Entering the domain, it was night inside too. The sky was dark but the stars were bright enough to provide dim lighting.

Pingu was stood by his usual spot, by the lakeside, peering out.

To have an air of maturity about himself, Zeng Fei channelled the energy of a father trying to spend time with their teenage son.

“Hey there, little guy. What are you up to?”

Pingu must have been deep in his thoughts as he turned around and blinked in surprise.

“Sqwuak?”

He speed-waddled over (only falling over twice), speaking too rapidly in chirps, peeps, and toots for Zeng Fei to understand what he was saying. Still, the general sentiment was easy to guess.

“Ha, what are you crying so much about? Almost makes me wonder which one of us really got their arse whooped out there.”

Pingu tilted his head to the side, then responded with a single-note answer. “Sqwuak.”

“Yeah, me. So why are you feeling ashamed when I was the one who was embarrassingly weak?”

Zeng Fei put on a strong front and ruffled Pingu’s head, brushing the soft feathers. “Don’t get it twisted, kiddo; I failed you, not the other way around.”

“Chirp chirp.”

“Huh…” Zeng Fei paused, thinking he’d misheard. “…Sorry, what was that?”

“Chirp chirp.”

“…you already know that?”

The penguin gave a slow, exaggerated nod to ensure his master couldn’t possibly misinterpret the action. “Chirrup.”

Zeng Fei stared at Pingu, the inspirational speech he’d prepared freezing up in his throat, too embarrassed to leave his lips now.

Pingu, meanwhile, concerned that his master was slow of understanding, raised one flipper and flexed it, the tiniest bulge swelling up and hinting at the existence of muscle; Pingu pointed at this with his other wing. “Toot toot.”

Using the same wing to then jab at Zeng Fei’s biceps, Pingu gave a sorry shake of the head. “Noot noot.”

Zeng Fei had not expected, just when he’d gotten over Dong Fu’s beating, to be struck with an attack this cold, not from someone so close.

Who would have know that the Green-horned Python’s demon core also had the effect of turning penguins into a snakes…

Zeng Fei took a step back and turned so that the little kiddo wouldn’t see him blinking away tears. “Sorry, just one moment. Something’s in my eye, ha.”

Finally wiping away at the snot and tears with the sleeves of his robes, Zeng Fei faced Pingu again. “Well… I guess it’s good to hear we’re on the same page.”

He cleared his throat to stop himself from choking up again.

In truth, he felt awfully tempted to accuse Pingu of failing to defend him, just so that he could see the penguin act the slightest part guilty, but he held himself back because he was the bigger man, he told himself. Someone had to act like the adult around here.

He did not know Pingu had his sights on that too.

Seeing how his master looked conflicted and downcast, Pingu took his first step towards maturity, stepping forth and patting Zeng Fei on the shoulder. “Sqwuak… sqwuak sqwuak. Toot, toot, chirp.”

The consoling was super effective as the uplifting message pulled Zeng Fei out of the dumps. “You really think so?”

“Chirrup.”

“Yeah, you’re right! We’ll show them! Let’s hit those sons of bitches right back. You hear me, Pingu? I’m done playing around.”

Pingu gave an encouraging nod but then, having to strike a fine balance between amping Zeng Fei up and getting him to acknowledge reality, proceeded to jab him in the chest a few times.

“Noot noot? Chirp brr. Toot toot!”

“I’ll show you too, goddammit! I’ll show you and all the others haters - just watch me. I’m going to get stronger, so strong no one will be able to stop me!”

Content with Zeng Fei’s show of resolve, Pingu gave a fond look and pointed his flipper into the distance, slowly nodding while closing his eyes.

The implication was obvious: now that Zeng Fei had found the right path for himself, it was time to go start walking it.

What Pingu actually meant by the gesture was that it was bedtime, and if Zeng Fei would kindly see himself out of the domain already, Pingu could finally get some much-needed shuteye.”

“I hear you loud and clear,” Zeng Fei said, grinning. “Prepare to be dumbfounded the next time you see me, at how powerful I’ve become.” With a self-indulgent laugh, he departed.

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Pingu did not say anything to rain on his master’s parade. He hadn’t consoled Zeng Fei out of cognition but rather instinct; something deep inside him had warned him the master being depressed and lethargic was bad for the colony, almost like a locked memory.

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Zeng Fei returned to the real world in high spirits, feeling he’d done a good job at consoling Pingu. Granted, he’d almost fumbled the bag at one point, but he’d clutched up at the critical moment to turn it around. The results spoke for themselves with how motivated he felt now.

At the thought, he released another self-indulgent laugh, “Ohoho—”, only to stop abruptly as he realised how much he sounded like that dastardly spirit adviser. He activated shameless mode to pretend he hadn’t done that and cleansed the moment from his memory.

Moving on promptly, it was time to get started on increasing his personal strength.

At first glance, the way to go about this seemed obvious: cultivation.

Zeng Fei would have to chant the mantra the spirit adviser had taught him, drawing in spiritual energy and expelling turbid internal energy from his body, repeating this meditation practice over and over like a monk.

The original had practised a different technique: after joining the sect, he’d been handed the manual for Clear Light Refining, a rudimentary cultivation technique that was suitable for those with False Spiritual Roots of the five elements.

But although the technique was different, Zeng Fei would still be able to make use of the original’s cultivation insights, giving a minor boost to cultivation speed and the ability to bypass any bottlenecks up to the fifth layer of Qi Refining. This was because the cultivation process remained largely the same for all techniques within the Qi Refining realm.

Regardless of the specific technique practised, you needed to circulate qi from the dantian, around the meridians, then back to the dantian where you may be able to condense it, the reliability of actually doing so and the amount condensed depending on your talent.

Once you’d done this enough times, you’d reach certain acknowledged levels of condensed qi that were known as the layers of Qi Refining, of which there were nine layers in total.

But while this was a reliable route to increasing personal strength, the issue with it lay in Zeng Fei’s abysmal cultivation talent, as exhibited by the original who’d toiled long and hard just to reach the fifth layer in four years.

Talent had multiple determinants, but what people almost always meant when using the term was what type of spiritual roots you had.

Spiritual roots were what allowed cultivators to absorb spiritual qi from their environment, and hence were what differentiated cultivators from mortals.

These spiritual roots could come in five primary attributes: metal, wood, fire, water, and earth; possessing a certain attribute allowed you to absorb the corresponding spiritual qi from your environment.

For example, if someone had metal-attribute spiritual roots, they’d be able to absorb metal-attribute spiritual energy from objects around them or the atmosphere, which itself was a mix of spiritual energies of various attributes.

Given this, you’d think having more attributes was better as it’d allow you to absorb more types of spiritual energy; the reality of the situation, however, was the exact opposite: the fewer attributes your spiritual roots had, the faster you would cultivate.

Why was this the case?

Well, the original’s understanding of the phenomenon went as follows: lower purity leads to inefficiencies due to imbalances/mismatches/something along those lines.

This was, in fact, the rough answer you’d get from most cultivators if quizzed on the topic, even those with much higher cultivation bases, and with good reason.

If you were to draw a parallel from cultivation to mathematics, and viewed the question of how to cultivate as a maths problem, then the manuals, arts, and sutras that cultivators used to guide them could be viewed as long-proven solutions.

And if you had the solution in your hands, why would you go through the personal effort of figuring out the process from first principles? It’s not like there were exam bodies in this world that would test your comprehension of these underlying concepts. Doing all those extra steps for little to none practical benefits was for nerds.

And if you were to ignore all the meditation that cultivators did and judged them solely by their behaviour, you would quickly discover cultivators were far closer in nature to hot-headed barbarians than inquisitive scholars.

Thankfully, there would still be people around in this all brawn, no brain xianxia setting who were interested in the theory of it all.

So to understand the exact mechanism by which certain spiritual roots were better than others, Zeng Fei would need to connect with these kindred, civilised souls, with the potential added benefit of finding out how to remedy the root cause of his trash talent as well.

Still, although the original had known little about the underlying mechanics of spiritual roots, he had known much more about their wider practical impacts.

If you had four or five attributes, you were said to have False Spiritual Roots, which were the most common type in the cultivation world. Possessing False Spiritual Roots destined you to the Outer Sect of any Immortal Sect that took you in, at best becoming a caretaker within the sect or of any businesses/industries the sect ran outside.

Everyone acknowledged this, and hence was why the original’s peers had looked down on him so much: he’d not just misunderstood his lane, but gone further in desperately striving to get into a better lane than them.

From the start, they’d had contempt for him due to his background as a beggar, and this had only grown over time as they’d viewed his dogged efforts to cultivate as an attempt to show them up - a perception his unsociable personality hadn’t helped with.

Was their crab mentality immature? No doubt. But what more could you expect from a bunch of teenagers who were insecure about their places in the pecking order?

And besides, they had a point: if Zeng Fei had possessed that lead-protagonist pzazz, this would have been the perfect setting for him to show them all up with his persistent hard work and unfailing self-belief; it just so happened, however, that real life was far less forgiving than fictional plot devices.

Moving on, if you had two or three attributes, you had True Spiritual Roots, which were uncommon to rare. With them, you would still join a sect at the Outer Sect level, but with the expectation of reaching the Inner Sect over your lifetime, perhaps even becoming an Elder if you worked hard enough and were sufficiently lucky.

If you had one attribute, you had Heavenly Spiritual Roots, which were exceedingly rare. With Heavenly Spiritual Roots, you’d immediately get placed in the Inner Sect and groomed to become an Elder or - if you showed sufficient promise - even a future Sect Leader or Grand Elder (that being said, many Grand Elders were cultivators with True Spiritual Roots who’d been exceptionally lucky over their lives, simply due to how rare Heavenly Spiritual Roots were).

At this talent bracket, you were treated like a nepo baby but far more extreme.

And alongside Heavenly Spiritual Roots holders in this talent bracket were those with Immortal Physiques, i.e. people possessing ancient bloodlines or other special constitutions that made perfect for certain techniques/Dao Schools.

That last point was important, for it would be what would make or break Zeng Fei’s cultivation efforts.