If he could choose again, Shangguan Fei would have used every tool available to earn his sister’s pity so that he could have remained behind in the Land of Fragrance and not have had to fight in the Dragon King’s wars. He also would have never agreed to practice this lousy ‘divine kung fu’.
He wanted to question Maid Lotus to find out if she had something against him. She was merciless when forcing him to practice, and no matter how much he screamed, she never showed any pity — not even once.
He knew very well that he had never offended this woman before in the Stone Castle.
The only thing he was guilty of was learning Wayless Qigong secretly, and there was no reason for him to let that be known.
It was said that the skilled were brave, but this was not true of Shangguan Fei. He was constantly scared, and the only thing that gave him a sense of security was the thick and tall walls of the Stone Castle — not peerless kung fu.
Maid Lotus could not care less about that. She was the only killer who had ever undergone the training of both the Golden Roc Fort and the New Moon Hall, and she was numb to her own pain (much less that of others). She was like a mad scientist and kept experimenting on Shangguan Fei, determined to discover the best way of practicing.
Firstly, she forced Shangguan Fei to practice the divine Sumeru Mustard kung fu using the normal methods. Unsuprisingly, he did not succeed. It was as if Chu Nanping was the only one who could blend both types of kung fu.
Shangguan Fei had not received any warning beforehand, and thought that he would only be spending some of his time practicing, undergoing just a little pain. Eventually, he experienced his first Qigong Deviation when he felt some of the Qi from the Sumeru Mustard technique enter his body.
Countless needles of ice flowed very quickly from the Dantian through the meridians of Shangguan Fei’s body, then everything became very bright and all of his hairs stood on end. It was as if he were being transported to a new world. Then suddenly, he felt excruciating pain and began screaming like a stuck pig.
This did not earn him any sympathy from Maid Lotus. The pain both she and the Dragon King had experienced was ten times more intense, but neither of them had so much as grunted.
Shangguan Fei fainted, and he refused to continue practicing from the moment he woke up. “Even if I cannot be defeated, I will not practice again. No wonder the Dragon King doesn’t want to learn it himself. I knew no good could come from this,” he complained.
“The Dragon King did practice, and so did I,” Maid Lotus corrected Shangguan Fei’s mistake. There was no awkwardness when facing the Ninth Young Master, unlike when she was dealing with her old master, Shangguan Ru. She felt that he was no different from most men in the world.
“So, did you two succeed?” asked Shangguan Fei.
“No,” she answered simply.
“But you still want me to practice?” he asked.
“We have to try. If one method doesn’t work, we can try another,” Maid Lotus answered.
Shangguan Fei shook uncontrollably for awhile, and he shuddered as he thought about the feeling of having the shards of ice swimming across his meridians again. “I won’t fall for it again. I don’t care if the two of you plan to master the technique or not. I won’t be practicing it again,” he said.
“Neither of us has tried the next method,” she responded flatly.
Shangguan Fei turned up his palms, showing that he would not comply, no matter what.
At one point, Maid Lotus had been skilled in making connections, but as her kung fu grew better (and especially after falling under the influence of the New Moon Hall), this skill of hers had slowly deteriorated. Her temper had grown increasingly, like Mama Xue of old, whose way of convincing someone was to point fingers, and bring up the past.
Maid Lotus’s finger pointing was much worse than Mama Xue’s, though.
After less than two hours, Shangguan Fei experienced an entirely different kind of pain. He could feel his insides burning up and he kept retching, as if he were going to throw up his organs. The amount of pain he felt now was even stronger than that during his Qigong Deviation.
“Stop… stop… spare me, my aunt… grandmother. Whatever you tell me… to practice… I will… I will…” he begged.
Maid Lotus waited a little while more before removing her finger, filled with debilitating energy, from his body.
Shangguan Fei’s pain had diminished slightly. He groaned as he held his abdomen, then suddenly struck out at Maid Lotus with his fist.
His kung fu was not weak, but he was lacking in self-confidence. Normally, he could not even use one third of his power. However, being in a life or death situation made him perform much better than usual, and his strike was easily seventy or eighty percent of his total strength.
It was a pity that he was sorely lacking in actual combat experience, though. Despite the laughable “surprise attack”, Maid Lotus’s kung fu was still much more powerful than his. After she had mastered the secret techniques of the New Moon Hall, her skill had increased to an even higher level. Combined with her rich experience from being in constant danger, the difference between the two of them was huge.
In the same amount of time that it took Shangguan Fei to make one punch, Maid Lotus had already made five strikes with her palm and fingers, and had connected with every one of them. She then took a step back from her opponent.
Shangguan Fei lost focus and stood rooted to the ground, seemingly unable to grasp the reality of the situation at first. He then felt as if he were stepping on red hot coals and leaped up high into the air, waving his limbs about and screaming until he fell heavily to the ground. There he twitched violently, like an earthworm that had just been dug out of its hiding place in the soil.
He could feel all sorts of different pain, coming one after the other: He felt as if he was being burned by fire, then frozen, then pierced by needles, as if being tortured. He was acutely aware of each different type of pain, but he could not call out to plead for mercy — he could not even pass out to escape the pain.
During this time, the Dragon Army had still not gone south, so Shangguan Fei was practicing in the barracks. His screams were too terrible to bear and would affect the morale of the soldiers, so Maid Lotus’s solution was to gag him before leaving him with these chilling words: “If you can’t even withstand this pain, how do you plan to continue practicing the divine kung fu in the future?”
Shangguan Fei wanted to tell her that he had no intention of continuing to learn the techniques and he did not care if she removed all his kung fu from him, as long as he no longer had to suffer like this. All of his energy was spent on trying to wriggle free, however, and he could not remove the gag fom his mouth to tell her.
After exactly six hours, Shangguan Fei’s pain started to diminish to a level which he could bear. He ripped the rag from his mouth and breathed heavily. From then onward, he treated Maid Lotus as a demoness and would not dare to reject her orders.
What made him most afraid was not her ruthlessness, but her indifference. For an entire six hours, she just stood there and showed no emotion, as if the thing wriggling on the ground was not even human.
For the first time, Shangguan Fei seriously considered fleeing back to the Stone Castle and pleading for the the forgiveness of his father, but he abandoned the idea the very moment the Lord’s cold, harsh face appeared in his memory.
And so Maid Lotus began experimenting with the second training method and let Shangguan Fei practice the divine Sumeru Mustard kung fu according to the methods of the Yin and Yang Strength technique.
Shangguan Fei was terrified as he practiced accordingly, but it ended without any results; wayless Qigong seemed to be incompatible with the method of using a Yin force to create a Yang force.
Shangguan Fei breathed a sigh of relief to himself. He secretly hoped that Maid Lotus would back off and give up.
He was wrong. She had a third training method.
From the very beginning, Gu Shenwei had brought up the fact that it would be easier to master the Yin and Yang Strength method with the help of an outsider, but Maid Lotus wanted to be sure that the first two methods truly did not work . After all, Chu Nanping had learned Wayless Qigong before, but could also practice the Sumeru Mustard technique at the same time.
The exception proved to be Chu Nanping, not the Dragon King or Maid Lotus.
The third method was a little more complicated. Firstly, Shangguan Fei had to control the Wayless Qigong within him and concentrate on practicing the divine Sumeru Mustard kung fu. It was quite similar to the first method, except for the fact that Maid Lotus was assisting him.
Maid Lotus channeled her own Wayless Qigong, used it as a Yin force (as per the method of the Yin and Yang Strength technique) to control the internal breath of the Sumeru Mustard and began to continuously hit Shangguan Fei.
On the surface, it looked as if Maid Lotus was obstructing Shangguan Fei from practicing, but this was the essence of the Yin and Yang Strength technique. It helped the practitioner develop a solid foundation, and although the speed of technique mastery was greatly decreased, it was extremely safe.
It was also the hardest part of learning the Yin and Yang Strength technique. Slave Yao had actually died from progressing too quickly while practicing Qigong Deviation.
Shangguan Fei was suffering again and the piercing chill had become something normal to him. He did not know whether or not he had gotten used to it or if the pain he had felt before was just a benchmark, but he began to be able to bear it, surprisingly. Even so, there was no substantial progress — the Sumeru Mustard Qi in his body remained only vaguely discernible.
Maid Lotus was extremely patient. As long as there was no conflict between them, the Dragon King’s idea of merging all three energies into one was still possible.
That was the backstory when she answered the summons of the Dragon King more than 20 days later to explain Shangguan Fei’s progress to him.
Gu Shenwei could not afford to take lightly the hidden danger of his Qigong Deviation. As such, he made sure to set aside time to check the results of Shangguan Fei’s training.
As the Right General had still not set sail, his guard, Chu Nanping, was called over.
Shangguan Fei had lost some weight. He was normally quite good at hiding his true emotions, but when he saw Maid Lotus, the fear and hatred in his eyes grew strong.
Shangguan Fei was a Young Master of the Golden Roc Castle, but he had just begun to enter the initial phase of a killer’s apprenticeship: to use hatred to sustain himself.
Like Maid Lotus, Gu Shenwei was indifferent about Shangguan Fei’s feelings.
“Does your Tianchi acupoint have any sensation, as if it’s beating?” asked Gu Shenwei.
Gu Shenwei asked a few more questions, which Shangguan Fei answered truthfully before requesting something he had been thinking about for a long time: “Dragon King, war has begun. Let me go to assassinate Shangguan Jianyi. Without their Commander, there will definitely be chaos in the Golden Roc Army.”
“Can you kill him?” asked Gu Shenwei.
“Hehe, it’ll be a little harder if I went alone, but there are plenty of people from the Stone Castle in the Golden Roc Army that used to be the loyal subjects of my mother. With their help…” Shangguan Fei began.
Gu Shenwei was not interested in the “former loyal subjects” and shook his head repeatedly, replying, “No need for that. It’s too dangerous. You’ll be safer staying here.”
“Then let me be your advisor, Dragon King. I have plenty of ideas, really. I could tell you a few right now. You’ll definitely…” Shangguan Fei started to say.
The Dragon King continued shaking his head.
Shangguan Fei was close to tears. To him, wherever Maid Lotus happened to be was the least safe place in the entire world.
“To be honest, Dragon King, the kung fu you want me to master is too torturous. I would rather die than continue practicing it. When will it ever end?” he said, pitifully.
Shangguan Fei needed a goal to work towards, and Gu Shenwei gave him one: “You can stop learning whenever you’re able to defeat Chu Nanping.”
Shangguan Fei’s eyes brightened upon hearing this. Chu Nanping was about three years younger than him and looked frail and friendly. The only thing scary about him was his longsword. “Will we compete with weapons or just our bare hands?” asked Shangguan Fei, hopefully.
“With only fists,” answered Gu Shenwei.
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s compete now. I’m in a hurry to serve as an advisor to you and give you my ideas,” said Shangguan Fei, enthusiastically.
Gu Shenwei and Maid Lotus cleared a space for the two contestants but it was over before it even began.
Shangguan Fei had learned about three more chapters of Wayless Qigong as opposed to Chu Nanping, but he had never put in the effort to practice it. To make matters worse, with his impatience to get the fight over with, there were obvious flaws in his moves as soon as he struck.
Even though Chu Nanping focused all his attention on mastering Emotionless Swordsmanship, he had learned plenty of fist and palm techniques before learning swordplay. He had also gone through countless life and death situations, which prepared him to be able to react swiftly to his opponent’s moves.
Chu Nanping did not know the occult sciences that Maid Lotus knew, so only smacked Shangguan Fei down with one palm.
Shangguan Fei laid on the ground for awhile before regaining his composure and replying, “I’m fine. Let’s compete again.”
There was no need to continue. The Dragon King and Chu Nanping left, leaving Shangguan Fei living in hell.
Shangguan Fei smiled happily as he raised his head to look at the demoness, keeping his hatred in check. “Maid Lotus, I have an idea,” he said.
“Oh?” she asked.
“Why don’t you return to the Stone Caste with me,” he replied.