In the haze, the warmth enveloping his entire body turned into a piercing cold.
"I'm sorry, Dad."
When Cheng Jinyang opened his eyes again, he found himself in the ancestral grounds of the Longxi Li family, floating like a ghost in midair.
To be precise, he was floating in front of the Genealogy Verification Center. Standing in front of him was Li Qingwan, about eleven or twelve years old.
The young Li Qingwan seemed unable to see him in the dream. Her face was pale, and her lips trembled as if she were enduring some form of anxiety.
Her father stood next to her, holding her genealogy verification report, flipping through it page by page.
He reached the end and then started again, continuing to flip through it page by page.
Guaranteed fifth grade.
No matter how many times he flipped through it, Li Qingwan's assessment result remained a guaranteed fifth grade, with no possibility of advancing to the fourth grade.
Yet her father continued to flip through it, silent, his face cold, his movements mechanical, which made the young Li Qingwan even more desperate.
"I'm sorry, Dad." She tugged at her father's coat.
However, her father ignored her, and she could only keep apologizing.
Until her tone and posture made the observing Cheng Jinyang feel uncomfortably excessive humility, did her father finally sigh deeply and said:
"Let's go home."
Back home, her father sat on the sofa and said in a deep voice:
"Go take a bath first."
So, Li Qingwan ran to the bathroom, and the ghostly Cheng Jinyang followed, seeing a bathtub in the bathroom.
Beside it were piles of various medicinal herbs.
Little Qingwan poured the herbs into the bathtub according to the ratio, then turned on the hot water. The gas heater controlled the water temperature at seventy degrees, and soon wisps of white smoke floated up from above the bathtub.
Then she began to undress.
Cheng Jinyang instinctively wanted to run, because if the dream progressed further and Li Qingwan discovered him here, she might hold him accountable for seeing her naked.
But on second thought, since she couldn't see him now, even if he ran, how could he prove later that he didn't look? Wouldn't that be assumed guilty?
Since he was going to be assumed guilty, he might as well look! Better to get beaten up for something he actually did, right?
Before he could decide, Li Qingwan had already finished undressing and stepped into the bathtub.
Almost the moment she entered the water, her skin turned red like a boiled shrimp.
What is the concept of seventy-degree hot water? In some rural areas, this temperature is enough to pluck chickens. However, Li Qingwan stayed in this temperature of medicinal bath, her body turning red and glowing, making Cheng Jinyang anxious to pull her out.
But he couldn't.
After all, in ghost form, he couldn't touch physical objects.
After the medicinal bath, she climbed out of the tub and dried herself with a towel... Every wipe peeled off a large piece of skin, revealing bloody wounds, making Cheng Jinyang's eyes burn, his SAN value plummeting.
However, the Li family's physical activation ability quickly healed and repaired the scalded wounds.
"Will this... really work?" She murmured, looking at herself in the mirror.
Cheng Jinyang pondered for a moment, trying to understand what she meant.
I understand now.
Regarding bloodline concentration, the current consensus among the aristocracy is that it can only rely on natural growth. That is, the older a person is in the first half of their life, the stronger they become.
Another confirmed point is that frequent use of abilities slightly increases bloodline concentration, but this increase is negligible compared to natural growth.
Considering the Li family's physical activation, which mainly focuses on healing wounds and regenerating flesh, it can be inferred that the purpose of this high-temperature medicinal bath is to increase Li Qingwan's bloodline concentration.
However, this is essentially useless. If medicinal baths were effective, the aristocracy would have long since bought up all the herbs for this bath in the entire Jiankang City.
While he silently criticized, he saw Li Qingwan biting her lip and silently changing into a coarse linen robe.
Then she pushed open the door. Cheng Jinyang followed her to the living room, where he saw her tall father already dressed in a training suit made of the same coarse linen, holding a wooden stick as thick as an adult's arm.
"Bear with it." Her father said in a deep voice, "Use the pain to help you absorb the medicinal power. If you really can't bear it, just tell me."
Cheng Jinyang: ???
Wait a minute, although I've seen protagonists in some fantasy novels use self-abuse training methods to level up, those are fantasy novels! Can that really be applied in reality?
And besides, Teacher Li is such a delicate and lovely girl, wouldn't hitting her like this be too cruel...
Just as Cheng Jinyang was thinking this, he saw her father raise the stick high.
In the next second, wham!
Li Qingwan dropped to her knees.
Her face contorted in pain, and her father, seemingly without any pity, continued to rain down blows with the stick.
Very quickly, Li Qingwan's figure wavered like a candle in the wind. Her face turned pale, her arms trembled, and large beads of sweat ran down her forehead and neck. Seeing this, Cheng Jinyang couldn't help but feel pity.
Hey, isn't this too much? A delicate girl in her early teens, and his own daughter at that, does he really need to be this harsh? What if something happens... oh, there's body regeneration, so it's fine.
Finally, Li Qingwan, nearly unconscious from the beating, collapsed to the ground. Her eyelids drooped over her swollen eyes as if she had fainted.
Cheng Jinyang watched her silently.
Her father, on the other hand, stared at his unconscious daughter with a complex expression and said:
"Six hundred and seventy-two strikes in total."
Then he raised the stick again and began to hit himself just as hard.
One strike, two strikes, three strikes... each blow was just as forceful as those he had inflicted on his daughter. Soon, except for his right hand holding the stick, his entire body was covered in bruises, soaked with sweat and stained with blood.
Yet this seemingly steel-hearted, iron-willed man continued to silently beat his already injured body.
Only after completing six hundred and seventy-two strikes did he drop the stick and collapse to his knees, carefully picking up his daughter from the ground, his face showing guilt and sorrow.
Cheng Jinyang: ???
He felt like his brain was starting to short-circuit.
In the past, the sources of the girls' mental traumas were all clear-cut tragic events.
Ah Zhi's mother had an affair, Miss Wang was oppressed by her clan, Qingqing suffered school bullying, Xiao Wangshu faced family pressure, and Cui Xiaoniang... her problem was probably overindulgence and lack of communication.
But what about Teacher Li?
Domestic violence? It doesn't seem like it.
Teacher Li's father hit her with the stick to train her in using body regeneration, thereby helping her absorb medicinal power and increase her bloodline concentration (though it might be useless).
Typically, domestic abusers act out of anger and malice toward the child, but the difference here is huge.
Besides, from what I observed, Teacher Li didn't seem to show any resistance or rejection. Otherwise, with her father's guilt-ridden and self-destructive behavior, if she said "Dad, I don't want to do this anymore," he would probably give up immediately.
The more Cheng Jinyang thought about it, the more confused he became, and he gradually sank into deep contemplation.