Chapter 203: Chapter 185 – A Girl’s Crucibles

"Most everyone hated training, but as they grow older and wiser, they would look back and thank their old tutors for the training they were given, as it was often what allowed them to grow old in the first place." - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

"Put your back into it!" yelled Cal as she pushed away Ying Xiao's halberd with her own. They were at the stadium, as she had trained the girl from morning to afternoon every day for the past week. Aideen had tagged along, partly out of curiosity, and partly to help the girl heal up, as Cal's way of training was anything but gentle.

 

Ying Xiao only wore some cheap roughspun tunic and trousers, both of which were in tatters and drenched with blood from that morning's training so far. She gritted her teeth before her legs pushed against the ground and launched her small figure forward at speed, as her arms thrusted her halberd at Cal.

 

Cal whirled her own halberd around, as she caught Ying Xiao's weapon by the bars that connected the crescent blades to the shaft between her own weapon's spearhead and crescent blade. One powerful yank of her hands, and the weapon slipped out of the young girl's hand.

 

Even so, Cal gave a smile in satisfaction when she noticed that her student had let go of her weapon on purpose, as the young girl charged closer and brought her blade and mace out of storage, and about to swing them her way.

 

The next thing Ying Xiao saw was a slender hand that covered her sight, grasped her face like a vice, and forcefully pushed her down. She felt as if an explosion went off in the back of her head the next moment, and could barely think, much less stand and fight some more.

 

It was an agonizing few moments before she felt a familiar warm flow of healing mana as it coursed through her body and did away with her injuries. She got up to a seated position, and saw Cal right in front of her, with her arms crossed over her chest.

 

"Not a bad attempt, though you should refrain from something like that when dealing with someone you know to be physically superior to yourself," lectured Cal as she watched the young girl get up from where she had slammed the back of the girl's head against the floor. That sort of blow would have shattered the skull of most people, though to her credit the girl managed to use her magic to brace against the blow. "You still need more training to reach a state where your brain no longer remains a necessity to control your body, however."

 

"I would like to learn, shīfù," said Ying Xiao with conviction and determination in her voice. It has been two weeks since they returned to Paradise, and those weeks had passed swiftly, her mornings were occupied by brutal training with Cal herself, while in the evenings Aideen and Kino worked with her to tackle the trauma that still lingered with her.

 

Their first sessions were mostly just the women talking, as they tried to get her to pour out her grievances and reassured her that while some would view her as diminished due to what she had been through, those that mattered would not have cared about it.

 

It was after Cal told her last week that Xain would come to fetch her later in winter that the girl grew more resolved. She wished to get rid of the shackles that had still bound herself to her past. To that end, she made a bold request to Aideen, one that made the unliving woman laugh so hard she had to hold her stomach for some reason.

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Ying Xiao naturally had not known that Aideen consulted Cal about it the next day, to which Cal gave her approval. It was the next night, and the nights thereafter that the unliving women then showed Ying Xiao that there was more than just pain, disgust, and humiliation to physical relationships.

 

Aideen also took care to talk to the girl quite thoroughly on what people in general tend to expect out of such relationships, and why she should be vary of those who approached her with ulterior motives. The girl's response, that she only wished to devote herself to the emperor in any way he deemed suitable, had somewhat surprised Aideen.

 

Cal was not surprised when Aideen reported Ying Xiao's words to her, as she had learned as much from the girl herself before. She understood the girl, to an extent, as what Xain had done - maybe on a whim - had literally given the young girl a second chance at life, instead of a life condemned to humiliation and suffering.

 

She knew that her young student had basically given her loyalty to Xain blindly, to the point that Cal suspected that the girl would have killed herself should Xain tell her to. That was a subject she would have to talk about with Xain when he came over in winter, she thought.

 

As for the rest, Ying Xiao was a blood mage, and Cal knew that the girl's future would contain a lot of violence if she wished to serve the empire, so she just did her best to prepare the girl for that instead. In her thoughts, the best gift she could offer to her student was to grant the girl enough power, which allowed her to grasp her fate in her own hands.

 

Cal then explained to Ying Xiao as best she could on how to control one's body purely with just their magic. As everyone felt magic differently, she could only use more vague words, a general direction for the girl to pursue, rather than specific instructions.

 

What she also did was to demonstrate it for the girl, as she severed one of her hands without a blink then controlled the disembodied hand purely through magic, all while Ying Xiao did her best to sense what she did.

 

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