30. Min-Maxing the Monster

The nights blur together into a rhythm of focused training, each session targeting a different aspect of Ling’er’s development. I watch her grow with each passing day, not just in power but in understanding. Ling’er stands in the clearing behind my quarters, stripped to light robes despite the cold. Her breath mists, but she doesn’t shiver: the dragon blood must keep her warm.

“Tonight, we push the bloodline. The Five Phases method gives you power, but the dragon blood gives you body. Strength, speed, recovery, resilience. We need to wake it up.”

She nods without hesitation. I lead her through exercises designed to stress every system. Boulders lifted until her muscles scream. Laps up the steepest slope until she collapses, then more. Short rests between exertions, monitoring how fast her body recovers. Light impacts from my strikes, carefully controlled, to test how quickly bruises fade. By midnight, she’s trembling with exhaustion. But her eyes are gold.

The next day, after everyone falls asleep, we focus on her weakest element.

“The Sacred Cosmic Bone gives you understanding,” I tell her as we begin. “But understanding isn’t the same as skill. You need to be equally proficient in all elements. No favorites. No weak points.”

From everything I’ve read… every xianxia novel, every cultivation theory, every cautionary tale—advancing too quickly without foundation is the key to downfall. Geniuses burn out. Prodigies crash. The ones who last are the ones who build solid bases. Ling’er could reach Foundation Establishment in months. But if she does it with a weak foundation, with gaps in her understanding, she won’t rise as high as she could. So instead of honing her strengths, we’re shoring up her weaknesses.

She considers my words. “But my bloodline favors fire—”

“Your bloodline favors dragon. Dragons command all elements. Fire is just what they’re known for. A true dragon controls water, earth, wind, everything. So will you.”

We spend the entire night on water. It was her weakest element; even if dragons in xianxia were associated with the sea, hers seemed to be of different lineage. Perhaps Fucanglong and Zhulong were the only species of dragon who still existed in this lower realm, while the Azure and Sea lineages had ascended or died out. If her bloodline was dense with earth and fire, then water was the missing piece to balance the scale. Not techniques, pure water, raw and fundamental. I have her sit in the stream and feel it. The flow, the temperature, the way it moves around rocks, the life it carries.

She struggles at first. Well, struggling by her standards. Her rate of learning is still astonishing; any other observer would assume she has a Heaven-grade Water Root. But compared to her fire affinity, water is sluggish. Resistant.

By dawn, something shifts.

“Master. I think… I think I understand now. Water doesn’t fight. It adapts. It goes around, under, through. It’s patient because it knows it will eventually wear everything down.”

She raises her hand, and water rises from the stream. A perfect sphere, rotating slowly, refracting starlight.

Elemental Balance – Water

Previous: 70% (technique-based)

Current: 85% (fundamental understanding)

Improvement: +15%

The next day, I take her to the mine. Deep underground, surrounded by stone, I have her sit and listen. The darkness is absolute. The silence is heavy. Miners’ picks echo faintly in the distance, but here, in this unused tunnel, there’s only rock and time. I remember a cartoon from my past life: a blind girl who learned to bend earth by feeling it with her feet, who spent her childhood in underground caves surrounded by badger-moles. The creators probably didn’t worry about copyright. Neither will I.

“Earth is slow. Stubborn. It doesn’t care about your urgency or your needs. It existed before you and will exist after. To command earth, you must respect its nature.”

She sits for hours. Miners pass, confused by the sect leader and his disciple in the darkness, but I wave them away. Finally, she stirs.

“It’s… heavy. Not just physically. It remembers. Everything that’s happened on this mountain, everything that’s been buried—the earth remembers. It doesn’t forget. It holds everything.”

She presses her palm to the wall, and the stone shifts, just slightly, just enough to feel.

Elemental Balance – Earth

Previous: 70% (technique-based)

Current: 80% (fundamental understanding)

Improvement: +10%

The day after, the herb garden. Mei Lin has been working tirelessly, and tiny sprouts are already visible; green shoots pushing through soil, reaching for sunlight. Ling’er kneels among them, touching the earth gently, feeling the life beneath.

“Wood is life. Growth. It’s the most… hopeful element. Even in dead soil, it finds a way. Even in winter, it waits.”

She doesn’t command the plants, she encourages them. Her fingers brush a tiny sprout, and under her attention, it unfurls an extra leaf. I watch, genuinely baffled. She says something somewhat profound, nods her head, and accelerates her understanding of an element she barely touched before. Is it really that easy for her? For anyone else, this would be months of meditation. Years of practice. For Ling’er, it’s an evening.

I truly don’t get it. But it’s working.

Elemental Balance – Wood

Previous: 65% (technique-based)

Current: 80% (fundamental understanding)

Improvement: +15%

And the day after, I give her a chunk of iron from the mine.

It’s heavy, dense, cold to the touch. A rough lump straight from the vein, unworked and unshaped. She holds it in both hands, feeling its weight. At this point, I’m improvising. I have no formal training in elemental theory. No ancient texts on balance cultivation. I’m drawing on memories of novels, fragments of conversations, teachings from the previous Sect Leader, and things that sound right. I let silence fill where instruction should be.

But Ling’er doesn’t know that. She trusts me.

“Metal is structure. Discipline. It’s the element of weapons and armor, of cutting and protecting. It doesn’t bend easily, but when it does, it holds that shape forever. It’s the most… human element. We shape it, and it shapes us back.”

She holds the iron for hours, feeling its density, its resistance, its potential. The metal is silent in a way the other elements weren’t.

“It wants to be something,” she murmurs finally. “A sword, maybe. Or armor. It’s waiting to be shaped. Waiting for someone to decide what it should become.”

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Elemental Balance – Metal

Previous: 60% (technique-based)

Current: 75% (fundamental understanding)

Improvement: +15%

And after days of going over every single element, we return to the clearing. Ling’er stands in the center, and I watch as she calls each element in turn. Water flows around her in a perfect spiral, drawn from the morning dew. Earth rises beneath her feet in smooth platforms. Wood sprouts briefly from seeds she carried in her pocket, tiny green shoots reaching for sunlight. Metal responds to her will, the chunk of iron floating before her like it weighs nothing. Fire dances in her palm, warm and controlled.

I scribble observations in my notebook, barely looking up. Water affinity improved. Earth manipulation smoother. Wood germination accelerated. Metal levitation stable. Fire control precise. Standard stuff. For her, anyway. I shake my head, resigned. This is my life now. Watching a twelve-year-old outperform every expectation, break every limit, and make me feel like a fossil in comparison.

Then I look up and squint.

‘She’s doing something.’

Water and earth combine first, becoming mud, thick and shapable. She molds it into a sphere, smooth and perfect. Then fire and metal; she heats the iron until it glows, then uses it to etch patterns into the sphere’s surface. Then wood and water, moss sprouts along the etched lines, vibrant green against the brown and gray. A sphere of mud, hardened with earth, heated with fire, etched with metal, decorated with living moss. She holds it up, rotating it slowly, admiring her work.

I stare at the display I just witnessed. Five elements. Combined. Harmonized. At Qi Condensation. I couldn’t do this. At Foundation Establishment, with forty years of experience, I couldn’t replicate what she just did. My physical base is stronger, my qi reserves larger and denser—but my elemental manipulation is laughable by comparison. I’m a hammer; she’s a medical-grade scalpel. At Qi Condensation, she’s wielding elements with a precision that makes respective specialists look average.