"One!" one of the disciples shouted, pressing the attack against the training pillar with their hand.
"Two!" someone else sang to the same tune, doing the same but with his left hand.
"Four!" yet another disciple trained at his own pace, striking the pillar with his left foot.
'Look at them go,' Mia thought with a small smile, observing how the normie disciples trained.
Not a single one of them had any chance of participating in the intersect tournament. Outside of Mia's team, hardly any disciple managed to reach the fifth stage, not to speak about the sixth one, which was basically a requirement for the sect to consider one's participation.
But that didn't stop any of them.
Intersect tournament or not, they were all eager to squeeze this opportunity to grow to its limits.
'If only I didn't have so much on my mind,' Mia thought, her mood souring by the second.
Even though the meeting that put so much on her mind concluded two days ago already, she still has yet to reach any decision regarding the things she heard back then.
"For now, we need you to keep your training regime," Andrea stated once Mia finally learned all there was to learn about the situation. "Judging by your aura, you are on the verge of breaking through to the Qi Tempering state, aren't you?"
"That's right," Mia nodded her head.
'They are strong enough to see right through it,' she thought, not seeing any point in hiding her own cultivation state.
In the end, whether she was on the fifth or eighth stage, she would still be nothing more but a worm in their eyes.
"Don't try to break through," Andrea advised. "Even though its going to help out only a little, we still need you to participate in the tournament," she added.
"Huh?" Mia shrugged, surprised by the sudden announcement. "What does the intersect tournament matter now?" she asked, puzzled by Andrea's wish. "It's not like winning or losing it will change anything, not after everything that you said!"
"Listen," Ackhart shook his head, "Sangakarts have yet to take full control of the sect. From what I found, they took over the middle management stages. The top and bottom ranks still are fully in Tuxi sect control," he explained.
"And what does this have to do with anything?" Mia asked again, her eyelids lowering over her eyes as a suspicion grew in her soul.
"If you make a massive fuss at the tournament, directly or not, the supreme elders of the sect will have to look into it," Andrea explained her plan.
"Still, whether I can win this tournament doesn't matter if I won't get chosen to participate in it in the first place," Mia countered. "And now that Arganar is gone..." she added, only to cut her sentence in half.
The implication hidden behind her words was obvious.
Without Arganar's support, Mia lost most of her backing necessary to coax the sect into putting her on the pedestal of the tournament participants!
"I said before that the Tuxi sect isn't our playground to mess with," Andrea brought back her earlier statement. "But that doesn't mean we don't have any influence over it," she added, a small, prideful smile appearing on her lips.
'They really gave me a lot to think about,' Mia thought, shaking her head and returning to the reality from the depths of her memories. She then shook her head again to fully detach herself from her former line of thought.
'Should I follow their advice?' Mia asked herself, forcing her eyes to scan the area around her in an attempt to further detach herself from her memories.
The sight of all the disciples diligently training with everything they had only made it harder for Mia to decide.
"FUCK YEAH!"
A sudden shout alerted Mia, finally forcing herself to move her attention back to reality.
She turned her eyes over towards the source of the shout, only to see Sander jumping in joy.
"You did it!" Veila shouted, her face melting in smiles. "You really did it!"
As the only person to reach the sixth stage of cultivation outside of Mia, Veila turned out to be the greatest supporter for the rest of their team.
Despite starting from the lowest point and struggling to cultivate at the same pace as the others, she somehow turned out to have the greatest talent towards absorbing vast amounts of spiritual energy.
Because of her past, filled with the struggle to grow, even when she became the second strongest person cultivation-wise in their group, Veila didn't turn conceited or arrogant. Rather than that, she opted to be as supportive to others as she possibly could.
'I wonder if she can be like that because we found a new enemy to motivate ourselves,' Mia thought, a small smile returning on her lips.
Now that the struggle against their fate of normie disciples stopped being the focal point of all normie's life, some of the disciples lost their motivation to try hard.
The people present in the training ground belonged to the group that refused to cut themselves some slack... but their numbers clearly decreased.
'Those that decided to take it easy are the people that shouldn't be allowed in this place anymore,' Mia thought, her face darkening a little.
Yet, before her mood could sour completely, Mia shook her head and ditched those gate-keeping thoughts.
'Either way, if I want to be worthy of Arthur's attention, I need to keep doing all I can myself,' Mia finally came to a decision, turning her eyes away from her celebrating teammates.
As happy as she was for Sander, she wasn't going to waste any more time than she already did.
Yet, instead of entering one of the spots within the formation, Mia moved towards one of the deserted spots where the formation of the training ground didn't reach.
And just like the disciples that she kept watch before, she started to execute the four-stroke sequence of Arthur. Yet, rather than trying her best to strike the air as hard as she could, Mia's moves turned to be extremely slow.
'Rather than improving my strength, I need to boost my precision,' she thought, moving her arms at a snail's pace.
While executing kicks, and especially the footing change happening between the third and fourth attack, turned out to be nearly impossible, Mia didn't give up.
Normally, after executing the first kick of the sequence, Mia would give up on her footing completely for a split of a second so that the entire sequence would flow better.
Yet, now that she kept her speed to its absolute minimum, she realized just how massive this mistake was.
'If someone were to strike me when I lack footing, the entire sequence would turn against me,' she realized, forcing her left foot to remain on the ground all the way to the point when her right leg would return to the ground.
'Shit,' Mia thought, a frown appearing on her face. 'It's pretty tough to change my habits,' she thought when her body attempted to keep up with the old habits she already ingrained into her flesh.
As Mia continued to fix the flaw she noticed in her execution of the sequence, disciples started to gather around her.
At first, people only watched her train, clearly curious why the fastest of them all suddenly started to move as slowly as possible. Yet, before long, rather than just watching, people started to mimic her moves, clearly inspired by the sudden change to her training regime.
'Woops,' Mia thought when her spiritual energy, prompted by the moves she would execute whenever absorbing the energy from the formation, attempted to push through her current limits.
'I can't let that happen,' Mia thought, forcibly putting the flow of her energy to a halt, only allowing it to flow along with her moves. Compared to how she would normally use the momentum of her flesh to increase the pace of her spiritual energy, this new form of training turned out to be way more challenging.
'To think that I was making so many mistakes at once,' Mia thought once she realized this pivotal point. 'Rather than training how to strike harder and more precisely, I only trained in a way that supported my growth,' she realized, bitting down on her lips to punish herself for those stupid mistakes.
'No matter what, I still need to get stronger,' Mia thought when her body protested against this unfamiliar form of training. Yet, instead of stopping, the girl simply gritted her teeth and continued to slowly mend her former mistakes.
And then, right when her left hand struck the air, Mia suddenly froze.
'I guess I already made my decision,' she thought, pulling her hand back. She then looked around, only to finally notice a crowd of people repeating her training sequence all over the place.
She shook her head and smiled.
'If I can draw Sangakarts' attention by making a mess during the intersect tournament, then that's exactly what I'm ought to do!'
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