Chapter 184: Skipping Grades
Doctor Yun took one look at Anji’s expression and immediately felt a sense of sympathy. Although he was not a cultivator, he could tell how difficult Anji’s training was. Each day, she would return with a look of frustration. However, instead of the fight in her eyes, Anji looked exhausted and resigned as she lifted her sleeve for her pulse reading.
Running through the daily health check, Doctor Yun eventually told Yan Ping that her successor was still in physically good condition even if she was mildly dehydrated. Anji’s training uniform was soaked thoroughly. Without time to drink anything to replenish the lost fluids, it was only natural.
When it was her teacher’s turn to check her inner core and cultivation progress, Anji thought she would continue to disappoint her shifu. Even if Grandpa Jin taught her the new sutra to increase harmonisation rates, Anji barely grasped the basics. There was insufficient time for Anji to fully understand how to coexist with nature.
As usual, Yan Ping inserted a strand of her energy to circulate it in Anji’s spiritual circuits. However, unlike the previous sessions, there was a slight change in her artificial cores. It was very subtle, and Yan Ping almost missed it. The change was so small, but the difference it had in Anji’s natural flow of energy changed. It was a strange experience that Yan Ping ended up making a second check to verify what she was feeling.
An hour passed, and Doctor Yun, who had been on standby, began to look concerned. Usually, it only took the half-sage ten minutes to check on her successor’s condition. Could it be that Anji had taken on some spiritual damage that his medical science could not detect?
After waiting for an additional thirty minutes, Anji’s stomach decided to announce itself to everyone in the room.
Hearing the embarrassingly loud growl demanding food immediately, Yan Ping snapped at the idle doctor to feed her successor while she continued her inspection. Anji blushed but could not refuse. Although her shifu was adjusting her artificial core seals to ease her spiritual bottleneck, her body was a different story.
Hungry, sore and exhausted, Anji was already nodding off on the chair when Doctor Yun returned with a basket of food from Aunt Wine.
"She included freshly squeezed watermelon juice in bamboo flasks to keep them chilled when she heard you were dehydrated," the doctor explained upon his return. "If you can’t finish it all, you can leave it until dinner."
Letting go of Anji’s wrist, Yan Ping told Anji to start eating while shooing Doctor Yun away for the day. Anji did as she was told and waved tiredly at the doctor, who left with an uneasy look on his face.
The meal was as nourishing as Anji remembered it to be. Aunt Wine put a lot of effort into the meal. She must have started learning how to make pickles and ferment food from the eastern kitchen after Anji claimed to enjoy the pickled peppers and cucumber slices. The sour and crunchy appetiser was something Anji had never tried before at the Celestial Dragon Sect. It was refreshing, although not meant to be eaten in large quantities.