Cailin handed Li Hao a so-called training plan, so detailed it was downright horrifying.
It specified what time he had to get up in the morning and how long he had to meditate.
It laid out the proper ratio of Soul Beast meat to vegetables for each of his three meals.
It even dictated the intensity of his physical training in the afternoon.
And it explained how to use medicinal baths at night to consolidate his cultivation.
Every detail had been arranged down to the last jot.
How was this a training plan?
This was a schedule for some super-devil boot camp!
"I don't..."
Li Hao had barely opened his mouth to protest when Cailin cut him off with her cool, unyielding resolve.
"Master, last night I made a preliminary assessment of your and Xiao Wu's strength."
Cailin stood ramrod straight, her bearing so imposing, with all the force of a queen, that it made the cramped wooden shack seem even smaller.
"My conclusion is that your strength is severely out of keeping with your status and potential."
"Intensive training must begin at once."
Li Hao opened his mouth, but felt every complaint jammed in his throat.
Status?
What status did I have?
Holy Soul Village's head fisherman?
Potential?
My only potential was to lie by the river all day without rolling over.
"Um... Cailin, I think..."
"Master, please have Xiao Wu and you attack me with all your strength."
Cailin interrupted him, then stepped back two paces and took her place in the little courtyard.
She didn't even gather any energy around herself. She simply stood there, calmly watching the father and daughter.
It was an unmistakable show of contempt.
But Li Hao couldn't summon even a trace of anger at being looked down on.
Because she was telling the truth.
Xiao Wu had been simmering with anger since yesterday.
That bad woman had not only picked her up like a little rabbit, she had even called her an accessory!
She still had a score to settle!
"Take this, you bad woman!"
Xiao Wu cried out and sprang from Li Hao's arms.
Her small figure streaked through the air in a pink blur. Her little body displayed a flexibility and speed completely at odds with her appearance, and she closed in on Cailin in an instant.
The Soft Bone Rabbit clan's specialty: close-quarters flexible combat!
Yet faced with Xiao Wu's fierce attack, Cailin didn't so much as move.
She merely raised two fingers.
Slender and fair, like the finest white jade.
Then, with pinpoint precision, she caught Xiao Wu's incoming fist between them.
Time seemed to freeze.
Xiao Wu had enough strength to kick through a Hundred-Year Soul Beast's backbone, yet against Cailin's two fingers, her blow sank like a stone into the sea, stirring not the slightest ripple.
"Good strength, but your technique is too crude. You rely on instinct alone."
Cailin gave her verdict without expression and flicked her wrist.
Xiao Wu cried out as a subtle force sent her spinning helplessly around and around, until she landed with a splat, right on her bottom.
She sat on the ground, rubbing her sore backside, her big eyes filled with shock and hurt.
Li Hao's eye twitched.
This was bad. His daughter had been taken down in one move.
Now all the pressure was on him.
"Master, your turn."
Cailin looked his way. Her gaze was calm, yet it carried an invisible weight.
Li Hao stepped forward, steeling himself.
What else could he do?
He couldn't exactly say, "I don't know how to fight. I surrender," could he?
That would be way too embarrassing!
He took a deep breath and recalled the strange sensation from yesterday.
Soul Power began to flow through his body.
Petrification Eye!
An invisible wave shot from his eyes, aimed straight at Cailin.
It was his strongest attack at the moment. It could reduce a boulder taller than a man to powder in an instant.
Yet when the eerie petrifying force came within three inches of Cailin, it seemed to hit an invisible wall.
A faint purple energy shield flashed across Cailin's body.
The petrifying force was instantly annihilated. It couldn't even make the shield ripple.
Li Hao: "..."
The air froze once more.
Xiao Wu being taken down in one move had been expected. But his all-out attack couldn't even break through her defenses. That was a blow to his pride.
Cailin finally moved.
She slowly shook her head. For the first time, her beautiful, icy face showed undisguised disdain.
"Master, your combat awareness is worse than a three-year-old's."
"You have a powerful Soul Skill, but no idea how to wield your energy, seize an opening, or lock onto your enemy."
"That last attack was full of openings."
Li Hao's face flushed red.
She was murdering him with words!
"I... I'm just a fisherman! Why would I need combat awareness?"
He finally couldn't hold back his last protest as a salted fish.
"My life's dream is to fish, laze around, and have a wife and child waiting for me at home! Who wants to fight?"
Cailin listened quietly until he finished.
Then she walked up and, for the first time, looked Li Hao straight in the eye with utter seriousness.
"Master, you may once have been a fisherman."
"But from the moment you saved Xiao Wu and me, you were no longer one."
"Now you are our master, our king, and the only person we can rely on."
She paused and spoke each word clearly.
"Your weakness is our greatest weakness."
Boom!
Those words struck harder than any Soul Skill.
Li Hao froze.
He looked into Cailin's golden, slit-pupiled eyes. There was no mockery or disdain in them, only an utterly pure sincerity.
Then he turned and looked at Xiao Wu, sitting on the ground, rubbing her eyes as tears welled up.
That was right.
He wasn't alone anymore.
He had people he wanted to protect.
If he stayed this weak, who would protect them when danger truly came?
Cailin?
But hadn't she nearly died because she'd faced an enemy she couldn't resist?
Li Hao couldn't refute her.
He couldn't even find the strength to try.
"Training starts now."
Cailin's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
"First up: physical training."
"Without using any Soul Power, run ten laps around Holy Soul Village."
Li Hao's face fell.
One lap around Holy Soul Village was at least a mile or two. Ten laps would make it twenty or thirty miles!
Without Soul Power?
With his six-and-a-half-year-old body?
Was she trying to send him straight to the King of Hell?
Half an hour later.
"Huff... hah... I... I can't... I'm... I'm dying..."
Li Hao braced his hands on his knees. He hadn't even finished one lap, yet his lungs burned and his legs felt like they were filled with lead.
Right now, he was just an ordinary six-and-a-half-year-old child. He was in even worse shape than the village kids who ran wild all day.
Smack!
A sharp crack rang out.
A purple energy whip struck him squarely on the backside.
It didn't hurt much, but the humiliation was immense.
"Ah!"
Li Hao yelped and jumped in pain.
He turned and saw Cailin standing behind him, holding an energy whip, her face frosty.
"Master, your stamina is even worse than I expected."
"Keep going."
Smack!
Another lash.
"You... You dare hit your master?"
Li Hao raged, thoroughly stripped of his dignity.
"This is to help Master adapt to the training intensity as quickly as possible." Cailin's answer was as calm as ever.
"I..."
Smack!
"Ah! I'll run! I'll run, all right?"
And so the villagers of Holy Soul Village were treated to a strange sight that day.
The village's famous lazy young fisherman was running around in a panic, his face full of misery.
Behind him followed a purple-clad fairy, so beautiful she hardly seemed real.
She carried a whip and every so often snapped it against the young fisherman's backside.
The sight was bizarre, yet somehow harmonious.
Meanwhile, Xiao Wu's training was an entirely different story.
Cailin created an energy clone specifically to spar with her.
Xiao Wu had a remarkable talent for combat. With Cailin's clone feeding her moves, her understanding of the Soft Bone Rabbit clan's fighting techniques advanced by leaps and bounds.
At first, she had been taken down with ease. But before long, she was trading dozens of blows with the energy clone.
Every dodge and every kick became more precise, more lethal.
When Li Hao finally finished his ten laps and collapsed on the ground like a dead dog, with half his life gone—
He saw Xiao Wu land a beautiful spinning side kick, scattering Cailin's energy clone.
Xiao Wu excitedly waved her little fists. Her face was slick with sweat, yet her smile brimmed with satisfaction.
Cailin stood to one side, watching her with a hint of approval.
Li Hao's heart took a hard stab.
How was that fair?
They'd both been taken in, so why was his daughter a combat genius while he was a useless wreck being whipped into running?
It wasn't fair!
But when he watched Xiao Wu's strength rise by leaps and bounds after her hard training, then looked at Cailin, whose expression said, "It's all for your own good,"
Li Hao realized, for the first time, from the bottom of his heart:
He couldn't keep running away.
Power had never been a reward the system simply handed out for free.
It was a responsibility.
It was the only thing he had to protect this unexpected bond.
Just as he was so exhausted that he didn't even want to move a finger,
Cailin walked over and looked down at him from above.
At some point, a crude map drawn on animal hide had appeared in her hand.
"Master."
"According to the intelligence, in three days, the Soul Saint family that gravely wounded me before will send people to this village to resupply."
She extended a slender finger and pointed at a circled mark on the map.
That mark was none other than Holy Soul Village.
"We'll go meet them."
Before you continue