It's been exactly one hundred seven days since Xiu Xiang had fallen into a spiritual cave. Even without food, she couldn't die since her body was constantly soaking up the dense spiritual energy. Most of the injuries on her skin had healed. She could tell because she felt every single one of the injury repair itself. Even her old scars were healing over.
The issue she was having at the moment was her bones. Every single bone in her body had shattered from the impact but it was slowly bit by bit repairing itself and it hurt like crazy as each tiny piece reattached itself. She would reel from the pain only to faint and end up in her unconscious state.
Eventually, she learned to stay within her unconsciousness mind where the stupid Demon King forced her to do body training every day.
"Come on! It's been over one hundred days and you've only managed to stand up?" the Demon King shot out. He munched on one of the peaches he had pulled off the trees.
"You try standing up with four hundred pounds attached to your body!" she retorted.
He clicked his tongue at her as he got up to his feet. With a snap of his fingers, Xiu Xiang saw golden shackles appear on his wrists and ankles.
"Each shackle weighs five hundred pounds," he told her. He jumped and twirled in the air before landing gracefully behind her.
"Show off," she spat as she watched him stick his landing with his arms stretched out. He grinned and walked back to the spot under the blossom tree.
"Of course, it did take me several hundred years, but we got all the time in the world, don't we?" the Demon King joked as he plopped back down on the ground to eat his peach again.
He was right about that which scared Xiu Xiang. She was deathly scared that she was going to go insane before she escaped this hellhole.
"Alright. Enough resting and start walking," she heard the Demon King say suddenly. Xiu Xiang felt a tug at her wrists and she instantly face planted onto the ground again.
"That hurt!"
Two years had passed since Xiu Xiang started body training. Even with the restraints on her, she could now run, jump, and climb.
Her latest challenge: scaling the tallest mountain.
"You know I really hate you," Xiu Xiang muttered as she struggled to breathe. Her entire body felt like jelly as she made it three-quarters of the way up the mountain. The Demon King was practically floating alongside her.
"My dearest disciple. This is all for your own good," he whined.
At some point in time during the first year of spending her life with the Demon King, she had given up her protest of denying him as her master. She figured that no matter how much she hated him, she had to admit that his training was doing some good. She's never felt this strong before and he was doing way more than her first master ever did.
Her only issue with the bastard was that every single one of training was excessive and to the extreme.
When she first started out, it was merely walking. Then he expected her to run. Then it was swimming. Then lifting boulders.
Each training felt worse than the last.
Sometimes, she wondered if he was merely doing this to pull her leg, but she pulled through with every training and grew stronger with time. Now she's scaling mountains.
Xiu Xiang heaved as she struggled to intake air. She was almost to the top but was rapidly losing her grip on the cliffside that she had been scaling. Her master had promised to take off the shackles on her if she made it to the top.
"Almost there...!" she said through gritted teeth. If she clenched her teeth any harder, she was sure it would break.
Only a hundred more yards.
Fifty more yards.
A few feet.
She could see the top of the mountain!
Xiu Xiang swung her leg over and with a final push, she climbed over and rolled onto her back, huffing and puffing.
"I...made it!" she breathed.
A slow clap could be heard next to her.
"Good job, Xiang Er. As promised, I'll take off the shackles you're wearing," the Demon King said proudly. The once heavyweight that now feels like a mere ten pounds, disappeared instantly. Her body felt light as a feather. Excited to run without the shackles, she got up to her feet and felt weightless as she covered a hundred yards in a matter of seconds.
"Whoa! Master, look at me!" Xiu Xiang cried happily. She whipped around to face her master only to find a frown on his face.
"Hm... you're still much too slow," he said.
Xiu Xiang clicked her tongue in annoyance and then she grinned as an idea flashed into her mind. She suddenly sprang forward in a surprise attack. She could just see the corners of the Demon King's mouth curve upward and then he was gone.
"Wha...?"
"Behind you!"
She didn't even get to turn around when she felt a hand chop over her head. Pain traveled all the way down to her toes as she tumbled to the ground.
"Yep. Much too slow," the Demon King said from behind her.
He was right. Compared to him, she was definitely too slow, and she suddenly had a bad feeling for what's to come next.
"Ahh... my disciple knows me so well," the Demon King chirped and then, Xiu Xiang felt it before she could even see it.
"UGH!"
Shackles twice as heavy as the last appeared on her.
"Mother fu--!"
A few more years flew by.
Xiu Xiang found that two things had changed about her: She was stronger now and her temper had gotten way, WAY shorter.
Back in the real world, when she was younger, Xiu Xiang had lived in a Shaolin temple. She studied under calm and patient masters. She meditated. She was calm. She was forgiving.
Now...
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" screamed Xiu Xiang. She had just mastered her shackles only for the Demon King to switch out her shackles for the golden shackles. Five hundred pounds per shackle.
FIVE HUNDRED.
"Why don't you just kill me and get it over with?!" she snapped.
"Sigh... my foolish disciple. Remember that you can't die. You tried dying over four years ago. Just give it up," her stupid master told her.
Who in Heaven did she end up offending that she was forced into a life of constant suffering?
As the Demon King watched his stupid disciple struggle to walk back and forth with her new golden shackles, he couldn't help but smile proudly. Many people had told him that as a demon, he had no heart but at the moment he couldn't help but feel that he had grown one. He once told Xiu Xiang that it took him over hundreds of years to even start walking in the golden shackles but the disciple in front of him merely took four years.
She was definitely gifted but maybe it was also because of her stubbornness that helped her come this far. He chuckled lightly as he followed closely behind her.
"What's so funny?" she snapped back angrily.
Sigh... the only problem was, this dear disciple of his had grown an extremely short fuse. Once they finished with body training, he was going to throw her into meditation next. In order for her to take over his role as King of the Demon realm one day, she needed to at least learn how to control that temper of hers. Then again, it was kind of his fault that she had become like this.
"Your face is funny looking, is all," he chirped and ruffled her hair like a child. She struggled to raise her arm and after much effort, she slapped his hand away only to miss and hit her own head instead.
"Your face is funny looking. Your whole family is funny looking!" she retorted. Her head spun from her own slap.
He loved teasing his disciple.
Maybe one of these days, he'll tell her the whole truth behind her blood lineage but just not right now. He was content with the way things were going. If this stupid descendant of his found out that the two of them are in fact related, she might just spit blood and die all over again.