When Wang Yang returned to the Plum Peak with the help of Xu Qiang, he climbed up the stairs in a daze. His body still refused to calm down, and when he passed through the gate of the estate, someone even more votile awaited him.

  “Go on, let’s hear it.” The air around Hua Mei scattered turned hazy as her qi poured down on Wang Yang.

  “What happened?” Sun Lingling arrived after sensing the sudden spike of power.

  “Your junior disciple fell into Lie Feng’s schemes and became the butt of a joke.” Hua Mei gritted her teeth. “I told you to be careful, and you gave them a bigger chance to disrespect Uncle. Granny Meng’s test is one thing, you should’ve at least fttened his nose if you were going for the punch!”

  Still half lost, Lingling could only guess what happened outside. And, the increasing pressure from the little, pyful girl hinted at a serious issue. However…

  “If I wasn’t stopped, I would’ve.” For the first time Wang Yang wasn’t pushed back, instead his eyes turned red. “You weren’t even there, so don’t talk down to me!”

  He seems too… unstable. Lingling couldn’t understand the sudden change.

  Wang Yang has never talked that way before when Mei had grilled him during training. She had a bad feeling about this and turned to Hua Mei for an opinion, but stopped.

  “Ho? Did getting high on power give you the courage to face me?” Hua Mei scoffed. “Looks like I was going too easy on you.”

  “Do you think I wasn’t wary of hitting a child before?”

  “I see, so that’s what you have been thinking deep down. Use your sword for the next match, I’ll crush you thoroughly.” A red Qi enveloped Hua Mei’s body, she was through with talking.

  Great… Now both of them have lost it. Sun Lingling could only watch as the two arrived at the training area.

  Wang Yang showed no signs of backing off and picked up the training sword. But the moment his foot crossed the line into the arena, fire surged. A hiss, then a crackle—his training sword burned to ash in seconds.

  “What the hell!” Wang Yang jumped back.

  “Use your real sword, not that stick. I’ll suppress my cultivation, qi, and physical abilities to your level.” Hua Mei struck her acupoints to form a temporary seal.

  “You said it.” Wang Yang wasted no time and brought out the real sword.

  “Senior Hua, this…” Lingling felt the drop in cultivation, but the danger signals that came from Hua Mei still didn’t decrease.

  “The surge of power has messed with his head. I have to snap him out of it or it will leave a negative impact on his psyche.” Mei said much calmer than before.

  “How will you do that?”

  “Fear.” Hua Mei stepped into the practice area and cracked her knuckles.

  Sun Lingling realized that Hua Mei wasn’t angry over whatever had happened outside. She provoked Wang Yang into this state and had a pn in mind, even if it did sound ominous. However, that’s the best they could do since Li Muchen wasn’t avaible.

  “Let’s set some conditions. I’ll lose if you get one hit on me,” Hua Mei grinned. “You’ll lose only when you admit defeat. Simple, right?”

  Sun Lingling didn’t think Wang Yang would admit defeat in his current state. However, the odds were against Hua Mei. Her cultivation and qi brought down, even if she had more experience, there was a limit to physical ability with the conditions she had set. If her opponent held out of giving up till she ran out of stamina, he’d win.

  “Yeah, it is simple.” Wang Yang lunged forward with a thrust aimed right at the girl’s chest.

  “Your mind has become dull, but your attacks are duller.” Hua Mei moved to the left.

  “Shut up!” Wang Yang swung his right leg hoping it would connect.

  The unstable posture and wide arc gave Hua Mei enough time to duck. With a timed sweep that targeted the standing leg, Hua Mei brought Wang Yang down to the ground. With a foot on the right hand to restrain the sword, she punted his chin with the other. Wang Yang’s left hand only struck air as Hua Mei jumped back.

  He stood up with the taste of iron on his tongue and a few loose teeth. But that didn’t seem enough as he kept dashing forward like a cornered animal. He could’ve stood a chance if he had thought about his attack pn and conserved his stamina. On the contrary, he kept swinging wantonly and missed his target by a hair’s breadth. All while his body received blow after blow from the small tyrannical fists.

  What’s happening? Why can’t I nd a hit?

  Wang Yang’s head felt hazy after an uppercut, but he picked himself up and shook his head to refocus. Hua Mei had stayed out of his range of attack the entire time. If he tried to extend, she’d always slip away and nd a counter without missing a beat.

  Her sense of distance is on another level. Barehand, even with the height and reach disadvantage, she is untouchable. Sun Lingling kept track of all the movements for further reference, as this wasn’t a simple beatdown but an actual lesson in combat.

  “Aren’t you giving up? Hitting you is getting boring.” Hua Mei asked.

  “You can only do that because you keep running away.” Wang Yang swung his sword.

  But this time, Hua Mei didn’t back away. She slid under the ssh and nded a gut punch that almost folded his body. This brought Wang Yang to his knees and the elbow soon connected to his jaw spraying his blood on the floor with a tooth.

  “Do you think I can’t hit you if I stay in your range?” She looked at Wang Yang spitting blood and gave him a chance to stand up again. “Range matters when two fighters are on the same level, but that’s not the case here.”

  “Su-Ack!” Wang Yang couldn’t even finish his words. A punch nded square on his nose. He stumbled back and tried to regain his bance.

  By the time his eyes opened, Hua Mei closed in and swept his legs. This time she didn’t even give him time to recover and id down punches in succession.

  “What good is range when you can’t attack? Just because you can swing a sword, doesn’t mean you know how to use it.” Hua Mei didn’t let up and weaved through the wild sshes to deliver a beatdown.

  She only stopped when Wang Yang had passed out on the floor with a bloody and swollen face.

  “Looks like the effect wore off.” Wiping the blood off her little hands, she shoved a healing pill in his mouth.

  “What happened to him?” Sun Lingling came near to check on the situation.

  “A surge of fire qi. It’s a problem that happens often in wood-fire type spiritual roots, in this mode their strength increases about 30%, but they become reckless and their anger explodes at the simplest trigger.” Hua Mei yawned. “Granny Meng’s soup triggered it in him; that’s why things escated.”

  “Will this become an issue for him?” Sun Lingling asked.

  “It can, but we don’t know how it's triggered. If he controls it, this will become a tool that allows him to fight opponents on a higher cultivation realm than his own. Right now, his strength was around the 8th yer of Qi refinement, a two-yer jump, even if in the Qi Refinement realm, is impressive.” Hua Mei jotted down the information on paper.

  “Such an increase… but how will he control it?” Lingling moved Wang Yang to the resting area while thinking over the case.

  “I told you before, fear will help to an extent.” The little girl stretched her arms and said words that didn’t suit her stature or cuteness. “I’ll beat him up till he becomes aware that there’s someone stronger than him, even in that state of etion. Otherwise, he will rush to his death with no regard.”

  She is doing this to help him, right? Something about Hua Mei’s smile unsettled Sun Lingling.

  “If I get a few pots of soup from Granny Meng, heh~.” Without Wang Yang knowledge or consent, the little devil of Tiger Peak constructed his brutal training regime.

  ***

  Leading up to the sect-wide trial, Wang Yang found himself in the middle of constant sparring (beating) in the name of training. From morning till evening, Hua Mei made him drink the soup of remembrance to trigger his powered-up stage, then beat him silly till it wore off. If not for the excellent healing pills Li Muchen had given his disciples, he would’ve been in the medical hall with multiple fractures and missing teeth.

  If this happened before, Wang Yang would protest this training but…

  “If you want to rub Lie Feng’s face in the ground and get back at the elders scheming against Uncle, I'd better not hear a compint.” As Hua Mei asked, he didn’t compin, no matter how unreasonable the training seemed.

  Through the constant repetition of the process, he could stay somewhat levelheaded in the powered-up state because of the fear built up inside him. He also found out the cause of this state and why his case differed from the usual, thanks to Muchen’s research notes Hua Mei dug out from the estate’s library.

  The cold qi from the soup agitated the fire qi in my body, and it went out of control. When the bance breaks, it causes an effect in my mental state because this happens in the spiritual root. Wang Yang wanted to find a way to induce this without the soup, as of now he could only do it because of Granny Meng’s soup.

  Hua Mei had tried frost pills, freeze arrays, and even encased him in an ice pilr, but nothing worked aside from the Soup of Remembrance.

  “Seriously, kicking me out without dinner in this cold and calling it training.” He lit a small bonfire outside the estate’s wall on a crisp night that made his every exhale curl like a dragon’s breath. “Maybe I should ask Master for some help.”

  “What help do you need?” The man himself answered his hopes when he returned. Muchen had been away from the estate for a while and only came back for lectures or refilling the pills and food array. So, when found Wang Yang alone outside the estate at night, he couldn't help but check in.

  “Ah… well…” The brief excitement that he could find his answer soon dimmed down. With how busy he seemed, Wang Yang didn’t want to pile more work on him. And more than that, he couldn’t look at him at the moment.

  “You want to know how to control the fire qi, right?” Muchen sat on the rock beside him.

  “…Y-Yeah.” Wang Yang couldn’t backtrack, of course his master knew.

  “Hmm… Let’s see, what do you think is the difference between this fire and this fire?” Muchen conjured a yellowish-red fme in the palm of his hand and pced it near the bonfire for comparison.

  “…One is made with qi and the other is normal, I guess?” Wang Yang said.

  “That’s one of the answers. Now, what would you do if you wanted to increase the strength of this fire?” Muchen pointed at the bonfire

  “…Add wood.” Wang Yang thought for a moment. “But would that work with the fire made from qi?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?” Muchen brought the ball of fire in his hand closer to Wang Yang. “How do you think a wood spiritual root type like me lit a fire?”

  Wang Yang looked at the fire for a moment. He wasn’t dazed, but tried to focus on the phenomenon Muchen wanted to show him. A stream of qi flowed into the fireball from Muchen’s palm, but it wasn’t fire qi, but pin wood qi. He used the wood qi from his body and ignited it from the fire qi in the air, then sustained it with wood qi like a normal fire.

  “Granny Meng’s soup finds which heavenly qi (Yin and Yang) the consumer’s body has in abundance, then takes the form of the opposite qi. Your body has an abundance of Yang, so the soup turned into pure Yin. The fire qi in your body moved first to suppress it, but it didn’t have enough strength. So, it absorbed the wood qi in your body and went out of control. That sudden spike in fire qi causes an imbance in the spiritual root, and your strength increases at the cost of mental crity.” Muchen extinguished the fme in his hand. “By controlling your wood qi, you control the increase in strength and stay level-headed.”

  “So… if I manage the wood qi feeding it, I can… control how wild it gets?”

  Muchen nodded. “Exactly. Bance the fuel, and the fme won’t burn you.”

  “Are there any more ways like these that can increase my strength?” Wang Yang’s eyes sparkled brighter then stars in the sky.

  “Of course there are.” Muchen smiled.

  “Can you teach me those as well?” Wang Yang’s excitement burned bright, but…

  “Not happening.” Muchen poured cold water all over it with a gentle smile.

  ...

  Want to read chapters early or support the novel directly?Check out my PatreonYou'll get advance chapters, exclusive content, and help keep this story going strong!

  Thanks for reading, and see you in the next chapter!