Nearly a week had gone by, in this time, Lute had learned many things from Seren. All of which he had spent many hours pondering over. To Lute there was no such thing as useless knowledge so he listened intently. But never would he expect that Seren would use the opportunity to get a favor from him because she had shared knowledge.

It was about two days before they reached Fallen Tide City, and Lute was sitting, cultivating and contemplating all that he’d learned when Seren approached him.

Seren had increased her training load, effort, and cultivation time the moment that they left the mountains. All of this was because she hated being inferior to Lute, especially because he was below her in cultivation.

Her craziness paid off; from the extreme torture she put herself through –Which looked like a child playing to Lute- had allowed her to break through to the second level of the Nascent Qi Realm. But her actual strength was now that of someone at the early stages of the third level. Upon this breakthrough she felt much more confident, and what better way was there to test her strength than against Lute.

Seren approached Lute, her intent unmistakable as the atmosphere changed between the two from the content silence of cultivation to Seren releasing her aura.

“I have shared knowledge with you and made you understand the powers of this world. I think the least you can do is spar with me.” Seren said as her confidence was spilling out; she felt like Lute wouldn’t be that hard to fight anymore.

Lute narrowly opened his right eye and stared at Seren, he didn’t feel any happiness for Seren breaking through as he wasn’t her friend, and at the most they were acquaintances.

From a quick glance it was easy to tell she wanted to fight him right away, and she had high confidence about winning. But Lute could easily see the difference. Lute’s absolute limit without opening the First Path of New Beginnings was the Nascent Qi Fourth Level, as long as it was a human he was fighting. If it was a Vicious Beast then his limit was the Nascent Third level, equivalent to a Rank Two.

But apparently Seren thought she could now win against him. However a quick glance at her and he could see that her Qi was unstable, apparently cultivators didn’t think they needed to stabilize after a breakthrough in the Mortal Realm. Even Lute needed to spend time doing this, albeit he could do it much faster than almost anyone else.

‘Perhaps I should take this moment to repay the favor of all the knowledge and show her the error in her cultivation.’

With such a thought, Lute stood up and stretched, maybe sparring with Seren would alieve the boredom he now felt every day. He had grown used to Vicious Beasts challenging him; they were the equivalent of exercise for Lute, but on a much deadlier level.

“All right, I’ll partake in this so called sparring.” Lute said in a somewhat bored manner.

He stood in the exact spot that he was sitting a moment ago. Not moving an inch or bothering to take a stance. Lute was the complete opposite of how he normally was. As he didn’t intend to kill Seren, he had to subdue his violent thoughts and Slaughter Aura.

Seren on the other hand did take a stance a few meters away, clearly intending to put her all into this sparring session. It was a good chance to test her strength as she wasn’t close to anyone in the Fallen Tide Hall, resulting in her being unsure of her limits.

Seren revolved her Qi and waited for Lute to take his stance… until she realized he wasn’t going to.

“Are you shaming me by not taking this seriously? You’ll regret performing such a rude action.” Seren said, her tone rising in annoyance. To her it was extremely disrespectful that Lute said he’d spar and then didn’t intend to take it seriously.

Lute stood there as an immovable sentinel, he didn’t really care what Seren thought. He was going to teach her the error in her ways. Had Seren actually stabilized her Qi and adjusted to her new strength threshold. Lute would have to take this seriously, but right now, he could easily tell her Qi was in a chaotic state, and because of this she would have problems executing Arts and Techniques, leaving many loopholes for him to take advantage from.

Because of this, Lute felt that he would feel rather bored; he had to seal himself away from the thought of using his full power unless he killed Seren in a state of battle frenzy.

With a remarkably bored and overall disdaining look, Lute lazily replied to Seren, “Let’s get this over with; I want to get in at least five more hours of cultivation before we start travelling again.”

A quick flash of murderous intent made itself apparent before Seren suppressed it.

‘You’ll regret acting so disrespectful; I’ve caught up to you.’

The wind began to blow fiercely, the moment a leaf flew in front of Lute’s eyes and blocking his vision, Seren charged in. She didn’t use Qi because Lute wasn’t using any. It was only fair, she thought, but that only put her at an insane disadvantage.

With a roundhouse kick aimed directly at Lutes head, Seren unconsciously lowered the strength behind it as Lute’s eyes were half closed; he appeared to be in a dazed state.

The power of that kick, even if it wasn’t aided by Qi was still from a Nascent Qi cultivator, and Lute hadn’t evaded or bothered to defend, and yet… nothing happened. Seren’s attack was successful. It connected with Lute’s neck.

But rather than Lute crying in pain or falling unconscious, his eyes slowly awakened from their half dazed state.

Once again, in a lazy manner, he began to speak. “Is that all you’ve got? Aren’t you from a noble family? I thought nobles had especially powerful martial arts, arts, and techniques.”

Lute was indeed bored, Seren wasn’t trying hard enough where he had to put in any effort and he couldn’t fight with the intent to kill. This wasn’t really something he enjoyed, not even enough to be considered loosening the muscles.

Putting the palm of his hand on Seren’s foot that was still planted on his neck, Lute put some force behind it and shoved Seren away. The force behind that simple shove sent her spinning off to the right. She almost fell to the ground under the force behind that one palm.

Seren was slightly dumbstruck, not only had she felt pain when she kicked Lute in the neck, he felt nothing and simply pushed her away with a palm. Yet within that simple palm was a great physical strength of which she couldn’t grasp. How had Lute gained such physical prowess?

‘I don’t understand I know he has a strong body but he should still be forced to defend, and yet he isn’t… if that’s the case, then I’m sorry for being impolite, but you forced me to do so.’

Regaining her positioning, Seren revolved her Qi at full strength. To her it seemed a little slow, but there wasn’t a problem. But to Lute, her entire stance and form were now in disarray, Seren seemed out of sync with herself because of the unstable form the Qi was in.

“You shall now witness the arts that my family has culminated and built up over many decades, please bear witness to the strength that is the Sweeping Gale Style.” Said Seren with a hint of pride, for that was all she held to her families self-created art.

It allowed the user to become in tune with the wind allowing strikes to become unpredictable and violent as a true gale of wind was.

‘Hmmm, is she going to use a technique of this Art? With her Qi in such disarray, the strength behind those attacks will be less than half, how does she not realize this?’

Lute was actually beginning to become quite confused. Seren was acting very similar to how Glen was. She was only exhibiting slightly less than half of the power she should be able to manifest. Why did people not feel the need to stabilize themselves every time they broke through a bottleneck? What was the rush?

Isla, who had woken up from a slumber and was silently observing had realized the problem after the very first attack of Seren which didn’t even have Qi, Lute could actually hear her mumbling in disgust within his mind.

“Trash, they are all trash who blasphemies what cultivation truly is how can they not literally feel their body in disarray right now?”

Seren once again charged forward, this time she chained many attacks together. Punches, kicks, jabs, all of them were straightforward. But under the Sweeping Gales effect, sometimes the trajectory of Seren’s attacks would change mid-strike and explode with power every time they connected.

While Lute was proud of his tempered body, he would still take damage from Seren if he was careless, as no matter how impure her Qi was that this world produced or how unstable her body was at the moment, she was still above Lute in cultivation and hence had the ability to injure him. But as Seren was now, he didn’t need to utilize everything at his disposal.

“Weak” muttered Lute out of boredom.

He covered only his palms with Qi and finally he used only the defensive stances of the Thousand Ways Scripture. After blocking merely a few strikes, the Thousand Ways Scripture allowed Lute to keep the built up momentum, allowing his body to flow between defensive stances without pause.

Every single attack of Seren, no matter where it came from or how much power was behind it, Lute blocked casually with his palms. This exchange occurred for more than ten minutes until Seren finally began to give in.

Her entire body was covered in sweat, her entire body ached. Every time she hit one of Lutes’ palms, it was like hitting the hardest metal, she actually was injured instead. Bruises covered her fists. Throughout this entire time, she was expending massive amounts of Qi, even overdrawing her strength causing an extreme depletion of mental and physical stamina, and yet she hadn’t done any damage to Lute, he didn’t have the slightest shred of sweat and still looked bored.

Even worse, he used the bare minimum amount of Qi to block her attacks. This was an utter disgrace.

Seren then sunk to the ground in utter shock as she realized something utterly horrifying. As she looked around the area, it was in shambles, all of this was caused by her attacks and none from Lute. And at the center of all this was a mound of unbroken ground which Lute was standing on. He hadn’t taken a single step for the entire duration of this so-called sparring session!

“Hehe serves the stupid bitch right, thinking that she could do anything to you with Qi in such a chaotic state as hers.” Isla said in utter contempt within Lute’s mind. She found the look of terror on Seren’s face quite satisfying.

Lute stood there, staring at Seren with no sympathy whatsoever, he had used maybe ten percent of his total Qi at the most. The rest of this fight he’d absorbed her attacks with most of his body and used that small amount of Qi as a cushion to absorb the attacks into his body with as little harm as possible. Any damage he would’ve sustained was almost nonexistent.

Lute then sat down again, once again starting to cultivate, the sparring session had failed to erase his boredom, but he did not start cultivating before he left Seren with words to contemplate over.

“Had you stabilized your Qi instead of challenging me the moment you broke through, I would’ve had to fight you seriously and you would’ve been releasing your strength at double the power you just did. Why rush cultivation, there is no reason to.”

Seren sat in a dazed state. The wind kept blowing; the ground beneath her was broken and falling apart from all her attacks earlier. And before her Lute sat on a mound cultivating in the center of all these ruins that was made from the sparring session, he didn’t even care.

All that she could do to cope at the moment was focus on Lute’s words instead of the utterly miserable defeat that she suffered under the hands of Lute not even putting much effort. He didn’t even retaliate and still won.

‘Stabilize Qi, why wouldn’t it be stable? Is that a secret to his strength?’

Seren then decided to carefully sit and observe Lute who was lost in cultivation, not a thought was apparent in his mind. From what she could see, the Qi of Lute compared to her own was significantly different. Only after comparing differences for hours did she finally understand what Lute meant by stabilization.

Her Qi was moving erratically through her body, it was in an agitated state, and it looked as well as felt like a wall that had holes in it. Compared to Lute her stabilization was horrendous. From her observation, Lutes’ Qi was incredibly stable, it moved at a steady rate without the slightest hint of disarray, even more so it was incomparably solid when she compared it to her own Qi. There were no holes or weaknesses in it.

‘So that’s why he was able to use such little strength. With all the weaknesses I exposed, he naturally took advantage of it. He is correct; if I can rectify my weaknesses then he would need to fight me seriously.’

Seren earnestly sat down to cultivate, with this new enlightenment, she felt that the gap between her and Lute had closed a bit. When she stabilized herself in the second level of the Nascent Qi Realm that was when she would challenge Lute next, and force him to take her seriously.