After the Rainbow Alliance Meeting ended, Liu Yanxia was the first to leave the Celestial Dragon Sect. This was understandable, given the turmoil brewing in her Heavenly Phoenix Sect. Zhao Mingfeng promised to contact her regularly. Original content can be found at novèlfire.net
Hong Nian Niang became an esteemed guest of the Celestial Dragon Sect for another week. She delighted in discussing her business plans to set up an information-gathering headquarters in Chang’an while enjoying a leisurely holiday in the region. Anji loved the gifts she received from Hong Nian Niang and eagerly anticipated her return from each trip. The Vermillion Bird sect leader had exquisite taste in products and never failed to bring a smile to Anji’s face. Her favourite gifts were the martial arts training robes and a rocking horse.
While his siblings were learning diligently under new teachers, Zhao Mingshen requested permission from his parents to follow Zhang Yi and Zhang Mou back to the Azure Dragon Sect to deepen his learning as both a cultivator and scholar. Zhao Mingfeng thought it was an excellent proposition and gave his oldest son his blessings.
Anji remembered bidding goodbye to her oldest brother. As they parted, he promised to send her many letters before he left, and Anji held back tears as she watched him leave the mountain at the main gates. Apart from furthering his studies, Mingfeng gave his oldest son the important task of understanding how mercenary guilds worked. The success of an inter-alliance exchange program was up to Zhang Mou and Mingshen.
Chen Zhong left with his son on the same day Mingshen left. He promised to send permission seeds to Mingfeng so that he could grow them at the back of his mountain after learning how much Anji liked them.
Anji watched and listened to her older sister train in the courtyard for two weeks. Sometimes, a guard would escort her to the back of the mountain where Bai Dajin was making her brother meditate shirtless under a chilly waterfall. Each time he fidgeted, Bai Dajin would throw a pebble at him and make him climb the mountain five times before sunrise. It was a strict training that made Anji wonder how she would survive such a similar training even if she were mentally prepared to undergo any hardships.
Unlike her siblings, who had already learned from their teachers and had been training hard, Yan Ping forbade anyone from disturbing her. Since leaving that night from the dinner meeting, nobody had seen her leave her guest room. Two weeks passed, and Anji became more nervous with each passing day. Was her teacher not intending to teach her anything? Or was Anji’s training going to be worse than Bai Dajin’s regime?
Without any instructions from her master, Anji decided not to waste time. She would simply have to assign herself some tasks if her teacher was too busy to do so. After all, Yan Ping could be testing Anji to see if she had the initiative to study on her own. Hence, the young princess started spending time at the library. Although brother Mingshen was no longer here, Anji could still learn from many other talents in the Celestial Dragon Sect.
Anji learned basic martial arts from her older sister for the next ten days. They were basic movement forms of blocking, striking, punching, and dodging, but they were already challenging for Anji’s small body. The hardworking child would do two rounds of frog leaps around the small courtyard and practice the basic forms with a straw dummy customised for her height. Then, she visited the library and reviewed the classics with the sect’s adviser for four hours.
Little by little, Anji made progress every day.
While the youngest princess worked hard in her way, Yan Ping cooped herself in the room and struggled. The new seal she developed cracked once more after she imbued it with spiritual energy. Creating a new formula was more difficult than mastering one that was perfected. Unlike regular seals that restricted the flow of qi, it was Yan Ping’s first time experimenting with seals that controlled soul energy.
Although she designed her lesson plans and treatment strategy on the night she left that dinner gathering, the sage struggled for two weeks to understand soul arts. No books existed, and she could only rely on her limited experience with them. The new seals for Anji’s cultivation core and twenty meridian points had long been completed. However, unlike the simple soul anchoring seals she created on Anji’s crystal bracelet, sealing the chakra proved to be more difficult.
Each time Yan Ping delved into a different dimension, trying to separate her soul from her vessel, she had to return almost immediately to prevent soul-drifting. According to her estimate, her limit was one hour per day. As a result, her experiments made very little progress.
On the third week of Yan Ping’s seclusion, the guest room exploded into splinters as a violent force from within tore it apart.
The emergency bells in the Celestial Sect went off immediately. Zhao Mingfeng was the first to arrive at the scene. Who would dare attack his sect?
Coughing from the dust clouds, Yan Ping emerged from the broken guest house with an apology.
"I’m sorry about the guest house," she explained. "I’m one step closer to perfecting the new seal. Can I request to borrow your sect’s cultivation chambers? Wooden houses won’t hold this power, and I can’t guarantee the next experiment will not fail."
After understanding the circumstances, Zhao Mingfeng personally opened the deepest cultivation chambers underneath the mountain for Yan Ping to continue her experiments. However, before Yan Ping left, she gave Anji a mission.
"I see how you’re studying and working hard to learn martial arts basics. Well done. It will take me a while to finish the new seals for your treatment, so here’s what I want you to do in the meantime. Instead of learning a martial arts style, only practise the basics and strengthen your body. You can learn the Eight Trigram Palm or the Taiji first. If anybody knows the Weightless Footwork technique, you have my permission to study that as well. At the same time, your brother should have copies of the Four Books in your family’s library. Study The Doctrine of the Mean and transcribe your understanding for every paragraph. I will check your progress after I find a solution."
Heeding her teacher’s words, Anji promised to study well and thanked her teacher for working very hard. She did not know the details. However, she knew Yan Ping was a sage and one of the wisest people in the murim world. If there was something that even she did not know, then it was almost impossible for anyone else to know it. Anji’s condition was very special. Hence, she could only wait patiently and believe in her teacher.