Dark Blood Age

chapter 23 Three Sword Techniques for Killing beetles

With the battle armor and the Thousand Defeat Sword, Andrew's confidence naturally soared. If it weren't for the excessive consumption of energy, he would really want to equip himself fully immediately and fight the red-armored beetles again.

Now, his goal was directly aimed level 2!

He needed to refine his elemental energy 54 times. He realized that he had miscalculated before. Every time he increased his energy level, he needed to kill many more insects. For example, with his current energy level of nine units, he needed four and a half red-armored beetles' flame patterns to fully replenish his energy. When he reached ten units, he would need five red-armored beetles. With each increase in energy level, an additional half of a red beetle's flame pattern was needed.

However, Andrew was not discouraged. Now that he possessed the battle armor and the Thousand Defeat Sword, he had confidence that killing insects would greatly enhance his progress.

His biggest problem now is to quickly cultivate to the realm of the level 2. Only with strong power can he ensure his own safety and even challenge others! Second, he is digesting the characters in the ancient books too slowly. It's like facing a treasure mountain, knowing that there are treasures on the mountain, but unable to find the path to enter.

The level 2 can be achieved sooner or later by accelerating cultivation. The characters in the ancient books are more troublesome. These characters, which cannot even be considered oracle bone script, are extremely strange and numerous. The only way is to constantly contemplate, guess, and then conduct experiments to verify the correctness or incorrectness of the guesses.

Andrew pondered deeply and decided to cultivate to the level 2 first, no matter what. He hoped that reaching that realm would provide more help in understanding the ancient books and allow him to conduct more experiments. After all, the types of second and third order elemental symbols are very rich.

After a good night's rest, Andrew calmed down after the excitement. Upon careful consideration, he realized that although the Thousand Sun Sword was indeed a powerful weapon, if he couldn't fully utilize it, its power would greatly decrease. Just like his Frost Arrow, due to the limitations of his archery skills, he couldn't accurately hit moving targets, which resulted in him only being able to shoot the first arrow through sneak attacks, greatly reducing the deterrent power that the Frost Arrow should possess. If it were used by an expert archer, he believed that the Frost Arrow's deterrent power should not only be used for sneak attacks before battles.

Therefore, he didn't want to blindly use the Thousand Sun Sword now. There are naturally martial arts techniques in the ancient books, but his current realm is not enough to cultivate them. He can only learn some basic swordsmanship, although there are a few in the ancient books, he doesn't understand those characters. Furthermore, the ancient books do not advocate for this type of swordsmanship. Under the immense power of sword combat techniques, these swordsmanship techniques have become auxiliary skills, only serving the purpose of familiarizing the sword user with the nature of the sword.

It doesn't matter if he doesn't understand the swordsmanship in the ancient books. Andrew himself had prepared a lot of martial arts materials in the Sunshine Era, some bought from bookstores and some printed from the internet. They came in handy now.

The basic movements of the sword, such as hooking, hanging, jabbing, picking, stabbing, lifting, and chopping, Andrew naturally wouldn't learn so many, too miscellaneous, too chaotic, and he didn't have that much time. His current first threat is the Red Shell Beetle, so his swordsmanship naturally needs to be targeted to match the characteristics of the Red-armored Beetle.

While recalling the attacking movements of the Red-armored Beetle, Andrew flipped through various materials. He needed to organize a set of the simplest and most practical swordsmanship.

The Red-armored Beetle's attacks are generally direct charges, either using its pincers to clamp the target or using its knife-like legs to pierce the opponent. Only after the attack is ineffective will it switch to using corrosive saliva. It can be said that although the insects have very strong attacking power, their attack methods are not complicated.

In addition to his own abilities, he now has the dual protection of battle armor and the Six-Armor Elemental Symbol. The threat of insect attacks has been greatly reduced, and if his internal vitality is sufficient, he can withstand multiple attacks from insects. Furthermore, the Qi-infused Thousand Defeat Sword should also be unstoppable and have distinct characteristics.

Combining all these factors, Andrew organized a set of offensive sword techniques with only three moves.

The first move is a straight overhead chop, called the Chopping Sword Style. With both hands gripping the sword and raising it, when the beetles approaches, he will bring it down from above to the front of his body, with the arm and sword forming a straight line, and the elemental energy and strength directly reaching the blade to chop off the insect's head.

If the beetle doesn't dodge and its most vulnerable head receives this strike, it will either be injured or killed.

Of course, this is based on his ability to accurately chop the beetle's head. If the insect moves too fast or his own technique is too slow, and he chops the beetle's carapace instead of its head, it won't be fatal!

If the insect evades or cannot be hit on the head, then use the second move: the slicing sword style!

The slicing sword style is also relatively simple and practical. After the first move, the chopping sword style, fails, the sword is already falling. At this time, simply turn the palm of the hand slanted upwards, level the sword, and depending on the position of the beetle if it is to the left of the sword, then as the body rotates, the sword will diagonally cut from the lower right to the upper left, with the sword tip piercing higher than the head, directly reaching the front part of the sword with energy and force.

The goal of this move can be either the beetle's head or body, with the purpose of severely injuring the beetle.

If the beetle still manages to escape, with its jumping ability, it is likely to leap over the sword, or even over Andrew himself. In that case, the third move is the sword reverse flick, known as the flicking sword style!

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