Wen Cheng walked up to Alex who was still on the ground and said, "Alright, I need to talk to you about something."
Alex stood up and waited for his master to continue.
"So, I have 7 techniques here with me. Aside from one technique, all of them are heaven grade. Thankfully, you had 5 elemental spiritual roots, so I didn't have to filter through the techniques and the search didn't last for long."
"What I am thinking of doing is every day, I will give a target for you to defeat. After each time you defeat the target, I will give you one of these books. So, since you completed today's task like I said yesterday, you get a technique."
"Choose, which one do you want? There are 3 offensive techniques, 2 defensive techniques, 1 movement technique, and 1 escape technique. The escape technique is the only one that is in immortal grade, while the others are in heaven grade. So, choose," Wen Cheng really outdid whatever expectations Alex had of him.
"Master, didn't you say that I needed spirit stones for everything in the sect? How come I'm getting free stuff from you?" he asked.
"Yes, you do. In fact, these books cost spirit stones as well. Only thing is, I paid for them instead of you." Wen Cheng said.
"Aw, Master. You didn't have to do that. I could've paid for them myself." Alex said. He had a few pills he could sell, and he could've made more pills if he needed to.
"You could've paid 15 True spirit stones? Didn't you say you were broke yesterday?" Wen Cheng said with a snort.
Alex was shocked. "They cost 15 True spirit stones? Don't you rent them? Why are they so expensive?" he asked.
"These are rented for 2 weeks. As for why they are so expensive, well, our sect's gotta do something to survive. We use whatever method to get spirit stones. Most of them are from our own disciples. Some from outsiders who use our disciples for their requirements like protecting them, or helping them move cities and other stuff." Wen Cheng explained.
"Either way, we are getting out of topic. Choose one for today and get to training."
Alex thought for a bit. He didn't care about the offensive or defensive techniques for now. He only cared about the movement technique. However, the immortal grade escape technique was too good to pass on.
He racked his brains for a bit and chose the movement technique. From his reasoning, during the next day, he wouldn't get into a fight where he would have to escape from it. So, the movement technique was something that would make his life much easier.
"Alright, here you go. Read it and learn it. Shouldn't take you more than 5 hours once more right? Since it's the same grade as Elusive Heavenly Sword." Wen Cheng said.
"I will see you at around 2, and we will practice till dawn once again. I had hoped to keep you till 3, but since you can just use pills, for the most part, it's quite helpful. Okay, I'm leaving. I will see you later." Wen Cheng left with the other 6 books and left Alex with the single movement technique.
Alex looked at the book and started reading it. "Fluctuating Friction Dance. Use your Qi on your entire body to remove or add friction to your movements. Helps one move and stop as required. Doesn't have any elemental alignment, so anyone can learn it.
"Hmm… Friction? That's a very unique thing for a technique. So, it's like increasing and decreasing my resistance to the surrounding? How fast can I get by just removing some friction?"
He read the whole book and didn't have to stop to practice mid-read like he had yesterday. After a few minutes of reading, he got the notification.
<Congratulations, You have learned [Fluctuating Friction Dance]>
"Okay, let's test this out." He started moving his Qi around his body. Some of the Qi started to leak from all over his body, while most of it ended up in his legs where it strengthened them. He willed the Qi to make his immediate surroundings frictionless and moved forward.
His legs were now too strong and he moved at an incredible speed due to the lack of friction. As such, the room wasn't large enough for his first maneuver
BANG
"Ow," Alex screamed as he hit the wall. His already hurting body hurt even more. "God, that hurts." He looked around the room and wondered if it would be large enough for him to train in.
"Alright, let's not remove all of the friction, I will need some to control myself." He once again started channeling his Qi around his body as he coated himself in Qi, removing most of the friction around himself. However, he didn't send as much Qi into his leg and only increased the strength by about half as much as last time.
He prepared himself and dashed forward. He was still quite fast, but not as fast as he was previously. So, when he reached the end of the hall, he managed to easily stop himself by removing the Qi around him.
'Hmm… what if I increased the friction at the end of the run?' He decided to try once again. He removed his friction, strengthened his legs, and dashed.
He smoothly ran forward and just before he was about to reach the end, he increased his friction. Abruptly, his speed decreased at once and he came to a stop at once. The Qi formed a soft blanket that stopped him from moving forward and cushioned his abrupt stop.
Over the next couple of hours, he started testing different ways to use the movement technique and started getting good at it. Unlike Elusive Heavenly Sword which was focused on one's body, Fluctuating Friction Dance required Qi, so it took him a while to properly learn it.
By 2 am, however, he had made quite a bit of progress in using the movement technique.