Faithful Heart (Flesh of my Flesh...Blood of my Blood 2)

Chapter 16

Author's note; This chapter takes some dialogue from TMOPB ep 54.

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His Lordship, Donghua Dijun had few equals and even less competent sparring partners. Zhe Yan, whom he had met when they where both boys with snot coming out of their noses, had been enthusiastic in martial arts but not competent with a sword. Bai Zhi had proven a good sparring partner, but affairs of state had made him soft and lazy in his old age. Mo Yuan had been an excellent training partner, but he gone and gotten himself kill by his own creation, leaving Dijun to his own devices. This had put His Lordship in a conundrum that had been solve by his adoptive mother, who had created several training devices imbued with her magic for him, each device work on a strange clock like mechanism that activated with his own magic with ten levels each of progressively more difficult training programs. After meditation and yoga, Donghua would activate the device and sparred with either a magical beast or warrior.

This morning he was practicing his martial arts, dressed in linen pants and shirt with flexible boots he breathed slowly as ten men circled him and closed his eyes. He broke the neck of the first shadow and the arm of the second, blocking a kick his arms he broke the ribs of his attacker with a powerful kick. Hearing the sound of steel being unsheathed Donghua avoided a knife to the throat and broke the arm of his assailant, taking the knife and driving it through its eye before his legs where swept from underneath him and he fell to the ground before rolling away. That was sloppy of him, opening his eyes he saw that this simulation multiply unless he found the original.

They came at him all at once and Donghua leapt to his feet punching one in the face and throwing it at the rest to slow their progression, he kicked two in the face snapping their necks, blocked the punch from another and swiftly punched it in the back knocking their out it. They where all illusions but there was one with a knife and it came at him with deadly speed, this simulation was not to first blood, but it was designed to beat him until he was unconscious. Blocking the arm with knife, he found the air being knocked out of him by a kick before he took hold of the hair of his attacker and twisted his neck.

The simulation banished in a puff of white mist and Donghua inhale slowly, he was distracted as of late, Feng Jiu's clairvoyant gift warning him of something dire to come. Walking towards the basin laid out for him, Donghua stripped of his clothing, washed off the sweat before drying off and donned a thick white robe. Quing Cang would break out of the seal placed on him any moment and he needed to be calm for the battle ahead, his heart having awakened was not good for his nerves. He found himself emotional, prone to being overly sentimental, he had not won battles by leading with his ridiculous heart, he had won battles by being cold in the heat of life and death moments. Putting his thoughts away, he made his way to his quarter down a secret corridor that connected to the training grounds he had constructed in Tai Chen Palace.

Once in his chambers, Donghua dressed in his usual simple robes that required no servant to help him and heard a chime of magic alerting him to a guest waiting for him in his study. His first day in the Nine Heavens, Lord of Numinous Treasure had come to him with a pile of reports from the Exalted Heavenly Court that settled international disputes in the Four Realms and Six directions, bowing he had congratulated His Lordship on his marriage and then proceeded to report on numerous trade disputes that where near their final ruling. Lian Song had also reported him an amusing story of the Ghost Realm princess and one of Mo Yuan's disciples, Zi Lan, being entangled in a torrid love affair. Third Prince also reported of the successful assassination of the leader of a Demon Realm terrorist group that still claim alliance to Miao Lou and had murder villagers in the lower levels of the Nine Heavens. Entering his study, His Lordship found Hao De standing in the middle of it pacing back and forth.