32. My SSS-Rank Carry is Backseat Gaming

We hunt more the next week. Each time, I let her fight more, intervene less. Each time, she grows.

The next job comes from a settlement just past our region’s northern border, a small mining town that’s lost three children to wolves in the past month. Their local cultivators are Qi Condensation 3rd Stage at best, wholly unequipped to handle a pack of frost wolves. The Violet Sky Sect hasn’t responded. They never respond to problems this small.

We travel north for two days, the air growing colder with each mile. Ling’er is quiet, focused, her breath misting in the frozen air.

The wolves are waiting when we arrive; six of them, gray-white fur blending with snow, eyes burning blue with cold qi. The pack leader is Qi Condensation 8th. The others range from 6th to 7th.

Ling’er moves before I can give orders.

She kills the first two before the pack can react. Water saw to the throat. Flame spike to the chest. Then the pack closes, and she’s surrounded, fighting three at once while I hold back, watching, ready.

The third wolf dies to a fire-enhanced palm strike. The fourth lunges for her back—she spins, catches it by the throat with one hand, but the fifth is already on her, teeth closing around her forearm.

She doesn’t cry out.

In the moment I’m about to intervene, she acts. Both hands occupied, one with the wolf she’s strangling, one inside the other’s mouth—she uses her mouth. Her teeth find the wolf’s throat. She rips.

Blood sprays. The wolf collapses. The fifth tries to flee, and she kills it with a frozen projectile that pierces its skull from twenty feet away. She stands among the corpses, breathing hard, blood dripping from her lips. Her eyes are gold. Her expression is calm.

I stand frozen, sword half-drawn. I shake, both in awe and fear. Dragon tendencies rising. The bloodline manifesting in ways that have nothing to do with cultivation.

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

I find my voice.

“Effective.” I sheath my sword. “Let’s harvest them.”

Two days later, I find another hunt.

The rock serpent is a local legend; a beast that’s been terrorizing a mountain pass for generations, killing travelers, accumulating a hoard of treasure from its victims. Qi Condensation 9th equivalent.

I track it for a full day, using my Gaze. The serpent is cunning, patient, coiled in its cave, waiting for prey to wander close.

Ling’er goes in alone. I watch from the entrance, sword ready, heart pounding. A peak-level serpent. Even I would approach such a beast with caution.

The battle lasts fifteen minutes. She uses everything; water saw to flay scales, flame spikes to blind, earth steps to evade strikes that would crush stone. She moves with a precision that has no business belonging to a twelve-year-old.

I keep my hand on my sword, waiting for the moment I need to step in. It never comes. The serpent slows. Bleeds. Falters.

‘Good,’ I think. She’s winning.

Then it lunges. Too fast. Too wide. Its jaws snap shut around her. And she’s gone.

I freeze.

My mind takes a second too long to catch up.

…She just got eaten.

“LING’ER!!!”

My grip tightens around the hilt, frost blooming along the hilt with murderous intent.

‘Idiot. Absolute idiot.’

I brought a twelve-year-old to fight a serpent that’s been terrorizing this mountain for decades. I watched. I let her handle it. And now my once-in-a-generation genius is inside its stomach.

The serpent settles, coils tightening, like it’s already won. But mid-motion, it stops.

I frown, tensing. Was it preparing an attack?

Its throat bulges. Once. Twice. Something inside shifts.

Then the flesh splits open from the inside with a wet tearing sound. Ling’er climbs out. Covered in blood, viscera dripping from her sleeves, breathing hard—but completely alive.

She wipes her face, blinks, then looks at me.

“…Sorry, did you say something, Master? I couldn’t hear very well inside of it.”

I stare at her.

Then at the serpent.

Then back at her.

I slowly lower my sword.

Income: 20 low-grade equivalent (rare scales, venom sacs, high-grade core)

The last job we take is different. A Foundation Establishment 1st equivalent beast, corrupted by something dark, killing indiscriminately. It’s already taken seven lives, including two Qi Condensation disciples from a minor sect in the northwestern region. The Violet Sky Sect hasn’t dispatched anyone yet. They’re too busy, too distant, too uncaring.

The bear is massive, over twelve feet tall on its hind legs, fur matted with blood and corruption, eyes burning red. It’s maddened, in pain, radiating malice like heat from a forge.

I justify the risk to myself: it’s too dangerous for Ling’er. Especially after the fight against the Rock Serpent. She didn’t have the raw power necessary to deal meaningful damage against a beast of this level. Not yet.

At Foundation Establishment, she could be hurt. At Foundation Establishment, I can’t watch and do nothing.

But truthfully? I want to fight. I’ve trained with the Frost Manual for weeks. I’ve sparred with Ling’er. I’ve frozen boars and wolves. But I haven’t truly fought since I woke in this body. I need to know what I can do. And unlike the old Lu Chen, I have a safety net. The sect isn’t wholly reliant on me now. I can take risks.

We find the bear in a clearing, feeding on something unrecognizable. It sees us. It charges.

The battle is hard. Humbling.

“Ugh!”

I feel it in every exchange—the hesitation between thought and action, the half-breath delay while my past life’s instincts argue with this body’s muscle memory. I know what to do, but my body responds a heartbeat slower than it should. Against a Foundation Establishment bear, that heartbeat is everything.

It lands hits I should have dodged. A claw rakes my shoulder, tearing through robes and skin. A paw catches my chest, flinging me into a tree hard enough to crack the trunk. I feel ribs groan, see stars.

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I’m stunned when I push myself up. I’m not dead. That blow should have killed a normal man. The tree behind me has a human-shaped imprint in its bark.

I’m bruised. Bleeding. But alive.

“Left side, Master! It favors the right when it winds up!” Ling’er’s voice cuts through the pain. She’s been watching, analyzing, seeing the threads I can’t.

I adjust. The next charge, I’m ready. I meet it with frost, freeze its leading paw solid, shatter it with a follow-up strike. It roars, stumbles, and I’m on it.

Five minutes pass.

The killing blow comes from Autumn Leaf, my flying sword, a straight thrust through the corrupted heart timed between heartbeats, delivered with Ling’er’s advice echoing in my ears.

The bear collapses. I collapse beside it, gasping, bleeding, laughing.

Ling’er runs to me, eyes wide. “Master! That was—you were—”

“Humbling,” I finish. “I need more practice.”

She kneels beside me, checking my wounds. Her hands are gentle, her expression serious.

“Master,” she says slowly, “Were you holding back? There were a few times where it seemed like you were hesitating. Or just scared?”

I laugh again. It hurts.

“Perhaps both.”

She frowns and begins binding my wounds.

Income: 40 low-grade equivalent (corrupted core alone worth 30, hide and bones valuable for crafting)

We return to the sect exhausted, dragging ourselves up the mountain path as the sun sets behind us.

Ling’er walks ahead of me, her eyes scanning the treeline, the path, the shadows between branches. She’s always vigilant now, always watching. Observing the Dire Bear fight changed something in her, or maybe it just revealed what was always there. The dragon blood, waking up.