Chapter 152 - A Furious Customer
After sending Tang Jin with a list of ingredients to fetch for her treatment of Kui Chong's spider bite, Ao Wen returned to the lobby where Gau and his friends waited for her. "I've sent a friend to purchase ingredients for Kui Chong's treatment," she told them directly. "Now, what are the rest of you here for? None of you look to be suffering in any particular way."
"It's like this," Brother Gau said hesitantly. He didn't want to offend an alchemist, especially one who would be treating his friend, but Lord White had provided him with the money for this visit and told him that he was to report back about what the young lord did to them. "We're all stuck at the end of our cultivation. I thought Brother Zhang was like us, forever doomed to be a Brawler, but look at him now, all leaping over the dragon gate and turning into a phoenix."
"It's carp that leap over the dragon gate to become dragons," Ao Wen corrected. "Well, carp and Flood Dragons who are ashamed of being sea serpents. So you think I can make an elixir to help you break through?"
"Sure," Brother Gau said eagerly. "Elixir, needle thing, magic tea, whatever it takes," he said with a large grin. "I've been a late-stage Brawler for fifteen years. I've all but given up. Lang Fei over here," he said, pointing to the hulking man who towered over Ao Wen even when he was seated and she was standing. "He's been stuck as a Brawler long enough to become a grandfather."
"Ey, shut up about that," the hulking brute said in a voice that rumbled like a low roll of thunder in a storm. "My brat sired brats as soon as his rocks dropped, I'm not even forty yet," he groused. Sometimes, the big man felt that becoming a grandfather at such a young age was more shameful than being a Brawler for twenty years, but at least his brat of a son hadn't turned into some kind of heavenly genius and passed his cultivation. That would be humiliating!
"Is it the same for you then? I didn't catch your name," Ao Wen asked, looking at the third man with the orange-red hair.
"Novice Ao can call me Chou Chai and I wish that it were so simple," the man said with an air of refinement that all of his friends lacked. "Something went awry in my cultivation when I broke through to become a middle-stage Brawler. I thought that my Furious Solar Ax art would be well supported by my Incendiary Cloud Lion bloodline but when I broke through, I felt the most horrific pain in my meridians. Ever since then, I can't circulate my energy without it being painful and if I use too much energy then it takes me days to recover from nearly crippling myself," he said, hanging his head in shame. "I've been reduced to guard duty outside the lowest grade of mines and it put an end to my career in the arena."
"Arena? You're a professional fighter then?" Ao Wen asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise. "I didn't realize that Lantern City was large enough to support an arena."
"You'd be surprised," the man said with a charming smile. "We might be lacking in cultivators but if there's one thing that Lantern City doesn't lack it's people with more spirit crystals than sense. The arena is a popular attraction for folks who want to gamble. Most of the people fighting there are professional entertainers but every now and then there will be open matches where any cultivator can challenge the arena champions. Things get bloody but deaths are rare. I'm hoping that if you can solve my problem, I can return to the arena. It pays ten times what I make killing the beasts that try to invade the mines and preventing miners from running off with spirit crystals shoved in their breeches."
"I see," Ao Wen said, debating on whether or not she should handle the next part personally. In the end, she felt there was little risk from a half-crippled middle-stage brawler. Reaching into her cosmos sack, Ao Wen drew Serpent Slayer and rested the blade across her shoulders. "Step outside with me, I want to see what happens when you fight."
"Excuse me?" Chou Chai said, his eyes widening as the refined Alchemy Novice produced a heavy bladed saber as tall as the young man himself! What kind of alchemist was this lunatic? "Esteemed Alchemy Novice Ao," he said cautiously. "While I'm injured, I'm still a middle-stage Brawler. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to," he began only to swallow his words when Ao Wen unleashed a hint of her rich earthen martial aura. "You're a Martial cultivator as well? Are you also a Soldier like Young Lord Zhang?"
"Close," Ao Wen said with a wicked smile at catching the proud gladiator off guard. "I came to Lantern City to find my breakthrough opportunity and to advance my alchemy. Now, are you going to step outside so I can see this cultivation deviation of yours the easy way or do I have to knock you outside?"
"If Esteemed Novice Ao wishes to see me fight, what else can I do?" Chou Chai said, reaching behind his back to pull two short-handled, single-bladed axes from where they'd been tucked into his waistband.
Stepping out into the light rain, Ao Wen's smile grew as Serpent Slayer spun lazily in her hands. She'd been cooped up in the villa for days and her need for a substantial amount of spirit crystals had forced her to focus more on her alchemy, giving her precious little time for real training with her saber. This wouldn't be a real fight but squaring off against someone she'd never crossed blades with still brought a thrill of anticipation to feel the other person's strength.
Squaring off against Ao Wen, Chou Chai hesitated when he saw the gleam in the other man's eyes and the grin on his lips. He'd seen that look on other men in the arena and it almost always meant that he was in for a beating from someone who would enjoy delivering it. The only way he'd ever found to deal with such madmen was to maintain his calm and frustrate them into enough of a rage to create an opening or to exhaust them. Reaching deep into his inner world he allowed the warm heat of the sun to flow from his body enveloping himself in a dim corona of flame as he took a defensive posture. "Come," he taunted. "Show me how an alchemist fights!"
"Oh, you'll regret that," Ao Wen said, throwing herself forward with a smile and a swinging saber. There was no reason to bring out any of her killing moves, no Rending Pincers or Heart Piercing Stings, all Ao Wen needed right now was the room to move and unleash a seemingly endless string of heavy overhand chops as though butchering a fish on the chopping block.
Chou Chai retreated instantly under Ao Wen's relentless assault. At first, he'd thought the diminutive alchemist would be a speed fighter, someone who relied on the needling techniques of a long saber and fought with it much like a long-bladed spear. When the first heavy blow knocked his flaming ax aside he knew he was badly mistaken. The second blow had still arrived much faster than he'd thought possible and it fell with even more force than the first one! It felt like he wasn't fighting a man but a mountain hurling boulders at him!
Ao Wen's hand and arms moved fluidly, drawing on the power of her earth dragon bloodline to put more strength and power into every strike than someone of her size should be capable of. Her heart sang in victory as Chou Chai fell back again and again, no longer attempting to wear her down or outlast her but striving desperately to prevent her blade from cleaving into his skull! While her body worked, however, Ao Wen's mind never stopped examining her opponent, the flow of his energy, and the structure of his techniques. "Is this the vaunted champion of the arena who wants to return in glory?" Ao Wen mocked, stepping in close and slamming the ring pommel of her saber into his gut, followed immediately by a heavy shoulder check that sent the older man sprawling into a nearby puddle. "That's all you have for me? For your return to the stage of honor?" Ao Wen said with a sneer. "Pathetic."
"I," Chou Chai began to say, anger surging from his heart. The anger, however, dissipated almost as quickly as it came. What right did he have to protest? Against the overwhelming physical might of the young alchemy novice, how quickly had his own techniques failed? "I admit defeat. I'm no match for Alchemy Novice Ao," he said, dispelling the corona of his aura and letting his axes fall from his hands into the puddle.
"It's not about victory or defeat Brother Chou," Ao Wen said kindly, putting away her saber and extending a hand to the fallen Brawler. "It's about finding the root cause of your cultivation deviation. I'm sorry for being insulting," she said. "I had to know if you could manifest the anger your cultivation method demands. You can't. Your 'Furious Solar Ax' has no fury. Worse, your Incendiary Cloud Lion bloodline gives you the strength to float above and lay waste to all that's beneath you, but a lion is a true ruler," she explained. "No ruler would lose their calm while destroying the unworthy beneath them. Your bloodline rejects your cultivation manual and your attempts to throw yourself into the fury of the sun have burned hundreds of holes into the meridians your energy flows through."
"So I need to abandon my manual? Will that be enough for me to continue cultivating?" Chou Chai asked, for the first time in years feeling hopeful about the road ahead.
"The road ahead won't be easy," Ao Wen said, giving the older man a healer's cold truth. "I'll need to treat you for the injuries in addition to changing your manual. We'll need to regress your cultivation to the very beginning to start over on the right path, but once you do, your speed of progress will be at least three times greater than before," she promised. "The question is, do you have the strength to throw everything away for the chance to rise above as the ruler you're meant to be?"
L’AVIS DES CRÉATEURS 
JustJae
JustJae Thank you everyone for all the support! If you’re enjoying this, please check out my other work ‘Unparalleled Artist Unlikely Hero’, set thousands of years earlier in the same world and following Wu Ling the disciple of one of Ao Wen’s previous incarnations!
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