Chapter 78: Restlessness

  Three new Bimon soldiers, one Earth Bimon and two Flame Bimons, followed Liu Yu as he headed south towards the fortress. The Earth Bimon was surprisingly Nari Pochomaru, a cousin of Fadimon who had died in battle alongside Liu Yu, and shared the same Pochomaru family name with him.

  When Liu Yu found out that Nari was Fadi's cousin, he also sighed in his heart, feeling that fate was playing tricks on people. At first, it was Fadi who brought him, a new recruit, to familiarize himself with military affairs, and now he was bringing Fadi's cousin to familiarize himself with military affairs. Fate seemed to always be making fun of people.

  In the south of the fortress, five or six miles away, there are several hundred-meter-high bare black stone mountains standing in the surrounding desolate mountain groups filled with withered yellow grass and wood. In the belly of these tall black stone mountains, there are several deep pits over ten meters deep.

  Liu Yu and three new recruits from the Bei Meng army stood in front of a large pit, watching as several hundred mouse people were busily using iron picks and iron mallets to extract stone blocks from the pit in the belly of the Stone Mountain. The mouse people's stoneworking skills were quite exquisite, and the extracted stones were all relatively neat and tidy, with many becoming long strips of stone after just a little processing.

  Liu Yu casually moved a few blocks of black stone placed aside to try, and found that the weight of this black stone was quite astonishing. A block of black stone the size of a water bucket weighed two or three hundred pounds. Liu Yu also happened to urge a bit of his Qi, testing the hardness of the black stone, and found that with his own mid-term "Breaking Tiger Fist" cultivation as a fifth-stage Qi General, it would not be easy to crush this black stone.

  "This fortress will be very difficult to breach once it's built." Liu Yu knew that on the continent of Pilong, every country would cast magic arrays on the walls of important strongholds and fortresses to enhance their defensive capabilities.

  So this black stone, although it can crush even the strength of a fifth-stage Dou General, if you add the power of an above-average defensive magic array, it would be very difficult for someone like him, a mid-tier Dou Zhe, to easily break through.

  "Old man, you're excavating too many stones. The dam over there doesn't seem to need that much." Seeing the quarry piled up with a lot of stone blocks, Liu Yu asked an old mouse person who was directing the excavation of black stones and had already lost his sharp teeth.

  The damage to the Emal fort was not very serious and the amount of stone required was not much, so the lieutenant only drew twenty or more Bamun warriors from several fires to be responsible for transporting stones.

  "This lord is right, the stones we excavate are not only for the fortress, but also need to be transported to several nearby passes, and some even need to be transported to the interior of the kingdom." The mouse-like man saw that Liu Yu was a golden tongue and immediately bowed slightly to answer him.

  "Hmm, so that's how it is." Liu Yu was taken aback, he hadn't expected the black stone here to be valued so highly by the kingdom.

  "Grown-ups don't know this, but the black stone here is much harder and heavier than the bluestone on the highlands. The bastards of the Fano Empire also attach great importance to the black stone here."

  "This quarry is where they built it, and even these tools were left behind by the Fano guards. We just made use of them." The rat man saw that Liu Yu was somewhat puzzled, so he took the initiative to explain a sentence.

  "Alright, thank you old man." Liu Yu said a word of thanks and then called on the three new recruits to start moving the stones. Soon, Liu Yu and the other three each pushed a small cart, leaving the quarry site. Each of their carts was loaded with two or three black stones, which didn't look like much but weighed no less than 500 buttes in total.

  "If all the passes in the southern mountain range were fortified with this thing, and combined with the strong beast tribe magic arrays, it would be extremely difficult for the Fano Empire to counterattack here." Liu Yu thought to himself as he pushed forward with 500-600 pounds of black stone.

  ...........

  After several days of continuous autumn wind, the weather became colder and colder, and with the arrival of the first snow, the continent of Brolong entered winter again. On the edge of a small pond in the west of Emal Fortress, where the water surface was already frozen, a figure in a black long gown with golden yellow hair sat quietly in the fluttering white snow.

  The space within five or six meters around Huang Jin is completely different from the surrounding area. The white snow floating in the air immediately melts as soon as it enters this space, and there is no accumulated snow on the ground. If you look closely, you can also see some subtle airflow fluctuations in the air, and a small amount of soil particles are even suspended in the air several inches above the ground.

  As time went on, the movement of air currents became more and more obvious. From a distance, it looked like several air dragons were flying in the sky, and many soil particles were suspended in the air about half a foot high. On the ground, there were also constantly rising soil particles from the ground.

  The "boom" was followed by a brief disturbance of the air and suspension of dust particles, but then suddenly stopped. A few wisps of mist disappeared instantly, and all the dust also fell back to the ground.

  The originally calm Huang Jin Bimong suddenly stood up, his eyes filling with anger as he gazed at the snowflakes falling on his shoulders. His pale face quickly turned bright red. At this moment, Huang Jin Bimong was like a lion whose dignity had been provoked, glaring at everything around him on the verge of eruption.

  A loud crash was heard, and after a brief moment, Huang Jin's figure flashed onto the surface of the icy pond. He heavily punched the ice surface, instantly shattering the already thin layer of ice. His fists then wildly swung around, while his legs, which had sunk into the icy water, kicked fiercely at the shattered ice blocks. Several golden waves of Dou Qi shot out in all directions.

  After a while, the small pond was destroyed and looked terrible. The ice surface was completely shattered, and the silt at the bottom of the pond was stirred up, making the originally clear water murky. The few small trees by the pond were also leaning east and west, probably dead.

  "This is the fifth time." His legs were soaked in the icy cold water of the pond, but this blond-haired man seemed to feel nothing, only muttering with a mixture of helplessness and anger.

  This Huang Jinbi was naturally Liu Yu, and after repairing the fortifications, the defending troops also relaxed. After all, with the arrival of winter, the Fano Empire would not waste its strength in attacking them at this time, so Liu Yu had a lot of time to cultivate.

  Last time in the sneak attack on Sas Province, Liu Yu suddenly broke through to the mid-term of the 5th rank Doujiang while rushing on the road. His magical cultivation had long reached the mid-term of the 5th rank Mo Dao Zhe and was at a bottleneck where he could break through to the late stage of the 5th rank Mo Dao Zhe at any time.

  Liu Yu's spiritual power was originally one level higher than his elemental affinity, and he had never relaxed in his cultivation of spiritual power. Therefore, his magical attainments were always a bit higher than his Dou Qi attainments.

  This time, with fewer tasks in the army, Liu Yu had a lot of time to cultivate. He thought that breaking through to the late stage of the 5th rank magic guide was just a matter of time, and because of some other reasons, Liu Yu still remembered that he wanted to strive to break through to the level of a 6th rank great magic guide by next spring.

  But nearly two months have passed, and Liu Yu's five attempts to break through the bottleneck of the late stage of the 5th rank magic guide have all ended in failure. What was thought to be an easy task has repeatedly hindered his progress. In Liu Yu's heart, from initial surprise gradually grew a sense of frustration, anger quietly brewing within him.

  At first, Liu Yu tried to calm himself down and attempted to wear off the anger in his heart for a breakthrough. However, after failing for the fifth time today, Liu Yu finally couldn't hold it in anymore and vented out his dissatisfaction wildly at the pond in front of him.

  "Alas, I didn't expect myself to still be so restless. Who knows when I'll be able to remain calm in the face of both honor and humiliation." Having vented his negative emotions, Liu Yu looked at the messy pond and the toppled small trees, silently sighing to himself for a long time.

  The land was originally covered with snow, and the small trees were all hung with a layer of white snow, looking very pure and beautiful. Liu Yu chose to break through this place also because he wanted to use the scenery here to calm himself down. Now, looking at the ruined landscape, Liu Yu's heart felt even more ashamed after calming down.

  In his previous life, Liu Yu had always been drawn to the Confucian concept of "external king and internal sage," with a strong yearning to become an internal sage. The most basic requirement for becoming an internal sage was also being able to maintain inner peace and remain unflappable in the face of honor or humiliation.

  Able to remain unmoved by external changes, worldly honors and disgraces cannot disturb the tranquility of the mind. In his later years, Zeng Guofan, the first minister of the "Tongzhi Restoration" of the late Qing dynasty, persisted in two habits for decades, day after day.

  First, he always got up on time no matter what; second, during the decades when he was striving to become a sage, he often wrote and read notes or family letters, even when the Xiang Army suffered several major defeats and he was being pursued by the enemy and fleeing for his life.

  Behind this persistence, Liu Yu saw inner peace. What is meant by being unmoved by favor or disgrace? In the midst of all kinds of hardships and setbacks in life, Zeng Guofan never gave up his pursuit of becoming a sage, this is what it means to be unmoved by favor or disgrace, this is persistence.

  In Liu Yu's eyes, the previous life was a frivolous era, and as a member of that environment, he inevitably carried a few frivolous lives.