Progress was a drug, and Xiao Yue was addicted. The feeling of controlled power she had experienced, the explosive crack of the bamboo branch, the ease with which her body had moved… all of it had ignited a flame of hope she had long believed extinct, a fire that now burned with the ferocity of a miniature sun deep within her.
However, the next day, reality struck her with the subtle brutality of a velvet hammer. As the Clan Master's daughter, even the forgotten one, she was obligated to attend the group training sessions with the other disciples her age at least once every fifteen days. They were supervised by the stern Master Wei, a man whose cultivation philosophy could be summarized as "if it doesn't work, hit it harder."
The session was an orchestrated disaster.
Master Wei, a burly man with a beard as rigid as his methods, barked orders from the center of the training courtyard.
"Feel the torrent! Don't think, push! Brute force opens all paths! Move your Qi as if you mean to shatter a mountain with your bare fist!"
Xiao Yue tried to obey. She truly did. But her body, having tasted the sublime efficiency and logical grace of Kenji's method, rebelled. Trying to force her Qi the old way, with that mindless fury, felt like trying to run through thick, sticky mud after having flown through the sky. She felt the old blockages return like vengeful ghosts: the stabbing tension in her shoulder, the frustration closing her throat, the Qi swirling in her dantian like stagnant, dirty water.
While the other disciples around her, clumsy and inefficient as they were, managed to produce faint glimmers of light on their swords or small gusts of wind, she could barely make hers whistle with a pathetic whine. The flow of power that had been a mighty river the day before was now a shameful trickle.
She finished the session humiliated to the core. The pitying glances from some and the poorly disguised smirks of superiority from others burned the back of her neck like hot coals. She walked back to her pavilion, her heart as heavy as a stone and confusion swirling inside her. Was Kenji's method a fleeting dream? A once-in-a-lifetime fluke? Or was she, fundamentally, a lost cause?
It was then that she saw him, waiting for her on the bamboo path leading to her pavilion, his back straight and his expression as neutral as a blank page. His mere presence was a calming anchor in her inner storm.
From a distance, hidden behind a dense cluster of bamboo with the discretion of a corporate spy, Kenji had observed the entire training session. His diagnosis was swift, silent, and brutally precise.
The clan's teaching method is a systemic disaster, he thought, his eyes narrowed as he analyzed the widespread inefficiency. It doesn't account for individual differences in hardware or software. It's inefficient, counterproductive, and relies on brute force instead of technique. It's like trying to build a skyscraper by giving all the workers the same hammer and no instructions other than "hit it hard." It's not that the asset, Xiao Yue, is defective. It's that the company's operations manual is stupid. It's like trying to fit a square key into a round lock and then blaming the lock for not opening.
That same night, he decided that "Project Phoenix," as he had mentally dubbed Xiao Yue's restructuring, needed a formal guide. Ad hoc coaching was no longer sufficient; standardized documentation was required. In the solitude of his corner in the servants' barracks, under the curious gaze of a spider on a rafter, he unrolled a new, clean scroll of parchment. He wasn't going to write a sacred text full of mystical poetry about ascending dragons and blooming lotus flowers. He was going to design a user manual.
His CEO mindset went to work, translating the complex and often vague principles of cultivation into simple, repeatable, and devastatingly effective systems logic.
For breathing, he thought of energy resource management. You can't flood the engine with fuel. You need a steady, measured, and controlled flow. Too much intake chokes the combustion.
For channeling Qi, he thought of supply chain logistics. You don't send a heavy truck down an icy dirt road without prepping it first. That would be stupid and a waste of resources. His bamboo pen moved, and his precise, functional calligraphy captured the idea: "Before moving your main power (the primary Qi flow), send out small energy scouts. Threads of heat as thin as a silk strand to run down your arms and legs. Awaken the pathways, warm up the channels, inform the muscles of the impending task. Prepare your body to receive the power. Don't surprise it."
For concentration, he thought of mental processing optimization and environmental data management. A beginner's mind is a chaos of irrelevant data. Fighting the noise is a waste of energy. You have to use it, integrate it. He wrote down one of his strangest ideas, one that no sect master would have conceived of in a million years: "At night, the chirping of crickets isn't a distraction. It's a metronome the world offers you for free. A rhythmic, constant pulse. Sync your breathing to their rhythm. Let them set the pace for you, and your mind, freed from that task, can focus on a single thing: guiding your energy."
When he finished, the document was a masterpiece of pragmatic logic applied to metaphysics. He rolled it up and wrote the title on the outside, a title no cultivation master in history would have ever conceived:
Biological Asset Optimization Manual, v1.0: Xiao Yue.
The next day, when he saw Xiao Yue returning, dejected and dragging her feet as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders, he knew it was the perfect time for an intervention. The client was at her lowest point, receptive to a new strategy after the catastrophic failure of the old one. He approached her with the confident stride of a consultant arriving to save a failing project.
"The training method they teach you is wrong," Kenji said, without any preamble. He paused for a fraction of a second, a crucial nuance. "For you."
Xiao Yue looked up; her golden eyes, the color of molten gold, were now clouded with frustration and humiliation.
"And what would you know? I just failed in front of everyone! I'm a laughingstock!"
"Precisely. You failed because you tried to use a tool that doesn't match your hardware and operating system specifications," he replied, his tone as flat as if he were discussing a quarterly report. He held out the scroll. "I don't guess. I observe, analyze data, and formulate solutions. This will work better. It's a personalized training protocol. Try it."
She took the manuscript, bewildered by its weight and the neatness of the calligraphy.
"Another one of your... plans?"
"The official documentation for your training," he corrected. "Consider it your personal user manual."
She looked at him, distrust warring with a desperate need to believe. The cold logic of his words was strangely comforting.
"Why? Why are you going to so much trouble for me? I'm... I'm no one important."
Kenji looked at her directly, his cold, inscrutable expression unwavering.
"Because your success is tangible proof that my method works. You are my pilot project. A prototype. Your results are my data, the validation of my hypothesis. An increase in your performance is an increase in the value of my intellectual capital. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for my assigned duties in the laundry. The spin cycle doesn't optimize itself."
He turned and walked away, leaving her with the "manual" in her hands and a strange mix of feeling like a science experiment, a machine in need of a tune-up, and, at the same time, the most important person in the world.
That night, curiosity got the better of her. By the flickering light of an oil lamp, she unrolled the scroll and began to read. It was the strangest text she had ever seen. It didn't speak of dragons roaring in the nine heavens or celestial rivers flowing into the sea of the soul. It spoke of "warming up the channels before high-intensity use," "breathing cycles optimized for maximum ambient Qi absorption," and "syncing with the rhythm of the crickets."
With a sigh that was half skepticism and half "what else have I got to lose?", she decided to try the most ridiculous idea of all. She went out into her garden. The night was alive with the rhythmic, constant, incessant song of the crickets. Chirp... chirp... chirp...
She closed her eyes. Instead of fighting to silence her mind, as she had always been taught, she focused on that sound. Chirp... She inhaled slowly, filling her lungs from the bottom up. Chirp... She exhaled, emptying herself completely. She let the pulse of the outer world dictate the rhythm of her inner world.
And then it happened.
The storm in her mind—the constant dialogue of doubt, anger, and frustration—subsided. The mental noise faded, drowned out by the simple, overwhelming rhythm of the night. For the first time in years, there was silence inside her. And in that silence, she could feel her Qi. It was not a wild beast to be tamed, nor a furious torrent to be forced. It was a deep, calm, dark lake, and she was sitting on its shore, observing it with perfect clarity.
With a calmness she had never known, she guided a small stream of that energy through her body. She followed the manual's instructions, sending out little "scouts" of heat through her arms and legs. The sensation was exquisite. It was like slowly sinking into a warm bath, a gentle, comforting heat that relaxed every muscle, every fiber of her being, dissolving knots of tension she hadn't even known she had.
She stayed like that for over an hour, simply feeling, controlling, existing in a state of peace and power she had always believed unattainable. There was no explosion of power, no heaven-shaking breakthrough. It was something far more important: it was the first time in her life that she felt at home in her own body.
Fifteen days later, the trial by fire arrived, as inevitable as the dawn. Master Wei, still puzzled by Xiao Yue's previous progress and suspecting it had been a fluke, announced a surprise evaluation for the inner court disciples. The exercise was simple but incredibly revealing: manifest and maintain a Qi Flame in the palm of the hand, a direct testament to a cultivator's control and energy purity.
Panic seized the other disciples like a plague. Xiao Yue, however, felt a strange, deep calm. She had spent the last two weeks religiously following her "user manual."
When her turn came, she walked to the center of the training courtyard. The eyes of her peers were on her, a mixture of curiosity and the expectation of witnessing her usual, pathetic failure. Ignoring them, she closed her eyes and found the rhythm of her own breathing. She applied the principles from the manual.
She held out her palm. An instant later, a flame erupted in its center. But it was not the flickering, anemic, and weak flame of the others. Hers was a sphere of liquid fire, an intense red like her hair and with veins of pure gold slowly swirling within it, burning with a supernatural stability. It didn't waver. It didn't sputter. It simply was. Perfect. Controlled. Beautiful.
The courtyard fell into a dead silence, so absolute you could hear the whisper of the wind in the leaves of distant trees. Master Wei, who had been about to bark a criticism and move on to the next disciple, stopped short. His eyes, normally narrowed in disdain, flew wide open. He approached Xiao Yue, almost reverently, circling her hand to examine the perfect flame like a jeweler inspecting a flawless diamond.
"Impossible..." he murmured, his voice hoarse with astonishment. He looked at Xiao Yue, his face a mixture of shock and utter confusion. "How? Your control... the purity of your Qi... it's increased tenfold! This is… this is flawless! What epiphany have you had, girl?"
Xiao Yue looked at her own flame, a soft smile playing on her lips for the first time in public. She thought of her strange consultant and his ridiculously logical manual.
"I simply stopped trying to be like everyone else, Master," she replied calmly, her voice clear and without a hint of doubt. "I started listening to myself."
From a distance, partially hidden behind an ornamental pillar, Kenji observed. When he saw the perfect flame and heard Master Wei's gasp of astonishment, he didn't smile. He simply nodded once, a short, almost imperceptible gesture. In his mind, a single, cold, and satisfying phrase formed: The data is positive. The implementation plan is a success. The prototype is viable.
That night, Xiao Yue didn't wait. The need to understand was a fire that burned hotter than the flame she had summoned. Breaking all protocol, she went to the servants' barracks, a place she had never set foot in in her life, and found Kenji outside, methodically sharpening a gardening tool under the moonlight.
"I have to know," she said, stopping in front of him. Her voice was firm, her gaze intense and direct. There was no longer a trace of the desperate girl. "Who are you? How do you do this? This isn't any clan technique. It's nothing I've ever seen or read before."
Kenji continued his work for a moment, drawing the whetstone across the metal with a steady rhythm, before looking up. His eyes, in the darkness, seemed deeper, colder—wells of unfathomable logic.
"It's simple," he said, his voice as calm as ever. "The cultivation masters of this world see power as a sacred mystery, a mystical force shrouded in poetry, tradition, and inefficient metaphors."
He paused, and the next sentence he spoke not only answered her question but redefined Xiao Yue's universe.
"I see it as a machine. And any machine, no matter how complex or biological, can be analyzed, taken apart, and fixed to run better."
She gasped. Suddenly, everything clicked into place with the force of a revelation. He wasn't a cultivation master. He wasn't a hidden sage. He was something entirely new, something her world didn't even have a word for. He was an engineer of souls.
Not knowing what else to do, and feeling her legs a bit weak, she sat down on the dirt ground near him. The chasm between the noble lady and the servant had vanished. Now there were just two people sitting in the darkness: the asset and her incredibly strange asset manager. Partners.
Kenji finished sharpening his tool, testing the edge with his thumb with purely functional satisfaction. He remained silent, but his mind was already on the next step, the next phase of the project. He looked over Xiao Yue's shoulder, toward the distant, arrogant lights of the main clan palace, where her siblings and the elders celebrated their own strength, ignorant of the seismic shift occurring in a forgotten pavilion.
This method works on one person, he thought, as cold, calculating logic drew up a bold new business plan in his mind. The next step is to determine the system's scalability.