldn't understand what he was doing.
In truth, Ye Mo would have preferred training in the Jade Forest. Its infinite vastness and dense woods were perfect to remain hidden and progress under the pressure of a wild environment, but he didn't know if the Liu clan found out about Liu Hualing already.
Although he cleaned the place, they were bound to notice her disappearance and come look for her, with their mysterious abilities, they might find something at some point. In case they notice him in the surroundings while they look for the culprit, he could be in danger.
He wouldn't take mindless risks so he chose to come here instead.
Ye Mo sat cross-legged on the ground and closed his eyes trying to feel the air around him. He completely immersed himself in the movements of the wind.
After a minute, he rose up and ran a short distance before sitting again.
"I can feel the wind resistance on my body, this one increases the faster you move. I must improve my comprehension of the air currents, if my movements are in harmony with the movement pattern of the wind and I can move along with it, I would have mastered the Wind Flow technique."
Ye Mo focused back on the breeze surrounding him. Sometimes he would stand up and run a couple meters before stopping and calmly sensing the wind for a long time then he would rise and sprint all over again. This cycle repeated many times as he slowly grew more familiar with the wind and its movements.
At dawn, he got back home and went to sleep. When he woke up, he would leave to eat something and then return to cultivate for the rest of the day. When night came, he would go back to the same place and train with the Wind Flow battle skill.
Time passed this way until the day before the recruitment competition of the Tiger Martial Institute.
Outside the city, on a barren land in the southeast, a silhouette could be seen sprinting in the dead of the night. It was so fast that one could barely follow it with their eyes.
"I can feel close to no resistance anymore, but this is still far from the wind currents depicted in the Wind Flow battle skill manual." Ye Mo stopped in his tracks, contemplating his progress.
He became faster, but he still didn't master the martial art and he felt he couldn't progress any more than this though, he knew his comprehension wasn't the problem.
He soon realized what was wrong.
"I can't use qi." Ye Mo stated flatly.
In the Wind Flow manual, there is a part on the manipulation of qi, but it was only a small paragraph containing a few simple lines while the manual gave prominent importance to the wind currents comprehension to completely master the battle skill making Ye Mo overlook this first part and believe he might be able to reproduce a similar effect if he could understand the air movements.
This belief was caused by Ye Mo's lack of knowledge.
Although he heard a few times of battle skills that used qi, he was a stranger to the cultivation world and didn't know that almost all of them did. Due to the composition of the manual, he was led to believe Wind Flow was an exception that could be used by understanding the air resistance on oneself.
In the manual, it was stated once the mastered battle skill was used, the user would be surrounded by wind currents and could move like a furious gale, leaving only blowing wind in its trail.
However, even if he trained this way for a year, Ye Mo wouldn't be able to achieve this feat without qi.
It wasn't abnormal as any youth when learning the ways of cultivators, would start by gathering and storing qi in their dantian. Qi was the foundation of cultivation and everyone went through it to make their first steps in their path towards superiority. In this case, Ye Mo was an exception as the circumstances made him start by refining his body instead of cultivating qi which was a very rare occurrence. Even to this day, he didn't have an ounce of qi in his dantian to complement with his understanding of the martial art so he couldn't perfect the technique.
Nonetheless, Ye Mo wasn't disheartened, he tried to grasp any small improvement in his abilities in preparation for the competition, since he attained the first revolution of his body refining technique, he could barely feel any change from the qi method.
In this last week remaining, his only option was to train in the Wind Flow battle skill so even if he knew the outcome, he would still have chosen to take this time to learn it, and despite the fact he couldn't use it yet, he wasn't without results.
Not only did he grasp the movements of the wind and could feel no resistance anymore, gaining a great boost in his speed, once he became a cultivator and could gather his qi, he would be able to use the martial art immediately without going through this whole phase of comprehension.
"I guess I'm stuck. Well, it should be enough for tomorrow, my speed increased a lot, and I don't believe I can't join the Tiger Martial Institute with my current capabilities."
Since he refined his body to the first revolution, Ye Mo was confident he could pass the recruitment competition as long as he wasn't too unlucky, and now with his heightened speed, he would have even more chances to join the Tiger Martial Institute.
With light steps, he left in the direction of the city.