Chapter 113: Gains...

Xiang Nan and Manman kept on traveling—only now their little tour group had grown from two people to four.

Inside a hotel room Pigeon once again tried to erode Xiang Nan's mind with his Malice Nen.

Yet, oddly enough, the "malice" did not pollute the aura pouring out of Xiang Nan's body; instead it settled into a kind of equilibrium.

The energy seething around him brimmed with dark, negative emotion—yet underneath it pulsed a rock-solid resolve.

A Nen user's aura always mirrors the user's mental state, since part of it is spiritual energy.

Xiang Nan was deliberately using that malice… to hone his own psyche!

When Pigeon first heard the request he thought it was insane.

To a Nen user, Malice is like strong poison—withstanding it once does not mean you can break free every time. Fall in even once and the consequences are disastrous; even if you wake up again you leave a festering weakness deep in the heart.

But Xiang Nan insisted on trying.

In fact, after most "big-shots" awaken Nen, their solitary training tends to echo the image of Wing & Biscuit's Shingen-ryū from the anime—cultivating the "heart."

Within that tradition the core is precisely the mind.

Xiang Nan clearly remembered Netero saying:

"Conviction is the greatest power.

The wider your heart, the stronger your strength."

Young Netero had hit a ceiling and looked for a breakthrough, not outside but deep within.

High in the snowy mountains, braving baking sun and cutting blizzards, he threw ten thousand punches a day, each one executed with absolute sincerity.

That, too, is a way to forge the will—yet Xiang Nan could never mimic Netero's feat, and frankly almost no one in Hunter × Hunter could.

He believed every one of the old man's punches carried genuine intent and technique; even so, in the end Netero's revelation was simply gratitude—gratitude toward nature, toward all things, toward existence itself—­and that became the faith that sustained him.

Likewise, bombarding himself with Malice and resisting it again and again so that his soul never strays is also a training method.

Different Nen styles bring different disciplines: with a mentor you get guidance; without one you must grope for your own way.

Hisoka of the Phantom Troupe, for instance, surely walks a very different mental path.

Xiang Nan's method just looks… less wholesome, more like a dark detour.

It works fast—and spares him Netero's years of effort—but it can never reach Netero's height.

The exercise is demanding for both of them.

Pigeon must meter his Malice output carefully and raise it step by step until Xiang Nan can ignore the harm altogether and his spirit has been quenched to steel.

In short, Pigeon has become a full-time tool—now he understood why Xiang Nan had insisted he stay.

Half an hour later the oppressive black aura in the room dispersed.

Xiang Nan opened his eyes; Pigeon, soaked in sweat and gasping, looked close to collapse.

Xiang Nan flexed, raised one hand before his face and studied it. Aura flowed across his palm more smoothly than before.

"Heh."

He grinned. Greater mental strength lets him manipulate Nen with finer precision and execute techniques more expertly—precisely the weak link in his current power set.

Your mastery over aura determines how high your technique can climb.

With a strong enough mind he would one day lace together every basic skill—Ten, Zetsu, Ren, Hatsu—and even advanced combinations like Shū, In, Gyo, plus top-tier moves such as En, Ryū, Ken, Ko—so naturally that they would feel like extensions of his own body.

He could already use some high-level tricks, but time had been short and his spirit still needed tempering, so his execution was rough—something that showed in the fight with Machi.

"Not bad… Get a good rest. We start again tomorrow."

The look he gave Pigeon was the hungry gleam of a wolf in grandmother's clothing.

Pigeon gulped and nodded, cursing this lunatic under his breath.

Even as a non-Nen user he understood the risk: if Orban were the subject, he'd have snapped already.

One slip inside that torrent of negativity and you scar the mind forever—and even your aura can be tainted.

Xiang Nan must be mad.

…

There was no escape for Pigeon, while Orban shadowed Xiang Nan with an obvious goal: begging him to cure the blindness in his left eye.

Both men had become Xiang Nan's retainers, but Pigeon had it worst—training with him day in and day out, too frightened even to say no.

Orban, when free, sparred with Manman.

After half a year the already aging Pigeon was a full size slimmer and visibly exhausted.

Fortunately Xiang Nan finally let him go: Pigeon's Malice could no longer affect him at all.

Xiang Nan's mental fortitude now felt downright unnatural—this method, frankly, only Xiang Nan would dare try; no one else could copy it.

Orban, meanwhile, had witnessed the miracle of Xiang Nan's Nen; the eye-patch was gone and his left eye restored.

They exchanged contact info and parted ways in a port city on the Yorbian Continent.

The past few months had been pleasantly relaxed for Xiang Nan and Manman.

Beyond toughening his spirit with Malice, he never neglected regular Nen practice and even coached the lazy Manman whenever he had time.

Touring, hunting rare gemstones, prying more intel about the other worlds Pigeon and Orban had visited—he never really set everything aside.

On a street outside the harbor Xiang Nan suddenly stopped and stared into space amid the passing crowd.

With a thought his aura expanded outward in a circle about two meters across.

Even with his eyes closed he could track Manman's every move inside that sphere.

Being able to cast En freely proved his Nen level had risen.

"Nobunaga's En is about two meters too," he mused. "At my current level I can hold two meters for two minutes—that's not bad. Grandpa Zeno Zoldyck can blanket several hundred meters; Neferpitou's is even scarier. But the size of En depends on technique, not raw strength; everyone shapes it to their own needs. Nobunaga keeps it small because that's the perfect distance for his sword."

"The only direct factor is aura volume…"

He pulled the aura back.

"This time on Mustang Island really paid off: I patched the shortfall in my technique and my mental power soared.

"What's left is the body—expanding my aura reserves."

He glanced down at Manman, who was looking up at him.

"Let's go," he said, and the two of them set off once more.

~~~

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