NOVEL NEXT Chapter 76 - Tea Art
At the end of the century, the Mai Dongzi from…
Mai Dongzi looked puzzled. Who was that?
After Mai Dongzi exposed her extensive research into ancient culture during a live broadcast, she avoided looking into the history from a thousand years ago to prevent inadvertently revealing her true origins.
Lucy’s understanding of history a thousand years ago was limited to major events. The end of the century refers to the history before humanity abandoned the Water Blue Star, after which it was known as the Star Era.
It is now the year 2203 of the Star Era.
And the Mai Dongzi from the end of the century… made Mai Dongzi doubt if it referred to her, her previous self.
“Do you have a private master? Did he teach you how to cultivate?” General Su asked again.
This question is difficult to answer; neither a yes nor a no is ideal.
If she said yes, where could she find such a person? If she said no, it would be hard to explain how she practiced cultivation as a child without a guide, and why no one could see through her true abilities.
Therefore, Mai Dongzi had already considered how to guide others to think in a certain way before returning to the Xi family, and also how to respond if someone asked about it.
The plan was to avoid answering the question directly, using an expression of difficulty that implied she couldn’t say or wasn’t allowed to say, allowing others to speculate on their own.
However, she didn’t expect that General Su would be the first person she would use this indecisive “tea art” expression on.
Fortunately, she remained calm and skillfully employed her “tea art” expression. After all, she hadn’t said anything, so there was nothing to fear.
It was unclear whether General Su believed her “tea art” expression or if she had conveyed that she wasn’t going to probe further.
After staring at her “tea art” expression for a few seconds, General Su asked another question: “If I were to be your teacher, I would be very strict. During training, fractures would be common. Can you handle that?”
After learning about General Su’s achievements from her guard and checking more information about General Su online, combined with the initial intimidation she experienced upon meeting, Mai Dongzi understood that General Su was not making empty threats.
However, for Mai Dongzi, this question was quite easy to answer. She firmly responded that she wasn’t afraid.
General Su’s questions were abrupt, and the conversation ended even more abruptly. Mai Dongzi’s strained explanations seemed to be accepted casually by her, with no intention of probing further.
Afterward, Mai Dongzi was puzzled by the discrepancy between her resume and herself, and suspected that General Su was testing her.
She didn’t quite understand the level of testing from such a high-ranking figure and wasn’t sure what General Su had gleaned from her weak explanations.
However, the outcome of the test was relatively positive. When Mai Dongzi’s abilities recovered to 70%, General Su concluded the conversation and asked her to demonstrate her mental meditation techniques.
Though this touched on personal matters, for a figure of General Su’s stature, guiding her in cultivation techniques indicated a willingness to take her on as a disciple.
Mai Dongzi was unreserved and demonstrated her mental meditation techniques before opening her eyes to look at General Su.
“Your mental meditation techniques are self-discovered,” General Su asked.
Mai Dongzi nodded. This technique took her six months to develop in her past life, and Lucy had never studied any related mental meditation techniques.
Indeed, being a high-ranking figure means noticing the details quickly. After just one demonstration, General Su could tell.
“Being able to develop a set of mental meditation techniques on your own shows you are a genius. This technique is very suitable for you and can help you advance your cultivation quickly,” General Su praised.
However, Mai Dongzi felt that General Su…
“But this set of techniques has its shortcomings. When you were working on improving your mental power, you likely focused solely on rapidly advancing your cultivation, neglecting other aspects,” General Su continued.
Mai Dongzi’s spirits lifted. She respectfully performed a deep bow and said earnestly, “Please guide me, Master.”
“A perfect cultivation technique must balance both rigidity and flexibility, with a main focus and supplementary aspects. Your meditation technique is too rigid and lacks flexibility; it only has the main but not the supplementary aspects. This imbalance will cause some damage to your mental power source each time you advance. The higher your cultivation, the greater the damage. By the time you reach level eight, this damage could affect your foundation, making future advancement difficult, and it might even cause your cultivation to slowly regress due to the damage to your core,” General Su explained.
“Please, Master, give me your guidance,” Mai Dongzi again performed a respectful deep bow.
When Mai Dongzi was developing methods to improve her mental power, she did indeed focus on rapid advancement, partly because she didn’t have much time to deliberate.
In both her past and present lives, she experienced backlash during her promotion to level six, which resulted in damage to her mental power source. However, this damage was not severe and would recover with just a day of rest.
She was certain that her mental meditation technique had issues and intended to correct the backlash it caused. However, up until now, she only knew there was a problem but had no clue about what exactly the problem was or how to fix it.
Unexpectedly, General Su immediately identified the issue and straightforwardly told her without any pretense.
This made Mai Dongzi sincerely acknowledge General Su as her mentor.
“I need to think carefully about how to correct this flaw. Please demonstrate your mental meditation technique to me again,” General Su said.
Mai Dongzi obediently demonstrated her mental meditation technique once more.
After pondering for a while, General Su said, “I have some ideas now. I’ll work on refining them and let you know. Please also demonstrate the physical techniques you practice for me.”
Mai Dongzi obediently demonstrated the integrated physical techniques.
General Su said, “This is an advanced set of techniques, but it seems you’ve incorporated some of your own insights, right?”
Mai Dongzi nodded eagerly.
“Indeed. With your own insights integrated, this set is better suited for your practice. Continue using it in the future. Now, let’s spar so I can see what martial skills you have.”
Afterward, Mai Dongzi deeply experienced how the so-called “female tyrant” General Su managed to subdue those who looked down on women.
Even though she wasn’t beaten to the point of fractures, she was thoroughly dominated. After General Su stopped, Mai Dongzi was sent by General Su’s guard to an advanced treatment chamber, where she lay for two hours before emerging.
It was certainly worth it. Although General Su had thoroughly dominated her, Maimudongzi learned a highly powerful combat technique.
After Mai Dongzi emerged from the treatment chamber, General Su also found a method to correct her mental meditation technique. She passed the method on to Mai Dongzi, instructing her to use it to gradually refine her meditation technique.
Then, General Su left.
For the next few days, Mai Dongzi would need to continue her training independently. Only after she had completed this would General Su teach her new skills.