Three days had quietly slipped away since the dramatic conclusion of the Jia Nan Academy recruitment.
For the Xiao Clan, the atmosphere remained festive and bustling as the selected youths prepared for their imminent departure. For Xiao Yu, however, those three days had been an absolute, grueling nightmare of bureaucratic paperwork, organizing travel logistics for the new recruits, and assisting Teacher Ruo Lin with the academy's ledgers.
It wasn't until the morning of the fourth day that she finally secured a sliver of free time.
Naturally, instead of sleeping in or visiting the bustling markets to buy dresses for her journey, she found herself back at the secluded, misty hot springs deep in the Xiao Clan's back mountains.
Clink. Clank. Clink.
The heavy, metallic sound echoed rhythmically through the clearing, accompanied by sharp, ragged gasps for air.
"Nineteen..." Xiao Yu hissed through gritted teeth, her arms trembling violently as she lowered her chest until it nearly touched the damp earth. "...Twenty!"
With a final, explosive exertion of pure willpower, she pushed herself back up, completing the set of push-ups.
To an ordinary observer, watching a Dou Zhe cultivator struggle with basic calisthenics would seem utterly absurd. A Dou Zhe's body, fortified by worldly energy, could easily shatter boulders and leap across rooftops. Push-ups, pull-ups, and squats should have been as effortless as breathing.
But the observer would be entirely blind to the torturous apparatus strapped to Xiao Yu's body.
She was wearing a thick, tightly fitted dark leather vest, alongside thick leather straps securely buckled around her thighs and calves. The leather itself was mundane, but the lining was anything but. Yoriichi had spent a portion of his evening yesterday in the clan's treasury, melting down incredibly dense, scrap pieces of Black-Iron and Deep-Sea Lead. He had woven these impossibly heavy metal plates directly into the leather.
Though the vest and straps looked deceptively thin, molding perfectly to her athletic curves, they carried a combined, crushing weight of nearly four hundred pounds.
For a cultivator whose entire fighting style relied on the fluid, weightless agility of a water whip, suddenly carrying the weight of a full-grown mountain bear on her shoulders was a special kind of hell.
Her muscles screamed in protest. Her pale blue Dou Qi flared wildly, desperately trying to reinforce her skeletal structure against the crushing gravity. Slowly but surely, over the past hour of relentless routines, her body was forcibly adapting. Her meridians were widening to pump Dou Qi faster, and her muscle fibers were tearing and knitting back together with terrifying density.
But internally, she was entirely consumed by frustration and exhaustion.
With the twentieth push-up complete, her arms finally gave out.
THUD.
Xiao Yu collapsed face-first into the soft grass, the heavy metal plates within her vest clinking dully against the earth.
'Ah, heavens... you must punish this demon brother of mine,' Xiao Yu cursed internally, lacking the breath to speak the words aloud. 'First it was drowning me in the spring, then it was lifting boulders, and now he turns me into a walking anvil! He is always doing these strange, sadistic experiments on me!'
She lay there for a full minute, her chest heaving, the cool morning dew soaking into her sweat-drenched training clothes.
Mustering the last dregs of her strength, she reached for the heavy brass buckles at her chest and legs. Click. Clack. She unfastened the straps and violently shrugged off the weighted leather vest, kicking the leg bindings away.
The relief was instantaneous and absolute.
Xiao Yu gasped, rolling onto her back. Without the four hundred pounds anchoring her to the earth, she felt incredibly, dangerously light. It felt as if a single strong gust of wind could blow her into the clouds.
As she circulated her Dou Qi to soothe her aching muscles, she noticed with a jolt of shock that the blue energy flowed through her pathways nearly twice as fast as it had a week ago.
'This... this actually works,' she realized, a complicated mix of awe and lingering annoyance washing over her. The sheer efficiency of his brutal training methods was undeniable.
As her breathing began to slow, the ambient sounds of the forest returned to her ears. The chirping of birds, the rustle of leaves, and the gentle babble of the hot spring.
But there was one sound distinctly missing.
'The carving stopped,' Xiao Yu noted, tilting her head slightly.
Ever since they had arrived at the springs hours ago, Yoriichi had been sitting a few dozen yards away, beneath the shade of a massive, ancient willow tree. He hadn't been cultivating. Instead, he had spent the entire morning systematically cutting down stalks of aged, hollow bamboo and thick wooden trunks.
When she had breathlessly asked him what on earth he was doing, he had not looked up from his work. He had simply replied with a single, cryptic word: "Flute."
Xiao Yu had guessed that her enigmatic brother was attempting to craft a musical instrument. It seemed like an incredibly difficult and entirely random endeavor for a martial arts genius on the eve of his departure to the continent's most brutal academy. 'I don't know what strange mood has come over him again,' she had thought, before returning to her squats.
Now, as midday approached, the rhythmic snick-snick of his blade carving wood had ceased.
Xiao Yu propped herself up on her elbows, looking toward the willow tree.
Yoriichi was sitting in a comfortable, relaxed posture, one leg crossed over the other, his back resting lightly against the thick trunk of the willow. In his hands, he held a freshly crafted bamboo flute.
It was about eighteen inches long. It was not ornate or beautiful in the traditional sense. There were no intricate carvings of dragons or lotuses, no silver inlays or jade tassels. It was merely a rough, prototype instrument—sanded smooth enough to avoid splinters, with perfectly measured holes drilled along its spine.