Chương 79: 34. Plagiarizing Fictional Immortals and My Disciple is Calling Me Out

Ling'er leads body refinement as always. The disciples groan when she announces the day's regimen: iron sand pockets sewn into their training garments, adding weight to every movement. She demonstrates first, moving through the Coiling Dragon forms with the pockets visibly bulging at her wrists and ankles. Her movements are fluid, effortless. The disciples watch, impressed despite themselves.

What they don't know is that her pockets contain the densest iron sand I could procure, carefully distributed across her limbs and torso. Fifty pounds of weight added to her small frame. More than twice as heavy compared to what they all were wearing. She wears it like a second skin. They struggle. It weighs on them, throwing off their balance, making every punch and kick a battle against momentum. She doesn't struggle.

She moves like the weights aren't there, demonstrating each form with the same precision she's always had. Wei Chen collapses after the third set, gasping.

"How does she do that?"

"Genetics," I say again. He accepts this. Everyone accepts this. Ling'er catches my eye and hides a smile. As the day wanes, I face her in the clearing behind my quarters. Moonlight paints the snow silver. She wears the full weights: fifty pounds distributed across her small frame, making her seem heavier, denser, more grounded.

"Fight me. Don't take the weights off." She attacks. It's harder for her now. I can see it in every movement: the weights slow her, throw off her balance, force her to work for every strike. Her water-saw is sluggish. Her flame spikes flicker before forming. Her earth steps crack the frozen ground but don't lift her as high. But she adapts. The bone shows her how to shift her center of gravity, how to use the weights as momentum, how to turn disadvantage into advantage.

Her body learns faster than her mind can follow. We spar for two hours. She lands three hits; a palm to my shoulder, a kick that glances off my hip, a water saw that I only barely deflect. I land one. She's holding back. I can feel it. When we finish, she's breathing hard, sweat freezing on her face. But her eyes are bright.

"The weights are teaching me," she says.

"Where I'm inefficient. Where I waste movement. The bone shows me, but the weights make me feel it." I nod, catching my own breath.

"Good. Keep them on." After sparring, I lead her to the stream that borders our territory. It's frozen at the edges, but the center still flows, dark and cold, carrying winter's chill down from the mountains. Our usual routine of elemental training. I have her sit in it. Weights on. Clothes soaked. The water is just above freezing.

"Water adapts to any container." I settle on a rock beside her, watching her shiver.

"Your weights are a container. Be water within them. Don't fight the weight; flow around it, through it, under it." She closes her eyes. I'm not even pretending to be original anymore. I read hundreds of xianxia novels in my past life, thousands of chapters of cultivation wisdom and martial philosophy. Some of it was nonsense. Some of it was profound. All of it is available for me to steal. Ling'er doesn't need to know I'm plagiarizing fictional immortals. She sits for three hours. The stream flows. The moon rises.

Ice forms on her lashes and freezes her hair into white strands. When she emerges, her control has shifted. Water rises with her, clinging to her clothes, then falling away at a thought. The weights don't seem to drag her down anymore. She moves through the frozen air like she's still in the stream. The next day, I take her to the mine. Deep underground, where the air is still and the darkness absolute, surrounded by stone that's been sleeping for millions of years.

The weights clink softly as she settles onto the cold rock floor.

"Earth supports everything." I stand beside her, my voice echoing in the narrow tunnel.

"Your weights are earth—heavy, patient, immovable. Become the mountain that carries them without effort. Let them be part of you, not a burden on you." She closes her eyes.

"Master?" Her voice is quiet in the darkness.

"Why do you say such profound things but never apply them to yourself?" I freeze. Sweat forms on my back despite the chilling cold.

"You talk about becoming water, becoming earth, becoming metal. You teach me to flow, to support, to endure." She opens her eyes, and in the dim lantern light I can see her expression—genuinely curious, not accusing.

"But you don't do any of it. You learn the Frost Manual, but you fight like you're still forcing the cold instead of becoming it." I cough.

"I'm... that's different. I'm older. Set in my ways. My foundation is already built."

"Is it?" I have no answer for that. She waits, patient, her eyes holding something that might be pity or might be wisdom or might just be a twelve-year-old who sees too much.

"Focus," I say finally.

"We're working on your earth affinity, not my cultivation struggles." She sits for four hours. Miners pass, confused by the Sect Leader and his disciple in the darkness, but Old Zhao waves them on. He's learned not to question the strange training that's transformed this sect. Two days later. The herb garden has become something beautiful. Mei Lin tends it like a mother tending children, talking to the sprouts, singing to them, coaxing growth with patient love.

Rows of healthy plants thrive under her care, their green shoots reaching toward the pale winter sun. Ling'er kneels among them, weights pressing into the soft soil, her small hands resting on the frozen ground.

"Wood grows through obstacles." I stand at the garden's edge, watching her settle into meditation as I recite a passage from a novel where the character controlled nature.

"Your weights are stone. Be the seed that cracks stone. Find the path through resistance, around barriers, between grains of earth. Wood doesn't fight. It grows." She closes her eyes. She meditates for hours. Mei Lin comes and goes, bringing water, checking her plants, glancing curiously at the kneeling girl. I wave her away each time. The sun sets. The moon rises. Frost forms on Ling'er's hair, her shoulders, the weights pressing her down.

When she opens her eyes, tiny sprouts have curled around where she sat, delicate green shoots that weren't there before, pushing through frozen soil to reach her warmth. She looks at them, then at me. At the end of the week, I give her the iron again. The same chunk of iron she's been working with for weeks. It sits in her palms, cold and dense, absorbing the lantern light without reflecting it.

"Metal is the element of weights. Of resistance. Of structure." I settle across from her in my quarters, the candle between us casting long shadows.

"Your weights are metal: not just physically, but spiritually. They are the discipline you carry, the structure you build, the shape you choose to become. Become the metal that accepts more metal without breaking." She holds the iron for hours. The candle burns down. I replace it. The wind whistles outside, rattling the windows. She doesn't move, doesn't breathe, doesn't seem to exist except as a statue holding iron. Dawn approaches. The iron hums in her hands.

A low, resonant vibration that I feel in my chest before I hear it. She opens her eyes, and for a moment, the iron glows faintly, not with heat, but with something else. Acceptance. Recognition. She sets it down carefully.

"Metal isn't just hard," she says.

"It's patient. It waits. It knows that what's being built is worth the weight." I sit in my quarters as dawn breaks, updating her records. The candle gutters. My hand cramps. The numbers tell a story of impossible growth. Sparring Record: 12 sessions, 0 losses (to me), 37 hits landed on Master To begin the next week, I add more iron sand. Seventy-five pounds total, distributed across her limbs and torso. The pockets bulge, the fabric straining. She accepts it without complaint, without visible strain.

She simply stands, adjusts her center of gravity once, and walks out to lead morning practice. The disciples groan when they see the new weights. They've been struggling with twenty pounds for a week. Thirty feels impossible. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Ling'er doesn't mention that she's carrying more than double that. She just leads. We fight every night in the clearing behind my quarters. The moon is our only witness, the snow our only record.

She's faster now, even with seventy-five pounds dragging at her limbs. Her techniques flow together seamlessly; water into earth, earth into metal, metal into wood, wood into fire. Combinations I've never seen, transitions that shouldn't be possible, attacks that come from angles that don't exist. She lands hits more frequently. I'm actually trying now with Foundation Establishment speed and power, no holding back— and she's keeping up. That's more than any Qi Condensation cultivator should be able to do.

Afterward, we focus on her elemental synthesis.

"Fire and earth become magma," I instruct, pacing the clearing while she sits cross-legged in the snow.

"Water and wood become life. Metal and fire become molten destruction. Create. Experiment. Find what works." She experiments. By midweek, she's created techniques that shouldn't exist at Qi Condensation. Techniques that I've only read about in novels, that major sects hoard for their top geniuses. Magma Spike (Fire + Earth): A molten projectile that hardens on impact, trapping enemies in cooling rock. She throws one at a boulder and it punches through, leaving a hole lined with obsidian.

Living Armor (Wood + Metal + Earth): Vines reinforced with metal roots, anchored to the earth, growing and shifting to deflect attacks. She wears it while sparring, and my frozen palm strikes glance off like water. Frozen Flame (Fire + Water): A contradiction. Flame that burns cold, that freezes what it touches. Dragon's Breath (Fire + Wind + Bloodline): Her most powerful attack. A cone of dragon-flame that ignites the air itself, that burns through stone and metal, that carries the weight of her bloodline.

She only used it once, at a dead tree at the edge of the clearing. The tree ceased to exist. Ling'er - Synthesis Progress 2-Element Combinations: 8 mastered 3-Element Combinations: 3 mastered 4-Element Combinations: 1 attempted (unstable, needs work) Bloodline-Enhanced Techniques: 4 The disciples are hard at work too. Struggling. I watch them during morning practice, their weighted forms moving through the Coiling Dragon forms with visible effort.

They're caught between two impossible things: not wanting to be outstripped by Ling'er, and not being able to match her no matter how hard they try. Every time they see her simply do better, I notice it. Mei Lin gets quieter. She doesn't complain, doesn't slack, doesn't show frustration. She just works harder. She's using the frustration as fuel, channeling it into discipline. Wei Chen curses under his breath, averts his gaze, pretends he didn't see. He's never been good at hiding his emotions.

The jealousy flickers across his face before he smothers it, and he throws himself into the next exercise with renewed fury. The others show it differently. Jun watches too long, analyzing. The younger disciples glance at Ling'er and then at their own weighted limbs, measuring the gap. I know I can't ask Ling'er to hide even more. She's already holding herself back so much: limiting her speed, her strength, her technique. Every movement is a calculation: how much can I show without revealing everything?

She's doing her part. I need to do mine. I wonder if I should tone down the weights, reduce the pressure, show them the "carrot" instead of the stick. They need encouragement, not just suffering. They need to see that growth is possible, that their efforts matter.

'I suppose it's time to provide them with pills.' I line them up after morning practice. Twelve disciples, weighted and weary, watching me with tired eyes.

"You've worked hard this month." I let my voice carry across the training yard.

"Harder than any disciples I've trained in forty years. Harder than I trained, when I was your age." They shift, uncertain where this is going.

"I recognize your effort. And I want to give you something in return." I reach into my robe and produce the small porcelain bottles. Their eyes widen.

"Qi Condensation pills. One each." Wei Chen makes a sound like he's been punched.

"These are the same pills I gave you last month," I continue.

"But this time, you've earned them. Not because I found a new mine or made a good trade. Because you've trained, you've suffered, you've grown. Use them well." I walk down the line, placing a bottle in each pair of trembling hands.

"Take them now. I'll watch." They settle onto the training yard, cross-legged, pill bottles open. The sun climbs overhead. One by one, they swallow and close their eyes. When they rise, hours later, something has shifted. Wei Chen bounces on his heels, energy crackling through him.

"I feel—I feel good. Like I could—" He punches the air, and his flame technique ignites brighter than I've ever seen it. Mei Lin stands more quietly, but her water flows smoother, her movements more precise. She looks at her hands like she's meeting them for the first time. The others show similar gains. Small improvements, by Ling'er's standards. But for them? For disciples who've been stuck for years, who've never had resources, who've scraped and struggled with nothing? It's transformative.

They train well into the night. The weights don't seem as heavy. The next few days are different. Wei Chen is emboldened. He works harder than I've ever seen him work. One-armed pushups with the weights on. Extra laps around the yard. Challenging everyone to spar: Mei Lin, Jun, even Ling'er. He asks everybody. And he loses more than he wins. But he keeps asking. I watch him with the Gaze, curious. His Spirit Root hasn't changed, still D-tier. His hidden potential remains: None detected.

The verdict that once said he'd never reach Fourth Stage stares back at me, unchanged. But something is different. His eyes glaze over during practice. Unfocused. Distant. But his movements grow sharper. His transitions smoother. He's not thinking anymore; he's doing. On the third day, he spars Ling'er. She's been careful with him, as she's careful with all of them. Holding back, pulling her strikes, making the matches close. But today, something in her expression shifts as she watches him move.

She raises her level. Just slightly. Wei Chen keeps up. She raises it again. He keeps up. I watch, fascinated. The Wei Chen of yesterday would have been flattened by this level of pressure. He would have stumbled, fallen, given up.

'Is this… sudden enlightenment?' But today, he's getting better. With every exchange, every block, every dodge, he's improving in real-time. Then he feints. Wei Chen has never feinted in his life. His strategy has always been head-on, full power, brute force. But today, he steps left, draws her guard, and attacks from the right. His fire breath ignites, larger than anything he's ever accomplished. The flame dissipates against Ling'er's guard. She wasn't hurt. She was never in danger.

But Wei Chen stands there, staring at his hands, breathing hard. His eyes are clear now, focused, present.

"I... I think I broke through." He looks up, and there's wonder in his voice.

"Fourth Stage. I'm Fourth Stage." He whoops. He hollers. He runs around the training yard, shouting for everyone to hear.

"Fourth Stage! I hit Fourth Stage!" Wei Chen - Qi Condensation (Fourth Stage) Name: Wei Chen Age: 17 Spirit Root: Fire/Earth (D-grade) Cultivation: Qi Condensation (Fourth Stage) Verdict: Previously projected to struggle reaching Fourth Stage. Overcame that bottleneck through arduous training and guidance from Ling'er, not innate talent. Will hit the next wall soon. And the next. But stubbornness is its own kind of resource. The disciples pour out of the dining hall, drawn by the noise. Mei Lin grins. Jun claps.

The younger ones cheer. Ling'er claps too, standing at the edge of the yard, her face bright with genuine happiness. I meet her eyes across the crowd. I nod. She was instrumental. She provided just the right amount of challenge for him to improve. Not enough to crush him, not so little that he'd coast. The perfect pressure to force growth without breaking. She understood that instinctively, and used it to guide them like how I did for her. That night, we celebrate.

Old Chen brings out the best cuts of meat; ironhide boar, roasted until tender. Wolf meat braised in a rich, savory sauce. Wei Chen gets the largest portion, and he eats like he's never been hungry in his life.

"Best meal ever," he declares, mouth full. Mei Lin snorts.

"You say that every time we have meat."

"Because every time is the best meal ever." He gestures with a bone.

"Do you know what I was eating two months ago? Do you?"

"Gruel," Jun says dryly.

"We all were."

"Exactly. Thin gruel. Nothing in it. Now I'm eating roasted boar and complaining about the wolf meat being tough." He pauses, considering.

"Actually, this wolf meat is still tough." Mei Lin smacks him on the back of the head.

"Wei Chen."

"What? I'm just saying!"

"You're being spoiled. Three months ago you were hoping for a second bowl of gruel. Now you're criticizing meat. Have some perspective." He rubs his head, but he's grinning.

"Okay, okay. It's good meat. Great meat. The best meat. I love meat. I love this sect. I love—" He reaches for another piece. Mei Lin smacks his hand away.

"Wait for everyone else!" The table dissolves into laughter. Wei Chen protests, the disciples tease, Old Chen brings out more food. Even the servants join in, their voices rising above the noise. I sit at the head of the table, watching. Mei Lin, who used to be quiet, who used to fade into the background, who's found purpose in growing things. Wei Chen, who was lazy, who was cynical, who's finally found something worth working for. Jun, who watched and calculated, who's learning to trust.

The others, each of them, finding their place. And Ling'er, at the end of the table, laughing at something Wei Chen said, her face open and young.