At the top of a steep cliff.
A handsome, bare-chested youth sat cross-legged at the cliff's edge, his long hair casually pinned up with a twig. A large purple dog lay beside him, amber eyes half closed as he watched the distant sky.
Biting winds whistled past, making the lines of the youth's muscles stand out even more.
He had spent a year in the Magical Beast Mountain Range, through spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Each season brought different insights: vitality in spring, fury in summer, killing intent in autumn, and now, in winter-cold.
He was not really gaining insights into cold. He was simply sitting there, feeling it.
"Boss," Wangcai's voice rang out in his mind. "How much longer are we going to sit here?"
Loa said nothing.
Snowflakes began drifting down from the sky. Hexagonal and crystalline, they floated slowly downward. One landed on Wangcai's nose, chilly against his skin, and instantly melted into water.
"Boss! It's snowing!"
"Mm." Loa opened his eyes, looked at the gradually darkening sky, then at the falling snowflakes. "Come on. Let's head down."
He stood and stretched. He had been training bare-chested for a long time now, and changes in temperature had practically no effect on him.
He headed down the mountain path.
Wangcai followed behind. After a couple of steps, he suddenly noticed something remarkable-the randomly drifting snowflakes were all swerving around Loa. As though they had eyes, they automatically turned aside within a meter of him and fell to the ground.
Wangcai was already used to such sights. The first time he had seen rain avoiding Loa, he had asked him about it.
"Boss, how do you do that?"
"I've reached that level." Loa had not looked back. "With a deeper understanding of wind, these are just some rudimentary applications."