The clinic was rather cramped today. Although Lizi and Gu Ying were regulars, Bai Dajin was a new face. Doctor He wondered if he needed to expand the clinic with this many visitors coming after his little apprentice started frequenting it.
"Aren’t you supposed to be teaching Brother Yihao?" Anji asked curiously when Bai Dajin seemed to have no intention of leaving the clinic.
Yawning, the White Tiger sect leader complained that it was too early in the morning to be reading books. He stretched himself comfortably on the sick bed and waved his hand lazily.
"Your brother is suspended for talking back to his teacher. I came over because I thought you’d be bored finding answers by yourself. Your shifu has a nasty personality, making a four-year-old do such a thing. Ordinarily, you’d be considered a genius for even being able to remember all the basic martial arts at your age. That old hag is clearly making this difficult for you. Are you sure you don’t want to change teachers?"
Laughing awkwardly, Anji reassured the gruff swordsman she was happy with Yan Ping as her teacher. If Bai Dajin was an idol for male cultivators, Yan Ping had to be the idol for female cultivators. Nobody could deny how great they were. Even when she was younger and always sick in bed, her mother would tell her stories about the seven heroes. Bai Dajin’s feats were no less impressive than her shifu’s.
Speaking of stories, Anji wondered if she could get another hint from the White Tiger sect leader.
"The last time you mentioned willpower can alter the nature of energy," Anji pulled a stool over to the sick bed. "Could you tell me more about what happened? What is willpower? Do girls have it too?"
Willpower... it was a new term that Anji had never encountered before. What sort of power was that?
Ah, this was the attitude he sought in a student when he finally agreed to accept one. Compared to the monkey he adopted, his girl was as cute as a chick, staring at him with a gaze full of respect and curiosity. She was nothing like her rascal brother. How did Zhao Mingfeng manage to father two completely different children? Then again, the Celestial Dragon sect leader fathered four children with the same wife and all four kids decided to walk completely different paths. Once again, he could not help but envy the old hag for snatching the brightest diamond from underneath all their noses. However, there was no better teacher for this lass than Yan Ping. If anything, only Yan Ping could save this child from her fate and guide her down the thorny path of cultivation. Check latest chapters at novel(ꜰ)ire.net
"Willpower is a form of mental energy," Bai Dajin whispered seriously. "It is said to only appear for those on the verge of death. When all hope is lost, the human body and mind will become one in that short moment, creating a special miracle that only the gods could explain."
About fifty years ago, during the great murim war against the demonic sect, Bai Dajin recalled facing off against a berserker-type dark practitioner.
"After falling for an ambush and getting hit by two different kinds of poisoned darts, I slayed almost eighty dark cult members before exhausting all my energy."
The sun had set because Bai Dajin had fought for so many hours. Weakened and depleted of qi, he thought the battle was finally over. However, the demonic sect had numbers on their side, sending backup forces to hunt the weakened White Tiger sect leader. At that time, everyone else had been scattered all over the central plains, chasing different leads and fighting different key figureheads of the demonic clan. With nobody else to assist his escape, Bai Dajin was determined to die with honour, taking down as many demonic worshippers with him.
The battle lasted late into the night, and Bai Dajin was already semi-unconscious when he slayed the last backup sent by the demonic clan. By then, the cliff had been painted in red as bodies littered the mountain path for miles. Exhausted and unable to move, Bai Dajin let down his guard. He had depleted all his energy and could no longer feel the sabre in his hand. Sustaining many injuries and wounds that were now scars on his body, Bai Dajin did not think there would be someone else hiding from the shadows, waiting for that one moment to deliver the decisive blow.
"It’s the instinct of a martial artist who had carried the blade for many years that saved me," he rubbed his nose sheepishly. "However, I could not block it with the sabre in my weakened state. Instead, I turned my body to the side so that he couldn’t stab anything vital. Who would have thought that the assailant had a secret weapon, attacking me from a blind side? I couldn’t react on time when he stuck that dagger into my core. Even after deflecting his main sword, I was forced to fall off that cliff I fought on."
Lifting his shirt to show Anji where the scar was when his cultivation core was stabbed, Bai Dajin let the girl examine him intently. There was no sympathy or fear, only respect and genuine curiosity.
Anji was not an expert like Doctor He. However, she could tell by the faded scar’s colour and thickness that the dagger wasn’t long. Although it pierced the cultivation core, the weapon was not long enough to completely sever its connection with Bai Dajin’s vessel. The White Tiger sect leader was very lucky to survive. However, someone else must have helped him repair his severely damaged core. Of the many people present in the Rainbow Alliance, there was only one skilful person Anji knew who was capable of it.
"Did my shifu help you recover your damaged core later?" she asked.
Speechless for a while, Bai Dajin’s jaw fell. He hadn’t even gotten to the most important part, but Anji already concluded the story. Her love for Yan Ping was like salt in an open wound. Although he was jealous, there was no way he could hate such an amazing person. Not to mention, she saved his life that day at the bottom of the cliff.
"Yes," he admitted begrudgingly. "But listen to my whole story first! If not for my amazing willpower, she could only collect my corpse at the bottom of the cliff and arrange a grand funeral for my valiant sacrifice!"
Resuming his story, Bai Dajin recalled how he could no longer see the moon in the sky. Even the sound of owls faded as his body grew heavier. The night was cold, but he had never felt it freezing before. It was obvious that he would die soon. At that moment, the White Tiger sect leader knew he had nothing more to lose.
"In those last few minutes of my life, I decided to try something I would have never done in my whole life. Absorbing energy into my injured body through my wounds, I forcefully held the energy I gathered using my body captive in the muscles. It was painful to keep everything locked inside my body, but I continued to store more energy in every muscle fibre I had. It burned so badly, but at least I wasn’t freezing. The more I compressed energy into my body through my wounds, the more alive I felt even if I were critically wounded."
Pointing at a scar on his torso, Bai Dajin explained how that scar used to be a large gashing wound that cut to his bone. However, the scar was so faint and thin that Anji thought it was a mere scratch.
"It’s a result of forcefully converting raw energy without a core," he explained. "Until today, I have no idea how it was done. It’s not sustainable or recommended for an extended period. However, it is definitely possible. If you put your mind to it, miracles can happen. At that point, I just wanted to live. It did not matter if I were to become a ghost or a zombie. I wanted to live and get revenge with my two own hands. That mindset gave me the strength to overcome the odds."
Naturally, it was only a personal story from his perspective. It might not be super helpful to Anji, who seemed to have accepted death from a very young age. However, he still wanted to encourage her.
Hopping onto that story of creating miracles using willpower, Doctor He had his fair share of stories to tell. In his time as a physician, he had seen many terminally ill patients who deified logic.
"There were children who could run through burning houses to save their grandparents and emerge without suffering a single burn. I’ve helped mothers who should have died during childbirth from severe complications deliver their children successfully before taking their last breaths. There was a father who fought a tiger to save his son and returned with a half-amputated arm. He killed the tiger with his bare hands and had never once learned martial arts in his life, nor did he possess any cultivation talents. Miracles happen all the time, and the stronger your desire to live, the more powerful it becomes."
Nodding, Gu Ying added that she once experienced this before as a child.
"It feels as if your mind blanks out and your body takes over. You’re there, but you move as if you’ve been possessed by a strength you did not know you had before. It was unreal."
The more Anji listened to amazing stories about willpower and the feats people accomplished with it, the more she wondered what it would take for her to unlock its secrets. Did she have to be in extreme danger or terminally ill enough to overcome this hurdle? For some reason, she had a feeling her shifu would not permit it.