The two of them strolled back to West Star Village with their arms slung over each other's shoulders. Wei Zhao asked, curious, "Ergoudan, I've noticed your skills have come along lately. You're a fair bit sharper than you used to be. Who taught you?"

It was no empty flattery. Ergoudan had never been a proper cultivator, but anyone watching him trade blows with Sun Baixu just now could tell he wasn't simply swinging brute force around. Every punch carried a kind of great skill disguised as clumsiness, and what was rarer still, he wasn't bound by any fixed stance or form—it all came straight from the heart.

To put it precisely, what Ergoudan threw wasn't fist techniques but fist intent—the intent of overwhelming all technique with sheer force.

"Your granddad," Ergoudan said, scratching his head with a sheepish grin.

"Really? The old man has that much leisure on his hands?" Wei Zhao blinked at that.

From what he remembered, Old Man Wei rarely took the initiative to teach anyone anything, and with material like Ergoudan—who by any measure didn't look like promising apprentice stock—the old man would be even less inclined to waste his breath on a stone. And there was a deeper consideration besides: for Ergoudan, living out his years peacefully in these mountains was the greatest blessing he could ask for. Old Man Wei had no wish to abruptly bend the course of his life. Ordinariness is a blessing.

"He didn't want to teach me at first, either. But these past few years my strength's been growing for some reason, like I can't hardly hold it in, and I keep breaking things without meaning to. Your granddad couldn't stand watching it anymore, so he taught me a way to control my force." Ergoudan chuckled.

"What way?" Wei Zhao couldn't help asking.

"Punching. A thousand punches a day," Ergoudan said.

"What kind of boneheaded method is that? There's no skill in it at all. The old man's just fobbing you off, isn't he?" Wei Zhao was rather speechless. If you're not going to teach, then don't teach—but if you do, teach properly. What Old Man Wei had done was no better than working a poor fool to the bone...

"But it works real well. At first he had me punch a rock every day. Told me to go all out but only crack it a little. But I kept smashing the thing to bits by accident. Took me a whole year of that before I could just about manage it," Ergoudan explained.

"And after that?" Wei Zhao nodded. That actually sounded a little interesting.

"After that he switched me to trees. Same thing—only allowed to crack it a little. That took me another year," Ergoudan said honestly.

"And after that?" Wei Zhao pressed on, his interest growing.

"After that it was water. Go all out, but don't raise a splash, and don't even make a ripple. That one I still can't do, even now." Ergoudan scratched his head.

Wei Zhao was stunned by the end of it. He patted Ergoudan's shoulder, dazed, and said, "If you could pull that off, you'd be an unrivaled grandmaster of the fist. It's only now I've realized—you're actually a genius!"

The method Old Man Wei had taught Ergoudan looked like a brush-off, but its purpose ran deep. From stone to tree to water, each switch meant Ergoudan's grasp and understanding of force had risen another level. A full-power strike that raised neither splash nor ripple from water—even the present Wei Zhao couldn't manage that!

If Ergoudan could achieve it, that would mean his mastery over fist force had reached a level never before seen. To call him a grandmaster of the fist would be no exaggeration at all.

From childhood on, Wei Zhao had never thought Ergoudan especially gifted. In both comprehension and potential, Ergoudan ranked below average even among ordinary folk. And yet who'd have thought training his fists would produce results like this? It truly made one sit up and take notice.

Still, when you came down to it, Old Man Wei's method could only work such wonders on someone as utterly simple as Ergoudan. Take Wei Zhao instead—setting aside whether he could stick to a thousand punches a day, earnestly and every day, the tangled thoughts churning in his head alone would have doomed him from the start to never throwing his whole heart into feeling out and mastering his own fist force.

Wei Zhao was sharp, but set him to the kind of dull, extreme training Ergoudan had done, and honestly he might not manage it. After all, this wasn't a matter of using your head—it was using your body to feel out and command everything. Being too clever was no advantage here; it was a handicap.

"Genius? Me? I'm awful dumb. Your granddad says he got through all that easy in three months. I've been at it three or four years and I'm still nowhere near." Ergoudan looked thoroughly ashamed of himself.

"Don't listen to him brag." Wei Zhao didn't believe a word of it. As far as he was concerned, getting as far as Ergoudan had was already remarkable. Old Man Wei doing it in three months? He must have been deep in his cups...

"Say, Brother Wei Zhao, what brings you back this time? Weren't you off to some Cloud Terrace Island? Is Cloud Terrace Island fun? Is it abroad?" Ergoudan peppered him with questions, eager to change the subject.

"Easy, easy, I'll tell you slowly. Cloud Terrace Island isn't abroad—it's a cultivator realm cut off from our world. The cultivators there are all very strong..." Wei Zhao patiently started from the beginning, telling Ergoudan one tale after another, secret or not. Toward this brother of his boyhood, Wei Zhao had never kept the slightest thing hidden.

They walked all the way back to West Star Village, and Wei Zhao still hadn't finished the business of North Island. He regretted it at once—seemed he'd gone into a bit too much detail, hadn't he? At this rate, finishing the whole account would take until the cows came home.

But on second thought, the Ancient Alliance matter was settled now, and he truly had nothing pressing for the time being. He'd meant to use this chance to stay a few more days in West Star Village anyway. Idle was idle—might as well treat it as storytelling for Ergoudan.

For the next three days straight Wei Zhao hung about with Ergoudan—though meals were still taken with Old Man Wei and Aunt Qing. Wei Zhao tried every trick he could think of, and in the end never got the slightest advantage over Old Man Wei. He couldn't help sighing that the old man's skill at snatching food off a plate truly did pierce the heavens!

The only real gain, in the end, was that after three days and nights Wei Zhao had finally given a rough account of his time on Cloud Terrace Island—and even then Ergoudan was left wanting more, wearing an impassioned look that said he'd gladly risk his life to go along. He had always yearned for the world outside; only the gu poison kept him from straying far from West Star Village, and places like Cloud Terrace Island were something he could only dream about.

Three days later, Wei Zhao meant to leave West Star Village. He had plenty else to do, after all; squeezing out three days to come back and see Old Man Wei and Ergoudan was already a luxury. What gratified him most was that at the final farewell meal, he at last didn't have to fight Old Man Wei for his food—because he ate at Ergoudan's house. (To be continued~^~)