Chapter 268: Upgrading Craze
“U—ugh!” With his breath knocked out of him, Xiao Er’s face grew red. He tried to regain his breath, “Brother Bai! Calm down! I’ll give you the accessories! Here, have them!!”
His hand pulled out a black space ring from within his robes before handing it to Bai Yunfei to see.
With the ring in sight, Bai Yunfei’s hold on Xiao Er loosened enough for him to fall back to the ground with a gasp. Grabbing the space ring, Bai Yunfei looked inside the ring and could see over two thousand accessories in there.
“Co-cough, Brother Bai, what are you doing!? What’s going on?” Now that Bai Yunfei was finally calm, Xiao Er immediately demanded an explanation.
“…” Snapping back to reality, the craze that was in Bai Yunfei’s eyes bled away as he looked at the panicked Xiao Er.
“Bro—brother Xiao, I… I apologize… I was…” An apology was stammered out.
Now that Bai Yunfei was finally back to normal, Xiao Er chose then to breathe a sigh of relief. “No need for apologies, brother Bai. I know you didn’t mean it, but you were truly frightful just then, what happened?”
Even though Xiao Er didn’t seem to mind, Bai Yunfei’s face was still extremely pale. His lips twitched into a frown as if he was pained and ashamed for what had just happened, “Brother Xiao. I truly apologize, I lost myself for a second there. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, just a scratch really. It’ll be healed after a good night’s rest.” Xiao Er was a very sanguine person, so a trivial matter like this didn’t weigh too much on his mind.
Bai Yunfei decided not to push the matters anymore. Looking down at the space ring, he thought for a moment before taking out a silvery-white dagger to give to Xiao Er.
Again, Xiao Er was surprised. Was Bai Yunfei the type of person who liked to give people gifts? Why was he giving him yet another powerful soul armament?
It was an honest apology. “Brother Xiao, I’ve an extremely important matter to take care of right now and can’t say much. I truly apologize for hurting you just now, so please take this soul armament as an apology. I might ask you to buy even more accessories in a little bit. The more the better! The faster the better!”
Xiao Er didn’t plan to take the soul armament, but Bai Yunfei had practically forced the soul armament into his hands, “Brother Xiao, please!!”
Xiao Er didn’t feel like guessing what Bai Yunfei needed these accessories for, but this time he could at least tell that Bai Yunfei really cared about this matter.
If a friend asked for a favor, one should do what one can to help.
Plus, his own grandfather kept repeating the necessity that he should help Bai Yunfei and his group with whatever they needed. Since he was given a second soul armament as a ‘gift,’ the necessity doubled for him. He needed to ensure that he did his best to help Bai Yunfei.
Putting away the dagger, Xiao Er nodded his head with a solemn expression. “Rest assured, brother Bai.” He vowed, “I’ll prepare every single last accessory in Curopia City if I must!”
“Thank you very much, brother Xiao.” Bai Yunfei cupped his hands together, “I must return first. Please prepare the accessories and send them when ready…”
“Not a problem!” Xiao Er nodded.
…………
By the time Bai Yunfei returned, Tang Xinyun’s essence fireseed was no more. Her body was devoid of elemental fire, and she was now a Soul Warrior once more.
Her wounds had, for the most part, stabilized. Even the corrosive energy inside had been stopped and was dormant. It remained to be seen whether or not another outbreak would occur… if there was, there’d be no second usage of her essence fireseed…
Wordlessly, Bai Yunfei stared at Tang Xinyun for a few dozen minutes. Then under the worried eyes of the others, he returned to his room and closed himself off.
Getting on top of his bed, Bai Yunfei turned to look in the direction of Tang Xinyun’s room. Though he was unable to look through the walls to see the pained body of Tang Xinyun, his own eyes ached with a tint of tenderness. “Xinyun, I won’t let you get hurt next time! I’ll make sure that I’ll make an equipment to help recover your soulforce!”
He shut his eyes and began to take in deep breaths to calm himself. By the time he opened them, Bai Yunfei had a staunch look of determination. Pulling a jade ring into his hands, he thought, “Upgrade!”
……
Upgrading… upgrading… and upgrading…
Bai Yunfei had been thrown into a near fanatical craze to upgrade things. Practically everything else in the world was forgotten. The only thing he could think about and focus on was upgrading all the accessories here.
The first time, it took Bai Yunfei an entire night to find over a hundred spirit increasing accessories from the thousand accessories he had first been given. Upgrading them until the item broke or gained an effect was another step to the process that added to his time, but this time, the two thousand accessories only took him half a day to upgrade! That was because during that first night, his soulforce hadn’t fully recovered yet!!
Later that afternoon, Xiao Er sent some of his people over to Bai Yunfei for third delivery of accessories. Upon opening the door, the maid that came to attend to Bai Yunfei had nearly cried out in terror!
His eyes were bloodshot, his teeth were gnashed together, and his face was practically without color. If the maid had come during the night rather than the day, she would’ve thought that Bai Yunfei was some sort of hellish demon rather than a human.
After finishing the second round of accessories, Bai Yunfei ended with thirteen accessories that were +10, but sadly, none of them had the effect he wanted.
Ever since Bai Yunfei had obtained the Equipment Upgrade Technique, the amount of accessories he had upgraded was innumerable. Aside from that first space ring with the soulforce recovery effect, a second one had not appeared even half a year later. From that, it was easy to tell that the chances of it appearing in the first place were very low. It was possible that even after a day dedicated to upgrading, it would not appear.
Whenever he upgraded, Bai Yunfei would stop for a break to let his soulforce recover before throwing himself back into it. Even with the breaks, upgrading so crazily like this was a giant burden on his mind. By the time he reached the third batch of accessories, he was no longer able to resist his fatigue and fell unconscious.
Under his meticulous efforts, Bai Yunfei was able to forcefully rouse himself from his sleep two hours later to continue upgrading.
Use up soulforce, fall asleep, wake up, and continue upgrading. That was how the cycle progressed without fail…
Bai Yunfei had done this once before when he had become a Soul Sprite. Though by doing this he was able to make a great leap in strength, the strain had been so severe that he nearly lost his life, so he had forbidden himself from repeating the process.
Even though he forbade himself from doing it, the promise he made today to Tang Xinyun trumped that. It didn’t matter what the consequences were…
The last time was for the sake of power.
This time was for the sake of saving the life of Xinyun.
The fourth batch of accessories came the following morning. Receiving them with a few words of thanks, Bai Yunfei returned to his room to continue upgrading.
What Bai Yunfei didn’t know was that by asking for so many accessories, all of the accessory stores in Curopia City were practically exploding with discussion. This by extension made the house of Xiao a topic of discussion again.
Of course, they were the central topic for the commoners too. Seeing one of the young heirs of the Xiao buy out all the accessories in the city was definitely a first for them.
By the third day, Bai Yunfei had all but locked the doors to his room. The only times he went out were to see Tang Xinyun at night and keep watch for half an hour, and each time, Cang Yu could only sigh and leave the room so that Bai Yunfei could stand by Xinyun’s bed. Tang Xinyun had a melancholic expression on her face; though beautiful by physical standards, her face was also sad to see.
Bai Yunfei never moved an inch whenever he looked at her. He never said a word either. After spending half an hour in such a manner, he’d return to his own room and continue to upgrade…
It went without saying that Cang Yu and the others were extremely concerned by Bai Yunfei’s behavior, but what could they do? They all thought that he was feeling extremely guilty, but none of them knew what Bai Yunfei was up to in his craze.
By the fourth day, Bai Yunfei didn’t even know how many accessories he had seen or upgraded. He couldn’t even give an estimate on the amount of +10 ones he had other than the fact that he had over a hundred of them!
He had despaired over the fact that many of the +10 accessories that granted additional spirit had normal effects such as ‘grant additional spirit.’ Not a single one of them had an effect of granting additional recovery rates!
By the fifth day, Bai Yunfei’s nerves were at a breaking point. With each passing day, the chances of the corrosive energy in Tang Xinyun’s body having a second outbreak increased.
He hadn’t even had a bite to eat since yesterday so that he could spend his time upgrading the accessories.
Later that afternoon when Bai Yunfei woke up from another one of his fainting spells, he decided not to upgrade any new accessories anymore.
He had to… upgrade the +10 ones!
If the +10 additional effects didn’t work, he’d aim for the +12 ones!!