“Wake up!” Suddenly jolted awake, Jun Li found herself kneeling over a Pill Furnace at the edge of a garden. After a few seconds of blankly staring off into space, Jun Li wiped the drool from the side of her mouth and looked around.

  It had been a few weeks since Jun Li broke through to the Crimson Palace stage, and under the recommendations of her Master, Zhu Enlai, she had yet to return to the Glass Cloud Sect.

  Instead, she had been spending most of her time at his own small manor at the outskirts of the city, undergoing a harsh training regimen.

  Over the past few weeks, she couldn’t remember waking up in a bed more than once or twice. More often, she would pass out from exhaustion after refining Pills and Elixirs for hours upon hours, but before she even had the opportunity to practice her alchemy each day…

  “Ready for another day of fruitful training?” Half-conscious, Jun Li painfully arced her neck up to see her Master. Standing proudly in the garden of Medicinal Plants, Zhu Enlai looked down at his disciple, full of energy.

  In response, Jun Li could only utter a groan as she wordlessly moved through the paces that had become habit. Opening her Pill Furnace, Jun Li plucked out all of the small Pills inside.

  Without restraint, Jun Li threw a handful of Medicinal Pills into her mouth and dryly swallowed them. “Guh… you old monster… how much longer is this going to go on?”

  Standing ramrod straight, Zhu Enlai smiled as he looked down on Jun Li’s disheveled form. “A genius born from anything other than pain and struggle is nothing more than a fraud, and I won’t have a fraud as my disciple!”

  Feeling the Medicinal Essence of her Pills sharply scrub the fatigue from her nerves, Jun Li slowly stood up, taking in a breath and looking out over the sunrise.

  “Give me a break already…” Shaking off her fatigue, Jun Li slipped into a fighting stance and stood opposite her master. “Come on then.”

  Seeing his disciple’s response, Zhu Enlai was delighted. ‘She complains so frequently, but never actually refuses to follow through with even the harshest training I send her way…’ Internally, he nodded in approval, but externally, he maintained a harsh front and slipped into a stance of his own.

  Initially, he had imagined a much more lenient training schedule for Jun Li, but over the course of a few weeks, he continued to increase the pressure and strain to the point that Jun Li wouldn’t get more than an hour or two each day to spend cleaning herself and eating.

  But even at such a strenuous level, she never failed to meet his demands, leaving him hesitant to reduce the intensity of her training.

  By this point, Jun Li’s life consisted of waking up, eating energy supplements for breakfast, sparring with her master until she couldn’t fight back, followed by a medicinal bath and a proper meal, then five hours of alchemical lectures, and another five hours of alchemical practice before sparring continued.

  By the end of each day, Jun Li felt forced to spend time creating Energy Pills from the Medicinal Plants in her Master's garden.

  Without these supplements, Jun Li felt she wouldn’t be alert enough to properly train in the mornings, as she was only getting about four hours of sleep each day.

  Although it sounded absurd, for a Cultivator at the Crimson Palace stage, four hours was just enough to maintain a functional, if uncomfortable, level of energy.

  The idea of refining Medicinal Plants into energy supplements wasn’t one that Zhu Enlai forced on his disciple. In fact, when he found out that Jun Li had taken the initiative to refine the Pills on her own, he was quite thrilled.

  For his disciple to identify a problem and use alchemy to try and solve it, Zhu Enlai couldn’t have been prouder to see it.

  As he thought about the previous few weeks, Zhu Enlai evaded Jun Li’s attacks without much effort.

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  For these sparring sessions, Zhu Enlai had suppressed his Cultivation to the equivalent of the lowest level of the Crimson Palace stage, but even then, a lifetime of bloodshed in the Jianghu set him far, far above Jun Li in terms of actual combat ability.

  Subtly shifting out of the way of each of Jun Li’s attacks, Zhu Enlai sent innumerable shallow strikes towards Jun Li, carefully picking away at the weak points in her technique.

  Without a doubt, Jun Li’s strikes had become sharp over the past few weeks. Having broken through to the Crimson Palace stage and having reached a greater level of mastery in the Rapid Perforator Art, Jun Li’s fingers were now strong enough to split trees and carve through the hides of fierce Magical Beasts.

  Despite how sharp and swift her strikes were, Zhu Enlai used a mysterious Movement Technique to flutter about at the edge of her range, drifting away just as her hand stretched out, like a falling leaf being pushed away by a disturbance in the air.

  As though expecting this result, Jun Li jolted forward with speed and control far beyond any mundane creature, stepping well within Zhu Enlai’s space.

  Narrowing his eyes, Zhu Enlai was a bit surprised by how far Jun Li’s comprehension of her Movement Technique had come. ‘The Glass Cloud Art, huh?’ Unphased by Jun Li’s pursuance, Zhu Enlai transitioned from a soft, evasive stance to a hard, offensive one. Lowering his hips, he braced himself and lashed out with a fist that could break open skulls as easily as rotten wood.

  Seeing her Master’s swift response, Jun Li narrowed her eyes, unwilling to back down. As though the fist closing in on her didn’t exist, Jun Li straightened her fingers like a lance and launched herself towards her Master’s throat, determined to force him on the back foot.

  Scoffing at the attempt, Zhu Enlai only pushed forward, laying his fist into Jun Li’s side before her attack could reach him.

  With her bones strained and organs warped by Zhu Enlai’s strike, Jun Li retched heavily as she was forced off her feet and into the air like a kite with its strings cut, before landing heavily in a patch of garden.

  A bit taken aback by how eagerly Jun Li leaned into his strike, Zhu Enlai furrowed his eyebrows. “I think that’s enough training for now.”

  Crumpled into a ball, Jun Li slowly untangled herself from the garden and looked at her Master with some confusion, wiping some stomach acid from the corner of her mouth.

  “What’s wrong? Usually, you’d keep this up for a few more hours at least.” She couldn’t help but smile at an errant thought, “Did I catch you off-guard with that last move, huh?”

  Hearing his disciple’s eager questioning, Zhu Enlai heavily sighed. “I think it’s time you got some more actual combat practice. If you keep sparring with me like this, you’re going to develop some weird habits…”

  Brushing the errant leaves from her clothes, Jun Li tilted her head at Zhu Enlai. “Did you have something in mind?”

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve been looking into your Sect.” Hearing these words, Jun Li’s attention was thoroughly captured.

  Over the past few weeks, she hadn’t been allowed to return to the sect, as her Master thought the transition into the Inner Sect had the potential to interfere with her early training, so he didn’t want her to return until he was thoroughly certain there was good reason to.

  “Supposedly, some matters that the Sect Elders would otherwise handle are instead offered to the Inner Sect Disciples as missions. These missions can range from anything between collecting rare Medicinal Plants, to slaying invasive Magical Beasts, to intercepting Rogue Cultivators from the Jianghu.”

  Zhu Enlai saw the growing expectation in Jun Li’s eyes as he spoke of the Inner Sect. “And of course… the Sect offers considerable rewards for fulfilling these missions. From unique Medicinal Plants, to even treasures that would be considered valuable among Cultivators…”

  “Needless to say, if someone were to auction off a few of these items… raking in enough mortal wealth for a lifetime of prosperity would be utterly trivial.” Understanding what her Master was implying, Jun Li beamed and quickly gathered her belongings from the corner of the garden.

  Seeing that his disciple was quick on the uptake, Zhu Enlai nodded. “For the next month, I want you to enter the Inner Sect of the Glass Cloud Sect and take on as many missions as possible that involve actual combat, prioritizing any missions offering Medicinal Plants as a reward, so that you can personally refine them into Pills and Elixirs as further training.”

  Remembering something, Zhu Enlai spoke up one last time before sending Jun Li away. “Ahh… and I'm not sure if such things are readily available in that Sect, but try to find a decent Cultivation Manual suitable for the Crimson Palace stage. You should know by now that it’s not so simple that you can progress through it blindly.”

  He sighed, thinking back to his youth of struggling to make progress in the Crimson Palace stage, relying on a garbage Cultivation Manual. “Hah… I can train you thoroughly in alchemy and combat, but for the early stages of the Crimson Palace realm, all I can do is help strengthen your bones by beating you silly every day…”

  Hearing her Master’s words, Jun Li’s eyebrow twitched as she turned to him with a strained smile. “…Is that why you’ve been so hard on me, hm? I thought it was just because you’re a sadistic old man.”

  Pleased to see his disciple was still so energetic, Zhu Enlai cackled. “Kueh heh, figured me out, have you?”