Sai

Ryu's first battle ended half an hour later with Reeve trying to find tears to cry but failing in even that in the end.

'Not good enough.' Ryu thought expressionlessly without regard for Reeve's feelings. 'It seems my qi control isn't as good as I thought it was.'

This evaluation wasn't entirely true. Ryu's standards were simply too high. He had no one to compare his progress to, but in terms of those just starting along the Necromancy path, his speed of improvement was blazing.

It was just unfortunate that although Ryu had gotten in some practice with his corpse puppets in the last year, he spent much of the time refining his using refinement path.

One had to remember that controlling a puppet worked differently depending on his inner structures. Ryu had practiced with human puppets, but his new refinement method turned his corpse puppets into what were effectively human-shaped plants. This changed the method of control entirely.