Cultivation Fever

"I"ve gotta admit, ya"ve got a pretty good cover story," Yin Xue continued, "people round "ere explain anything weird by sayin" "oh it"s just another const.i.tution.""

"But ya can"t fool my All-Seeing Eyes technique. What yer doing is Soul Expansion, the second half of the Soul Forming technique."

I made sure not to seem surprised. Sure, I was practicing Soul Expansion, but the Soul Forming technique was something new to me.

"Soul Forming technique is pretty common in the Imperial Academy, so yer daddy probably got that for ya."

"But that doesn"t come close to explaining why yer soul is so big. Ya got a qi force of 866, only 66 of which come from yer body."

He was able to measure my qi so precisely… this man didn"t want to show his abilities in front of the other teachers.

"Unlike other qi generating techniques, the Soul Forming technique is pretty linear, so I can do some maths here."

He leaned close to me, grinning.

"It would take an unparalleled genius at least 6 years to get that far."

I couldn"t help but show a bit of excitement. I"d had a few delays in my cultivation and it was rea.s.suring to know I was still cultivating at a good pace. Seeing my excitement, Yin Xue perked up.

"Yer surprised to hear that? So ya really haven"t had a teacher."

I shook my head, and Yin Xue nodded to himself.

"Hm, yeah," he pointed at my wrist, "a teacher wouldn"t let ya do anything so stupid that ya need to be saved by a demon."

"Now, there"s no way ya been cultivating for only 6 years, yer not that much of a genius. So how have ya gotten this far?"

Any happiness I was feeling disappeared. How would I explain that?"

"There are two options I can think of. Maybe ya got somethin" that lets ya cultivate in a shorter time period than anyone else, or…"

My heart stopped, waiting for the inevitable.

"Ya been cultivating since birth. So, what is it?"

He struck me down with a vicious glare. Pinp.r.i.c.ks coated my skin as my stomach did somersaults.

I didn"t trust Yin Xue one bit. Until I knew his character better, I wouldn"t tell him the truth. I didn"t have a good excuse either, so I stared right back at him, keeping my lips pursed in silence.

The stand off only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like minutes. Yin Xue broke it with a dry cackle.

"Haha! Fantastic! It woulda been so boring if ya just told me!"

He leaned over and put his hand on my shoulder.

"Listen, brat, forget what I said to those t.w.a.ts back there. I"m gonna help ya all I can," he lowered his tone, "but ya better believe I"m gonna find out yer secret."

"So," he leaned back in his chair, "tell me a bit about yerself. Why are ya here?"

Yin Xue wanted to uncover my secrets, so I had to maintain the façade of an 8-year-old.

"Mister Yin, I…"

Yin Xue raised his hand to stop me.

"No, no, don"t call me Mister Yin. Call me teacher. Actually," he looked up and scratched his chin, showing a hint of a smile, "call me master."

It felt a little early to call him master, but I"d play along for now.

"Master,"

His smile morphed into a contented grin, accompanied by a gurgling chuckle. It seemed that "master" was a bit delusional.

"father told me," I continued, "I could get strong here."

"So, ya wanna be strong like yer daddy?"

I shook my head, "I wanna be stronger."

"Hm. Okay. Well, that much is obvious. Why do ya wanna be strong though?"

I thought about that for a second. I wanted to be strong so I could have a great impact on the world and become someone people admire. I wanted recognition.

"I wanna do really cool things."

"So, ya want admiration? Pretty shallow, but I can"t blame ya."

Yin Xue crossed his brows in thought.

"But that"s not quite it, is it? Usually, kids who want admiration didn"t get enough from their parents. But ya must have been a little baby or toddler when ya started cultivating."

He shook his head and scratched his beard,

"That"s way too early… There"s gotta be somethin" else…"

Yin Xue squinted his eyes at me, and I stayed silent.

"Well, I"ll find out eventually. Anyway, if ya came here, ya wanna be a fighter, right?"

"Yeah."

"Finally, a start. I guess, cos I"m yer master, I should help ya choose a technique," he clapped his hands together, "come "ere."

Yin Xue heaved himself out of the armchair and shuffled through to the vault.

"Most masters would teach ya their own techniques. But that"s d.a.m.n boring…"

"What is master"s technique?"

Yin Xue whipped around,

"No interrupting!" he yelled, "But yeah, I should probably show ya my techniques. Ya can see qi, right?"

At this point, showing that off seemed fairly inconsequential. I channelled qi to my eyes and could only see a trickle of aura leaking from Yin Xue"s eyes.

"I mainly practice two modified techniques. First, my Spirit Hands technique."

He waved both his hands, facing his palms upward. Three ghostly golden hands spiralled out of each palm, settling in an arc around his body.

"Now, my special All-Seeing Eyes technique."

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. All the ghostly hands clamped shut as well, and light shone through their fingers.

With a flash of qi, his eyes and hands snapped open. Embedded in each golden palm was a twitching, ephemeral golden eye.

Wisps of qi drifted like smoke from his real eyes as he looked at me with pride. With his wreath of golden hands, he looked like some divine asura.

"These techniques right "ere are usually used to support combat. But I"ve modified them to do this!"

The hands shot out, spinning around the library. They extracted some books from the shelves and brought them down, floating around Yin Xue.

The hands flipped open the books, and I could see the spectral eyes scanning the pages at a phenomenal pace. The vault was filled with the sound of fluttering pages.

"With this, I can read seven books at a time! How "bout that!"

I felt a little let down on hearing this. Such an impressive looking technique was just used to read more books.

However, on second thought, I realised the difficulty of the feat in front of me.

"Master, how can you understand it all?"

"Remember what I said. If there"s somethin" ya don"t understand, it"s probably a weird const.i.tution. I have a Mind Part.i.tion Const.i.tution, so I can separate my mind into seven parts."

This level of multi-tasking was impossible for a normal brain. Any ordinary person would suffer ma.s.sive performance deficits trying to read even two books.

Yin Xue"s incredible mental prowess could have made him expert in many fields in my old world. But here, he was just a school librarian?

I realised just how skewed the standards were in this world. What fantastic abilities did people in high power have?

"My techniques aren"t really useful in combat, and they definitely don"t suit ya. But I"ve read all the cultivation techniques in here, so I can help ya choose a good one."

"Now, just tell me what ya want. With these techniques," he swirled his finger in a circle, "the world"s yer oyster."