Chapter 92: Yan Ping’s Departure
Several months later, when Yan Ping finally emerged from her isolated recovery, Anji could not wait to see her teacher.
"Shifu!" Anji greeted clumsily after barging into her father’s study. Lizi informed her that morning that her teacher had finally emerged from her isolated recovery and was meeting with her father before Anji’s usual morning lesson commenced.
In the past few months, even without the physical presence of her shifu, Anji always felt Yan Ping’s presence in the lessons with her father. Zhao Mingfeng might be a slightly better teacher than his wife. However, he was terrible at thinking out of the box for students with a special disposition. Although he had the right mindset and direction for what Anji needed to learn, his lesson guidelines were messy. If not for the messages Yan Ping passed to her father through Gu Ying, Anji might have ended up as the zookeeper of all basic martial arts. Apart from the Mudskipper Breathing Technique and the Rolling Panda Art of Falling, her father had introduced the weirder martial manuals in an attempt to improve her stamina and balancing skills, such as the Taunted Rhinocerous Stomping Charge and One-Legged Flamingo Meditation Method.
Eventually, Zhao Mingfeng used Yan Ping’s traditional teaching methods from the Mystical Qilin sect, and Anji benefited from the simplistic but effective lessons. At first, Zhao Mingfeng thought the blind woman was simply ordering his youngest daughter to perform chores in preparation for the bullying famous in her sect.
Unlike other sects, which respect seniority based on the order of acceptance into the sect, the Mystical Qilin Sect only respected contributions. All new disciples of the Mystical Qilin Sect practised the tradition of bullying the youngest disciple until they proved to have more contributions than others. Seniority promotion was based on academic and cultivation contributions. No amount of nepotism would spare Anji from the fate of becoming the chores girl.
However, after witnessing how Anji improved over time after learning how to carry buckets of water by strengthening her body with qi, Mingfeng was finally convinced it was an unusual but practical method. At the very least, it was more practical and a tad easier than learning how to row a bamboo raft.
The other training method of folding paper cranes with only emitted energy took Anji longer to understand. The girl took almost a month to manifest a strand of qi from her body and control its movement with her will. It was a long process to even move the paper. However, with the energy imbuing secret training she did with the persimmon plant in her room, Anji eventually succeeded in controlling her energy enough to fold the paper. However, she often ran out of stamina to finish folding a crane within a day. Zhao Mingfeng was still impressed by how far her daughter had come along.
Compared to before, Anji had grown a little taller. The maids reported that Anji also needed new clothes and shoes because she had started to outgrow them. It had been a long time since the sect spent any money on Anji’s wardrobe because the girl had not grown. Apart from the new year, Anji barely needed new clothes. Now, they had more excuses to celebrate her success.
"You’re here," Yan Ping nodded in acknowledgement.