The Results of Training

Yan Jinghong arrived in a graceful glide, his robes fluttering like an immortal's. He showed no sign of exerting himself: with a light tap of his toes, he leaped a great distance forward, faster than Si Ming. Yet he made the feat look effortless. The lake's surface stirred only slightly, without so much as a ripple.

"'Iron Palm Running on Water' sounds awful. There's no poetry to it at all." Si Ming turned to look behind him and said anxiously, "Master, slow down! Why are you chasing me so fast? You've scared the fish in the water."

Yan Jinghong sighed. His disciple was good in every other respect, but he wasn't steady enough. Praise him a little and his tail would stick up to the heavens. His mouth also seemed incapable of stopping, and he particularly liked to ramble about this and that during a fight. Yan Jinghong had no idea where he'd picked up the habit. According to the intelligence report, he had once been a quiet boy who disliked talking to his classmates and friends. How had he developed such a frivolous personality?

He shook his head, realizing he was asking too much. It was only natural for a boy his age to be full of youthful vigor. If he were as lifeless as an old man, that would be the strange thing. Perhaps this had always been his true nature, and the burden of being unable to cultivate internal arts had weighed him down in the past, leaving him pessimistic and unwilling to talk to others.

Even so, as his master, Yan Jinghong still had to knock some sense into him when the occasion called for it.

Yan Jinghong reached out and caught a droplet of water kicked up by Si Ming. With a light flick of his finger, he sent it shooting out like a stone from a slingshot, striking Si Ming squarely on the back of the head.

"Ow!"

Si Ming let out a miserable cry. His posture faltered, and he immediately lost his balance, nearly becoming unable to keep running across the waves. Fortunately, he was no longer the novice he had been half a year ago. He urged his internal art into motion, producing a fresh surge of strength out of nowhere, and regained his balance.

"Master, that's cheating! We agreed I'd run and you'd chase me, so why are you attacking me too? Sea transport with a side of cannon fire-are you trying to be a shipboy?"

In answer, Yan Jinghong raised his right hand, formed his palm into a blade, and chopped down at him. A faint but exceptionally sharp streak of Sword Qi slashed vertically outward, parting the lake and raising a wall of water roughly a hundred meters long and ten meters high.

Startled, Si Ming immediately backed down. "You're the master, so what you say goes. Reasonable demands are training, and unreasonable demands are tempering!"

"Silver-tongued."

Yan Jinghong suddenly accelerated. Instead of leaping in an arc, he stayed closer to the lake's surface, like an osprey swooping on its prey, and reached for Si Ming's shoulder with a move from the Mighty Eagle Claw Art.

"I won't fall for the same move twice."

Si Ming twisted around and held both hands before his forehead, all ten fingers spread. Blazing Sun True Qi circulated, bursting forth in a dazzling flash.

To make the exercise useful as training, Yan Jinghong had suppressed his cultivation to the eighth level of internal arts, greatly weakening all his physical attributes along with it. Thus, he couldn't react in time either. The intense light struck his eyes, and his movements stalled.

Si Ming took the opportunity to dodge, changing direction and opening up some distance before continuing toward the shore.

"Solar Flare from the Blazing Yang Battle Art. Strange, I remember that move requires the fourth level of internal arts..."

Without waiting for his sight to recover, Yan Jinghong followed Si Ming by sound, recalling how the scene had unfolded. His movements were extremely practiced, without the slightest hitch. Could he have cultivated Solar Flare to major accomplishment, lowering the requirements for using it? But he's only at the third level of internal arts. He doesn't even meet the basic requirements, so how could he cultivate a martial art he can't use to major accomplishment?

Though he was puzzled, over the past four months he had already witnessed Si Ming's unreasonable talent for martial arts. It took him less than a week to go from learning all kinds of martial arts to using them proficiently-Si Ming had deliberately concealed part of his talent to avoid causing too great a sensation.

With those "precedents" behind him, Yan Jinghong found it less difficult to accept that Si Ming had mastered a martial art above his level.

Master and disciple continued their chase across the lake, displaying extraordinary mastery of lightness skills, but no matter how hard Si Ming tried, the distance between them continued to shrink bit by bit.

"Almost there. Only two hundred meters to the shore. This time I'll definitely make it!"

The lake chase training was not a game of eagle catching chicks. Both started at the center of the lake; one had to find a way to reach the shore, while the other had to intercept him before he got there.

Ever since Si Ming's Blazing Sun Internal Art had broken through to the third level a month ago, he and Yan Jinghong had held a lake chase training session every day. But he had never succeeded in reaching the shore. Even on his closest attempt, he had still been a hundred meters away.

"There's nothing wrong with a young man having dreams, but you must also learn to keep your feet on the ground. As long as you learn your lessons, every failure will become a cornerstone of success."

Yan Jinghong used his full strength, displaying the maximum speed he could reach at the eighth level of internal arts. The distance between them shrank rapidly, visibly closing. At this rate, Si Ming would surely be caught before he reached the shore. This time, Yan Jinghong had simply closed his eyes to avoid falling into the trap of Solar Flare again.

Sensing the presence rapidly closing in behind him, Si Ming gritted his teeth. "I'm going all out. I can only gamble on that move I haven't fully mastered yet."

His body suddenly lit up. Blazing Sun True Qi erupted from within, spilling out through his acupoints while stimulating his cells and greatly increasing their strength.

In an instant, Si Ming's entire body was enveloped in a golden halo, and his presence surged. His speed, strength, reactions, and every other physical attribute grew several times stronger. Moreover, the True Qi stimulated his cells, producing bioelectric currents that formed a small antigravity magnetic field, making every strand of his hair stand on end.

Solar Prominence Eruption!

A limit-breaking move from the Blazing Yang Battle Art, it was similar to the Heavenly Demon Body Disintegration Great Art and other such methods, capable of greatly enhancing the user's abilities for a short time. But unlike the latter, which had no requirements for use and only side effects, Solar Prominence Eruption consumed a vast amount of Blazing Sun True Qi. Once the True Qi ran out, the user would be forced out of the superhuman state. Its advantage, however, was that it had no side effects.

Given Si Ming's total reserves of True Qi, he could maintain Solar Prominence Eruption for only ten seconds without sunlight. If light was available to replenish him, the extra duration depended on its intensity.

Ten seconds was very brief, but more than enough to cover two hundred meters. Si Ming, golden light radiating from his body, suddenly surged forward. When his foot came down, a wave ten meters high blasted upward, as though he had detonated a naval mine.

As he raced ahead, a series of explosive waves rose from the lake. At first glance, the scene looked like the old-fashioned special effects commonly used when characters competed in internal arts in wuxia television dramas.

Yan Jinghong hadn't expected Si Ming to have such a trump card hidden away. Unable to catch up in time, he could only watch as the distance between them widened. By the time Solar Prominence Eruption wore off after more than ten seconds, Si Ming had already reached the shore.

Chapter 38: The Results of Training

Though he had won the contest, Si Ming was exhausted like a dead dog and could only lie on the ground, panting. Not only had he depleted his True Qi, but his physical strength was also exhausted, and even his mind was filled with fatigue. Racing across the lake was a tremendous test of both stamina and willpower. Every step required a perfect combination of strength and skill; the slightest mistake would send him sinking into the lake, leaving him unable to push himself forward.

Yan Jinghong, the loser, didn't have a drop of sweat on his face. He leaped lightly onto the shore and said, "Though there's some suspicion of trickery, you won through your own strength in the end, so you've passed the test. I thought it would take half a year, but it seems I still underestimated you. You actually managed it two months early."

Si Ming laughed twice, lacking the strength to be as smug as usual.

Yan Jinghong said earnestly, "As long as you follow your cultivation plan, guard against arrogance and impatience, and proceed step by step, you'll succeed sooner or later. Ordinary people often think geniuses have imaginations that soar like heavenly steeds, but the opposite is true. Geniuses understand better than ordinary people how to keep their feet on the ground. When they encounter a problem, they only have to glance at it to see the whole story clearly. They know how to take the first step, what difficulties they'll encounter along the way, and what methods to use to solve them. In the end, success comes as naturally as water flowing into a channel.

"But when ordinary people encounter a problem, they often can't see its outlines clearly. They neither know how to take the first step nor what difficulties await them. They can only stare at the final goal and look back and forth. Those who can take things one step at a time are already outstanding talents. More of them hang between heaven and earth, drifting along in bewilderment until someone points them in the right direction. Only then can they finally set their feet on the ground and move forward. By the time their first difficulty stops them, the genius has already reached the destination and begun tackling the next problem. Thus, the gap between them grows ever wider."

If Si Ming had still been a boy, he would surely have dismissed those words. Young people feared neither heaven nor earth and thought there was nothing in the world they couldn't accomplish. With ten parts strength, they insisted on exerting twelve. As a result, they pushed too hard, went in the wrong direction, and wasted a great deal of time for nothing, without even brushing the edge of success.

But precisely because he had an adult's experience and had been tempered by society, he understood that these words were truly pearls of wisdom. At work, he had seen quite a few people who could complete their tasks with ease despite putting in little effort. Very few of them were geniuses; the vast majority had learned a genius's methods, knowing to use only eight parts of their strength and save the other two in case of emergencies.

Si Ming couldn't help thinking of the protagonists of those system-style novels. They themselves could hardly be called geniuses, but once they had tasks issued by a system, they at least became talents who could take things one step at a time. It was equivalent to having a genius constantly pointing them in the right direction and telling them where to go next, especially since that genius was, in essence, a "god" like the author. The same principle applied to the portable-grandpa genre.

"Master, you're not saying all this because you want to stop instructing me early, are you?"

Yan Jinghong smiled and admitted, "I've taken four months off. It's time I went back to work. Things aren't like they used to be, when a master had to guide his disciple hand by hand to keep him from going astray. With schools taking care of that, you at least know which direction to go. Even if it isn't necessarily the direction best suited to you, you're still moving toward your goal."

"But these past four months, all I've done is practice stance training, temper my body, absorb solar energy, and cultivate basic martial arts. I haven't mastered a single one of our school's ultimate arts."

"The master leads you through the door, but cultivation depends on the individual. Once you've built a solid foundation, how you cultivate from here is entirely up to you. I originally intended to teach you my adaptation of Dunjia Heavenly Movement, but now it seems the original might suit you better." Yan Jinghong picked up the sword case from the ground and slung it over his back. "All right, I've taught you everything I should. From now on, I'll come check on you once every six months. I hope you'll cultivate diligently and not neglect your practice."

Si Ming struggled to his feet. "Master, you're leaving just like that? At least let me throw you a farewell banquet."