The itinerary for the Verdant Vine Mystic Realm trip was finalized quickly after Yan and Qingxue discussed the details.
Alexei didn't understand most of the logistics anyway, so he was happy to let them handle it.
They were sitting in Qingxue's receiving room again, going over the final preparations, when Yan suddenly stopped mid-sentence and stared at him.
"You're planning to go into the realm wearing all that, aren't you?"
Alexei looked down at himself.
"Yes?"
"That's a bad idea."
"Why?"
"Because it's ug... I mean, you'll look like a walking treasure vault. Every bandit, robber, and opportunistic cultivator will start thinking about how to kill you and take your gear."
Qingxue nodded in agreement. "She's right. The first time you went down the mountain alone, you were attacked almost immediately."
Alexei thought about it. "But what's the alternative? Go in naked?"
"Don't be ridiculous. Just hide the armor somehow and make yourself look less valuable."
"How?"
Both women looked at each other, then back at him.
"We'll figure something out," Qingxue said eventually.
Alexei had a feeling "figuring something out" was going to involve a lot of trial and error.
Yan leaned back in her chair, still looking thoughtful. "There's another problem. How do you plan to get around inside the realm?"
"Uh... walking?"
"The realm is enormous. If you just walk everywhere, you will cover maybe one percent of the available area before the realm closes again. You need a way to fly."
Alexei blinked. "I hadn't thought about that."
"Clearly." Yan smiled slightly.
"Do either of you have a spare flying treasure I could borrow?"
Qingxue shook her head. "I fly by controlling my sword. It's not a treasure, just a technique."
They both looked at Yan.
She sighed. "Of course. It had to be me."
"You have one?" Alexei asked hopefully.
"Yes. I'm the only person in the sect who does." She pulled a sword from her storage pouch. It was made of white jade, elegant and simple in design. "My master forged this for me years ago because my primary treasure can't be used for flight. It's called the Pale Sky Blade."
Alexei examined it. The craftsmanship was incredible, even to his untrained eye.
"Can I borrow it?"
"No." Yan's smile widened. "But I'll sell it to you."
"What the hell... how much?"
"One favor."
Alexei's eyes narrowed. "What kind of favor?"
Yan tilted her head slightly. "That depends. But it's nothing unreasonable, I promise."
He thought about it. Open-ended favors were dangerous in the cultivation world. But he needed a way to fly, and this seemed to be his only option.
"Define unreasonable."
"Nothing that would harm you, the sect, or anyone you care about. Nothing illegal or immoral. Maybe I'll simply want some company over tea."
"Tea?"
"I get lonely sometimes." She shrugged. "The point is, I'm not asking for your firstborn child or your soul. I just need your cooperation when the time comes."
Alexei considered this. "And if I refuse the favor when you call it in?"
"Then I'll be very disappointed, and you'll owe me two favors instead of one."
He sighed. "That's not how favors work. But I reserve the right to negotiate the specifics when you ask."
"Deal." Yan handed him the sword. "Try not to break it. This is a Profound-tier treasure, upper grade. It took my master three months to forge."
Alexei took the sword. The moment his fingers closed around the hilt, information flooded into his awareness.
[Pale Sky Blade:
Flight Control II
Spiritual Energy Circuit I
Barrier I]
Just as Yan had said, the sword was built purely for flight. It didn't even register an attack stat, which meant either it had zero combat capability or his system considered the damage too low to bother recording.
The experience cost for MC-ification was hefty: 40 levels.
He was at Level 125. If he wanted to maintain at least Level 100, he only had 25 levels he could freely use.
That meant he was still short by 15.
He could dip further if necessary, but doing so would affect his cultivation progress.
"I'll need some time to prepare it."
"Take all the time you need. We don't leave for another week."
---
It took Alexei about three hours of mob grinding to get the experience he needed.
Then he sat in his workshop, sword laid out on the table in front of him, and began the MC-ification process.
The blade glowed as experience poured into it. When the process finished, he picked it up and ran some tests.
The sword had two flight modes.
Sword-riding: He could stand on the blade and fly. Top speed was absurd, roughly two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. Range was limited only by how much spiritual energy he had to power it.
Remote control: He could make the sword fly on its own within his line of sight. Useful for retrieving items or creating distractions.
The problem was durability.
Each time he summoned the sword, it consumed one durability point. Every kilometer of flight consumed another. The maximum durability was 93.
That meant the sword would break after less than twenty-five minutes of continuous use.
There was another issue.
To stay on the sword, he had to circulate qi to the soles of his feet to create adhesion. When he had flown on Qingxue's sword before, she had handled it for him. At the time, he hadn't realized it, since he could already sense qi. But doing it alone was different. Without sufficient control, he would lose his footing mid-flight.
He needed more practice to reduce the qi consumption for adhesion, or he would end up falling out of the sky.
Still, it was fixable.
Enchantments.
The sword already had three enchantment slots built in, which meant he could apply three levels of enchantments before hitting the penalty threshold.
He started with the basics: Unbreaking III and Auto-Repair III.
Unbreaking gave a thirty percent chance to not consume durability on any given action. Auto-Repair restored three durability points per minute.
At full speed, the sword consumed about four durability per minute. With Auto-Repair active, that dropped to one. And with Unbreaking triggering roughly once per minute, the net durability loss was effectively zero.
Now for the fun part.
The sword had no attack damage, but testing showed that certain enchantments could still be applied. Disarm and Armor Shatter both worked, even on a weapon with zero base damage.
He only had Armor Shatter II in his collection, but he could upgrade it.
Upgrading Armor Shatter II to Armor Shatter V required combining books multiple times, which consumed four operation counts from the penalty budget. That left him with some room to work.
After a full second of internal debate, he decided to go for it.
Armor Shatter worked similarly to Disarm. Each level gave a twenty percent chance to knock off one piece of the target's armor. At level five, that became a one hundred percent chance. One hit, one piece of armor gone.
But that wasn't enough.
He added Remote Sensing I, which allowed dropped items to be pulled into his inventory from a distance.
Now the sword could strip equipment off enemies and automatically collect it.
The operation count was now at five, which gave him a penalty of thirty-one experience levels. That meant he could add up to eight more levels of enchantments before the cost became unreasonable.
He took out four Spiritual Energy Circuit I books, salvaged from dismantled treasures, and combined them into Spiritual Energy Circuit III. This would reduce qi consumption. Then he searched through his enchantment chest and found Purification Edge V, which he had extracted from an enchanted golden sword earlier.
Purification Edge was a modded enchantment with a maximum level of five. Each level gave a twenty percent chance to remove a random status effect from the target. At level five, that was guaranteed removal.
It was perfect for dealing with cultivators who relied on poison, curses, or other debuffs.
He applied both enchantments to the sword.
The blade glowed brightly as the enchantments took hold. When the light faded, Alexei picked up the sword and examined the final result.
[Pale Sky Blade:
Disarm V
Armor Shatter V
Purification Edge V
Spiritual Energy Circuit III
Auto-Repair III
Unbreaking III
Flight Control II
Barrier I
Remote Sensing I]
---
Alexei spent the entire morning hunched over his enchanting setup, books and materials spread across every available surface in his workshop. By the time he finished upgrading the Pale Sky Blade, evening had crept in through the windows.
He rolled his shoulders, feeling the stiffness from hours of concentration, and made his way back to the courtyard where the others were waiting.
The moment he stepped outside, he activated the flying sword.
It responded instantly, circling him twice before settling beneath his feet. The control was perfect, as if the blade were an extension of his own body rather than a separate object.
He stepped onto it.
Whoosh.
Wind screamed past his ears as he shot forward, covering over a hundred meters in less than a second.
"That's fast!"
The voice came from the pavilion, where Mengyao, Yan, and Qingxue were sitting and watching his impromptu test flight
----------
[POV: Yi Mengyao]
Mengyao was staring up at him with interest.
Though "interest" wasn't quite the right word. It was closer to the way someone might observe an unusual experiment.
Not that Alexei could blame her. He was flying on a sword. That was objectively strange, even in a world where people could shatter mountains and live for centuries.
Still, she didn't seem particularly surprised. She had already seen him use spatial techniques to teleport. Compared to that, sword flight at his level of cultivation was almost mundane.
The problem was that he clearly didn't know how to fly properly.
The sword responded well enough to his commands, but his movements were unrefined. He moved like someone testing the limits of a new toy, not a cultivator using a technique.
At one point, he even flew upside down, hanging from the blade by his feet.
"Is he... showing off?" Qingxue asked, sounding uncertain.
"I think he's just seeing what he can get away with," Mengyao replied.
Which was very much in character for Alexei. The man treated cultivation like it was some kind of game with exploitable mechanics, rather than a sacred art passed down through millennia.
It was honestly refreshing, if occasionally frustrating.
She had been curious about his abilities ever since joining the sect. She had even asked him directly once, back when she was still feeling out the social dynamics.
His response had been evasive.
"I'm a generalist," he'd said, in that flat tone he used when he didn't want to elaborate. "Jack of all trades, master of none. You know the type."
Which was obviously bullshit.
Mengyao had seen the spirit stone torches he made. She had watched him wear enchanted armor that weighed easily several thousand kilograms.
None of that was "generalist" behavior.
Her personal theory was that he had some kind of unique cultivation method, likely something he had stumbled upon by accident or inherited from a forgotten legacy, that gave him access to abilities across multiple disciplines.
It would explain why he could enchant items like a master artificer, fight like a body cultivator, and use spatial techniques that most people spent decades mastering.
The only thing that didn't fit was his cultivation level.
He was still at the Body Tempering stage, which was frankly pathetic. Even outer disciples of minor sects usually reached higher realms within a few months of beginning cultivation
But Alexei showed no signs of caring about advancement. He was perfectly content to sit at the absolute bottom of the power hierarchy, tinkering with enchantments and making unneeded comments about "cultivation logic."
She suspected there was more to it than simple laziness. Maybe his unique method had drawbacks. Maybe he was suppressing his cultivation for some reason.
Or maybe, and this was the theory she was leaning toward, he didn't give a shit about traditional cultivation and was just doing his own thing.
Which, again, was refreshing in its own way.
She pulled her attention back to the present as Alexei executed what could only be described as a completely unnecessary barrel roll, then came to an abrupt stop directly in front of the pavilion.
Yan raised one hand, conjuring a barrier of spiritual energy to block the gust of wind that would otherwise have blown directly into their faces.
The Pale Sky Blade circled once more before flying back into Alexei's hand.
She reached for it.
----------
Yan examined the sword. If she noticed something wrong with his enchanting work, Alexei would know immediately.
"The quality increased," she said after a moment, channeling spiritual energy into the blade. "This is Earth-grade now, isn't it?"
"I don't know."
"The energy circulation is smooth." She tested the blade's responsiveness, making it hover and spin with small applications of qi. "Aside from the reduced energy consumption, I'm not seeing any obvious changes in function."
"That's because most of the effects are combat-focused," Alexei explained. He gave her a quick rundown of what he had added, including Disarm, Armor Shatter, Purification Edge, and several others that either stripped away equipment or removed harmful status effects.
Mengyao listened with fascination, while Yan looked more thoughtful.
"So it can strip away equipment and remove those status effects you mentioned," Yan said. "What are status effects?"
"Things like poison or other abnormal conditions. That's the theory, anyway. I haven't tested it on a person yet."
All women looked at him.
"Then let's test it," Yan said, standing and pulling out her jade fan. "Better to find out now than in the middle of a fight."
Alexei hesitated. "Are you sure? I mean, the Armor Shatter is pretty aggressive..."
"I'll be fine. I'm Nascent Soul peak stage now. Even if the enchantments work perfectly, you won't hurt me."
Which was true. The Pale Sky Blade had zero base damage. It was a flying sword, not a combat weapon. Even with all his enchantments, the most it could do was knock things off people.
"Alright," Alexei agreed. "But don't blame me if something weird happens."
They moved outside the pavilion. He took a position about three meters away, sword held in a grip that was probably terrible by cultivation standards but felt comfortable to him.
"Ready?" Yan asked.
"Ready."
"Then attack."
Alexei swung.
It wasn't a particularly good swing. Yan caught the blade easily with one hand, stopping it cold. Then her expression changed.
Her fan slipped from her grasp and shot toward Alexei, as if pulled by an invisible thread.
Along with a small, blue, fabric item he didn't immediately recognize.
Time seemed to slow as his mind caught up.
The fan made sense. That was the Disarm enchantment working exactly as intended.
The other item, though…
Before he could stop himself, his hand snapped forward. The Remote Sensing enchantment dragged both objects straight into his grasp.
[Flowing Cloud Golden Silk Fan:
Spiritual Energy Circuit III
Fire Control III
Golden-White Spirit Flame II]
[Blue Silk Underbinding]
His brain quickly connected the dots.
The item in his hand was an undergarment, it had been on Yan three seconds ago, and now, for some reason, it was sitting in his palm.
He stared at the small piece of clothing, his mind taking a second longer to catch up with reality. Thankfully, the Remote Sensing enchantment didn't come with any automatic equipping function. It only pulled items into his hand.
He looked up. "Do you want it back?"
Yan's face had gone bright red. One arm was pressed across her chest, holding her outer robes in place to prevent any wardrobe malfunctions. Her other hand was reaching toward him, clearly intending to snatch the item back.
Then she vanished.
Qingxue and Mengyao, who had been standing behind Yan during the test, looked around in confusion.
"Where did she go?" Mengyao asked.
Alexei stood still, holding only the jade fan in his hand.
"So Armor Shatter counts undergarments as armor..." he muttered.
"What?"
"Nothing."
His thoughts were already spiraling into increasingly disastrous scenarios.
This time, it had been Yan's chest binding. Embarrassing, but manageable. But what about next time? What if he ended up fighting some burly bandit and accidentally stripped off the man's loincloth?
Worse still was the Remote Sensing enchantment. Any item stripped by Armor Shatter would automatically fly to him. There was no way to turn it off or refuse it.
Which meant that if he ever knocked off someone's underwear in combat, it would come flying straight at him whether he liked it or not.
The mental image of being pursued by a flying loincloth while trying to fight for his life was so horrifying that he shuddered.
That was when Yan reappeared.
She had taken a moment to fix her clothing, but the instant she saw his expression and the way he was holding himself, her irritation flared.
She hadn't even said anything yet, and he already looked like that?
"I can explain—"
"Can you?" Yan's voice was perfectly level, which somehow made it worse than if she had been shouting.
She took a slow breath. "I'm going to assume this was an accident. But if you ever use that on me again, I will ensure you spend the next month regenerating limbs."
---
In the end, under what could only be described as "aggressive negotiation tactics" from Yan, Alexei agreed to re-enchant her Flowing Cloud Golden Silk Fan as compensation for the incident.
"This is extortion," he muttered, watching her examine the fan with satisfaction.
"This is fair recompense for emotional distress," Yan corrected primly.
"I already gave the fan back."
"Yes, but my dignity requires additional reparations."
"Your dignity is apparently very expensive."
"Consider it a valuable lesson in reading enchantment descriptions before field testing."
Alexei had no good counter to that, so he just got to work.
The problem was that he couldn't actually MC-ify Yan's fan. Earth-tier treasures required at least 50 levels of experience to assimilate, and her particular fan was high-quality enough that it would probably cost 80 or 100 levels minimum.
That was an obscene amount of experience. He was sitting at Level 100, and dropping that low would seriously impact his cultivation progress.
So enchanting-only it was.
[Flowing Cloud Golden Silk Fan:
Embers V
Wildfire IV
Spiritual Energy Circuit III
Fire Control III
Durability III
Auto-Repair III
Golden-White Spirit Flame II
Flame Addition II]
Embers and Wildfire were both modded enchantments, which made them particularly effective in combination.
Embers increased damage dealt to burning enemies by 10% per level, reaching a total of 50% at max level. Wildfire reduced the interval between burn damage ticks by 20% per level, up to an 80% reduction at max level.
Combined with the eight-second burn from Flame Addition, the fan now had a feedback loop: ignite target, deal massively increased damage while they burned, and apply damage so frequently it was almost continuous.
"This should synergize well with your combat style," he explained as he handed it back.
Yan tested it immediately, channeling spiritual energy into the weapon. The fan hummed as flames danced along its edge.
"The energy flow is significantly smoother than before."
She gave him an approving nod, then left to test it properly outside.
Which left Alexei alone with Qingxue, who was watching him with an expression he couldn't quite read.
"What?"
"You enchanted Yan's weapon," Qingxue said slowly.
"Yes?"
"But not mine."
"I was planning to!" Alexei said quickly. "I just did hers first because she was, uh, insisting very loudly."
Qingxue's expression didn't change, but somehow the temperature seemed to drop several degrees.
"Let me fix that immediately," Alexei said, pulling out her sword before she could say anything else.
---
Qingxue's Frost Jade Blade got a similar treatment, though the enchantments differed to match her ice-based techniques.
[Frost Jade Blade:
Sharpness V
Flash Freeze IV
Spiritual Energy Circuit III
Auto-Repair III
Durability III
Frostbite III
Frost Condensation I]
He upgraded the existing Sharpness from IV to V, added the utility enchantments, and then applied Frostbite and Flash Freeze.
Frostbite functioned similarly to Flame Addition. Each level added four seconds of cold damage over time, up to a maximum of twelve seconds of continuous freezing damage.
Flash Freeze was the ice equivalent of Wildfire, reducing damage intervals by 80% at max level. But it had an additional effect: each level gave a 5% chance to completely freeze the target solid. At level four, that was a 20% chance per hit.
Qingxue tested the sword, executing a series of practice forms. Ice crystals formed along the blade's edge, and the air temperature around her dropped noticeably.
"This is excellent work," she said after a moment. "Thank you."
"No problem. Just maybe don't mention the whole 'I enchanted Yan's first' thing?"
Qingxue smiled slightly. "I won't. But you should remember that I also deserve consideration."
"Of course."
After that, Alexei spent the next few days grinding levels to rebuild his experience buffer. He didn't want to be caught without enough XP if an emergency came up.
---
Three days later, early in the morning, Alexei found himself boarding Quan's spirit boat for the third time.
Mengyao and Changgui were joining them as well.
Yan had insisted the two younger disciples come along to "gain experience and broaden their horizons," which Alexei strongly suspected was just another way of saying she didn't want to babysit them for two weeks.
Changgui was buried in a cultivation manual. He had already reached the mid-stage of Body Tempering, which was solid progress for someone his age. The issue wasn't his talent, but his inability to memorize the later sections of the technique.
Cultivation methods were traditionally passed down orally or through written texts that required precise memorization. You either remembered it perfectly or you didn't progress.
For someone like Changgui, who seemed to have the retention capacity of a goldfish, this was a significant obstacle.
"How's the studying going?" Alexei asked, settling into a seat near the front of the boat.
Changgui looked up with a pained expression. "I've read this passage seventeen times, and I still can't remember the meridian sequence for the third circulation."
"I know the feeling. Have you tried writing it down?"
"Master says that's cheating."
"Master won't see it, because he's busy piloting the spirit boat."
Changgui's eyes widened slightly. "Are you suggesting I break the rules?"
"If writing helps you memorize, then write. Once you've got it memorized, you can destroy the notes."
The younger disciple looked conflicted, but eventually pulled out a piece of paper and started transcribing.
Problem-solving through rule-bending. Alexei approved.
---
The Yureth Kingdom was approximately 75,000 kilometers from the Aureate Summit Sect.
Without the mid-grade spirit stone lamp providing sustained power, the journey would normally take a month or more, with frequent stops to rest and recover spiritual energy.
With Quan piloting at full speed, they could make it in under eight days.
Which was still eight days of sitting on a flying boat with nothing to do.
Alexei had brought reading material.
Qingxue had lent him a book titled "Peerless Master," which turned out to be exactly the kind of cultivation romance novel he'd expected. The plot was straightforward: powerful master finds orphaned disciple, raises them, romantic tension develops, lots of emotional drama ensues.
It was, objectively speaking, trash literature.
He read it anyway, mostly because it was helping him learn the local written language faster than any formal study session had.
Interest really was the best teacher. After a few days of stumbling through the text, he had learned more words than in all his previous attempts combined.
The book itself was surprisingly tame by romance standards. The most risqué scene involved someone's robe being "partially unfastened," which barely qualified as suggestive.
But the character dynamics were well-written, and the emotional beats landed effectively. No wonder Qingxue had been so absorbed in it.
"Enjoying the story?" she asked, noticing him turn the final page.
"It's good for passing the time. The master-disciple dynamic creates solid tension."
"I thought you'd find it silly."
"Oh, it's definitely silly. But I'm bored."
She smiled and handed him the second volume.
----------
[POV: Changgui]
Changgui had given up on studying for the moment. His brain felt like it was leaking out his ears.
Instead, he was watching the landscape pass beneath them and thinking about how unfair life was.
He had worked really hard. He'd been cultivating diligently for months now, and he was proud of reaching Body Tempering mid-stage.
Then he heard that Mengyao, who had joined the sect around the same time as him, had already broken through to Qi Refining stage last week.
And Alexei? He was apparently so strong that even Nascent Soul cultivators couldn't harm him. Yan had mentioned once that he could strike with several thousand kilograms of force.
"He really is the protagonist," Changgui muttered. "Father was right. Just like in the stories… ridiculously overpowered."
Still, he had a theory.
In those stories, the protagonist always had companions, usually female ones. There was always a heroine, and sometimes even several.
Where there was a protagonist, it was only natural for a heroine to appear. He suspected that Mengyao might be the so-called female lead.
She fit perfectly. She was talented, beautiful, and had that personality that heroines always seemed to have.
Though, come to think of it, Qingxue and Yan also had that kind of presence.
But he simply couldn't imagine a young man having any kind of relationship with two grandmas beyond master and disciple.
Appearances could be deceiving. Both of them were over 200 years old. He had even heard that Yan was over 700!
If that didn't qualify as a grandma, what did?
Unless… some protagonist actually liked grandmas.
…No. That couldn't be right.
----------
By the sixth day of their journey, they started encountering other cultivators with increasing frequency.
Spirit boats and sword-riders dotted the sky, all heading in the same direction: toward the mystic realm in the Yureth Kingdom.
The Aureate Summit Sect's vessel was significantly faster than most of the traffic. Which meant they spent a lot of time overtaking people.
"On your left," Quan would call out as they blasted past another spirit boat.
Within minutes, they would disappear from that vessel's line of sight entirely. Then they would overtake a group of sword-riders, who would watch with frustration as the boat vanished into the distance.
Alexei noticed something odd: every time they passed someone, that person would speed up and try to follow.
"Are they trying to draft off us?"
"Unlikely," Quan said. "Spirit boats don't work like that. More probably they see how fast we're going and assume we know something they don't."
"Like what?"
"Where to find the best opportunities. Or how to avoid danger. Cultivators are a suspicious lot. When they see someone moving with purpose, they assume there must be a reason."
Which was technically true. They were moving with purpose. They were heading for the Yureth Kingdom.
---
[POV: Observer on Large Spirit Boat]
Wei Chen had been working as an observer on transport vessels for fifteen years. His job was simple: watch for threats, analyze patterns, and alert the pilots before danger arrived.
Right now, every instinct he had was screaming that something was wrong.
It started with the small spirit boat that had overtaken them an hour ago. The vessel had been moving at incredible speed, far faster than was sustainable for long-distance travel.
Then came the sword riders. Dozens of them were flying at full speed, burning through their spiritual energy as if the cost did not matter. They all had the same look: desperate, exhausted, but unwilling to stop.
And now the small boat was long gone, disappeared over the horizon.
He made a decision.
"Sound the alert," he told the pilot. "Full speed. Don't worry about spirit-stone consumption."
"What's the threat?"
"I don't know. But whatever made all those cultivators run, I don't want to be here when it arrives."
The pilot didn't argue. Within seconds, the large spirit boat's formations activated, increasing its speed dramatically.
They caught up to some of the exhausted sword-riders within minutes, then overtook them.
Those cultivators, seeing an even larger vessel fleeing at full speed, pushed themselves even harder.
The panic spread.
----------
By the time the Aureate Summit Sect's spirit boat approached Jade Prosperity City, the settlement outside the mystic realm entrance, they had accidentally created a full-scale evacuation.
Behind them, a convoy of more than a dozen spirit boats and nearly a hundred independent cultivators raced toward the city at maximum speed, convinced they were fleeing from some terrible threat.
Quan slowed the boat as they approached the city gates.
The convoy behind them didn't slow. They shot past, disappearing into the city in a desperate rush.
Many of them collapsed immediately upon landing, sprawling on the streets while gasping for air. Their spiritual energy reserves were completely depleted, their bodies pushed far past safe limits.
Passersby stared at the exhausted cultivators with confusion and concern.
"What's going on?" someone asked.
"I don't know," another cultivator wheezed. "But we made it. We're safe."
"Safe from what?"
No one had an answer.
From the deck of the spirit boat, Alexei watched the chaos below and shook his head.
"The attraction of mystic realms really is something else. People will push themselves to collapse just to arrive a few hours early."
Beside him, Changgui nodded in agreement.