Crooked Mountains. Late Morning.
With Zeng Fei standing in the open, it wasn’t long before a beast took the bait.
A second-layer Thunderhoof Boar made a beeline for him. A child, it was half as tall as him with tusks as long as hands and hooves that weren’t yet thunderous, better described as coconut shells being clapped together.
In preparation for dangerous situations like this, the original had learnt one martial technique: One Fist, Three Punches. Though the technique was nothing fancy, it was a popular offensive skill amongst the disciples for its effectiveness.
The reason Zeng Fei hadn’t used it in his fights so far was because the original had practised the technique to minor proficiency and no further, meaning he could only display roughly 40% of its power. And a strike at 40% efficiency from someone at the first layer looked very different to the same strike from someone at the fifth layer.
So although the boar was a child, it was by no means an enemy he could take on. Thankfully, Zeng Fei had taken measures to appease the vigilante in his domain, having bought back the restive penguin’s loyalty by letting it snow again.
Zeng Fei pointed ahead of him and yelled. “I choose you, Pingu!”
Pingu had been briefed they were here to fight, so he was ready to go from the get-go.
The boar, meanwhile, changed the direction of its charge towards the closer target seeing as this one was also at the first layer.
Pingu didn’t attempt to run (not that he could at his waddling pace) and instead stood attentive like a martial artist ready to strike, wings partially raised.
Just before the boar entered his proximity, it bellowed an aggressive trumpet burst to rattle him, though to no avail as Pingu immediately casting Serpentine Slap with both wings.
His flippers slashed down quicker than even the boar’s charge, tips piercing through the boar’s eyes. Yet, this also meant it was too late for him to dodge.
Colliding into Pingu, the boar gored him with its tusks and used its momentum to drive him a fair distance before violently jerking its head and flinging him to the ground.
In a fit of pain and rage, the blinded boar continued its charge, shortly after running headlong into a massive tree and bouncing back. Knocked onto its side, the boar mewled from the ground; it couldn’t gather any strength in its legs, and one of its tusks had snapped off.
Zeng Fei, through his connection to Pingu, could tell the chick was badly hit in the belly, blood soaking down the grey fur. Hence, he was impressed by the penguin’s show of resilience: Pingu bit down the pain and rolled to his feet, speed-waddling towards the stunned boar before it got a chance to recover.
Arriving, Pingu used Serpentine Slaps as testing strikes to see how well the boar could defend itself.
Congratulations! Pingu’s Serpentine Slap has advanced to Level 4!
When it turned out the answer was not at all, Pingu stopped with the elegant technique usage and began slugging the boar to death - if ever Zeng Fei needed a reason not to get on Pingu’s bad side, this display of savagery was it.
Within half a minute, the deed was done: the boar’s legs squirmed one last time as though trying to escape, then stilled for good.
Pingu moved his beak closer to the body in search of a potential demon core but found no scent; he gave Zeng Fei a head shake.
Zeng Fei clicked his tongue. “Drats. Oh well, rest up now.” He returned Pingu to his domain.
Under normal circumstances, it was well worth the effort to dress Demonic Beast corpses due to how much their parts went for. But since the Crooked Mountains were sect-controlled hunting grounds, the sect already had an excess of components from the beasts here.
As such, Zeng Fei chose to clamber up a wide-boughed tree nearby, seeking out a position between the branches where he could sit comfortably.
The plan was to meditate up here, mumbling the chant, and lie in wait for another demon beast to show up attracted by the scent of the fresh corpse.
If Pingu was healed back up by then, they’d catch the beast unawares and get their second kill as simple as that.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Of course, it wasn’t that Zeng Fei was underplaying Pingu’s injury - as far as wounds went, getting gored in the gut was pretty damn serious - but rather that he knew spirit beasts had highly enhanced healing rates, as had been shown after Pingu had been bitten by the Green-horned Python.
The downside to Pingu’s impressive healing rate was that it caused the domain to engulf the spiritual qi Zeng Fei was circulating, actively hampering his cultivation efforts.
Zeng Fei briefly entered his domain to check what was going on and discovered that Pingu had become a vortex, the qi in the atmosphere rushing towards him to heal the wound whilst the snow on the ground crawled towards him.
It did feel unfair to Zeng Fei that his minion got to gobble up everything, forcing the master to make do with the scrappings that fell from the table; still, there was no denying who was doing the heavy lifting and who could utilise those resources better, so he left in the end sighing to himself.
----------------------------------------
It was in this manner that the duo spent their time: hunting demon beasts in the Crooked Mountains and cultivating.
With every fight they won, their skill markedly improved and their strategies evolved. This was especially the case once Zeng Fei started getting involved in the fights, initially because they’d been waylaid by two beasts at once, but afterwards because he realised how foolish it would be to act like the original and be scared of getting his hands dirty.
Even if he didn’t want to fight, intelligent enemies would ignore Pingu and go for him - as Dong Fu had proven - so it was vital for him to acclimatise to being in the thick of it; and better here, where the beasts were relatively weak and had known weaknesses, than to be thrust into the position amid a life-or-death battle.
Since Zeng Fei didn’t bother to skulk around the sect or hide his presence, it wasn’t long before Dong Ju caught wind of his activities.
A few days later, when Zeng Fei was near the peak of second layer and Pingu had reached third layer, the junior Dong caught them in the Crooked Mountains, claiming that he wanted to have a rematch to wipe his shameful defeat away.
As for why he brought his lackeys along with him to do this, go figure; maybe he was feeling shy and needed half a dozen burly cheerleaders to cheer him on?
Suffice to say, Dong Ju and his buddies never bothered Zeng Fei again.
Their pitiful appearances at the Medicinal Hall soon set off new rumours about Zeng Fei’s strength, though hardly anyone came to lick his shoes this time.
The ones who’d done so last time had observed everyone else staying ostensibly clear of Zeng Fei following the spar in the Training Hall but hadn’t thought as to why that was, instead only smelling the opportunity to curry favour with the new hot thing. Naturally, they had been enlightened when Dong Fu had publicly smashed Zeng Fei’s face to the curb, and so weren’t feeling super inclined to make that same mistake again so soon.
The overall reaction to the latest rumours about Zeng Fei was worse than before; even those sympathetic to his case believed he should have just taken a beating from junior Dong to bury the hatchet instead of worsening the issue like this.
Having made the mistake once and been punished for it already, people couldn’t help but view him as a mad dog begging for another beating.
Not that Zeng Fei minded: he was afforded peace wherever he went now that people avoided him like the plague, fearful of being associated.
Other than cultivating, he also practised his techniques daily in the Training Hall, which included One Fist, Three Punches as well as a new technique he’d learnt.
He’d originally gone to the Techniques Hall in search of a technique that would allow him to heal Pingu during a fight, but had found nothing that allowed for rapid healing from a distance.
Because of this, Zeng Fei had instead picked up Shifting Steps, a footwork technique that allowed for rapid repositioning, useful for brief bursts of movement and escaping. He put off the task of finding a good support technique for when he made it into the Inner Sect.
After all, the Treading Infinity Sect contained countless wondrous techniques in their Scripture Pavilion, accessible to Inner Sect Disciples and higher.
The techniques in the Techniques Hall, by contrast, had been selected for being effective, easy for beginners to learn, and commonplace in the cultivation world such that the sect wouldn’t face any losses even if they were stolen.
Some Immortal Sects had many criteria and a high bar for selecting disciples, whereas others took the opposite approach, taking on disciples with any level of cultivation talent, giving minimal guidance, and waiting around to see who had sufficient talent, luck, or diligence to make it into the Inner Sect, only at which point would they get treated like true disciples.
This was because at their core, all top-tier Immortal Sects were lean organisations of high-quality candidates; and the Treading Infinity Sect, despite taking on disciples of Zeng Fei’s talent, was no different.
Where some sects had Elders deciding what traits would contribute the most to success on the path towards immortality, other sects acknowledged that the will of the heavens was the biggest contributing factor and as such used their Outer Sect wings as an extended entrance test to have the heavens select candidates for them.
Besides getting a new technique, Zeng Fei also tried to approach Sun Ru to thank her for saving him, but was told he couldn’t meet her as she’d gone into closed-door cultivation.
In fact, this was the case for most disciples at the top end of Outer Sect as they were all preparing for the Outer Sect Tournament.
And so, Zeng Fei settled into a routine of training - cultivation, technique practice, and monster hunting.
A month passed by without incident, and the application period to participate in the Outer Sect Tournament opened.
Applications poured in from those eager to prove their ability to ascend to the Inner Sect.
By the time it closed, there were many ninth and eighth layer names, a smattering of seventh layer names from disciples confident in fighting above their rank, and a single name from a disciple at the fifth layer.