Zou Tian sighed. In the five days since the expedition had departed, he’d been hard at work preparing for his eventual mission. Cultivating. Working on his Shadow Perception technique. Getting his Knowledge of Spycraft technique to Small Success. Sparring with his dagger.

Everything but entering the Trial Pagoda.

Brother Peng Zhen had given Zou Tian permission to use it any day he wanted. He just needed to run by the Contribution Points Shop first thing in the morning and make the reservation.

For three days, he’d tried to psych himself up for the trial but unfortunately ended up psyching himself out—one of Master’s phrases—instead.

His fear wasn’t exactly the same as last time. Before he’d generally been afraid of failure just because he didn’t want to be the first to be put in that position.

Instead, his current fear was much better grounded. The mission was important to him and to the sect, and he didn’t think he could achieve what he needed to accomplish without upgrading his affinity with his aspect.

Of course, he could try again if he failed. And he would try again. It was just that he felt that the lack of success might destroy all his confidence, making the next try that much more difficult.

He sighed again. Regardless, he had to try at some point. Soon. He needed to know.

Tomorrow. He’d do it tomorrow.

Yang Ru had spent the previous five days watching Jin LiJuan slowly, very slowly, improve her techniques, finally getting her plant manipulation ability to Small Success the previous afternoon. Due to her being assigned to his processing group after the beast tide, he’d spent more time with her than his sister or Kang Lin had. He’d actually been there when Jin LiJuan had found the wolf pup that would become Ganzou.

It was really ironic how embracing the thing she hated most—a beast—had become the path to power she so desired. Yang Xiu had gushed about it being like something out of one of the novels she read. Yang Ru didn’t say anything, but his opinion was that an author who came up with such a stupid plot device must not be very good.

He had to admit, albeit begrudgingly, that he envied Jin LiJuan’s easy advancements. She hardly cultivated at all, instead only having to feed Ganzou spirit beast cores. But he didn’t feel that he had any right to complain. Kang Lin told him all the time that her fellow sect members would weep blood to hear someone with his talent whine about someone else’s advantages.

Which was quite true. But it was still difficult not to be envious.

Not that he didn’t like Jin LiJuan or bore her any ill will, however. In fact, he’d do anything in his power to support her.

The girl reminded him a lot of himself. They both had a similar background in that they’d lost parents to violence. If anything, she’d had it even rougher than him, losing her parents at a younger age and witnessing the event. It was a miracle that the beasts hadn’t taken her as well.

While he’d focused inwardly, though, blaming himself for not being strong enough to protect his family, she’d directed her anger toward the creatures that had killed hers. Toward revenge.

Watching her fight to get that hate under control reminded him of his early struggles with his desire to protect Yang Xiu. Even though he’d recognized that his focus on that particular goal was unhealthy and unreasonable, he had a hard time getting past it. Even to the current day, it was still hard for him to admit that, if she couldn’t save herself, there were only isolated situations where he could do anything to help.

Meeting Kang Lin helped a lot with overcoming that mindset, though. He felt like his thoughts were turning more toward the future instead of the past, allowing him to focus more on steady growth and stability for himself instead of being concerned about protecting his capable sister.

Yang Ru felt like he’d come a long way from the boy he’d been less than a year ago when he’d first encountered Master.

Returning his attention to his surroundings, he sighed. They’d moved out of the territory mainly populated by rank twos and into the area near the base of the mountain, which was filled with rank threes and the occasional rank four. The three older disciples in the group still gave up their turns at the lower ranked beasts to Jin LiJuan, as Yang Xiu had done several minutes ago.

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The younger girl was not doing well with the more powerful beasts. For one thing, they were faster. And stronger. Using Ensnarl to hinder them with plants accomplished only the briefest of delays, and while one of her seniors would have been fast enough and skilled enough to take advantage of the opportunity that distraction gave, she … wasn’t. And therein laid the real problem. She simply needed more experience.

Jin LiJuan was progressing. It was just that the pace was so slow compared to everyone else.

Still, if Master asked for a recommendation, Yang Ru would firmly advocate for the girl to be allowed to hunt in the valley on her own. Could she handle all the challenges present? No. Definitely not. Could Ganzou? Absolutely. And the two of them worked well enough together for him not to worry overly much about them, especially as she had a contingency ring.

She was currently fighting a giant centipede, easily as long as she was tall. The thing was just nasty, a creepy crawly if he ever saw one. Nothing that big should have that many legs. Thankfully, it wasn’t very fast, but it made up for its lack of speed with extra toughness.

Though Jin LiJuan had gotten in several strikes with her sword, she’d yet to break through the beast’s chitin exoskeleton to do any real damage.

Kang Lin, whose current job was to watch the surroundings instead of the fight, suddenly spoke. “Incoming. Rank four.”

Yang Ru grinned. His turn.

Trusting his sister, Ganzou, and his likely future fiancé to watch Jin LiJuan, he reached out with his spiritual sense, immediately spotting the quickly approaching ball of qi.

Their group was approaching the mountain from the northwest, and the beast rapidly making its way to them came from the east. The forest was too thick to see it, though, and the dense underbrush also impacted his ability to build up Momentum.

That was okay, though. It was only a rank four, the equivalent of his level. Fighting using different methods from his normal tried and true was good practice, and the situation gave him to perfect opportunity to do just that. Rather than using Inevitability and Momentum Transfer, he’d go with his original skills—spear combat and Stone Skin.

The fact that it felt weird for him not to be rushing toward the beast told him he was becoming too set in his ways. It was good to discover that fact while in a low danger situation rather than against rival cultivators.

Soon, the beast broke through the cover of the brush, coming into view less than ten yards away. A spider.

If there was one type of creature under the heavens that Yang Ru despised, it was a spider. The hay at his uncle’s farm was simply infested with arachnids, and he couldn’t even count the number of times one had fallen on him from above, crawled inside his shirt, and bit him.

Yang Ru felt his heart start to race, tainted by anger and disgust, so he took a deep breath, calming himself. Losing himself to his emotions would do him no good.

Not for the first time, he considered how weird it was that he preferred being cool and calm, a trait associated with Ice, while his twin preferred emotion and excitement, much more Fire aspected characteristics. What the fact that they portrayed a mentality associated with their sibling’s aspect meant, he had no idea.

Meanwhile, the spider, instead of charging or attacking, simply turned back the way it had come. For a moment, Yang Ru was disappointed, thinking it was running just from the sight of him.

It turned out that wasn’t what it was doing.

There was one thing most beasts that he fought lacked—a ranged attack. Which worked out great for him since he rarely used the bow he stowed in his ring. With his skill still at Small Success, he’d be lucky to even hit a moving target, much less strike it somewhere critical enough to actually hurt it.

The spider, though, proved to be an exception to not having the ability to strike at range. Its first move was to shoot a web at him.

Though he could move at incredible speeds when he got going, he wasn’t quick. His acceleration was slow, steady, and Inevitable. There was no way he could dodge the mass of sticky web coming at him.

Well, so much for using only his spear skills and Stone Skin to fight the beast.

Yang Ru had not been lax about continuing to practice and learning new uses for his signature abilities after reaching Mastery. In fact, he’d recently achieved a breakthrough that he thought of as a real gamechanger.

The only problem was that he needed something connected to his body to serve as a conduit for his qi, and he definitely didn’t want his spear to touch that sticky webbing.

His previous thoughts about the bow probably influenced his decision to pull a single arrow from his ring.

Perfect.

He held it out toward the incoming webbing, and as it neared, he triggered his Momentum Transfer technique. Instead of transferring his own Momentum to a target, though, he stole the web’s motion and transferred it to himself.

Two things happened simultaneously. One, the web collapsed to the ground, its forward progress simply halted. Two, he accelerated instantly.

Since the web didn’t weigh nearly as much as he did, the Momentum imparted actually wasn’t all that great, but the spider was at a huge disadvantage. Shooting the web at him had required it to turn its backside toward him.

By the time the beast realized that he was not enmeshed in its trap, he was more than halfway to it. All it had time to do before he reached it was to make a halfhearted stab with one of its many legs.

Yang Ru didn’t even bother to block it, trusting his shield to handle the blow. Which it did with aplomb.

His strength as a Foundation Establishment cultivator was decent but not really in excess of the similarly ranked spider. The additional strength provided by reaching the second minor realm of Silver Body Cultivation, however, eclipsed the arachnid by at least a degree of magnitude.

He thrust his spear with perfect technique and all his considerably enhanced muscles driving the blow. The spider’s abdomen practically exploded, leaving him covered in the spider’s blood.

The good news? His opponent was dead. The bad news? Kang Lin was absolutely going to insist that he find a place to bathe before he was allowed within twenty yards of her.

He sighed again.