The white ice spears shot through the air and into the sludge body, causing the Three Tailed Fox Demon to let out a piercing scream. After which, its movement got even more erratic and aggressive too. The three tails acted independently from the main fox body, making Jin feel like he was fighting four enemies at once.
It became even more challenging when the tails shot their own energy power beams at Jin. He was unable to block them entirely even when he transformed Boo into a bamboo shield.
Block the attack to the chest? The fox demon would aim at his legs instead. If not for the Critical Survival Barrier, Jin would have lost his arms and legs many times over. (Not to mention his head too.)
Thus, Jin tried to replicate the same trick with the White Panda Ice Spears since he was no longer able to move as quickly as in the beginning. However, the Three Tailed Fox Demon was smart enough to learn from its mistakes and destroyed the formation of the White Panda Ice Spears before Jin could even hurl it.
“Cast faster, distract it or surprise it with something new. Else it will know that you are creating those shards. Remember, if you cannot beat a Three Tailed Fox, do not even think about defeating a Nine Tailed variant.” Kraft lectured as he was still leaning on the side of the Isolation Ward with Zeru.
“How do I cast faster when it does not allow me to cast in the first place!” Jin thought to himself as he got smacked by the fox’s paw on his shoulder, causing him to drop his guard because of the impact. That was when the fox demon went for a bite to Jin’s head.
“Fuck it!” Jin used all his might and smashed his bloodied forehead onto Fox Demon’s mandible before it could go for the crunch of Jin’s skull. Surprisingly, that unremarkable move caused the demon to fall back momentarily to fix its crooked jaw, giving Jin the breather that he needed to recover.
“Too hardworking.” He suddenly heard a distant voice in his head. Was he hallucinating from the head bash? Did he lose too much blood?
“Be lazier.” The voice emerged again, and Jin could vaguely focus on it or the battle in front of him.
“Be as lazy as a Panda. That is your cultivation.” The voice was louder this time round, and Jin realised it was Ming’s. It took him a while to remember those were the things he said about his cultivation when he was training with his grandfather during the adventure trip that they took…and before he encountered the White Tiger of the West.
“The Astral Panda Cultivation is meant to be cultivation for lazy people. Your yawn produces an energy beam, and your swipe generates a tremendous force at once. The Epic Art that I taught you was also a demonstration of laziness. Other cultivation styles need to be flashy and insert even more chi to reproduce the amount of destructive power in your Epic Art, the Bamboo Cyclone of the Lazy Panda. But all you needed was a swing of your hand to create that with a bit of imagination.” Ming had explained.
“So the same goes for your White Panda Ice and Black Panda Fire. They were also taken from other cultivations, and I had simplified its activation just for you. The Cultivation Manual did not explain much because it was supposed to be that straightforward. So stop thinking that much and let your body take over the fight.”
“Trust in the cultivation that I painfully designed for you both in manual and in person. Remember the number of grades that you reached was not by chance but by hard work. Combine your imagination with your powers, and they will become your skills.”
“For you are the Lazy Astral Panda Cultivator.”
Jin panted as his body slid down with the wall as his support. “Gramps, why are you lecturing me in flashbacks? Hahahaha.” Jin whispered to himself as he continued to catch his breath though the fox demon was not done with the fight yet.
“Since I cannot move my body a single bit, I shall listen to your advice. Be as lazy as possible.” Jin said out loud, and it made Kraft and Zeru worried for a moment when the Three Tailed Fox Demon charged towards him.
“Is this the end? Jin seems to be incapacitated from all the attacks.” Zeru worried as he could only feel Jin’s chi aura in a mess instead of him concentrating to make a barrier.
“Looks like it… I will stop the foxes before they can deal any life threatening damage to Jin. At least it should be a valuable lesson for that kid too.” Kraft said as he prepared to halt the berserk Three Tailed Fox Demon. Just when the two bellators thought it was the end, suddenly the fox demon who was a few centimetres away from Jin was being stopped from mauling him. The demon was then slowly being pushed away from Jin.
“What is that?” Zeru saw that the massive chi aura seemed to produce some sort of silhouette in front of Jin. “…a Panda..?”
“Hahaha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Jin laughed when he finally comprehend the truth about the teachings of the Nineteen Lazy Astral Pandas Cultivation. The Panda silhouette in front of Jin was carrying Boo in shield form, protecting Jin from the attack.
Both of his bellators were awestruck that they also began to laugh at the true awakening of Jin’s cultivation. “With his mind concentrated, purified and attained to imperturbability, he directs and inclines it to create a mind-made body.” Zeru preached out a short modified quote from a Buddhist manuscript, Samaññaphala Sutta: the Fruits of the Contemplative Life.
“What bullshit are you spouting? It’s obviously his mind switched off! Too lazy that it attained the state of not giving a single fuck which in turn subsequently inclined him to create a mind-made body!!” Kraft gave his depicted version of Jin’s awakening of his Astral Panda Cultivation.
Similar to what Jin did previously, the Panda Silhouette smashed the shield to the Three Tailed Fox Demon’s head but instead of shooting flames from the shield, the Panda Silhouette blew flames from its mouth.
However, this time around, the Black Panda Fire were more intense than the one that Jin had produced. The flames were so widespread that it drowned the Three Tailed Fox Demon in it.
The moment the Astral Panda stopped its fire breathing, it let out a sneeze and caused an impactful knockback to the fox demon, smashing it into the opposite side of the Isolation Ward.
With its job done, the Astral Panda in front of Jin dissipated. In exchange, two Astral Pandas now emerged at the sides of injured fox demon with two stakes made out of White Panda Ice that were at least 2 metres in diameter and 10 metres in length.
Even Kraft had to close an eye to see the glory(and gory) of the two Astral Pandas slamming the ice stakes into the sludge body with a coordinated tempo to it. The fox demon growled in pain before its sounds slowly became a whimper. A large amount of sludge was also spilt all over the ground, and there was barely anything left
“Alright boys and girls, you did enough. Come back to me now.” Kraft ordered his three foxes as the spirit forms of Ixa, Ixel and Itori floated towards Kraft and hovered around him momentarily before they disappeared right in front of him.
Jin was still panting but not as much as he had when he took his breather. Both Zeru and Kraft went towards him, clapping with elation. “Well done, well done. Looks like Ming’s efforts paid off.”
“Now we can start the training for real with your Astral Pandas,” Zeru said as he took his wooden sword out and started warming up while Kraft called for Pei and Milk to look at his wounds.
“You can’t be serious! Forcing him into training with this much damage on him? Do you want to cripple him for life?!” Pei examined the body and realised that the wounds were very severe. She estimated that the bones in his extremities were all broken, not to mention 8 broken ribs, 2 of which were crushed into nonexistence.
In addition, there was internal bleeding in all of his organs and blood was rushing into his punctured lungs, which was why he could not stop panting. The reason he was not dead yet was because of the Critical Survival Barrier, which Milk had reinforced while casting her other healing spells.
“He does not have much time left to train should he need a guarantee against the four Demon Cultivators. If Grandma Yuan decides to break her promise and add that Claire into the fray or even join in personally, he won’t be able to handle it” Kraft said as he clearly did not trust that old grandma. (their distrust for each other was mutual).
“Her attitude towards us might never change for the reasons in the past, but there is one thing I am sure of. She always keeps her promise. When she said four fights, it means four fights. Right now, Jin needs urgent intervention. It’s already a miracle that he can survive your No Mercy Trio. Also! You should have held them back even more. How could you allow them to go berserk?!” Pei argued with some scorn under her breath.
When she was in the bracelet, she realised that Jin had already pushed past his physical threshold and was solely relying on his will and abnormal chi generation to hold on to the fight. However, she was equally surprised that Jin managed to awaken his cultivation’s true powers rather than relying on the ones he had obtained through training.
“Enough talk, I should be able to slow the time down with some temporal manipulation spells, but I cannot do it as well as the System. I will do as much as I can.” Peppers appeared despite her recent discovery of the unusual living armour plate since she was concerned for her master.
“Fine, get him up as soon as possible. You might think Zeru and I are heartless, but we both agree that this is the only way to make him learn that he has yet to see the world. We cannot shelter him forever. I’d rather him hate me than have a repeat of-” Kraft wanted to continue until he heard a loud shriek from the girls.
“SHUT YOUR DAMN TRAP!” Pei screamed so loud that everyone felt like their ears were going to burst. (If Jin’s ears hadn’t been bleeding already, they probably would right now.) Pei called upon Peppers to first expand the storage bracelet into a dungeon like instance to create a pocket dimension in the Isolation Ward. Something like triggering a dimensional plane onto a current plane. Some say it’s akin to merging two different spaces into one.
This was because Pei feared that the sensory inscription charm that was in the Isolation Ward would trigger if Jin disappeared entirely into the storage bracelet for treatment even though he would still be technically present in the ward.
Thus, Peppers not only had to expand the storage bracelet into a makeshift operating theatre, but she even called some of the Panda Nurses from the Luxury Recovery instance into this merged dimensional space. As advised by Pei, Jin had previously upgraded all the Panda Nurses with all the necessary knowledge to cope with an emergency as well a Head Panda Nurse that knew everything literally. (It cost him a bomb, but Pei made him do it.)
While all the fuss was happening in this makeshift operating theatre, Jin was technically not in mortal danger. With sufficient rest and consistent healing from Milk, he would recover. It was because of the time limit that Kraft artificially imposed on him to be ready for the next battle, Pei had decided to step in to quicken the process.
“I have stopped all the internal bleeding in the organs. Also, all broken bones and bone pieces were removed. Those that had punctured any of the organs were discarded too.” Milk said as she wiped the sweat off her while Pei quickly gowned up into her scrubs.
“The temporal manipulation spells are ready, I will cast them the moment you start cutting him.” Peppers said to the entire group.
“Then let’s begin. Since we are replacing the bones, we might as well add in a few inscription charms to his new bone parts to ensure people like a certain DEVILMAN, and potentially Zeru does not make me perform this kind of emergency operation on a daily basis.” Pei said while staring at the two who were watching at the sides as usual.
“Hey, look at the bright side, didn’t you always claim that you could create an ultimate ma-!” But before Kraft could say anything else, Zeru already took a masking tape out from nowhere and slapped it on to the fox’s mouth.
“Don’t make things worse. We need Jin to be ready as soon as possible.” Zeru spoke with a firm objective. For some reason, Kraft noticed that Zeru suddenly felt pumped to teach his master(and disciple) a few tricks.
