Feng Shen started reading, and soon enough, Liya could almost see a question form in his mind: how different was Guardian biology from everything he was reading? Understanding it would be essential.

Yet, he never asked it.

She bet it wasn't out of obedience—she hadn't let him ask any further questions—but wisdom. He wondered whether it was something she would tell him anyway and didn't want to play into her hand again. It irked him to be on the same page as his tormentor and all but admit it out loud by speaking his mind.

So he read quietly. Liya saw the ripples in his soul and the itches on his body as he fought himself to not open his mouth. The question ate at him. It was a form of torture that strengthened his willpower even more than the methods she used.

Feng Shen read the seven hundred and thirty-six books in a couple of days. He could read and even think much faster than that, but his learning ability was still limited. He had to comprehend the content he was absorbing, not just run his eyes over the words.

Liya read with him, using her domain. She hadn't checked the books' contents, only taken them from a library. Knowing what he knew would help with the next step.

"So," she said after he closed the last book. "Enlightened yet?"

"Yes," he grunted the answer.

"Good. Unfortunately, your stupidity knows no bounds. I was expecting you to ask how Guardians differ from what you're reading. Yet here you are, with close access to a veritable well of knowledge, me, and too dumb to ask the right questions."

His right eye merely twisted slightly in anger.

He really did learn self-control much earlier than expected. It was fortunate, really. Reaching this point early would let her push him even further, helping him also hide his emotions better.

Not that he would enjoy the process.

"I don't have books on the topic," she informed. "But I allow you to buy the Multiverse Alliance's Official Primer on Drow Biology and Guardian System Enhancement. Your race only reached D-rank until now, so the knowledge would be limited in a primer on human biology. The drow are similar enough for your purposes." After reading the books he had read, she was confident that was the case.

"How much for a Multiverse Alliance's Official Primer on Drow Biology and Guardian System Enhancement?" he asked instead of straight buying it.

After being so wasteful with his AP by buying clothes, she approved of his caution. Although she hadn't expected his distrust of her to produce this side effect, it was welcomed.

His eyes widened a moment later.

Liya smiled knowingly. Feng Shen hated her smiles, especially when it was at his expense, so she forced herself to so her teeth more than she was comfortable with.

"Ah, yes," she said. "Many humans hide from others that official primers are only 100 AP. So much knowledge, and thus power, readily available at one's fingertips, and some people from your egoistical race deem it better to hoard it for themselves. Who could see that coming?" She paused. "Then again, it's not their fault that everyone else is too stupid to use the system to buy knowledge."

Of course, she didn't tell him the tutorials were carefully crafted to induce that error. In there, knowledge there was expensive when available and often beyond one's means unless given by the Alliance at their own pace. The Pioneer Tutorial was even worse, as it greatly rewarded personal growth that mainly came from relying only on oneself.

Moreover, the Guardian Store didn't even quote prices unless you asked for "official Multiverse Alliance" information about something or used the word "primer"—or whatever was the direct human translation. If you asked just for "a book," "knowledge," or "information" on a topic, the system said it had none available. That was only technically legal due to a wordplay on a language spoken by one of the original Alliance races.

The tutorial setup and the Guardian Store trick were like that exclusively to make it harder on new races. The Alliance had started with good intentions, and it was too old and big to change in a day. However, anyone with eyes could see that it was slowly turning less welcoming to new races, no matter how much the conservative groups wanted to preserve the Alliance's foundational tenets.

"What are you waiting for?" She asked. "Buy it."

Feng Shen obeyed. No book materialized because the primer's content was on a system window. Liya expected him to start reading immediately, as curious as he was, but he asked a question instead.

"Can I buy a smartphone to record this information and tell everyone about it?"

Feng Shen had freely shared information in the tutorial, so while the request's timing was surprising, the content wasn't. After her training, he was recalling what being human meant to him.

She disapproved of his arrogance, but she had to admit he had never shown himself to be egotistical, at least. He refused to freely share his clan's techniques, but that was common in any organization—wise even.

Liya was proud of her face for developing a training method that proved its effectiveness time and time again. Feng Shen was already reaping the benefits of her labor in more ways than one.

So she smiled boastfully and replied, "No."

His eye twitched in anger.

Good.

"Does the Alliance have a primer on energy, too?" Feng Shen asked after he finished reading.

"You're really talkative all of a sudden, aren't you?" Liya mocked. "This is the last question I'll answer for a while. You're taking too much advantage of my boundless generosity."

He growled. It was sweet. She laughed—and he got angrier.

"There are primers on almost anything you can think of," she replied. "Seeling research to the Alliance gives AP, too; the more novel the idea, the better. Energy, spears, water, wind, lightning... All Laws in your Path have been studied. By the way, I'm in awe of how stupid you are to mix so many Laws together."

It wasn't hard to guess someone's Path's Laws. Liya was confident she even had pinned down most of his Concepts.

His core Concepts were Sharpness, War, and some personal battle-oriented Concepts from the Laws of Spear.

His support Concepts were Flow from Water; some kind of breeze from Wind, a Concept from Lightning that stupidly had more to do with explosion and light than speed, as most people took from the Law; and a formless seventh Concept that she couldn't quite put her fingers at.

It almost felt like the seventh Concept came from the Spear. However, a Law's Concepts couldn't be both core and supportive. Well, theoretically? Yes. In practice? It was almost impossible and way, way too dumb to do.

She really hoped he hadn't been that crazy, not on top of mixing so many Concepts and Laws together.

Feng Shen was surprised that she enumerated his Path's Laws, and she smiled again.

"Everything has been researched," she continued. "Of course, the best stuff isn't sold to the Alliance, but at your level, what they have is more than enough.

"Don't get too excited. Primers are almost always a waste of time and AP at best. At worst, they can taint your understanding of something with someone else's perspective and forever hinder your growth. Think twice before consuming theoretical knowledge created by someone else, especially once mastered Concepts or Laws are added to the mix. Your Path is only yours to walk. My training methods are obviously much better and... untainted."

She emphasized the last word to provoke him into thinking they might be tainted instead, but he focused on what she had started with.

"You can tell the Laws my Concepts are based at?" Feng Shen asked.

"I said no more questions," she rebutted.

"I want to buy the primer on energy," he insisted.

She showed displeasure on her face. "No."

"At least let me read human books on physics!" he pleaded.

She answered by slapping him with her domain. Painfully so. "You seem to have forgotten your place. Let's spar. No qi or weapon."

They would spar for the first time after he concluded the second phase anyway. Using it as punishment, however, was perfect.

Feng Shen just made it so easy to make him hate her!

Liya was almost enjoying teaching him.

Everything was energy. Shen was astonished by how such a simple truth could come with so many creative applications and reveal so much power.

Looking at the drow now, he saw many of the things she had mentioned: body, soul, vibrations, mana, qi, mind, Path, and domain. Well, he didn't see it exactly, but he considered everything she was and how to better take advantage of what she had taught him—including defending against all that.

If everything was energy, it was only natural that converting one into the other was possible. Therefore, one facet of energy could easily be used to exploit another as long as one knew how.

As Shen contemplated how to attack and defend against her, he first heeded her body.

It was superior to his in every way. Despite her limiting her strength and agility to D-tier, her resistance was still beyond his means of breaching. So, he would primarily defend on that front.

Then came her soul.

He didn't know how strong it was, but she was C-rank. His soul grew more powerful when he ranked up, so hers would be stronger than his too. Moreover, his soul was injured. He had to be extra careful to protect himself.

At first, it looked like another dead-end attack-wise. However, she had taught a few moves that affected one's soul and, by extension, mind.

Shen was no stranger to his mind being both on his brain and soul, but the elf had said that from C-rank onwards, the mind existed exclusively in the soul. The brain became but a natural mind-body interface that could be bypassed with mana, aura, or a domain.

He didn't care if his attacks against her soul ended up not working; he wanted to try them anyway. It was a novel concept to him, and just seeing them fail might give him some insights. So he would explore that avenue of attack.

The drow was also vibration.

Unfortunately, the basic moves she had taught him were only there to deal with incorporeal beings. A Guardian's physical body's atoms and cells vibrated, too, though she hadn't gotten into the specifics, and he had found nothing about it in the biology books. Disrupting those vibrations was only so useful, so he wasn't overly worried about her using it against him.

On the other hand, he would use it against her. He also wanted to experience it first-hand, even if it failed.

Then came the mana she was made of.

The principle that everything was energy was cool and all, but he had still been surprised to learn ways to negate mana without using mana or qi. It mainly involved vibration, but there was also a way of pushing his soul out of his body to take advantage of his innate soul defense and True Path. Doing so was painful, and the range was limited to half an inch, but the elf had said it wouldn't further hurt his soul.

She had also claimed that the higher a being's rank, the more condensed the mana they were made of. Therefore, the attack's vibration—which was limited by the agility stat and thus rank—made a lot of difference.

Mana disruption was the thing Shen was most curious about, though. He wanted to experience dispersing mana, especially C-rank mana. He would give everything he had on that front.

He would also be extra ready to defend against magic attacks. Just because she had said he couldn't use qi, it didn't mean she wouldn't use her mana.

Moving forth on the energies Liya was made of, she had no qi in her body, or so she had claimed.

According to her, D-ranks and lower would have some qi because it was the base metaphysical energy that everything was made of. The only exceptions would be those who purposefully purged it from their bodies before C-rank.

From C-rank onwards, the system replaced qi with mana in one's entire constitution: body, soul, and mind. He had thought it would give cultivators an advantage in the front lines, but she had disabused him of that notion. Proximity to the Void might cut one's access to the system and thus to mana, but it also twisted the environment to make absorbing qi impossible.

Even then, Shen still found it absurd to swap readily available energy, qi, with something controlled by the Alliance. The drow had said they would touch the subject later in his training.

Anyway, even if the elf had had qi, he wouldn't have been able to do anything against it. She had surprisingly admitted that her race had limited experience against cultivators. The unarmed combat style contained only three defensive moves to disrupt qi outside one's body.

Shen considered her mind next.

He didn't even contemplate outmatching her on that field. He had learned his inferiority against the Embryo, and just the sheer amount of knowledge a C-rank had to hold to touch on a Law was proof of their willpower. That was likely part of the reason the Embryo had been so resolute, too, he realized.

He would still use moves to affect her mind to see what happened and be ready to defend against it.

Then came her Path.

The drow's Path was all Laws, while his was Concepts. She had taught him a few moves to infect one's Path with foreign energy. That would kind of short-circuit one's mind, but it was useless against True Path Walkers for now. Only after he reached B-rank and could ignore any innate defense would that be useful against her.

Yet, as useless as that was for now, he had also learned how to defend against such an insidious attack, which was great and might be helpful in his spar.

The elf wasn't B-rank yet, but she was a genius that might have other means of bypassing his True Path.

Lastly, the drow was also her domain.

Shen had no idea what a domain was beyond what he had accomplished: a way of using his feelings and ideals to fuel his Path and convictions beyond what should be possible. That told him nothing about how to fight against other domains, and the unarmed combat style didn't touch on it either.

"If a domain holder wants to kill you, you'll die," she had said. "Kneel and beg for your life, and you might survive."

That part had sounded suspiciously as if she was hiding something—as many parts of her training. Shen noticed some parts of the unarmed fighting style where it felt like things had been purposefully left out.

That would make sense if she was using a rigorous methodology that left those teachings for later. Shen didn't believe it, though.

The drow had killed Marzia for no reason, for a comment. He doubted she would be beyond killing him even if she had claimed she was supposed to train him according to Alliance law. Alliance law also supposedly prevented her from interfering with humans, didn't it?

Of course, he was getting stronger, but she had some nefarious end goal. That also fitted with withholding crucial things from him and made more sense.

She wanted him to grow more powerful but not enough to become a threat.

Feng Shen dreaded the day he would be forced to escape.

The only hope he had against her domain was, ironically, the gaps she left in his knowledge. If she wasn't telling him how to deal with it, there was a way. He would find it, somehow.

Until then, he would grow as powerful as he could.

Shen's fist vibrated at ridiculously high speeds as he punched her. His mastered Path was needed to control his own cells to not get damaged by the same vibrations.

He was sure he had moved perfectly.

"Atrocious," the drow stated. She dodged his attack and punched him in the guts. "I won't let you land a strike until you attack like a human, you pathetic hybrid bastard."

Shen bit down the pain and anger and tried again.