Although Zeng Fei felt a desperate urgency to get powerful, he was comforted at least by the fact that the ways to go about this were straightforward.

Given that he relied on Pingu for perhaps 90% of his current combat strength, it was a good thing that the System was handling the heavy lifting in Pingu’s training.

Out of the limited things Zeng Fei could do to help with this, some were better than others.

One thing he could do was ask the penguin to practise Serpentine Slap during the downtime.

This type of self-study would level up the skill over time, although it would also leave Zeng Fei perpetually drained of qi and, more importantly, was sub-optimal from a training perspective.

Since Serpentine Slap was a martial technique, the most effective way to level it was by using it in combat, which would allow Pingu to gain insights against real-life opponents and result in rapid levelling of the technique. This had been established earlier on by Dong Ju who’d kindly donated his face for demonstration purposes (truly a selfless hero, he was).

And once the technique was levelled high enough, the Emperor’s notes mentioned how this would unlock advanced techniques that Serpentine Slap had good synergy with, which altogether made this a clearly defined and unfailing route towards more power.

That said, there were problems with speed-levelling the technique.

For one, the notes mentioned that this technique originated from the Venomous Court, a poison-specialising sect, where it had been classed under the Dao School of the Dance.

Unfortunately, Zeng Fei had no idea how he’d go about acquiring poison, which was a large part of this technique and likely any that it had good synergy with.

But even if that hadn’t been an issue, the truth was that Zeng Fei didn’t want to work with poisons in the first place because he feared they’d be a bigger threat to Pingu than any opponent. After all, this was a penguin who had already refused to change his ways of putting random things in his mouth, certainly not the smartest chick in the colony…

The other problem with this route lay in the whole dancing thing.

Now, it wasn’t that Zeng Fei was underestimating the Dao School of Dance whatsoever; he’d read enough cultivation novels to grasp the genre’s unspoken rule that even the most mundane actions and objects could become deadly in the hands (or feet) of an expert.

Rather, the issue with the Dao School of Dance was that he struggled to see how it could be a match made in heaven for a penguin who struggled to waddle in a straight line.

As supportive as Zeng Fei wanted to be, if he were to be brutally honest, the truth was that he could not see Pingu ever making it into the Happy Feet cast.

His belief was supported by Pingu’s stats, which showed Pingu had an abysmal 3 Agility and 2 Dexterity once you removed the demon core’s stat bonuses.

In light of this, it seemed far more sensible for the penguin to focus on his true strengths, which incidentally lay within Strength at 8 and Constitution at 6.

Pingu was a large lad who, although in possession of two left feet, had the physique to be a top-tier brawler, as had been shown when he’d taken the Green-horned Python’s hit and returned superior fire without blinking, or from how he’d ripped Dong Ju’s paper-tiger style apart.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Therefore, Zeng Fei felt the best way to buff Pingu would be to find a demon core and technique that complemented his brawler/champion fighting style.

Zeng Fei didn’t have any particular beasts in mind for this, mainly because the resultant technique, unlike the stats, did not appear to perfectly fit the beast it had come from.

E.g. the Green-horned Python had been a brawler if anything given it was a large constrictor snake, yet the resultant technique had been a low damage one suited for venomous snakes, purely as a result of the serpentine essence in its demon core.

Since it was evening and Zeng Fei was mentally fatigued by the day’s events, he decided to hold off until tomorrow to head back over to the Crooked Mountain to grind out the beasts there for more cores.

For the remainder of the day, he hoped to finally get around to cultivation, but he was unable to get a quiet moment to meditate as a result of the constant stream of people knocking on his door.

Many of these people were unknown to him, inviting him out for tea to introduce themselves, and were best seen as rats jumping from one sinking ship to the next now that he was the new hot thing. And although he ignored their calls for him, it was never long until the next one came along to try their luck, safe in the knowledge they had nothing to lose.

Others who visited were the original’s supposed ‘friends’ coming out of the woodwork to congratulate him on the win and saying that they should celebrate together.

There was ironic humour in that these were the same people who’d been least present when the original had needed them the most, yet were all available to celebrate now that they were needed the least.

It went without saying that every single one of them had unfaultable reasoning as to why they’d been out of touch, excuses ranging from the logical - such as that they’d been outside the sect on a mission - to the emotional, which comprised everything that tugged on the heartstrings.

Zeng Fei had no interest, however, in socialising with people who were so evidently disloyal and self-interested; since the original’s connections to them had been tenuous at best, he was more than happy to use this as an opportunity to cut those connections off for good.

After being pointedly ignored, some of his ‘friends’ threw away their facades and cursed him in earshot; some tried to explain themselves further before giving up and claiming they’d return later; and some simply walked away without another word uttered.

Although these people had wasted his evening away, he was glad to see they’d received his message loud and clear and wouldn’t try to disturb him in the future.

That evening, he also tried to exploit the system, doing everything he could think of to access its library of techniques and trick it into giving him a super cool and overpowered technique, alas to no success.

----------------------------------------

After a night of terrible sleep on that rough-hewn bed, the next day could not have come any sooner, though it took Zeng Fei a good while to ready himself in his grouchy and tired state.

It was mid-morning by the time he departed for the Crooked Mountain.

He was recognised and greeted by many on the way, aggressively so in some instances, though they all stopped on seeing his stony attitude and let him proceed.

His demeanour of cold indifference became shattered in a single stroke, however, several minutes after leaving his hut.

A blaring shout came from behind and caused him to flinch.

“Zeng Fei, I demand you stop at once!”

It wasn’t the command itself that stopped Zeng Fei but the intensity behind it, amplified by qi so that it shook him to his core.

Alarmed, he spun around.

A score steps away stood a grown man in the orange robes that all Outer Sect Disciples wore, his eyes blazing balefully.

Wait, no, not a man - Zeng Fei recognised him through the original’s memories: this was actually a boy who’d entered the sect at the same time as him, one of the leading members of his cohort, and without a doubt the person he least wanted to run into right now.

Dong Fu shared the likeness of his younger brother, only with those jock-like features placed on a meathead’s body; where Dong Ju had looked like a handsome leading man in a soap opera, his older brother appeared brutish and far more dangerous, embodying the barrel-chested and grotesquely muscular thug that served as any good villain’s right-hand man.

Although Zeng Fei couldn’t perceive Dong Fu’s present cultivation realm, news had gone around a few months prior that he’d reached the seventh layer of Qi Refining. Worse still, Dong Fu been fighting above his realm for several years now.

On watching Zeng Fei’s expression crumble, Dong Fu grinned viciously, his intentions bare to see.