The journey between worlds was rarely peaceful.
This ti, it was worse.
The teleportation array hurled them into a long chain of spatial relays prepared by the Immortal Court and reinforced by the Martial Fist King Sect. Even so, traversing that distance required weeks of drifting through layered telerportations channels that crossed pocket spaces, and sealed transit domains that could only be used by the Immortal Court. Ti itself felt distorted, stretching and compressing in strange ways.
For ng Bai, it beca six months of hell that he had willingly invited.
From the very first day after departure, ng Bai imposed a brutal routine upon himself.
There were no excuses.
No delays.
No "tomorrow.""
Every single day began with cultivation before the others even woke.
He would sit cross legged inside the cultivation chamber of the mobile courtyard, circulating his Qi until his ridians felt like they were being scraped raw from the inside. He focused heavily on refining his Water Dao comprehension, drawing upon every insight Lin Mu had ever shared with him.
Water was patience.
Water was persistence.
Water endured.
But water could also drown.
ng Bai ditated on all of it.
He imagined Qi flowing like deep currents beneath the ocean surface, unseen yet unstoppable. He practiced compressing his Water Qi, forcing it to circulate faster, denser, heavier. Several tis he nearly lost control, cold sweat soaking his back as his ridians threatened to seize.
Lin Mu noticed.
TT
He did not intervene.
Only once did he say quietly, "If you force it past the breaking point, you will cripple yourself."
ng Bai nodded and adjusted, but did not slow down.
After cultivation ca formation study.
Hundreds of formation plates littered his chamber. So were jade, so crystal, so tallic alloys scavenged from Lin Mu's stores. He carved arrays until his fingers cramped and his mind throbbed.
He no longer studied formations as isolated structures.
He studied them as living systems.
Inspired by the Lapis Link Body Array Totemic Art, ng Bai began experinting with dynamic formation logic. Arrays that adjusted based on incoming force. Arrays that flowed instead of remaining static. Arrays that mimicked circulation patterns rather than rigid geotries.
He failed constantly.
Explosions cracked several formation plates.
Once, a feedback loop knocked him unconscious for an entire day.
When he woke, Dongxu Ning was not there to scold him.
But Lin Mu was.
"Again," Lin Mu said simply, placing a new formation plate beside him.
ng Bai swallowed and began carving.
Sparring was the worst.
And the best.
Every afternoon, without fail, ng Bai sparred with soone.
Sotis it was Lin Mu.
Those sessions were humiliating.
Lin Mu suppressed his cultivation heavily, using only a fraction of his power, yet ng Bai could barely land a single clean strike. Every mistake was punished instantly. A wrist twisted. A leg swept. A spear knocked aside and pressed against his throat.
"Dead," Lin Mu would say calmly.
ng Bai learned quickly.
Other days, it was Cattaleya.
She was rciless.
She refused to suppress herself much at all, forcing ng Bai to rely on formations, movent, and sheer instinct to survive.
"Body," she would say, slamming him into the ground. "You have none."
"Resolve," she would say, knocking him sprawling again. "You hesitate."
"Anger," she added once, pinning him down with a knee to the chest. "You are finally learning this one."
She trained him like a weapon that needed tempering.
Elyon's sessions were different.
The wolfkin taught him awareness.
Sensing killing intent.
Reading movent.
Recognizing danger before it manifested.
More than once, ng Bai found himself immobilized with a blade hovering
near his throat without ever realizing when Elyon had moved.
"You died before you knew you were in danger," Elyon said flatly.
ng Bai shuddered.
Daoist Chu focused on discipline.
He made ng Bai deploy formations under pressure, mid combat, with limited ti and incomplete resources. He forced him to adapt arrays on the fly,
tearing down old logic and replacing it with new patterns in seconds.
"You cannot afford perfection," Daoist Chu said. "You need effectiveness."
Slowly, painfully, ng Bai changed.
His Spear Dao advanced first.
Unlike sword cultivators who pursued elegance, ng Bai's spear beca
practical. Direct. Brutal.
The spear was reach.
The spear was control.
The spear kept death at a distance.
He practiced thrusts until his shoulders burned. Sweeps until his waist scread. He learned to channel Water Qi into his spear, turning every strike
into a flowing assault that chained into the next.
Under Lin Mu's guidance, he stopped thinking of techniques as fixed forms.
"A spear is an extension of intent," Lin Mu said once. "If your intent wavers, the spear wavers."
ng Bai learned to strike without hesitation.
Formation Dao followed.
He began integrating miniature formations into his movents. Temporary
arrays activated by footwork. Defensive runes that flared for a split second at
the point of impact. Flowing formations on his robes that circulated Qi through his limbs, reinforcing strikes and dampening recoil.
It was inefficient.
It was exhausting.
But it worked. His Water Dao comprehension deepened alongside this.
He stopped thinking of Water as rely gentle or overwhelming.
He learned it was adaptive.
He learned to yield and redirect force rather than resist it head on.
He learned to let pressure build, then release it at the precise mont.
The night he finally succeeded in creating an auxiliary self stabilizing formation that could reinforce his body without requiring prior body cultivation, he collapsed from exhaustion. While it still needed robes to be used, it was still
so progress.
Lin Mu quietly carried him back to his chamber.
Even if ng Bai had the pills that helped him skip sleep, passing out from exhaustion was not sothing that the pills could help with.
Six months passed.
ng Bai barely noticed.
He grew taller.
Leaner.
Harder.
His Qi circulation beca smoother. His reactions sharper. His confidence
quieter but stronger.
He still had far to go.
But he was no longer helpless.
The day the mobile courtyard shuddered and slowed, everyone felt it.
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