What a Pain This Fellow Was

Company Commander Xu Sanlang, who had watched the whole thing, let out a surprised laugh. He had already thought highly of Wang Qi's potential; now he simply valued him even more.

At the same time, the incident had brought a problem to his attention... There was no shortage of excellent archers in the army, but almost none could see as clearly as Wang Qi in the gathering dusk.

This was because, although plenty of hunters served in the archer company, most chose to trade their game to wealthy landowners for grain... The meat from one animal would last only a meal or two, whereas the grain could feed them for days.

After all, most hunters could only catch small and medium-sized game with traps.

Wang Qi's household was different... He had once seen the man from that household tear a tiger apart with his bare hands.

Yet Xu Sanlang knew just how high Commandant Lin's hopes were for this Divine Archery Battalion, which had yet to take shape.

Night blindness was another detail they had to address seriously. Otherwise, however well these soldiers were trained, they would never be able to carry out missions of that kind.

For now, Xu Sanlang had no particularly good solution. He merely made a note of the detail, intending to offer his advice after rejoining Commandant Lin.

That night, inside a tent where fifty men shared a communal sleeping platform, newly appointed squad leader Wang Qi could not fall asleep.

Snoring surrounded him, leaving him thoroughly irritated.

But military regulations made sleeping alone impossible. Even if he went out for a walk because he could not sleep, he had to stay near the tents...

Just then, the man beside him suddenly flung out an arm and draped it across his stomach... Life like this was simply unbearable. He felt his patience had reached its limit.

Then, from beside him came...

"Pfft~~ pfft-pfft~"

The sound was positively "melodious."

"No!"

He pushed the man's arm away and sat up.

He felt as though the foul air of fifty men had mingled inside the tent, enough to smother him alive.

Back when he had made do with living alongside Wang Dashan, that fellow's snoring had nearly driven him to a nervous breakdown. Only after forcing Wang Dashan to build him a wooden cabin had life become tolerable.

And now...

He realized he had underestimated the hardships of military life. He could not even clear the first hurdle: sleeping.

So he simply got up and walked out of the tent...

Outside, the moon shone bright among sparse stars, and the fresh air felt wonderfully pleasant.

At last, his frayed nerves found some relief.

Once outside, he found that there were hardly any night patrols, since they were not at war.

He simply sat cross-legged beside the tent, closed his eyes, and settled into meditation.

Originally, although cultivating qi had been something novel to him, it had mostly been homework he had to complete under Wang Dashan's insistence.

Now, however, it had become his only way to while away the long night.

Once night patrols grew more frequent, his meditation and qi cultivation in camp would inevitably face plenty of interruptions... For now, he could only muddle through.

Perhaps the only solution was to earn promotion to hundred-man commander as soon as possible... Only an officer in charge of a hundred men qualified for a private tent.

Fortunately, qi cultivation was quite pleasant too. Cultivating "lesser yang qi" had originally come with fairly strict timing requirements. Early morning yielded the best results, especially at sunrise.

But after he had achieved "first yang arises," that restriction seemed to have vanished. Cultivating at any hour produced good results.

So he patiently refined his internal qi, accumulating it little by little.

When he had first cultivated internal qi, he had excitedly asked Wang Dashan just how wondrous it was, and whether he could send golden dragons flying through the air.

Wang Dashan had given him a hard smack on the spot...

Later, Wang Qi had learned that internal qi in this world could be profoundly mystical, but it could also be quite ordinary.

The strong, with steadfast wills and condensed qi, could stride through empty air with ease.

The weak, with feeble wills and scattered qi, could only strengthen their bodies.

That distinction between strong and weak applied to martial artists...

There were also spellcasters who worked magic with qi while pursuing the teachings of the Daoist tradition.

Then there were Confucian disciples, whose internal qi transformed within their chests into vast, upright power.

And there were utterly mysterious shamans...

Finally, there were the orthodox Daoists, hidden among famed mountains and great rivers, who often appeared only as fleetingly as a swan in flight.

With countless thoughts of internal qi's wonders and possibilities turning through his mind, Wang Qi worked all the harder.

In the end, however, he still had to return to reality.

Because the mosquitoes flitting about in the autumn air had begun testing another limit of his patience...

At first, he had intended to focus on cultivating qi and ignore those distractions, but as the mosquitoes danced beside his ears, buzzing incessantly...

His temper began to fray.

Especially when he felt that some mosquitoes seemed to have landed on him... Fastidious as he was, Wang Qi felt himself coming apart.

He abandoned his efforts to accumulate internal qi entirely, instead trying to guide it with his will, converting qi into force to flick those damned little things away.

At first, this proved rather difficult. Often, a mosquito would already have drunk its fill and flown away before his internal qi reached the right spot.

But he was not discouraged. Like a child who had found a new toy, he kept trying to get his internal qi there in time, then turn it into force to strike...

After numerous attempts, he finally found the trick in a flash of inspiration, and began improving rapidly.

A mosquito had barely landed on his skin and plunged its mouthparts in before a pulse of internal force struck it, sending it tumbling to the ground, its fate unknown.

Finding this entertaining, he simply took off the cloth tunic he wore to sleep, exposing his bare upper body to the mosquitoes, and began enjoying the process of repeatedly directing his internal force to strike them.

At first, he might have been doing it for fun, but then he discovered that this was actually a form of cultivation.

With this practice, he grew increasingly familiar and proficient at moving his internal qi and releasing it as bursts of force... Especially when mosquitoes were plentiful and four or five landed at once, he had to knock them off one after another as quickly as possible.

This was not accumulating internal qi, however. Rather, it was a form of honing and practice that consumed a considerable amount.

His internal qi was the product of only ten years of hard work. As a martial artist, he would have counted as no more than a young hero just setting foot in the martial world.

In theory, constantly converting internal qi into force to knock mosquitoes away would have been an enormous drain on a fledgling young hero... Yet he was utterly absorbed in it, enjoying himself endlessly, as though his internal qi were suffering no depletion at all.

This was another benefit of "first yang arises."

His internal qi was no longer generated solely within his own body. It seemed that with every breath, he also drew in essence from the surrounding void, then transformed it for his own use.

He was having such fun that he failed to notice the sky gradually brightening...

His platoon commander, Wu, was the first to climb out of the tent and was relieving himself outside... Suddenly, he spotted Wang Qi sitting by one corner of the tent.

The young man who had already drawn the attention of every junior and mid-ranking officer now looked utterly wretched. Mosquito bites covered his body in swollen lumps, and his face was a dreadful sight!

"!"

Platoon Commander Wu gave a shudder and nearly pissed on his own feet.

Somewhat irritated, he barked, "You little brat! Instead of sleeping in the tent, what are you doing out here making a spectacle of yourself?"

Only then did Wang Qi blearily open his eyes... It turned out he had fallen asleep while practicing.

He said, "Too many people inside. I couldn't sleep."

What kind of damned quirk was that... Or rather, why did this damned fellow have so many quirks?