Doctor Yun took one look at Anji’s expression and immediately felt a sense of sympathy. Although he was not a cultivator, he could tell how difficult Anji’s training was. Each day, she would return with a look of frustration. However, instead of the fight in her eyes, Anji looked exhausted and resigned as she lifted her sleeve for her pulse reading.
Running through the daily health check, Doctor Yun eventually told Yan Ping that her successor was still in physically good condition even if she was mildly dehydrated. Anji’s training uniform was soaked thoroughly. Without time to drink anything to replenish the lost fluids, it was only natural.
When it was her teacher’s turn to check her inner core and cultivation progress, Anji thought she would continue to disappoint her shifu. Even if Grandpa Jin taught her the new sutra to increase harmonisation rates, Anji barely grasped the basics. There was insufficient time for Anji to fully understand how to coexist with nature.
As usual, Yan Ping inserted a strand of her energy to circulate it in Anji’s spiritual circuits. However, unlike the previous sessions, there was a slight change in her artificial cores. It was very subtle, and Yan Ping almost missed it. The change was so small, but the difference it had in Anji’s natural flow of energy changed. It was a strange experience that Yan Ping ended up making a second check to verify what she was feeling.
An hour passed, and Doctor Yun, who had been on standby, began to look concerned. Usually, it only took the half-sage ten minutes to check on her successor’s condition. Could it be that Anji had taken on some spiritual damage that his medical science could not detect?
After waiting for an additional thirty minutes, Anji’s stomach decided to announce itself to everyone in the room.
Hearing the embarrassingly loud growl demanding food immediately, Yan Ping snapped at the idle doctor to feed her successor while she continued her inspection. Anji blushed but could not refuse. Although her shifu was adjusting her artificial core seals to ease her spiritual bottleneck, her body was a different story.
Hungry, sore and exhausted, Anji was already nodding off on the chair when Doctor Yun returned with a basket of food from Aunt Wine.
"She included freshly squeezed watermelon juice in bamboo flasks to keep them chilled when she heard you were dehydrated," the doctor explained upon his return. "If you can’t finish it all, you can leave it until dinner."
Letting go of Anji’s wrist, Yan Ping told Anji to start eating while shooing Doctor Yun away for the day. Anji did as she was told and waved tiredly at the doctor, who left with an uneasy look on his face.
The meal was as nourishing as Anji remembered it to be. Aunt Wine put a lot of effort into the meal. She must have started learning how to make pickles and ferment food from the eastern kitchen after Anji claimed to enjoy the pickled peppers and cucumber slices. The sour and crunchy appetiser was something Anji had never tried before at the Celestial Dragon Sect. It was refreshing, although not meant to be eaten in large quantities.
Pairing her pickled side dishes with rice and steamed fish, Anji ate quickly. Between mouthfuls, she sipped cool watermelon juice. The contrast between sweet and sour brought her back to life.
While her student ate, Yan Ping continued checking on the shocking progress. The more she analysed Anji’s progress, the more convinced she became. Although nobody taught Anji about the concept of energy harmonisation to become one with nature, the child was already beginning to incorporate some of that into her unusual training method.
Could it be that their original cultivation method was unsuitable for Anji’s unusual constitution?
While Anji finished her first meal of the day, Yan Ping helped to balance the energy in Anji’s body. There was too much external energy that did not acclimatise to her natural life signature running in her spiritual network. While it was not dangerous to let them circulate in Anji’s network, it would disrupt the quality of her rest. If not handled properly, there was a chance the child would develop a high fever and experience cold sweats in her sleep.
With food, water and better energy flow in her body, Anji finally gave in to exhaustion and fell asleep at the table with grains of rice stuck to her cheek.
Seeing how uncomfortable the position was for a growing child, Yan Ping carried Anji to the bed and continued regulating the chaotic energy flow, adjusting every artificial core’s seal to unlock the support mechanism meant to restrict an overload in Anji’s body.
If her disciple was able to master the art of becoming one with nature, it was akin to having access to a vast energy vault with no spending or storage limit. Although Yan Ping had never encountered anyone else skipping through cultivation stages like Anji, her successor was also the first person to survive an overly powerful sealed spiritual core.
Borrowing this inspiration, Yan Ping wondered if she could explore the potential of Anji’s discovery. Originally, the artificial cores were created as a dam gate to help Anji control her energy flow. However, as she progressed towards mastering harmonisation, they were proving more obstructive than helpful. Yet, Anji was able to work past the bottleneck limitations by flooding her spiritual network with an external source to erode the gate resistance.
Although unconventional, Yan Ping saw no need for Anji to follow the traditional path of cultivation. If a child was smart, why force upon them the slow-paced curriculum of education? Nurturing a child according to their readiness for growth was the key. Anji was more than ready for the next step. She should be skipping grades, according to Yan Ping. Nᴇw ɴovel chaptᴇrs are published on novel⁂fire.net
"Rest well," she brushed off the sweaty bangs stuck onto Anji’s forehead.
Just for today, she would not wake Anji up for the next training session. After such a groundbreaking discovery all by herself, Anji should take a few days to recuperate. In the meantime, Yan Ping should start preparing new lesson materials suitable for her gifted successor.
Who knew that artificial cores could be overflowed to alter energy characteristics? Anji was the only person who would use them as sieves for energy refinement. Most energy refinement was done in the spiritual golden core. However, Anji had to get creative without one. Her method of enabling energy sieves to refine it throughout the twelve meridians was a clumsy attempt at harmonisation. However, with greater mastery and refinement, her very disadvantage could become one of her greatest strengths.