"Rise and shine kid!"

Ma Qianle startled awake at the sound of the far too cheerful voice. He grudgingly pried his eyes open and glared at Wei Wei Yaling.  Seeing that there was as of yet no light filtering in through his curtains, he fumbled for his phone.  4:45 am.

"Fuck off," he grumbled, rolling over and pulling a pillow over his head.  While the jar of herbal something-or-other Wei Yaling had given him the previous night had prevented him from becoming a giant walking bruise, his muscles still ached fiercely.  On top of that, with how late it had been when he finally returned from the training session, he had barely gotten three hours of sleep.  Not nearly enough even when he hadn't been repeatedly pummeled into the ground.

Wei Yaling tsked at him as she pulled off his blankets.  "Is that any way to talk to your big sister Wei Yaling, who is working so hard for you?  Come on, out of bed, we've got a lot to get through today."

"Fine.  We can get through it after I've had a decent night's sleep."  Ma Qianle's voice was muffled by the pillow he had clamped over his head, but his growing irritation was still clear.

"Well if that's the way you want it…"  Ma Qianle barely had a moment to relax at this statement before he felt a tug at his ankle and suddenly he was flying through the air. He opened his eyes and looked around groggily before realizing that Wei Yaling was carrying him over one shoulder.

"I was going to be nice and give you time to wake up and get changed before we headed out but if you refuse to get out of bed I can only take you as you are," Wei Yaling admonished as she made her way out to the living room.

This finally caught Ma Qianle's attention.  Even in the dead of winter, he didn't wear much to bed.  "Alright alright, I'm awake, let me at least put some clothes on!"  He flailed ineffectively in an attempt to get down as he spoke.

Wei Yaling laughed and obligingly put him down, and he darted back towards the bedroom.  As he pulled clothes out of the dresser, he called out the door grumpily.  "Isn't it a bit inappropriate for you to be going into a man's bedroom in the middle of the night and pulling him out of bed in his underwear?"

At this, Wei Yaling cocked an eyebrow and crossed her arms, a look of puzzlement on her face.  "What? Why? You're not even 100 yet…"  Realizing what she'd just said, she winced slightly.  "Right, human.  Sorry, I'm not used to teaching mortals.  Where I come from, someone your age would barely be what you'd call an elementary school kid."

"Hrmph," Ma Qianle grunted.  He didn't appreciate being treated as if he were a child, though it did go some way towards explaining Wei Yaling's complete lack of respect for his personal space.  Clearly she had just been acting polite when she knocked on his door the previous night — had it really been just the previous night? — because as far as he could tell, the woman had simply appeared in his bedroom to wake him up.

Her goal accomplished, Wei Yaling did not pester Ma Qianle further as he went about his morning routine, and he didn't care to continue conversing.  He had always considered himself somewhat of a morning person, but there was a limit.  Before long, he found himself headed back out to the park he had left mere hours before.  At this hour, dawn was still nearly two hours off, and was only visible as the barest hint of paleness on the horizon.  The grass was thick with icy cold dew that made him reluctant to take a seat.

"Here, eat this," Wei Yaling said.  She had retrieved another pill from her pouch, though a different kind than the yin pill he had taken last night.

Ma Qianle swallowed it and instantly a rush of energy washed through him, sweeping away all of his weariness.  He found himself as awake and alert as he had ever been, his limbs full of renewed vigor.  It was better than the strongest coffee he'd ever had.

"You know, if you had just started with that to begin with this whole process would have been a lot easier for both of us," he said scathingly.

"And waste some of the energy?" Wei Yaling replied.  "It'll only work for a limited time, I may be a good teacher but I still need to maximize what little time we've got.  C'mon."  She led Ma Qianle in a series of stretches and warming up exercises, and then started in on the martial arts.  In contrast to her relentless assault the night before, this time she slowed things down, correcting Ma Qianle's mistakes and making sure he understood what he was getting wrong.  Ma Qianle had to admit that, for all of her seeming frivolity, when she got down to business she really was the excellent teacher she claimed herself to be.  He felt that in just one morning his ability had grown by leaps and bounds.

By noon, he could already feel the abundant energy he'd gained from eating the pill was beginning to wane.  Rather than staying in the park and continuing to work through lunchtime like he expected, Wei Yaling ushered Ma Qianle back to his apartment and let him nap briefly while she cooked a meal.  

He awoke after about half an hour to the smell of food. He came to the table and ate hungrily, barely even caring about the only adequate taste, as Wei Yaling lectured about various topics. He learned about the different types of vengeful ghosts he was most likely to encounter, and how to tell them apart.  He learned about the various natives of the underworld, about their hierarchy and their duties, and about the hellish courts that regulated the cycle of death and rebirth and made sure that wrongdoers got their just rewards. She even taught him a bit about the various types of spirits that shared the mortal realm with humans, unseen and unknown to all but a select few.

"You don't have to worry too much about them," she had said.  "They're Keeper Ruan's responsibility; it's enough for you to know they exist."

After lunch, rather than going back out to the park for more physical training, Wei Yaling began Ma Qianle's spiritual training.  Physical ability was all well and good, but it was far from enough when attempting to counter angry ghosts and evil spellcasting.  First, she guided him into sensing the wells of yin and yang energy that he, like all humans, had.  The yin energy was familiar to him as the cold, damp sensation he had felt when opening his spiritual eye.  In contrast, the yang energy was hot and wild, rushing energetically, eager to be used.  It was like the comfortable blanket of dry heat one felt after leaving an overairconditioned building in summer.

Next, she taught him how he could draw out the power in the two energies and use it to affect the world around him.  As ghosts were by definition creatures of overwhelming yin, it was vital to be able to manipulate yang in order to effectively combat them.  Where it had taken a mere hour or two for Ma Qianle to be able to sense the energies within him, using them was not so simple.  Even with Wei Yaling's careful guidance, it took most of the day for him to be able to cast even the tiniest of spells. By the time he finally succeeded, it was late at night and he collapsed into bed, exhausted.

Sunday was much like Saturday.  Ma Qianle's day started much too early with Wei Yaling's much too cheery countenance.  Having been threatened with practicing martial arts in the park in his underwear yesterday, he got out of bed willingly, if resentfully, when Wei Yaling woke him.  Another walk to the park, another pill that filled him with strength, another morning of exhaustive training.

The afternoon began with a refresher on manipulating internal energy.  This time Ma Qianle succeeded much more quickly than he had the evening before.  Once she was satisfied with his performance, Wei Yaling handed Ma Qianle a jade tablet and taught him how to channel his energy into it, along with a warning never to do so with items that didn't come from a trusted source.  As soon as he did, information flooded into him and etched itself into his brain.  Inside the tablet was all of the spellcasting knowledge he needed to fulfil his duties as a mortal agent.  There were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of spells, talismans, formations, and other techniques for countering evil influences, as well as methods for strengthening one's internal energies and making them easier to manipulate.

After that, the time was spent absorbing the vast amount of information and practicing what little he could under Wei Yaling's supervision.  Only the tiniest fraction of his new knowledge was anything he was able to use with his current capabilities, but what he was able to do, he did.  This training was even more exhausting than the previous afternoon's practice, and by the time the sun was setting Ma Qianle felt that he had done all he could.

Wei Yaling was just about to open her mouth to congratulate Ma Qianle on completing his initial training when she felt the flash of heat that indicated she had been sent a message via her official tablet.  She summoned it and listened to the message, then a broad grin slowly spread across her face. 

Wei Yaling tossed the tablet over her shoulder, and then looked in Ma Qianle's direction with a calculating expression.  It was an expression that Ma Qianle didn't trust in the slightest.

"Hey kid," she said in a coaxing tone.  "How do you feel about getting some hands-on practice?"

She — they — had a ghost to catch.

Hello everyone! This is your author here, jumping in with a quick plug for The Daily Eggplant. We are a community of readers and writers of OEL BL content, and would love for you all to come join us! We just completed a kinktober fanfic exchange (where you can find a story featuring Ma Qianle and Ruan Ye among others) and there's an ongoing fanfic and fanart event (with prizes!) celebrating the recent completion of one of our member's novel. Drop on by our discord server at https://discord.gg/wn5HjF5ZwH and say hello!