Na'er vs. Gu Yue

The next day, with Gu Yue joining them, the training group gained another member.

Leng Yaozhu, however, decided to slack off and handed the entire responsibility over to Su Xun.

Though helpless to refuse, Su Xun could only shoulder the burden.

Fortunately, while Leng Yaozhu had delegated authority to him, she still lounged nearby and supervised.

Clearly, this was to keep Na'er from acting cute and wheedling her way out of things.

To prevent a battle between the two girls, Su Xun quietly extended their training time.

Na'er complained endlessly, inwardly cursing Su Xun as a petty villain intoxicated by his newfound power.

To Su Xun, Na'er's thoughts were like an open diary. He could sense what was written on its pages without even looking.

Naturally, he knew exactly how Na'er was cursing him in her head.

He did not mind, though. He merely picked at her mistakes in silence, and Na'er soon behaved herself.

Gu Yue, on the other hand, remained calm, quietly observing Su Xun as though she wanted a good look at how this monster had been forged.

Unlike Na'er, who left herself completely unguarded.

Gu Yue was still highly wary. Even though, on the surface, Su Xun's spiritual power now exceeded hers.

He still could not peer into her thoughts.

The morning passed. After lunch and a rest came the deportment class that had once made both Su Xun and Na'er complain endlessly, yet Gu Yue took it very seriously.

In an instant, the bearing radiating from her seemed to transform her into a noble queen.

Watching this, Na'er ground her teeth for a long while, then clenched them one last time and inwardly cursed Gu Yue as a fox of a dragon.

During the close-combat class that followed, Na'er, brimming with resentment, volunteered to teach Gu Yue a lesson.

To stop Gu Yue from cheating, she even specifically asked Leng Yaozhu to seal both their soul power.

Then a smile of triumph spread across her face.

"Little Gu Yue, you're no match for me when it comes to strength!"

"And I've been learning close combat for three years. Just wait until I put you in your place!"

Gu Yue saw through Na'er's intentions, but a faint smile curled her lips, as though she already had victory in the bag.

A moment later, the two stood facing each other, and Su Xun called out the signal to begin.

Na'er immediately stepped forward and delivered a crisp knife-hand strike straight toward Gu Yue's collarbone.

Gu Yue raised her forearm to block it head-on. Hand met arm with a dull thud.

Na'er was slightly startled, realizing she had underestimated her opponent.

But she reacted swiftly, using the rebound from the block to slide sideways, lowering her center of gravity and turning her palm into a fist that drove toward Gu Yue's ribs.

Unexpectedly, Gu Yue reacted even faster, instantly drawing in her abdomen and chest to evade it with ease.

Then she followed through with an elbow strike.

Leaning forward, Na'er could not dodge it. The elbow slammed into the hollow of her shoulder, leaving it numb and bringing tears to her eyes.

Had Su Xun been her opponent, she would already have been crying, throwing a tantrum, and threatening to hang herself.

But she was facing Gu Yue now!

She stubbornly refused to make a sound, sinking at the waist and twisting around to move behind Gu Yue.

Her left hand wound around Gu Yue's arm like a nimble snake, while her right palm pressed toward the back of Gu Yue's neck, aiming to seize her in an arm lock.

However, Gu Yue sensed Na'er's intent. Her body proved even more supple than expected. With a slight turn of her wrist, she twisted into a somewhat strange position and once again slipped effortlessly out of Na'er's hold.

Now the two girls were face-to-face again.

Having broken free, Gu Yue seized Na'er's right wrist with her left hand, spread the fingers of her right, and reached straight for Na'er's face.

Apart from her first month, Na'er's close-combat training had all been rigorously overseen by Su Xun.

She reacted just as swiftly, tilting her head aside. Her tied-up silver hair came loose and fluttered in the gust from Gu Yue's palm, while she raised her knee toward Gu Yue's lower abdomen.

Gu Yue's expression shifted slightly. She hurriedly released her grip, bent forward, and retreated.

But at the same time that her left hand had seized Na'er's right wrist, Na'er's right hand had also caught her left wrist.

Gu Yue had let go, but Na'er still held on tightly.

With a fierce tug, she dragged Gu Yue straight back, driving her knee solidly into Gu Yue's lower abdomen.

With her soul power sealed, Gu Yue had none to defend herself or disperse the impact. Her face paled, and her stomach churned.

Yet that very blow truly enraged her. Forcing herself to endure the intense pain, she relied on her exceptional control over her muscles and followed Na'er's pull, lunging forward to tackle her to the ground.

Na'er's back slammed heavily against the floor, but Gu Yue already had both her shoulders in her grasp. Her inverted body continued forward until her feet landed on the ground.

Then she exerted a sudden burst of force, actually swinging Na'er up into the air.

Following through, she likewise drove a knee toward Na'er's lower back.

Fortunately, Na'er twisted in midair, turning sideways to Gu Yue and bringing her right hand down to guard her waist.

Otherwise, that knee strike would have been far more serious than a direct blow to the lower abdomen.

Even so, Na'er was already in considerable pain. After a muffled thud, she used the momentum to put some distance between herself and Gu Yue.

"You were pretending to be a complete novice!" she demanded indignantly. "You've trained too?!"

Surprise appeared on Su Xun's face, though inwardly, he was not surprised.

Being around Na'er day and night, he could be certain that she had awakened her memories within the past six months.

Before that, apart from her unusually large appetite, Na'er really had been like a blank sheet of paper.

Gu Yue was different.

Though Su Xun did not know where Gu Yue had spent those years before turning nine, she could not have been a blank slate.

With her spiritual power, learning a few fighting techniques and bringing herself up to standard could not have been easier.

Leng Yaozhu was not particularly surprised either.

Gu Yue's mother, Ji Zi, was a rank ninety-one Titled Douluo. Her father was in seclusion, and his cultivation level was unknown, but according to Ji Zi, his martial soul was a black dragon, and his talent should have been somewhat greater than hers.

Given their family's circumstances, he was very likely attempting to break through the bottleneck to become a Super Douluo.

With such a family background, and dragon martial souls themselves ranking among the strongest beast martial souls, strength and physical combat were generally their specialties.

The true name of Gu Yue's martial soul was the seven-colored dragon. Though it had mutated from a rainbow dragon, it was not suited to strength.

Still, her family background spoke for itself. Practicing combat as a child would have been perfectly normal.

Na'er had simply known that Gu Yue had entered the human world late and assumed she had not had time to learn so much.

"It's just a few fighting techniques. Is that supposed to be difficult?" Gu Yue folded her arms and looked at Na'er with utter contempt.

A secondary self was just a secondary self!

All brawn and no brains. How could she compare to the incomparably clever primary self?

Last night, Leng Yaozhu had also been quietly following Na'er and Gu Yue's quarrel.

She had already seen how the two girls clashed from the moment they met, each confronting the other at every turn, as incompatible as fire and water.

The reason was probably that Na'er treasured Su Xun and guarded against Gu Yue as though she were a thief.

Gu Yue, meanwhile, refused to bow to the pressure and openly tried to steal him away.

Thus, Leng Yaozhu's expression remained unchanged as she quietly lifted the seals on their soul power and commented:

"You both did well. Keep up the good work."

Then she turned to Gu Yue and said:

"Though I said Little Xun was my only disciple, now that you're training with me, I'll treat you equally."

"Little Xun and Na'er have been studying the knowledge needed for a second profession since they were six. Have you had any exposure to it?"

At those words, something stirred faintly in Gu Yue's heart.

Before entering the human world, she had already learned about the manufacture of Battle Armor through Di Tian and her other subordinates, so naturally, she knew what a second profession was.

Indeed, Battle Armor itself was one of her major objectives in entering the human world.

She shook her head gently. "I know a little, but I've never studied it in detail."