He said to her, "You didn't have to do that. You could have just come here and had your seat like a normal person."
She sipped his wine and asked, "But I wanted to see if you were alert and responsive to danger."
He picked up a metal piece on the ground, showed it to her, and asked her, "Tell me, was it worth the destruction? Was it worth it at all?"
She laughed. "Yes, it was worth it. I enjoy breaking stuff, so yeah."
He grumbled and said, "You're crazy."
She retorted, "So are you."
He corrected her, "I'm not crazy. I am just kind."
She insisted, "You're not just kind. You're crazy about kindness."
Then she began to laugh again.
After laughing for a while, she took a sip of wine before saying, "I must say, you have a good thing going here. And here I thought you were wasting your time running that dojo of yours."
He sighed as he gathered the shattered fragments of his giant sword. He said to her as he worked, "So you were wrong."
He nodded in agreement. "I was a little bit wrong."
Then he shook his head and said, "I'm going to need money from you to buy a new sword."
She asked, "How much is that crap? I'll pay it without blinking."
She said that with confidence and a proud smile on her face. Then she sipped some more wine.
He replied, "It cost me 1,000 coins."
What he said made her choke on her wine. She coughed violently and said, "Do you want to kill me? What kind of person do you think I am? Do you think I'll believe that, or do you think I grow money on trees so I won't care that you're trying to cheat me?"
He shrugged and said, "Looks like you're not as rich as you say you are. If you're not going to pay, just say you don't have money. There's no need to come up with some fake excuse about me overpricing you."
She snorted, "You snorty brat. You just want to fleece me."
They began to argue as he packed the fragments of the giant sword into a small mound. His students that were around dispersed and went away so as not to get involved in their argument.
This makes the sixth one she has destroyed ever since she began coming to hang out with him. Her presence is a true nightmare.
But he can't bear too much of a grudge about it because she will eventually pay for it. He also knows why she behaves like that. It is all because she is at the second mortal coil.
The first mortal coil is the natural limit of every being. To move on, one must transcend the shackles of the first mortal coil and advance to a greater life level.
At the second mortal coil, mortals begin manipulating their life force and using it together with their body for power. They could also decide to take the path of using their minds and external mana for power.
These two options frame the decision between progressing through the path of body refining or going along the path of energy refining.
These two paths are similar in many ways. They are not mutually exclusive and can be cultivated at the same time. But each path has its consequences on the individual.
His mother, for example, chose the path of body refining. This path involves relying on the force diagram to cultivate the vitality and life force of the body.
The path of body refining makes the body strong, but it also affects emotions. To be exact, it makes the emotions volatile.
Emotions come from the body, not the mind. They are caused by hormones and other chemical reactions in the body. Since the body becomes stronger, so do emotions.
Just like muscle strength, perception, and reaction time increases, emotional reaction also increases the more someone proceeds along the path of body refining. This makes one more extreme in their reaction.
For example, at the beginning of the second mortal coil, a mother can break her child's legs and arms in order to keep that child at all. That same mother will also have no problem threatening to kill her child's pet or childhood friend to keep the child in line after tricking him into killing someone that didn't deserve it.
Another example on the extreme side is that a powerful cultivator will become so angry at being cheated that he or she will destroy a fighting ring and swear to come back to destroy it in the future if that fighting ring dares to establish itself on the surface.
It is a serious matter because people took that person's warning seriously. Even after two decades since the fateful event happened, the fighting ring doesn't dare to run their business on the surface because they know that the person is very powerful and serious about their oaths.
One word to describe those who are on the path of body refining is unreasonable. They can be a lot of things, but most times they are unreasonable.
It is why he suspected her of orchestrating his near-death experience as soon as he woke up. Even now, he still suspects her of being responsible for it, but he doesn't have any proof of her involvement in the event.
He still suspects her of pushing him into a desperate situation so that he can continue to live with her despite the absence of evidence because the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
As for the path of energy refining, the emotional change that occurs in them is obsession with power.
Unlike those on the body-refining path, whose increasingly powerful life force causes their emotions to be riled up easily, those on the path of energy refining cut off their emotions and become detached from the world.
They become detached from everything else and focus on the acquisition of power. They become cold and obsessed with power. Their obsession makes them capable of doing anything for power.