When Zeng Fei woke up, he did not recognise the ceiling above him.

There was dull pain in his face, neck, and chest. Worse, touching his cheeks gently, he found them raw and stinging.

He winced and pulled his finger away, and discovered that it was now coated in dried-up residual paste.

An owl hooted outside, prompting him to look around.

After scanning his environment, he got up and pulled the closed curtains to note that it was currently nighttime. The owl hooted again from somewhere nearby.

Shifting the curtains back, he returned to the bed and laid down.

He was in a room by himself, presumably inside some sort of treatment centre given the herbal balm on his face, though he didn’t quite know why he was here.

This was shortly answered as the last memories before he’d fallen unconscious reemerged.

He recalled he’d been saved from Dong Fu’s wrath by a mysterious girl, meaning that this must be the Medicinal Hall.

Zeng Fei didn’t know if someone would soon come around to check up on him, or if he’d have to wait till morning. Either way, he didn’t feel inclined to leave until he knew it was safe outside: after all, that bastard had left saying that the punishment wasn’t over yet.

If it hadn’t been for that girl…

Zeng Fei shuddered at the thought and his gut cramped painfully, forcing him to rapidly exhale to release some of the tension in his system.

He shifted his mind onto her to calm himself down: naturally, he wanted to thank her, but first he’d need to find out who she was.

If she was an Outer Sect Disciple, this would be a relatively easy task since there were very few in the Outer Sect who could make Dong Fu retreat like that; the issue was that Dong Fu’s reaction was also fitting for a senior from the Inner Sect, even if they rarely showed up in the Outer Sect.

All Zeng Fei had on her, besides what she’d said, was that she’d smelled pleasant, meaning she was likely to be someone who cared about her appearance.

While this was not a detail that’d help single out who she was, it was nonetheless meaningful as she’d not hesitated whatsoever in placing his bloodied body against hers, an action made all the more significant by the multitude of bystanders stood around who’d refused to move a muscle in his time of need.

If anything, she was the odd one for doing what she’d done, not them; ever since Zeng Fei had transmigrated over, he’d been duped, bullied, and beaten by the people here.

So what a breath of fresh air it was to finally come across someone with a sense of decency and honourable character.

In sharp contrast to her lay Dong Fu, who for a second there had appeared to have a commendable character by not sinking to the lows of typical xianxia bullies, yet had then revealed himself to be a nasty piece of work all the same.

To think he’d wanted to pummel someone to death for the simple transgression of beating his younger brother in a fair spar.

Only now did it sink in to Zeng Fei - no longer on a cerebral basis but on a deeper core level - that this was a cultivation world with its own set of logic drastically different from any found in modern, civilised society: here, might equalled right, not only at the highest level but at every single level and in every single interaction.

“Ah.” Realising how badly he’d read the situation until now, Zeng Fei felt embarrassed.

All this time, he’d believed he’d messed up by getting distracted during the spar and letting Pingu go too far against Dong Ju. But this was obviously not the case.

Say that Dong Ju had taken those exact same wounds from Pingu but then gone on to win after a gruelling slug match; in such a scenario, would his older brother have come out to punish Zeng Fei? Of course not!

In fact, even if it’d been unclear during the spar itself, everyone there in the Training Hall should have noticed afterwards that the cuts from Serpentine Slap were shallow, and therefore deduced for themselves that Paper-Tiger Ju had only fallen so fast due to his weak mentality.

For Dong Fu to come punish Zeng Fei despite this being common knowledge, it meant the wounds had never been the problem.

Converse to what Zeng Fei had believed this entire time, his overreach hadn’t occurred at the end of the match when he’d failed to recall Pingu fast enough; it’d occurred right at the very start when he’d dared to win and let Pingu throw even the first punch!

By doing so, he’d prevented Dong Ju from being able to claim he could one-shot cultivators two minor realms above him, coveted bragging rights, and thereby spat on Dong Fu’s face who’d set the whole thing up.

In fact, Dong Fu had admitted as much himself in the first thing he’d said to Zeng Fei this morning; Zeng Fei had just refused to listen, instead trying to understand the older Dong’s anger by modern, civilised logic.

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It wasn’t anything deep: his crime had been to be weak and yet act otherwise - after all, if he’d been any stronger or had a backer behind him, there was no way Dong Fu would have carried out such brazen retribution.

The message it left was clear: if you’re only as strong as a dog, you better roll over when you’re commanded to.

No wonder then that the bystanders had thought one-sided walloping was justified, for this was a world where being weak in itself was a sin deserving of punishment.

Zeng Fei smiled in self-deprecation on realising the truth; to think he’d received such a brutal beating for such an inane reason.

Yet, as he reflected on this, his fear and dread of Dong Fu began to transform into something more consuming: a terrible rage towards the one who had grossly mistreated him.

But all the same, what he could do when he was too powerless to act?

Well, at the very least he could carry out prompt reflection, he told himself: by identifying what mistakes he’d made, he could avoid making them again and earning another hiding; besides, doing so would distract him from his current feelings of victimhood, anger, and impotence.

Exercising his self-control to the limit, Zeng Fei tore his mind’s eye from his turbulent emotions and turned its searchlight onto the events of the last two days.

His mistakes were forthcoming:

1. The weak link in combat was Zeng Fei. Sure, Pingu most likely would have lost against Dong Fu in a fair fight anyway, but that didn’t change the fact that Zeng Fei had been so useless he’d been knocked out before Pingu could even get to him.

2. When in Rome, do as the Romans do; likewise, in a world where might equals right, every fault begins with you being weak and ends when you’re powerful. That was to say Zeng Fei would continue getting mistreated by all corners of the world until he had the power to hold his own ground.

3. And not just that; he’d also need a mindset shift to make himself less vulnerable to the whims of others. He had to wake up from his main character syndrome.

It’d been the belief that he was someone special due to his status as an otherworlder that’d made him susceptible to the spirit adviser’s trickery, and then had him needlessly puzzled when Dong Fu had not acted according to a thug archetype.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; and boy oh boy, he needed to avoid a third time at all costs with how dire the consequences could be.

This was clearly not a neat and tidy cultivation world where characters and tropes played their part to accommodate the transmigrator’s rise to the top; this was a world in which cultivators acted according to their independent motivations, just like people on Earth, meaning they’d behave predictably at times, but just as easily not if circumstances changed, which too were largely out of Zeng Fei’s control.

The belief that others would fit cliched moulds and allow him to exploit their behaviour was the height of delusional arrogance; if that really were the case, then why had the Heavenly Demon Emperor, a transmigrator possessing unimaginable power, succumbed to the unthinking natives in the end?

What sucked was that Zeng Fei didn’t think being alert would have changed any of the events so far: the natural disaster that was the spirit adviser would have crashed into him no matter how he acted, and if not the older Dong beating the life out of him today, it would have been the younger Dong beating the shit out of him yesterday.

Still, being alert was a whole lot better than flying blind into uncharted territory while under the delusion it was home turf.

Reaching his conclusion, Zeng Fei transmuted his feelings of powerlessness into a frustration with himself, yes, but also into the belief that he had the ability to outplay his adversaries if he played his cards right.

Having reached a better state of mind, he wanted to get started on powering himself up straight away by starting his cultivation. But he figured he ought to check up on how Pingu was doing first.

Although this recent beating had woken Zeng Fei up to the reality of his situation, it was likely to have had a deeper impact on Pingu, and likely a more negative one too seeing as, from his perspective, he’d failed to protect his master.

Zeng Fei would have to use his maturity to guide the inexperienced chick away from such negativity spirals onto a more productive mindset; they couldn’t afford to waste any time on a pity party, not when they had pressing matters to attend to.

Zeng Fei smiled wryly; he may have contained his anger, but in no way had he let it go.

First they’d fuck up Dong Fu, and after that, the spirit adviser; and not in several years time, but now (well, not now as in right this second, but close enough that he could mentally summarise the intervening period as a brief training-montage).

He was done taking names; it was time to start kicking arse.

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The owl turned its head sideways towards the strange creature sharing this high branch with it.

Blue and faintly luminescent, the creature made non-stop undulating motions as though in danger of being swept away by the wind, despite holding its place effortlessly.

Ever since it had perched atop the branch, the creature had cast a watchful eye on the grounds below, evidently scanning for tonight’s dinner.

And yet the owl was puzzled by how this creature would even hunt, seeing as it lacked claws, fangs, or even a beak. Perhaps it was the type to lift its quarry and drop them from great heights?

Although it was technically a competitor to the owl, it was also so wildly incompetent that the owl didn’t feel threatened in the slightest.

Its biggest mistake was in staring solely at the spot next to the pungent man building - it was a silly choice of location, not close to many trees or covered by the long grasses that their prey favoured.

And yet the foolish creature refused to diversify its hunting grounds, stubbornly fixated on that single spot.

The owl gave a piteous hoot at its incompetent competitor, though to no response.

But suddenly there was, as the strange creature vibrated with manic excitement, its gaze still glued to the same spot.

Wondering what could have made it react this way, the owl looked over as well but found nothing there, at least not on the spot itself; but next to it, a man silhouette had appeared in the window of the pungent man-building, before disappearing again after a few seconds.

Pupils dilating, the owl turned towards the strange creature with newfound reverence.

Never in its wildest dreams would the owl have imagined that this harmless-looking creature favoured hunting not voles or mice but man-things!

But hell, the owl was all for it!

The owl let out a hoot of excitement, deeply curious to observe how the strange creature would make the kill.