“My knowledge of the world only seems to increase ever more since I joined Jing...” Wan Qing muttered as she looked at her allies.
They’ve only been training in here for a month but their progress is honestly mind blowing. They didn’t resemble the angels she saw a month ago in the slightest when talking of their skills. It was like they took the same training she did but gained 100x more than she did! This spatial world or whatever it was called... It just wasn’t fair at all. That month she spent with Jing was nothing compared to a few days in here.
‘The more I think about it, the more depressed I get.’ She sighed.
“What’s up Qing?” Ying asked as she walked over.
Ying was now a 9th stage Qi Gatherer ready to crossover into the next realm at any second. Her body was bursting with vitality and strength with a deep aura of fire qi being concentrated around her body. A small child was hanging around her waist with his arms wrapped around her stomach. A pleased expression was on his face while Ying didn’t seem bothered by him at all.
“It’s nothing.” Wan answered.
“Oh, getting nervous about your task in the Inner Court? Hehe. Didn’t think you were the type of person to get cold feet about things like that.” Ying teased.
“That’s not it at all.” She corrected.
“I’m just lucky I got an easy task this time around. All I gotta do is ask the leader of Fearsome Garden to surrender to us as Heaven’s Angels or I have to burn their entire group into ashes.”
“Is that why you purposely stayed in the Qi Gathering realm?”
“Yeah. It wouldn’t be fair if I fought their leader when I was a stage above her. I also think something really special is going to happen with my cultivation art when I breakthrough. But that’s just a feeling I got in my gut. I don’t know for sure.”
“I also don’t like fighting those weaker than me. I believe that cultivators should show some sense of respect and honor.” Qing agreed.
“My grandfather always said that a Yue never bullies the weak. We only target the strong!”
“Hmm. I never heard of the Yue family before but that is a saying I can respect.”
“Don’t worry about that. Once I return back home and deal with the pests trying to eliminate my family, we’ll grow back to the heights we once had.” Ying confidently rose her fist.
“When will you return?” Qing had no idea of this side of Ying.
“I plan to temporarily leave the sect once I make it to the Qi Consolidation realm and after the Grand Tournament.”
“Are you sure that’s strong enough to deal with your family’s enemies?” A cultivator at the Qi Consolidation realm wasn’t all that strong in the grand scheme of things. Maybe Ying’s family was a really weak noble family.
“I’m not going up against them by myself. I plan to return just in time for the local tournament of all the noble families inside the city and cripple their strongest youths. I can’t outright kill them or their family heads would definitely try and kill me at any costs. But a missing arm, leg, covering most of their bodies in horrific burns, or anything that’ll cost them a fortune to get fixed won’t.” Ying explained.
“What if they decide to kill you anyway for crippling their geniuses?” Wan Qing brought up.
“That sounds like something BLEEP would ask.” She rolled her eyes.
“It is something you need to be prepared for. Can the experts in your clan defend you from dying at the hands of your family’s enemies?”
“Yeah. Unless they group up and attack us together. Then, it’d be hard to say.” Ying had to think on it for a moment.
“Then you need to prepare yourself for that outcome. Even if it doesn’t happen. Better to be prepared for something that never happens than unprepared when it does.” Qing lectured.
“That month you spent with Jing really was a learning experience, huh?” Ying grinned.
“It was horrible... but very enlightening.” She shivered at the memories of it.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
“Just with those impossibly painful poses she’s been making us do every morning, I can already tell what you went through had to be awful.” Ying empathized with her.
“You don’t know the half of it... Those poses were just the beginning.”
“Let’s talk about something more positive instead! Like uh, the Grand Tournament in a few months! How high do you think you’ll rank in the Qi Consolidation matchups?” Ying changed the subject.
“Top 5.” She confidently answered.
“If I wanted to stay at the Qi Gathering stage, I would probably be first or second. But when I breakthrough after dealing with the Fearsome Garden, my goal is to at least make it to 10th place.” Ying shared.
“That’s a pretty high spot to aim for. Especially when you’ll be a 1st stage of the Qi Consolidation realm. Right now the 10th spot on the ranking list in the Inner Court is a 6th stage disciple.”
“Fighting someone over 5 stages higher than me? Sounds like fun. I’ll probably get to go all out for once.” She smiled.
“You don’t think the leader of the Fearsome Garden is going to give you a challenge?” Wan Qing noticed.
“Not as much as a 6th stage Qi Consolidator would.” Ying responded.
“Let me give you a small warning that I've only recently started to truly understand. Never underestimate anyone. I’ve almost lost my life, my sense of self, and my spirit by underestimating people.” Wan Qing warned seriously. Without Jing and the rest constantly saving her, she would already be dead by now.
“I understand.” Ying understood just how serious she was.
“You won’t truly understand until you’re on the edge of life and death. But that’s okay. I believe we’ll experience plenty of situations like that as Heaven’s Angels.” Wan Qing smiled before walking away.
Ying thought that Qing was right in a way but she still didn’t like the way she said it. She’d had her fair share of life-or-death experiences to know what it was like to not know if you were going to live or die. But none of it was ever due to underestimating people. Unlike Qing, Ying was never considered talented. She had as much talent as Bing and his talent was as common as they come. People like them shouldn’t have had the opportunity to enter a sect as grand and respected as the Golden Serpent Sect. It was only through luck that they survived the recruitment test.
With her average talent, she never underestimated anyone she fought and always fought to her full ability. Even when she knew it was impossible to win against a foe, she never gave up. Her grandfather once told her something very important when she was younger. Back then, Ying was more of a brat who didn’t understand the true nature of the world. She thought the training her grandfather made her go through was stupid, tiring, and a waste of time after learning that her talent wasn’t anything special.
It was that moment when her grandfather yelled at her for the first time. That was also the first time she ever cried from something that wasn’t physical pain. He told her that if she gave up in the face of hardship and danger, she would never make it anywhere in the world. Nor would she ever accomplish anything to be proud of as a member of the Yue Family. After he left her in the backyard alone, Ying spent that entire day doing nothing but the training her grandfather wanted her to do in the first place without a single word of complaint.
She released enough sweat and blood to fill multiple buckets by the time her grandfather came to get her. When he held her in his arms and apologized for yelling at her, she cried more than she had ever have in her entire life. After that day, she began to follow the family’s code much more strictly and never complained during training again. Her grandfather was the only person in her family that showed her true love. Not her parents, cousins, brothers but Ying didn’t hate them because of their lack of love towards her. Ying was actually considered the strange one in her family with how emotional she was.
“Hey Bing. Come help me tame this spirit plant with your weird technique.” Ying called out to the boy pigging out on the field of spirit grass.
“Moh. Hokay.” He responded with his mouth full of grass like a grazing cow.
Eating the plants nourished with qi from Ying’s Void World, helped train his body art, Devil’s Physique. It turns out that he didn’t need to eat only food with high quality qi and nourishment. Just the high-quality qi part as important. If his stomach could digest magical treasures, they too would be things he could eat and benefit from. Maybe he should ask Jing about a spirit tool that’ll help him accomplish something like that...
Bing got off his butt and walked over to Ying carefully standing over a normal patch of grass. Making sure not to let it touch a single part of her flesh. Jing warned them once and only once about the dangers of this strange plant she decided to grow in Ying’s garden. With a simple demonstration by her, no one needed to be warned twice of its dangers. She threw the corpse of a beast in the late stages of the Qi Preparation realm onto the seemingly normal looking grass and they all watched as it was slowly drained completely as none of its bodily fluids or flesh remained.
“How do you plan on taming this thing anyway? I don’t think spirit plants can be tamed like spirit beasts.” Bing asked.
“This thing has a will! Hao Gang said that it wasn’t like the other spirit plants in the garden. And since it wants to live and grow so quickly in my garden, it needs to abide by my rules.” She declared. “I won’t accept something in my Void World that wants to kill me!”
“That makes sense but how are you going to tame it?” She still didn’t answer his question.
“I’m going to threaten it until it submits. My fire doesn’t work as well as your weird martial art.” She admitted.
“Wouldn’t it submit to me instead of you then?” Bing brought up.
“I’m going to burn it alive until it submits to me and you’re going to frighten it by using that technique of yours.” She explained.
“Okay.” Bing shrugged. He’d probably feel a little bit conflicted if it was an animal or person she was talking about doing this stuff to, but it was just a plant. Plants couldn’t feel pain or anything. Probably...