Chapter 539: Critical Glove
To the northeastern parts of Zheng manor. A secluded courtyard with old-fashion housing.
An elderly white man sat next to an incense table, his eyes closed in meditation.
This elderly man was quite old, and his hair was grizzly-white and in various amounts around his face, though it failed to retract from his hale and hearty facial expression. He was an elderly man in every sense of the word, but his body was vibrant and muscular with life.
But the most particular detail to him was the serpentine two-inch black scarring on the left side of his neck. It looked quite aged, though however way or however long it was he got this injury, it looked still quite strangely.
In the middle of his meditation, the eyes of the elder suddenly flew open!
“This…the Planar Laws!”
Shifting his eyes to the southwest, the elder’s aged face showed an expression of confusion onto it.
A short moment later, his eyebrows knitted together, “Eh? It’s gone?”
“Strange….” The elder muttered, “Was I just imagining things?”
The force he felt was extremely weak, and it was only just for a moment. The elder hadn’t even been able to ascertain where it came from other than the general direction.
“How strange, I’ve never felt a type of Law like this before. It’s weak enough to not be noticed by anyone else….” The elder sighed. “Perhaps some young Soul King has found themselves upon some luck by accidentally or purposefully touching upon one of the Planar Laws…..”
Silent for a moment longer, the elder shook his head and returned back to his meditation.
……
The western courtyards where Bai Yunfei resided in.
Upgrade Successful
Equipment Grade: Low Heaven
Elemental Affinity: Metal
Upgrade Level: +12
Attack: 2100
Defense: 2200
Additional Attack: 2000
Additional Defense: 2100
Soul Compatibility: 85%
Equipment Effect: Increase damage dealt to wood-type enemies by 20%.
+10 Additional Effect: 30% Chance to deal 300% damage with the next strike.
Cooldown of 1 minute.
+12 Additional Effect: Consume soulforce to grant the ability to deal 400% damage with the next strike.
Cooldown of 5 minutes.
Upgrade Requirement: 120 Soulpoints
With that one ‘action’ of his hand, Bai Yunfei had been given a different string of notifications.
In that one moment, the ‘upgrade failed’ had been replaced by another!!
He had….‘changed’ the outcome of the upgrading result!
This….
Bai Yunfei’s eyes blinked several times at his achievement. His eyes were no longer glazed over, focused light now back in them.
He had looked a little vacant in the moment before, though. As if realizing something, his eyes hovered over onto the equipment in his hand.
Scanning over the stats of the equipment, Bai Yunfei’s eyes glistened excitedly. His body shivered with emotion, his heart pounding equally fast.
“I….I finally did it!!”
Bai Yunfei screamed internally, his mind filled with emotions. With his haphazard state and bloodshot eyes, Bai Yunfei looked a little ‘crazed’ at the moment.
He couldn’t be blamed for that, however. This was an outcome that was extremely important!
His study in the Upgrade Technique had finally a true and useful discovery!
Manually upgrading equipment from +1 to +10 was a little ‘superfluous’ at first glance. After all, if the Upgrade Technique could do it faster and easier, what point was there spending precious time and energy with manually upgrading it?
The answer came to him in the form of this achievement. It wasn’t too useful prior to +10, but afterwards, manually upgrading an equipment was useful!
What manually upgrading offered him now was the amazing ‘assistive’ ability to ‘change’ the outcome of upgrading!
There was a reason why Bai Yunfei opted to try and use this ‘assistive’ ability during the Upgrade Technique rather than manual upgrading from +11 and +12 was because of an assessment Bai Yunfei had. After researching for the past week, Bai Yunfei knew that manually upgrading to +10 was already extremely difficult. To try and repeat the attempt to +11 by manually upgrading would be insanely difficult.
He had been in a trance when this miracle happened. It was an extremely rare situation, one that if missed, Bai Yunfei would’ve have to wait for an extremely long time before the chance would be offered to him again. By using the Guaranteed Upgrade Stone to upgrade the equipment to +11 and then soaking in the gained insights to try again, Bai Yunfei was able to go into this special trance to try and upgrade again. And then while he was still soaked in these insights, Bai Yunfei was able to touch upon an unknown ‘power’ to forcibly alter the results!
It was a series of coincidences that required plenty of luck for any single one event to happen. But with luck backing him, Bai Yunfei was able to come out on top over everything else.
The heavens favor the bold. If one was willing to take the risks, then they would naturally receive the rewards.
The special trance he had been in was long gone now. Excited that such a success happened, and that his research was successful, Bai Yunfei felt his energy drain from his body and flopped back onto his bed.
He was tired.
Almost an entire week had gone by since he last ate or drank. This was a feat that’d be extremely hard for most people to even imagine, but the fatigue he was feeling was far too much for Bai Yunfei to resist, and without any further ado, Bai Yunfei fell asleep….
……
Bai Yunfei wouldn’t awake for another ten hours when it was evening. Blinking his eyes open slowly, he sat back up on his bed.
A rate of recovery like this would be equally astounding to others. The coloration in his face was back to normal now, and Bai Yunfei’s physical appearance was looking much healthier than before.
Before looking at the +12 golden glove, Bai Yunfei flipped through his space ring to take out a normal mid-earth tier soul armament to concentrate on.
His eyes were sharply focused on the soul armament for a while before disappointment shone in them.
As hard as he might, Bai Yunfei knew he couldn’t reenter that ‘trance’ he had been in before. Even manually upgrading this soul armament to +1 would take an extraordinary amount of effort now compared to when he was manually upgrading the golden glove.
This unprecedented level of success one after another had to be mainly in part due to the special background of the golden glove. Without that special background, Bai Yunfei wouldn’t have had succeeded so smoothly.
Elsewise, using manually upgrading or even using the ability to ‘change’ the outcomes so easily would be an enormous stroke of luck for his future….
Still, not being able to pull off that ability wasn’t too much of a disappointment for him. He had the ‘experience’ now. No longer did he have to ‘guess’ his way around how the Upgrade Technique worked. Bai Yunfei had faith that he’d be able to pull off today’s successes without difficulty with time.
His hand back on the golden glove now, Bai Yunfei couldn’t help but smile in glee at the results. He had now another +12 soulbound armament!
Critical strike!!
Both of the glove’s effects related to the ability to have ‘critical hits’! And the +12 effect granted him a critical strike four times his normal strength! And at any time he wanted!
This meant that as long as Bai Yunfei wanted, he’d be able to attack someone with four times the strength possible!
And to make it even better, the two additional effects didn’t contradict with one another! He could activate the +10 effect with the +12 effect for….an attack with seven times his normal strength!
TL Note: Author is thinking additively rather than multiplicative.
Seven times!! Just how strong was this? Wouldn’t he be able to kill any soul cultivator at his level in one blow?
Gingerly wearing the golden glove on his left hand, Bai Yunfei clenched it reflexively. It fitted his hand quite well and didn’t cover his fingers completely, being fingerless gloves. It also covered just shy of an inch over his wrist, and without the light shining from the glove, it’d look like any ordinary glove with a golden tint to it. But even with that golden lustor, many would be hard-pressed to note that this glove had been created with a metal affinity to it.
Pleased, Bai Yunfei nodded his head. “Critical strikes….then in that case, I’ll name you the ‘Critical Glove!”