The man appeared quite shocked at the fact that I managed to deflect his strike. Not waiting for him to process it, I pressed onward and attacked. I've been trying to figure out Space Dao deeper and deeper ever since breaking through, but it's been sort of like trying to figure out college-level algebra when you only know basic high-school math.
Sort of like seeing that big-ass equation that spans half the paper, with symbols that look like they'd be used to summon C'thulu or some shit, but every once in a while you recognize something--a number, some normal letter and so on--and you go 'Hey! I know that!'.
That was kind of what I felt with Space Dao. For the most part, it was just numbing dullness, but every once in a while I'd make connections that shot a whole bunch of dopamine into my brain for a moment, making me happy with the progress... even if it was minimal.
I'd understood all the fundamental aspects during the breakthrough itself, which allowed me to utilize the 'idea' of space a bit better.
For example, right now I'm driving forward in the flat line, arm extended as though in a position to pierce, but at about ten feet of distance between me and him, I 'displaced' space in front of me--sort of like creating a mini wormhole but not really--and appeared basically a few inches in front of him, swing already completed.
I barely registered his shocked expression as he struggled to lift the sword and deflect my strike; as it was quite clumsily put together, he was blasted off sideways yet again, with me in pursuit.
There's a law of unpassable equivalence--displacing space costs a lot of Qi. That little action basically consumed a quarter of my entire reserves. There's also a key difference between that and using movement arts which, visually at least, do the exact same thing--movement arts are sequences, and are executed in sort of a 'three-part-process' of sorts: the preamble, which accounts for the gathering of Qi and shuffling it around the meridians in the correct order, the action itself which discharges the gathered Qi to do something, and the aftermath which is, well, the aftermath of that action.
All three parts sequenced together discharge Qi and those traces are visible and readable. If I had tried to jump into the man's shadow using the Imminent Shadow Steps, for instance, he would have noticed it immediately upon me even reaching the 'preamble' stage as I would have had to made a connection to his shadow--and the tether would be Qi.
Circumventing these rules is probably stupid on my part, as evidenced by the fact that using movement that would have cost me like 1% of my Qi if executed through a movement art instead cost twenty-five times more, but this is more of a 'proof of concept' as I try to navigate my understanding of Space Dao.
Having made my way over to him immediately, I changed up my approach; rather than displacing all the space between us and moving next to him, I roughly tried to calculate the trajectory of my sword strike and, mid-swing whilst still some twenty feet from him, I instead tried to precisely displace space between the endpoint of the strike and the man's left shoulder.
Ultimately, I was off... a decent amount. I missed him by about a full foot, but since it was a Qi-charged strike, an array of energy shot forth as my sword 'appeared' both near him and in my hand.
Having likely not expected it, the array just struck him cleanly, digging a massive gash into the right side of his ribs and causing him to sputter a mouthful of blood as he fell to his knees, his neck craning back as his eyes stared at me in abject horror.
I gasped as I felt my entire body 'shudder'--well, shudder might not be the right word; a sense of weakness overwhelmed for a fading moment, the culprit being the fact I'd spent nearly half of my Qi reserves within what was maybe two or three seconds. Though my meridians and dantian were strengthened and I've got that elusive Eternal Core, there still was such a thing as 'too much'. No matter how great of an engine a car has, if you full-throttle it without stop, it will blow out eventually... I'm assuming.
Probably not, though. Just how many goddamned sensors did the modern cars have to make sure something like that didn't happen?
Regardless, I had no sensors like that--as such, having used so much Qi so quickly left me in an extremely vulnerable spot. Luckily, the man seemed to have been so shocked at my attacks for some reason that he didn't move. He didn't even use Qi to patch up that gaping hole that was bleeding quite profusely, pooling blood underneath him.
Luckily, the moment of weakness was literally just that--a moment. I felt my core spin up almost like a cooler in a PC when you boot up a game, with Qi within me churning rapidly as I began to recover it.
The reason why people here didn't do something as stupid as 'displacing space' in order to emulate movement arts was pretty obvious by now, but it didn't matter; it was never supposed to be a mainstay, anyway, and would have always been a more of a 'learning thing' and a trump card should I need it.
With the man not having expected it twice in a row, and seeming quite shocked at the same time, it means that the attack is irregular enough to where it could potentially constitute a trump card.
"You should patch yourself up," I said, putting away the sword; though he attacked me, I really didn't have any intentions of killing him. As we were gonna drop both him and the kids off in the mountains, he'd be the only shield they would have left, and their only chance of getting out of this thing alive. "And voluntarily seal your cultivation until we reach the mountains. If you don't, I'll simply leave you here."
"..." though there was a look of displeasure, it was also... diminished. He listened silently and quickly sealed up the wound before, miraculously, actually sealing his cultivation voluntarily.
I did not expect him to do it, actually, having fully been ready to beat him until he passed out, but hey, maybe he finally woke up to my kindness.
Anyway, we really have no more time to waste, so I spun around and was just about to usher everyone into the chariot when I paused, feeling chills run down my spine.
The kids were looking at me... weirdly. That wasn't the odd bit, truthfully--these days they often looked at me weirdly. What was weird were the looks Long Tao, Lao Shun, and Han Yimu were giving me. Those three were by barometers of 'common sense', and the look in their eyes was telling me... something was off.
"W-what's wrong?" I asked.
"Did you--"
"--nothing, Master," that was Long Tao interrupting Lao Shun. "We should hurry and get into the chariot. If we delay any further, we might not be able to get away."
"... yes. Let us do that."
Though they 'dropped it', I have this sneaking suspicion that it won't remain dropped for too long.
The only question that remained: what did they drop, anyway?