Qing Shen hit the ground with a heavy thud. Her head smacked the earth on the collision, and pieces of dirt kicked up into her eyes as she sputtered incoherently from the impact. Dull waves of pain throbbed through her stomach when she felt around her waist. She flinched when a particularly tender spot shot needles of fire up her nerves.
That definitely was going to bruise.
"Come on, let's keep going. You still haven't lasted more than a minute." Qing Shen glanced up from her place on the ground to look up at her enemy. The monster who hadn't pulled back any of his punches despite this being the sixteenth time she ate dirt.
"Give me a minute to rest, Young Master." Qing Shen bit back as the monster of training recoiled at his title. She took express glee in seeing Zhang Yong take even a bit of mental damage that those words brought him.
"You don't have to be like that, Miss Qing. I'm only going hard on you because I care; besides, I can heal any injury that I may or may not cause. Just look at your scars. You're lucky that I had some extra Scar Vanishing talismans laying around when you came back." Zhang Yong retorted as he leaned into the thick wooden cutout of a polearm.
Qing Shen huffed, but didn't bite back. Instead, she idly rubbed her stomach where instead of having angry jagged lines like she thought she would have from her previous life or death fight, she had four thin, white lines that extended from her stomach to her lower right ribs. She had been lucky that the wounds on her thigh hadn't added more scars, and had promptly vanished when Zhang Yong had applied his Scar Vanishing talismans. Honestly, she was more impressed by the fact that he had so many talismans with such varied effects.
"Fine," Qing Shen finally said, standing upright on shaky legs. "Give me a few seconds."
It took her more than a minute or two to finally get her breath together. In the lull of peace, she was completely bewildered by the fact that Zhang Yong was so strong. Her Essence Vision had clearly shown that he only hadn't had any of those weird veins that signified someone in the Cycling Essence stage. Actually, as she focused her eyes, she found something odd about the flow of blue grainy Spiritual Essence around him.
"Why does the Essence around you look like it's being controlled?" Qing Shen asked before they began again.
Zhang Yong froze as if he had been struck by lightning. Then his face relaxed, falling into a smile that Qing Shen knew appeared whenever someone was hiding something. "It's my talismans. I have a muscle strengthening talisman on my arms and legs, and a skin hardening talisman on my body. I can't hope to compete with an actual cultivator without cheating a little."
"I see…" Qing Shen simply replied without actually seeing.
"Right, well, are we done talking?" Qing Shen nodded to his question as he smiled. "Good, rule number two: words don't belong on the battlefield unless in the form of taunts. Of course, that only applies when equals face each other, or when you're not being taught."
With those words said the two faced off against each other in the small dirt courtyard of Zhang Yong's garden. They both were garbed in thick clothed, brown shirts and leather pants, and wielded similar wooden weapons fashioned after Qing Shen's first guandao. Qing Shen herself was littered in new bruises that were slowly turning blue.
"The first step to any sort of combat is your posture." Zhang Yong said. "This is especially useful when fighting beasts of any kind. Corrupted beasts, no matter how intelligent, are still fundamentally beasts. This means that if you show no fear towards them, and posture yourself as if you were larger than them, you'll be able to trick them... Most of the time."
Qing Shen nodded sharply. She remembered how weak and terrified she was in front of the Half-Corrupted beast at first. It had probably thought that she was easy prey, and when she tried to fight back, it had probably been confused when it saw easy prey trying to attack instead of run.
Her recollections were cut short as Zhang Yong swung his wooden pole, creating large sweeping swipes. Qing Shen hurriedly brought up her weapon. However, no matter how improved she was, his control of the weapon was on a different level. At the apex of each strike he would tilt his body in a subtly different way, and the wooden guandao would abruptly change like a ghost. The blunted edge of the weapon would strike her every time she thought she had blocked. Even when she did manage the seldom block, she would then be battered by the rounded butt of the weapon's shaft.
"You're thinking too much." Zhang Yong commented after letting up a little on his endless assault. "I think you use your instincts more than complicated plans to fight; you told me that you outsmarted the Half-Corrupted Beast, but how did you come to that conclusion? It was your instincts that first led you to the answer you needed, and it was your instincts that allowed you to break through in the heat of the moment. Think back to those times. And now, when you see me raise to strike, you falter to think if it'll be a feint or not." He struck her again in a spot she thought she had guarded long ago.
"Do not falter." He slammed the butt of the guandao into her sore ribs. She flinched and gasped, her breath suddenly lost from the impact. Still, Qing Shen stood her ground despite being breathless.
"The guandao is a weapon for attacks with large openings as it is reliant of heavy sweeping blows to get the most efficient use from the weight of weapon." He droned on again, throwing in a completely different attack than what he said, stabbing her with the practice weapon's blunted tip. "However, that doesn't mean it is without simple jabs and quick slashes."
He further proved his point when Qing Shen felt the edge of his weapon slam into her right wrist, sending her own weapon from her hands. She had saw how he had smoothly changed from a wide swipe to a short, swift strike, but she had thought she had been guarding for that trick. Zhang Yong then followed up by smacking her chest with the butt of the guandao, again.
Finally having enough, Qing Shen snarled like a beast ready to strike, and grasped her weapon in one arm from off the ground. In the same motion, she swept up dust into the air by roughly standing up from her place on the ground. With her Essence Vision highlighting Zhang Yong inside the dirty cloud, she burst forward, and grabbed the pole part of her friend's weapon before he hit her with the large sweeping attack he had been preparing. However, before she could finally put her weapon's teacher in place, he had already let go of his captured weapon and advanced inside her guard.
He sent a few quick jabs into her floating ribs that stole her breath, but he never expected her to take the hits in order to slam a foot into his unguarded chest. Zhang Yong expertly used the force of the attack to jump back and create distance. Somehow, in the same movement, he had stolen back the wooden guandao that QIng Shen had stolen first.
"Of course, fighting while relying on your natural toughness and strength is one way to get over skill." He commented with a pleased smile. "Good job finally tapping into your instincts. Now let's see if I can drill some better muscle memory into you. After all, instincts are great, but relying solely on them is just asking to be taken advantage of."
Qing Shen collapsed into the ground with a resigned groan of pain. She didn't know whether to focus on all the conflicting things ZHang Yong was saying, or the pain that wracked her body. That last bout had thoroughly beaten her. While she had tried to tough it out through the jabs Zhang Yong had sent, he always knew which attack would cause her the most pain. And it always seemed to be in the same places, too.
"Or we could call it a day?"
Qing Shen groaned.
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Feeling and controlling massive amounts of Spiritual Essence is the keystone to any cultivator's path. From the beginning, Qing Shen had been monitoring how she perceived the energy ever since her time spent inside that array of Essence Gathering talismans. At first, she had barely experienced a difference, but slowly that changed as she realized that she had much more Essence than anyone on the same level as her.
Or that's what Zhang Yong had told her after waving a weird talisman around.
While that is certainly a cause for celebration, it didn't help with fine tuning of her techniques as she was always overpowering even the simplest task of infusing Essence into an ink bottle each day. It would take her minutes longer to complete a task that had taken her seconds before. However, she also was overpowering her muscles whenever she infused them, which, according to Zhang Yong, was a good thing if she wanted to smash through two inches of thick steel only to have twice the muscles aches later. A fairly good trade off in her books.
Still, the most notable the about having more Spiritual Essence to work with was only visible under her Essence Vision, or when Zhang Yong got creative in training. The dull blue veins that appeared around her whenever she infused her body with Essence were much brighter and thicker compared to the Half-Corrupted beast she had fought against. She had found out that the brightness of the veins directly affected how effective at taking hits she was. Of course, when Zhang Yong realized that she could suddenly take more punishment than she originally could, he was rather ecstatic, and then promptly proceeded to figure out exactly how much punishment was too much.
With herself sitting firmly within the early step of the Cycling Essence stage, Qing Shen was rather adept at being a punching bag. However, having a much larger amount of Essence also meant that she needed to refine her Essence Veins that much more in order to reach the next step. Zhang Yong had told her that she needed to strengthen her metaphysical cycle before she even attempted to assail the next step anytime soon.
With that goal in mind, Qing Shen cultivated, sitting cross-legged in her comfy bed, in order to ease the pain of the day. She had been slowly understanding what Zhang Yong meant when he said that she needed a day or two to rest after an intense training session. Even if they were only more time to get away fromm the crazy fifteen year old who could beat her into the ground at anytime. During these days of 'rest' she would spend most of her time rousing the surrounding Essence in the hopes of quick improvements; taking the energy in the air to fill up her body, and after each refinement session, the shine on them would be just a tad brighter.
Though, if the girl was to be completely honest, she was still immensely worried about the last bit of informaiton Zhang Yong had said. After he had revealed his thoughts about how a horde of Half-Corrupted Beasts, and maybe a Corrupted Beast, could be lurking nearby, Qing Shen was understandably distressed. Even if she had worked out some stress in fighting, that single Half-Corrupted Beast almost ended her life several times. Simply imagining a horde of them charging the helpless maids of the villa was sometimes too much for the girl.
It reached the point where some days she would spend her free time looking out into the surrounding trees with her Essence Vision, hoping to find some orange in her sight so her paranoia was proven. When she wasn't doing that she was either training, or studying what different talismans in the armory did, that is.
The idea that one day she might wake up to an army attacking drove her to cultivating constantly.
As such, when she reached out to the surrounding Spiritual Essence, Qing Shen would always strain her ability to manipulate the energy to its utmost before reigning in her spoils. Her Essence Vision helped particularly to point out any larger than normal points of Essence nearby for her voracious, energy purposed hunger. Another useful ability was the fact that she could use her sight to see if there was any hidden enemies nearby, and subsequently, her paranoia drove her to always have it on. It at least saved her the time of pestering Zhang Yong about it.
On a separate note, for the past three weeks or so, she had been trying to interact with the maids of the villa ever since she had that weird heart to heart with Head Maid Li. Sure, it was more of a talk about each of them disliking each other, but it was mainly Li Ling bringing poor maids to her in hopes of adding more friends to their small group. Most of them ignored her like nothing ever happened, but some began to open up to her. Even if most of their talks devolved into awkward silence.
"Miss Qing?" Turning to the door, Qing Shen found a rather young maid tailed by Li Ling. She had shoulder length brown hair tied up into a ponytail with the same jeweled string Qing Shen was given. Her dark maid uniform was contrasted against her pale white skin and emerald green eyes. A nervous smile appeared on the woman's face as Li Ling happily pushed her through the open doorway.
"Hello, I hope Sister Ling didn't trouble you too much." Qing Shen said quickly, sending a warning glare to her friend for bringing another working woman over to bother her in her cultivating time.
Li Ling didn't seem to catch the glare, and happily gestured to her company. "This is Chun Hua, she's in charge of registering, and detailing the effects of the talismans that little Yong makes. I figured that since you're being boring, and refuse to play with me, that you'd wanna talk to another nerd."
"I thought you said you needed someone to take her to Master Yong?" Chun Hua asked curiously.
Qing Shen sighed at the common occurrence. "Sorry, Miss Chun, Miss Li is rather playful, and while I would love to talk to you, I presume you have been taken from your work by Li Ling?"
"Do not worry, it is fine! Li Ling only disrupted me when I finally had some time." Chun Hua corrected, sending a glance to the happily bouncing Li Ling who had taken a spot on Qing Shen's bed. "I think you should get rid of that horrendous habit of lying, young lady. What would Li Na say when she finds out how you're taking time from Miss Qing's day?"
"Mom won't say anything!" Li Ling childishly retorted, sticking her tongue out as if to add emphasis on how ludicrous the idea that head maid Li would be annoyed by maids skipping work. "Besides, Sister Shen spends all day either getting beaten silly by little Yong, or stays inside all day to cultivate. She needs to spend time playing with me more!"
"I definitely spend enough time out and interact with people!" Qing Shen defended.
"I'm sorry, Miss Qing, but I will have to side with Li Ling on this matter. I have only been seeing you taking a couple talismans every now and then when you are not training with Master Yong." Chen Hua commented from her place still at the door.
Li Ling cheered on her partner, and swung her body over to her friend. "See, even Sister Hua thinks that you're being antisocial! So what if little Yong says that there might be an invasion force of several hundred Half-Corrupted Beasts led by a giant Corrupted Beast that can use a fused element, you need to live a little!"
"Wait…" Qing Shen replayed her friend's words back again. "Zhang Yong never said anything that in detail before…"
"You weren't supposed to hear that." Chen Hua elaborated as Li Ling slapped her hands over her mouth.
"What do you mean! That's some pretty important information to keep from me!" Qing Shen panicked. "Several hundred of those monstrosities! Do you really think that this villa can handle an assault of that size?! We'd be overrun and eaten alive! Wait, what is fused element?"
Li Ling's smiles and attitude took a nosedive. Her lips twitched into a frown, and it looked as if tears were gathering in her eyes. For a second, no one in the room talked as they watched the always happy girl lose her fragile composure.
Qing Shen idly remembered back to her first meeting with the girl. How Li Ling's smile seemed so weak and distant, but spending time with her, Qing Shen felt that maybe she had seen wrong at first. Now, seeing her friend get so upset over her, the blonde knew that maybe there might be something behind the facade of happiness that Li Ling never wanted anyone to see.
And as she made those conclusions, Li Ling rushed out of the room as if being chased by a vicious beast. Her actions were too quick and abrupt for Qing Shen nor Chen Hua to actually react to stop her. The brown-haired woman stood quickly, looking on as Li Ling slammed the door behind her.
The room was sentenced into silence as the only noise that echoed throughout was the soft breathing of the two occupants.
"I think," Chen Hua was the first to break the silence. "I think that you really need to start think over your actions and words, Miss Qing. I can't really speak for you, but spending your time repeating the same thing over and over again will only drive you to insanity. Master Yong had a similar problem when he was forced away from the main household and sentenced here."
"And what did he do to fix it?" Qing Shen asked. The blonde was too in shock by Li Ling's sudden departure to realize her words before the tumbled out.
Chen Hua sighed, as if she seemed to remembering a great tragedy. "He still hasn't. I don't say I know a lot about cultivators, but I do that the world of cultivation is much stranger than the one of us civilians. Master Yong was once part of that world, but after he lost his cultivation and prestige, he's just another civilian like Li Ling and I. However, he still chooses to press forward into such a dangerous place instead of just simply resting like most would do in his circumstances."
"But there doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with him." Qing Shen said, frowning.
"Do you know of any civilians who have trained till exhaustion to master every single weapon they can lay their hands on?" Chen Hua stoically asked, not even waiting for a response before continuing. Qing Shen idly felt that the woman was worse than the head maid when she got riled up. "Do you know of any civilians who have to deal with their families actively plotting to kill them for any misstep? Do you know of any civilians who can look at the face of killers and laugh without any fear? Master Yong is the most insane civilian I have ever known. But, he chose that path, and now you need to make a similar choice."
"What? What do you mean?"
"Whether to stick with that same insanity, or look around to those who care for you." Chen Hua finished. She then bowed awkwardly, somehow feeling embarrassed about her speech, before stepping up to leave. "I'm sorry for my outburst, Miss Qing. I have been told I get lost in the mood sometimes, but please come and speak to me if you have any questions on talismans. I am the second most knowledgeable person about them who can probably answer any questions you have about their effects."
It was like a bolt had struck her. Qing Shen naturally recoiled as the implications, and information continued to invade her head. Li Ling had an already preconceived notion about cultivators from Zhang Yong, but did that mean that he and Qing Shen were that far apart in experience? The question made her reflect over her time as a cultivator.
Ever since her fight with the Half-Corrupted beast she had been basing all her training around that. What could she have done differently? What techniques or talismans she could have used to better her chances of not having such a close encounter again? She knew she was beginning to overthink the issue, and it only required someone hitting her in the face with that realization to finally look the problem head on.
Now that the problem was out in the open, Qing Shen felt that she had been thinking too much like Zhang Yong had said before. She was definitely better at going with her instincts than thinking things through and getting stuck on one problem after another.
However, did she want to abandon her cultivation to be with her friend? Li Ling obviously had no talent in cultivating, and would probably be stuck forever as a civilian. Qing Shen asked herself if she was really willing to put her friend in danger just because of her dreams.
No matter how long she thought about it, the answer never became easier.