The academy's teaching elder rushed out of the lecture hall in a fluster, all but stumbling forward to bow in salute, his voice trembling faintly: "We did not know the Young Lord would grace us — we failed to welcome you from afar. I beg the Young Lord's pardon!"
Yun Huang only waved a bland hand and walked straight to the seat of honor at the front of the immortal platform — the spot with the best view, just now hurriedly cleared — and settled into it at his ease, then closed his eyes, his whole person clear, noble, and remote, seeming to have not the slightest interest in the class about to begin.
Yun Qing walked to the front of the platform, black-robed and ink-haired, his figure like a lone pine looking down over an abyss. Facing the countless gazes below — curious, worshipful, scrutinizing, even secretly jealous — his expression was calm, and unhurried he began the day's lecture on 《Basic Spiritual-Power Circulation and Combat Micro-Control》.
His voice was clear as a mountain spring, breaking down abstruse and complex principles of spiritual power into the plain and easily grasped. Now and then he stepped down in person to demonstrate a move, his motions flowing like water, precise and free, so that the young clan members below watched without blinking, yearning stirred in their hearts, even their breathing unconsciously softened.
"What I spoke of just now — the heart of circulating spiritual power lies in 'intent moves, qi moves; qi moves, force is born.' The stress is on guiding and controlling, not on driving by brute strength." His gaze swept over the crowd and came at last to rest on a concubine-born youth who looked especially cramped and uneasy with Yun Huang present. A gentle smile that felt like a spring breeze hooked at his lips. "For instance... you. Step forward. Circulate the basic Qi-Drawing Formula, and with your strongest move, attack me."
The youth started in fright, circulated the spiritual power within him, and threw out a trembling fist.
His stance was crooked, his spiritual power scattered as sand.
Yun Qing neither dodged nor evaded, nor even employed spiritual power. Only, in the instant the youth's fist was about to reach him, he stretched out two long fingers and, at the wrist joint, seemingly at random, brushed, drew, and sent. The motion was ethereal and nimble, like a butterfly alighting on a flower's heart.
The youth felt only an irresistible yet unusually gentle, mellow spiritual power surge into his meridians in an instant. His own scattered, disordered power, darting everywhere, was as though combed and gathered in an instant by an invisible, abstruse great hand, converging and compressing helplessly at furious speed along some track that matched the rhythm of heaven and earth, until it gathered fiercely at the fist's edge—
"Whoosh!"
A jet of pure white force, more condensed and fierce by several times than a moment ago, burst through the air like an arrow off the string, with a clear tearing sound!
"See it clearly?" Yun Qing withdrew his hand and smiled gently at the dumbstruck disciples, his tone carrying a composure and confidence that won hearts. "Spiritual power is like the water of rivers: to dam it is worse than to channel it; to channel it is worse than to guide it. The key is to find the true hinge and rhythm of its flow, and lead it along with the momentum. Turning aside a thousand catties with four ounces — this is the essence of 'micro-control.' It does not chase raw, overwhelming force; it teaches you to use every last thread of spiritual power within you more efficiently and precisely."
With so immediate and marvelous a demonstration, the disciples below rubbed their palms and itched to try.
"You may spar with one another and give it a go." At Yun Qing's word, the scene at once grew lively.
He watched, smiling, these vigorous figures brimming with boundless possibility, and was just about to offer more guidance when, from the northwest corner of Sun-Radiance Court, there suddenly came the muffled boom of a violent clash of spiritual power, along with several stifled cries and a scornful sneer.
The crowd looked toward the sound. A trueborn disciple in a brocade robe, his manner arrogant, was driving a black-robed youth back step by step with a fierce palm-wind.
That youth's steps were unsteady, his face pale — none other than Yun Li, once heavily punished by Yun Huang, his dantian injured and unhealed to this day. He clenched his teeth, a thread of stark red seeping from the corner of his mouth, yet his eyes were gloomy and unbowed as he stubbornly held his spine straight.
"Yun Li, this 'Layered-Wave Force' of yours is soft and feeble, full of openings. It seems that after your last punishment your dantian and sea of qi are wholly crippled? You're a disgrace to our Sun-Radiance Court!" The trueborn disciple's face wore an undisguised contempt, his voice pitched high: "Better you roll off to Moon-Rad— no, even Moon-Radiance Court would find you a burden. Go keep company with the milk-babes at Cloud-Sprout Cottage instead! Though even they have full dantians — their future achievements are likely far above a piece of trash like you!"
His words were venomous, every stroke aimed straight at the old wound in Yun Li's dantian, plainly meant to humiliate; and from the corner of his eye he kept stealing glances at Yun Huang, sitting with eyes closed on the high platform, an undisguised wish to please and to show off in them.
Many disciples around watched coldly, some with a mocking look, some resentful but not daring to speak. Yun Li, owing to his birth and disposition, had never been well-liked, and with his earlier heavy punishment for offending the Young Lord known to all, ordinary folk were the less willing to touch him.
The concubine-born youth Yun Qing had called up to demonstrate a moment ago hid not far behind Yun Li, his lips working a few times as though he wished to say something, but after a struggle he did not speak.
Yun Li bit down hard on his lower lip, fists clenched, his eyes full of humiliation and unwillingness — yet with his spiritual power stagnant and his dantian faintly aching, he could not retort.
He had been wounded earlier by Yun Huang's divine power, his dantian injured; not incurable, but it required an exceedingly rare "Yuan-Condensing Meridian-Steadying Pill" to fully heal. This pill was hard to refine, its ingredients hard to find, and with his concubine-born status and his having plainly offended the Young Clan Head, the elders and stewards in charge of resource distribution were naturally unwilling to stick their necks out for a "discarded piece" like him, so his injury had dragged on to this day.
Just as the trueborn disciple's savage grin grew fiercer, spiritual power surging around him, ready to crush Yun Li utterly and sweep his face to the ground before all—
A black-robed figure cut in between the two like a fresh breeze.
Yun Qing did not attack; he only brushed his fingertip at random, and a mighty chaos spiritual power rolled out, dissolving the trueborn disciple's fierce, ruthless palm-wind into nothing without effort. At the same time, a supple force steadily caught the staggering, near-falling Yun Li.
"Sparring among kin — stop at the touch. To bully the weak by force and strike at another's wound is no act of a gentleman, and runs counter to the academy's teaching." Yun Qing's voice was calm, yet carried an authority that brooked no doubt. His Double Pupils' secret light swept over the trueborn disciple, plunging him in an instant as into an ice cellar, all his arrogance frozen on his face.
The trueborn disciple's face went from red to green. He wanted to argue and retort, but in the instant he met Yun Qing's Double Pupils every word stuck in his throat, dissolving into a halting: "...Yes. The Eldest Young Master's rebuke is right." He had meant to please the Young Lord, and never thought he would first offend this Eldest Young Master whom the Young Lord plainly "indulged" the more.
Who'd have thought this gloomy, unlikeable brat Yun Li actually had some bond with the Eldest Young Master?
Seeing this, Yun Qing sighed inwardly: what those above favor, those below will carry to excess.
Then he turned to Yun Li, his gaze falling on the pallor of his face and the hand pressed tight to his dantian. Meeting his eyes, Yun Li instinctively turned his head to avoid the gaze, with a measure of awkwardness, wariness, and a scarcely perceptible... sense of his own unworthiness.
Yun Qing said no more. He turned his hand and produced a plain jade vial, tossing it casually to Yun Li, his tone gentle and bland: "This is a 'Source-Anchoring Restoration Pill,' enough to fully heal your old dantian injury. Take it. Cultivate well, and do not go astray again over a moment's temper, sinking your own ambition and backbone."
Of course, this was not one of the spirit-energy-wreathed "Nine-Turn Jade-Restoring Pills" Yun Huang had given — a joke; to give away a pill that ancestor had refined by his own hand, still holding his origin-aura, given that seemingly cold and aloof but in truth "extremely petty" temper of his, there was no telling what fuss he might make. Yun Qing could all but picture the scene: those pale-golden eyes narrowing faintly, the temperature around dropping ten degrees at a stroke.
Still, this "Source-Anchoring Restoration Pill" he gave was more than a cut above that "Yuan-Condensing Meridian-Steadying Pill" in grade, and struck straight at the ailment besides.