Xiao Ji stood in front of his master, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He was currently in the middle of trying to figure out the reasoning behind the ancient cultivator's decision. An exercise in futility, as usual.

“You wish for me to begin cultivating again, master?”

The scepticism was clear in his voice,

“I believe I did not stutter the last time, disciple. Or has the cold perhaps gotten to your hearing? That would be rather disappointing now.”

Ji shook his head in frustration. Under normal circumstances, he would be glad to get back to cultivation after spending weeks doing other things. However, the egg was still inside his body. It would be gone in a few days if it stayed idle, something that his Master knew well. Which was likely why he was telling him to start cultivating again now. If he cultivated and the egg managed to take in qi, he would reset the amount of time it had to spend to two weeks, inevitably delaying the time he could start cultivating till he could do it while having the egg inside him..

A voice whispered in his mind that such practice would likely be for his own benefit. Unfortunately, the part of him that had spent the last week sleeping in the cold was not particularly interested in common sense, and it wanted to be heard.

“Master Fan Guo,” he said, at the edge of his politeness. “May I just wait for a few days till the egg is out of my system?”

“No you may not,” the old man returned sternly, then softened just a little. “I understand you are young and you seek to progress, but you have chosen the path of the super prodigy. It is a path that will make you enemies. Knowing how to cultivate with something attempting to steal your qi is part of the bare minimum required to walk this path. You made your choice, now you must stick with it. My disciples are certainly not known for lacking commitment.”

He stared at the human, trying to find flaws in his reasoning. It was when he inevitably failed to find any that the angry part of him reluctantly acknowledged the truth. His Master was right, and if one day he was stuck in a situation where the ability to cultivate while being drained was needed, he would hate himself for refusing to learn it out of childish impatience.

So he grudgingly accepted and sat down to start cultivating. Though he understood the reasoning, it did not mean he was a fan of it. Not even the fact that exercise was waived for the day in favour of cultivation was enough to lift his spirits.

After over a week of holding the small qi inside his dantian, the process took almost no effort. It was so simple he could do it in his sleep! That said, taking in qi and manually directing everything through his meridians , all while resisting the pull of the egg was not something he was sure he could do currently. It was made even worse by the fact that his breathing technique took in a tremendous amount of qi.

Making sure to keep his qi senses on, he took in a small amount of qi manually, not trusting his ability to control the amount of qi his breathing technique was sure to bring. Immediately the qi entered his lungs, the egg awoke, and the qi was almost wrested from his grasp. Thankfully, he was prepared, and managed to retain control. Though he could now comfortably sense the qi around him while remaining in control of the one in his dantain, doing all that simultaneously while having to manually guide qi through his meridians required a different level of focus.

He found his mind strained to the limit as he fought with the egg for control. He only managed to get it a quarter of the way through before realising he could not go on. The qi was yanked from his grasp and immediately, the egg started glowing softly. At least that was how it seemed to its qi senses. Instinctively, he knew that it would take even longer than two weeks for the egg to finally disintegrate if it received no more qi.

That was the moment he truly realised that he had no choice other than success. He did not have enough conviction to believe he would get it on the second try. That meant the amount of time he would have to spend waiting for the egg to disintegrate would continue to increase until it became unreasonably long. If he wanted to start cultivating without waiting for months, he would have to learn how to do it while under pressure from the egg.

Qi entered his lungs once more, though this time he was careful to reduce the amount he took in till it was barely noticeable. Running the much smaller amount was a lot more manageable, and he found himself resisting the pull till it got to his dantian, which his mind held in an iron grip. Though he was technically successful, the egg had pulled away enough bits at different points that only half of what he took in remained, which was barely enough to even make a splat. It was certainly not nearly enough to make for viable cultivation.

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Nevertheless, he continued pulling the same tiny amount over and over, slowly but surely empowering the egg. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make, however and it seemed like it was gradually paying off. Indeed the amount of qi he was losing had been steadily declining. The qi he was inhaling was still too small to make cultivation feasible, not at reasonable speeds at least, but progress was progress.

Eventually, he was able to bring the amount of qi he was losing down to almost nothing. It should have been good enough, but the fact that some minute qi particles were sucked out at certain parts of the journey grated on him. A part of him acknowledged that losing some qi along such a long path was inevitable. However, he remembered what his Master said. Would the titans at the top of the world settle for ‘good enough’? Or would his uncle be willing to take this result and consider it fit for him?

Xiao Ji did not know the titans, but he knew his uncle. And he knew the old rooster well enough to be sure that he would spit in the face of ‘good enough’ and practice till there was no single drop of qi left to the egg. It would not do to feed a parasite, after all.

Truth be told, it was never a choice. Whether it was to cultivate with the egg or to perfect his control, he had known what he was signing up for when he chose the hard path. He was not so stupid as to expect an easy road.

That did not mean he wouldn’t complain though.

Stopping the last bits of qi from flying into the egg’s grasp was a task much easier thought about than actually done. Whereas he could bring his full mental might to bear on the mass of qi flowing through his meridians, taking control of the small bits flaking off required a level of fine control that could only be gained through lots of repetition and practice. Not to mention it required a certain level of mental precision. Hopefully, that was something his trait could help him with.

Hours of painstakingly focusing on those tiny particles produced little results. Not even after he dropped his qi senses to focus more on his meridians. It was disheartening to see such lacklustre results, especially when he had made steady progress earlier, but he supposed perfection would not come easy,

He took a break from cultivation, choosing to take care of his hunger after spending his extra hour in the cold. In the dining hall, he found himself observing Ruo Long more than normal. He could not deny that he still felt gratitude towards the dragon. The painting was the first physical property he actually owned, and it held a special place in his heart. His conversation with the dragon had also caused him to revaluate his opinion on the other disciple’s character. Which was why he was trying to observe him. So far, nothing seemed different and he was still the boisterous, arrogant Ruo Long they all knew.

After eating, there was little for him to do, which of course meant he went back to his room and engrossed himself in his cultivation once more. This time, instead of breathing in qi, he decided to use what he had available in his dantian. His primary goal was to improve his fine control, and it was better if he could do it without losing any qi to the parasitic egg.

After making sure his mental hold on his dantian was firm, he set himself to the task of separating individual qi particles from the whole and holding them with his mind. He did this till he reached his limit, which was a pitiful two hundred individual particles. The particles were minute and did not constitute a noticeable amount of the whole. Not entirely sure what else to do, he started moving them around, trying to form complex shapes with them. That turned out to be much harder than it seemed and the strain of controlling the individual particles manually nearly stretched him to his limits.

The difficulty pushed him to continue, trying to move them in more complex shapes. When he felt it getting easier, he increased the number of particles till it was difficult again. By the end of the night, he had doubled the number he could control and he went to sleep mostly satisfied with his progress.

The next day he went back to doing exercises. Though it was nothing dramatic, he had begun to notice some improvement there as well. He took a little longer to get tired when he ran, and stretching himself was no longer as painful as it once was. He was certain his Master was taking note and he suspected it was only a matter of time before he would be given more difficult exercise. He was reminded of something his uncle had said once.

“Remember kid, the reward for doing work well is always more work.”

He thought back to the memory with fondness as he was practising his qi control once more. This time, he had no one else to blame for his work but himself. So he powered on, occasionally taking a bite or two out of the can of worms he had requested from Mei. He always did better when he ate consistently throughout the day, unlike the others that seemed better suited to eating big meals at a time. Though he had noticed Qian Shi sneaking a snack or two outside of eating times. Perhaps he was not the only one.

The rest of the week went on like that, his days blurring into a combination of exercise, eating and qi control. It was something he knew would likely get more tiring to maintain over time ,but the improvements he was making kept it interesting enough for now. He had managed to separate the qi in his dantian into individual particles and move them around with little effort.

When he tried cultivating again, he found it trivial to prevent the egg from stealing even a single particle. So he had increased the amount till he found his new limit. His goal was to be able to cultivate the large amounts of qi his breathing technique brought in without any wastage. So far he was still a little far from that goal, but he was confident in his ability.

Over the next month he made little progress in his cultivation as the amounts of qi he was taking in was far from what his breathing technique could handle. Still, he was now capable of taking in the maximum amount of qi he manually could and guiding it to his dantian without losing a single drop.

Finally, after over a month of little contact with his master, the old man finally decided to summon him.