Mendoza wasn't in a rush to bring me up to speed.

I suspected there wasn't really anything to bring me up to speed on yet. What she did have was ambition, dreams of victories and great achievements. And an inflated sense of confidence following her breakthrough to Stage Five.

But I wasn't here to psychoanalyse her. Although… psychology. Should I consider making that my specialisation?

Doubt I could handle it. Cultivation was already filled with enough uncertainty to make my blood boil. I wanted more order, more clearly defined rules.

Some of that uncertainty I could cover with intrigue. Novak took centuries to cleanse his school, until he found me. And only because he kept a cool head, patiently and quietly untangling the entire web of conspiracies, was he able to succeed.

I didn't think I had that kind of patience in me.

Even picking an additional type of qi wasn't coming easy. If only damage and penetration could be measured numerically and compared! Sadly, even with all its sophistication, the interface wasn't capable of that yet.

It could only quantify energy consumption, and that, only after a technique was already learned.

Plus, cultivators could have an affinity for certain types of qi, which would make some techniques naturally stronger when used by them. Adam, for example, had an affinity for Fist. I, apparently, had no particular affinities, just a clear incompatibility with Wood.

I could feel all the main types of qi, plus Space. But I had no clue how to use Space in combat. Not sure it was even possible. There were no common techniques tied to it. Surely someone had experimented with it at some point, but I had no access to those experiments, and I didn't think I was ready to start my own.

At the very least, I'd need to get pointers through Novak if I choose Space.

What I definitely could experiment with was my pocket-amulett.

As long as it hung around my neck, I couldn't wear the shield amulet there too. The two amulets conflicted when in direct contact. And that was with the shield I tucked in my spatial pocket easily. I could nest one inside the other, but I couldn't use both.

It was like a video game where your neck only has one slot for enchanted jewellery.

Thank God life isn't a game, restrictions could be bypassed.

My experiments led me to tie the amulet around my wrist, turning it into a makeshift bracelet. The jumpsuit sleeve pressed it firmly to my skin, providing a stable connection, and through that contact, I could channel qi into the amulet and control the pocket.

With the pocket on my wrist and the shield around my neck, there was no interference between the two. In fact, the new bracelet consisted only of a cord and a thin metal plate, it fit under my armour with ease, outperforming both of my old bracelets. There was even a bit of room to spare, and the plate slid back and forth when I moved quickly.

To stop it flapping about, I spent the evening braiding a proper bracelet from plain cord, fixing the plate in place while keeping it in contact with my skin.

The new bracelet went on my right wrist. Which meant I now had to give up one of the old ones.

Both bracelets were, essentially, designed for discreet drug delivery — one loaded with stimulants, the other with antidotes.

On one hand, my Foundation had proven strong enough to resist some fairly potent toxins. On the other, it couldn't fully purge them, I still needed a trip to the infirmary to get properly cleaned out.

So I decided to keep the antidote bracelet.

That didn't mean I was throwing away the stimulant one. I simply started practising how to swap them without anyone noticing.

The antidote was against surprise attacks. But if I found myself heading into a situation where conflict was clearly brewing, I'd just switch bracelets and trigger the stimulant.

Besides, a broader set of stimulants had already been preloaded into the auto-injection system of my spare armour, also tucked safely into the pocket.

All of these preparations, contingency plans, really, I handled in the evenings, once I was alone.

During the day, Soro gave me a proper tour of the school's lesser-known highlights. Places that weren't obviously marked on the map, like the Gardens or the Flow Chambers. Shops, cafes, the greenhouse, massage salons, and a trusted armourer.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

At Black Lotus, I had Alan, always with an incense stick burning. Adam was an independent contractor. At Yellow Pine, they had Leon Navarro, one of Mendoza's former disciples.

Bulsara had also been Novak's former disciple, and still followed him. I figured Navarro's relationship with Mendoza was similar.

Navarro was over a hundred, looked barely over forty, and preferred real cigars.

It made me wonder if there was some hidden reason why armourers loved aromatic smoke so much. Though, to be fair, I hadn't met enough of them to draw conclusions.

Alan practised Palm and Wind, and specialised in engraving formations. Leon Navarro leaned into mechanics and alloy work. He cultivated Fire and Earth, which was a great help in his line of work. Soro, now almost officially my shadow, followed the same path.

In fact, more than half of Mendoza's disciples cultivated Fire. Unlike Novak, who leaned heavily into Fist, Mendoza aimed for balance between Fire and Lightning. Two of her current disciples had Fire roots, two Lightning, and one followed her path completely.

Collectively, they covered the full school qi spectrum, but not all of them had time for me, so arranging sparring matches and joint training fell to Soro.

Not that it was particularly difficult. Very few people turned down the chance to connect with a disciple from another school. At the very least, it was an opportunity to trade essence at better rates. Plus, sometimes your own shop ran dry while another school's stock was exactly what you needed.

For instance, I learned that here they valued tea made from Black Lotus seeds, and Water cultivators sometimes used its crystallised Lotus form during breakthroughs. It made their ice sharper and stronger.

My first joint training session was with Soro's friend, Zhang Xiao Ling. She was still in late second, which, formally, wasn't far from my own mid second. In practice, though, she was on the edge of breaking through, she just hadn't acquired a key material needed for the next step in her development.

She was about two years older than me in cultivation time. But she had me completely beat in both variety of techniques and combat experience.

Zhang was a Finger and Lightning cultivator. She rarely used mixed techniques. Her Lightning was mostly for movement, both general mobility and dashes, while she attacked with Finger.

Zhang wasn't listed among the school's top duelists, but she'd already participated in six raids. Essentially, she was a sniper-glass cannon hybrid. Her ultimate had incredible penetrating power. She could either open or close a fight, but never waded into the thick of it, always preferring to operate from a safe distance. And there was always demand for that kind of role.

So what exactly was Finger qi?

My understanding was partial, but I felt it as a kind of aim assist — a pointer toward weakness. Finger cultivators received feedback from the qi beam about the structure of whatever material they touched, and an intuitive sense of how much force it would take to break through.

The way Zhang went pew-pew looked easy and even kind of fun, but something about that qi rubbed me the wrong way.

It wasn't like with Wood. It took me ages to make any sense of Wood. But Finger, I could understand, I couldn't accept it.

It lacked the determination of Fist.

We weren't training in a hall, but on a mountain slope, where Zhang was blasting rocks, carving molten holes through them from over a hundred metres away.

"How do you do that?" I asked.

Her accuracy really was sniper-level.

Zhang pointed a finger at me, and I Monkey-dodged to the side, sensing danger.

"What the hell!?" I snapped.

"The eye doesn't see it, but you feel it," she said calmly. "I send a micro-impulse before firing. That lets me evaluate the target a split second ahead of the shot. If cultivators couldn't sense that, Finger qi would dominate every other path."

She closed her eyes, aimed at a rocky outcrop, and fired, punching a melted hole straight through the stone.

"Why pure Finger?" I asked. "You study Lightning too."

"Because there's beauty in simplicity and purity."

I could've tried to dig for some deeper meaning, but for some reason, it felt like she said that because the real answer didn't satisfy her either.

"Sounds like you made a mistake and are now trying really hard to justify it," I said, risking offence. "Come on," I pushed. "What's really in it?"

I fired a Punch projection into a small boulder about ten metres away, and it exploded into gravel. Stone shrapnel rattled against our armour and bounced off harmlessly.

Zhang raised her hands, showing me her palms with fingers spread.

No, not palms. Gauntlets. Just like me, she wore a specialised pair that amplified the damage of her core qi.

"Almost five hundred thousand," she said.

"Just the gauntlets? You're kidding. How the hell does that cost so much?"

"It was an auction," she said.

She turned her palms towards herself, studying them.

"Dead man's gauntlets from last century. Made by a master from the Army & Fleet Academy. He's still alive, by the way. He's the one who re-fitted them for me."

"I need to hear this story."

"Tea and cake's on you," Zhang replied.

And the story was worth it. We found a cafe Soro had shown me earlier. Something in between our Tangerine and Marco's. The thinhorn barista behind the counter, but no table staff, and the prices were much more reasonable than Marco's.

It was almost a classic tale of a legendary treasure from traditional xianxia, except the treasure wasn't very ancient, and definitely not legendary.

So, a group of cadets went on a raid to Ontel. Deep in one of its hundreds of thousands of caves, they stumbled across a nest of Obsidian Spiders. They cleared the nest and, along with other loot, recovered several damaged sets of armour left behind by less fortunate cadets from the Army & Fleet Academy.

The armour itself was badly damaged. The spiders had shredded it during combat, and then again when they injected venom and dissolved flesh to feed. But the weapons of the poor sods had mostly survived.

The raiders walked out with a few decent swords and a hammer. The gauntlets, being part of the armour, had taken damage, but not much. The real issue was sizing, which scared off most buyers.

Zhang took a big risk when she placed a bid. The gauntlets boosted her beam by 20%. That was huge, especially for her ult. Plus, they bore the maker's personal seal. Before bidding, Zhang contacted the master to ask if he could adjust them for a smaller female hand.

He said he could, so she went for it.

And he did, though the cost of the adjustment was nearly as much as the gauntlets themselves.

The gamble paid off. Zhang ended up with a weapon whose full potential she couldn't even unlock yet. The gauntlets would remain viable at her next stage, and even into stage four, but that stroke of luck now dictated her entire path.

She had no choice but to stick with the pure Finger route.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.