Snow dashed through the ancient forest, a streak of white against the deep greens and browns of the primordial woodland. His powerful legs propelled them with breathtaking speed, a force of nature unto himself. They blurred past colossal trees whose trunks were wider than houses, and wove around strange, mineral pillars that jutted from the earth like the bones of the world itself.

  The mere thunder of his passage and the potent aura he emitted was enough to send the local wildlife—massive bears with pelts like shale and great cats with sabre-like fangs—scattering into the deeper thickets, sensing a predator they had no hope of challenging.

  With effortless, soaring leaps, Snow cleared wide, rushing rivers and moss-covered boulders that would have been troublesome obstacles for any ordinary mount, never breaking his relentless stride toward the looming, pencil-shaper peak of Titan’s Reach that dominated the horizon.

  As they neared the base of the mountain, the territory became familiar. Here, the first sentinels of their home could be seen. A family of stone-plated badgers was foraging near the treeline, and a great feathered serpent was sunning itself on a warm rock. Snow did not slow, but he let out a deep, rumbling "Woof!"—a friendly, familiar greeting to his kin.

  The beastkin looked up from their activities. The badgers chittered in response, and the serpent raised its head and let out a soft, hissing chirp, their unique calls acknowledging their brother and before Snow dashed past them, the wind of his passage rustling the leaves in his wake.

  The true ascent began at the stone staircase. Without missing a beat, Snow began his climb, his powerful haunches driving them upward.

  The stairs, wide and expertly carved, were the product of Kai's labor and the earth-aligned beastkin's power, a permanent path etched into the mountainside. As they rounded a switchback, they came upon the quake buffalo, Ning, who was making a slow, deliberate descent. The massive beast saw them coming, and with a surprising grace, she pressed her formidable bulk against the mountainside to give them a wide berth, letting out a low, resonant moo of greeting.

  Snow responded with a short, acknowledging bark mid-stride, not slowing as he surged past her, the sound echoing off the stone. Higher and higher they climbed, the world below spreading out into a breathtaking tapestry of green.

  Finally, they burst onto the summit.

  As they exited the final turn of the staircase and emerged into the vast, sunlit expanse of the mountain's caldera, Snow instinctively began to pick up speed, his muscles coiling to carry his passengers all the way to the distant buildings of Azure Sky Haven. But before he could break into a full run, Kai gave two firm taps on his shoulder, the agreed-upon signal to halt.

  Obediently, the great wolf slid to a stop, his paws scattering a few loose stones on the paved pathway. Kai swung his leg over and dropped to the ground with a soft thud, his movements fluid and practiced. Behind him, Gin let out a grunt and practically slid off Snow's back, stumbling several steps before catching his balance, his precious gourds sloshing wildly. He never had managed to get used to the dismount, often looking like a man who had just spent a day at sea.

  "Thanks, boy," Kai said, giving Snow's neck a fond scratch.

  Snow gave a happy chuff while the wolf nuzzled the side of Kai’s face.

  He would normally have let Snow carry him straight home, but there was something he wanted to check on first. His gaze was drawn to a specially constructed area not far from the staircase entrance: a brutalist training ground carved into the very edge of the caldera.

  This was the obstacle course he had designed as penance—specifically for Chen Gong.

  It was a merciless test of balance, strength, and concentration. The most prominent feature was a series of towering, perfectly straight logs, each as thick as a barrel, jutting out of the ground at varying heights. The objective was to leap from one precarious perch to the next while balancing a heavy, awkwardly shaped stone weight on your shoulders. A fall wouldn't just mean failure; from the highest logs, it meant a painful drop.

  But the course wasn't just about balance. Kai had enlisted the help of some of the more playful, smaller beastkin. As a disciple navigated the logs, these creatures would dart and leap, trying to swat at the weights or startle the cultivator, adding an element of unpredictable chaos. Other sections included swinging sandbags meant to knock one off balance and narrow beams suspended over water.

  As Kai drew closer, the full scene of exertion came into sharp focus. High above a murky, reed-choked pool of water, Chen Gong was precariously balanced on a narrow, greased beam. His face was smeared with dirt and grime, and sweat poured from his brow, dripping from his chin. His muscles trembled under the strain of the two heavy, rough-hewn stone weights he carried, one on each shoulder, his knuckles white from gripping them.

  Just as he found a moment of shaky equilibrium, a heavy sandbag came swinging toward his midsection from the left. With a panicked gasp, Chen Gong shuffled forward a step to avoid it. The sudden movement destroyed his balance. He windmilled his arms wildly, the stones threatening to pull him over. In that moment of vulnerability, a second sandbag, perfectly timed, swung in from the right and caught him square in the chest.

  "Whoa!"

  With a cry of dismay, Chen Gong dropped the weights—which landed with two heavy thuds on the bank—and desperately grabbed the beam with both hands, his body swinging underneath like a pendulum. For a few seconds, he hung there, his breath coming in ragged pants, his arms burning with the effort. But the shock of the impact and the sheer fatigue from hours of training proved too much. His grip loosened, finger by finger.

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  "Aah!" he yelled, a short, sharp cry of defeat before he plummeted downward, hitting the stagnant water with a loud, unceremonious SPLOOSH.

  Kai watched from the sidelines, his arms crossed. He gave a slow, thoughtful nod. This was precisely what he had expected. As brutal and humiliating as it was, the course was effective training. It forged resilience, punished carelessness, and built a core of steel. It was just that this particular regimen had been introduced significantly earlier than Kai had originally planned, accelerated from a future training milestone to an immediate form of punishment for the alchemy pavilion incident.

  His gaze then shifted from the sputtering, sodden Chen Gong clambering out of the water to the large, wooden crank mechanism that powered the swinging sandbags. And there, he saw something that made him pause. Turning the heavy crank with determined effort was not Lu Bu, but the smaller form of Zhang Liao, his face set in a mask of concentration as he diligently maintained the course's rhythm.

  Kai's eyebrows rose in surprise. Lu Bu was suppose to be operating the mechanism, learning patience and the responsibility of overseeing another's training. For Zhang Liao to be there instead meant something had gone off-script.

  With Snow padding silently beside him and Gin trailing behind, taking a small swig from his gourd, Kai walked over to the crank. "Liao," he said, his voice calm but questioning. "Why are you the one operating the machinery? Where is your brother? Where is Lu Bu?"

  “Oh, Uncle Kai!” Zhang Liao said, startled. He immediately stopped turning the heavy crank and offered a respectful bow. He then pointed a finger toward the far end of the obstacle course. “Brother Bu is over there.”

  Kai, Gin, and Snow all turned their heads in unison to follow the boy’s direction. What they saw made them freeze.

  There, balanced perfectly atop one of the highest, most precarious logs, was Lu Bu. The young disciple wasn't just standing; he was in a deep, immovable horse stance, his feet planted firmly on the narrow surface. Most staggering of all, he was carrying double the stone weights that had just defeated Chen Gong—a load that would have crippled a grown man. Yet, Lu Bu looked as steady as the mountain itself.

  The course’s challenges were in full effect against him. A pair of playful, cat-like spirit beasts were leaping from adjacent posts, swiping their padded paws at his legs and the weights, trying to knock him off balance. He didn’t flinch. A moment later, a heavy sandbag swung on its pendulum and slammed directly into his side with a dull thump. The impact would have sent Chen Gong flying, but Lu Bu’s body absorbed the force without so much as a wobble. He was an unmovable statue, his eyes focused intently on the next log. After a moment of perfect stillness, he exploded into motion, leaping the gap with ease before settling back into his unshakable stance on the new perch.

  Kai, Gin, and Snow all did a comical double-take, their heads snapping back for a second look. What they were witnessing was absurd.

  It turned out that Kai’s strategy of delaying Lu Bu’s technical training and forcing him to focus solely on physical conditioning had produced a truly peculiar outcome.

  While waiting for his fellow disciples to catch up, Lu Bu had thrown himself into his training with a monstrous fervor. He had done so much repetitive, grueling physical labor that he had developed a raw, foundational strength far beyond any normal mortal his age—and, more alarmingly, far beyond what was typical for a cultivator even at the Body Refinement stage. He was stronger than a fully-grown, lifelong soldier. His core strength was so profoundly developed that once he rooted himself, it was like trying to topple a centuries-old oak tree.

  “Your disciple is a monster,” Gin whispered to Kai, his voice a mixture of awe and horror.

  Kai knew that was a profound understatement. He had designed this course to be a severe challenge for his disciples, who were already heaven-defying talents in their own right. The fact that Chen Gong and Zhang Liao struggled with it was proof of its difficulty. The fact that Lu Bu was casually navigating it with double the load, treating the obstacles as minor annoyances, placed him on a level that was becoming difficult to even categorize.

  “Brother Lu Bu wanted to run the training course,” Zhang Liao explained, breaking the stunned silence. “So he asked me to operate the machinery that controls the obstacles while he ran it.”

  “But… he didn’t need to run it,” Kai said, baffled. “This is punishment training, specifically for Chen Gong.”

  Zhang Liao nodded earnestly. “I know, Uncle Kai. But Brother Bu said that if he wants to be the greatest warrior in the world, he can’t skip any training, no matter how hard it is. He said he would do every single training method you develop, even the punishment ones, to make sure he is the strongest.”

  Kai watched Lu Bu's display of effortless power, and a cold knot of anxiety tightened in his stomach. The raw, physical talent was undeniable. The boy’s declaration of wanting to become the "greatest warrior" was no longer childish boasting; it was a foreseeable destiny. And that was the problem.

  Mike’s frantic warning from the dream echoed with newfound urgency: "You gotta keep Lu Bu from becoming an arrogant, backstabbing, bloodthirsty prick!" The first part of that prophecy—the arrogance—was already knocking at the door. How could it not be? When you are a young boy stronger than any man you have ever met.

  How do you temper a spirit like that? Kai racked his brain, feeling utterly out of his depth. Punishment clearly didn't work; Lu Bu just saw it as another challenge to conquer. Defeat seemed to be the traditional teacher of humility, but where could Kai find an opponent who could genuinely challenge this budding prodigy? Sending him against Snow or one of the other powerful spirit beasts was too dangerous, a gamble that could end in severe injury or shatter the boy's spirit entirely. It was a fine line between a humbling lesson and a traumatic breaking.

  The standard sect method—pitting disciples against each other—was also useless. Lu Bu already dwarfed Chen Gong and Zhang Liao; such a victory would only reinforce his superiority. Kai himself could intervene, of course. He could use his higher cultivation base to effortlessly subdue the boy. But that felt like a betrayal of the teacher-student bond, an assertion of dominance that would teach fear, not wisdom. It might curb arrogance, but it would not cultivate the genuine humility that comes from understanding one's place in a vast world.

  The answer, he suspected, lay not in normal physical opposition, but in a challenge of a different kind. Perhaps the key was to redirect that immense confidence, to give it a purpose greater than mere personal strength. Or perhaps he needed to expose Lu Bu to a concept he couldn't overpower with brute force.

  That was it. Kai would try to develop a type of training that Lu Bu couldn’t complete with strength alone.

  But for now, standing at the edge of the training ground, Kai had no answers. And, Kai was desperately trying to think of a lesson plan that didn't yet exist.

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