Chapter 35

  Days Mundane (II)

  I must admit, I never expected days within the world of cultivation to be so... mundane. Once I handed the method to Dai Xiu and mostly finished the barebones construction of their home, things just... settled down. Inordinately so.

  Long Tao never asked me for the cloaking art again; he did stop cultivating and started hanging around the girl a lot, guiding her quite... earnestly. I don't know what that old monster has planned, but maybe he warmed up to the place? Yeah, right. Ah, who's to know...

  Once a month, a cart of resources would be brought up, but, save for that, we had no more visitors.

  I'd descend the mountain every couple of weeks and head straight into the library, borrowing more and more books. That's right--I became a bit of a bookworm!

  Naturally, I wasn't renting cultivation arts or methods and such, no; I mostly stuck either to histories, folklore, or just 'tales,' as they called the novel-like tomes here.

  There were... a lot of them. Histories, alone, filled up a massive bookshelf with eight rows, each holding at least fifty books. To be fair, I'm using the word 'history' quite loosely here; most contained myths of the age that were just that: mythical.

  Things like, "There be this God who made this mountain and lived for 8 billion years," or "The Tribe fought the Serpent God for 10,000 years and perished..." Though I would be inclined to believe some of these, as this is a fantasy world, after all, I rejected them all on the basis that hyperbole was the mother of them all.

  No, seriously.

  Nothing ever happened within either a short distance or a short time; nothing was ever 'normal-sized', either. Kingdoms spanned literal hundreds of thousands of miles, mountains peaked at a million miles, and people themselves were as 'tall as the sky,' which ranged anywhere between a billion miles or some loose, indeterminate number.

  However, it was... fun, I have to admit.

  Much like my little hideout at the back of the mountain, these books became my anchors; they reinforced, in however small a way, that despite the fact people here could shoot magic from their fingers and do things otherwise impossible, they weren't actually all that different from me me.

  They, too, were bewitched by concepts beyond their ken, even if those concepts were slightly more exaggerated. They, too, formed beliefs around the things they could not otherwise explain; while we conjured up gods for environmental hazards, they made up mythical cultivators who 'fought' and 'produced' these catastrophes.

  It was... compelling, reading accounts of mythological figures that resonated with something deep inside of me.

  But it was also rather frustrating.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  After all, I was mostly interested in real accounts of this world, in a desperate bid to spin a proper framework of it in my mind. However, after reading through nearly 150 books, I can maybe ascertain like 10 true details of the world itself, beyond the grasp of this tiny hamlet.

  Perhaps the most revealing was that this corner of the world wasn't even charted on official maps that were present in the books--it was so off the beaten path that nobody even bothered checking if there was anything here.

  In fairness, the map itself had a lot of... gaps, let's call them. It's likely that this isn't the only 'missed' portion, but just one of the many. Unlike on Earth, where we felt compelled to document every single tribe we could, here there seemed to be a broader sense of pure apathy towards anything 'below-level'.

  Alas, I did learn a few moderately important things and potentially even found a slight clue as to my dear disciple's original identity.

  Per the system, Long Tao used to go by 'Divine Blade' back in the day. And though there are no direct references to that name that I could find, there are a few mentions of 'Divine Sword Academy', a supposed hegemon of some or another area just about 10,000 years ago. According to the texts, it eventually won in a war and 'ascended', whatever that meant.

  In my learning of truths and myths and trying to distinguish between the two, the remaining four months before competition came and went.

  Dai Xiu managed to reach the peak fourth stage of the Qi Condensation Realm, essentially guaranteeing that I will win the bet. Luckily, Long Tao taught her means and ways to hide her cultivation, so, to others, she appeared to be an ordinary first-stage newbie.

  Though her realm is impressive, I gotta say... it bled me dry. Of the 1,000 freakin' stones, I had just shy of 200 left. Yes, some of it went into buying supplies, such as small elements for a simple Qi-bounding array that I placed at their 'house', but it was merely a drop in the bucket that was the 'Dai Xiu project'.

  The advantage of physiques like hers is that the speed of cultivating was magnificent... but so was the drain on the resources. It's very likely that she'd only need stones for now but also perhaps need completely unique concoctions sometime in the future... and I would have to pay for them.

  Just the thought made me shudder; luckily, I have two bets to win that will recoup some of my wealth and make me feel somewhat secure yet again.

  "Okay, guys. Today's the day," I greeted them in the morning; while Dai Xiu appeared to have a lot of spunk in her step and was clearly somewhat nervous, Long Tao was bored. I don't blame him--he likely held back from breaking through for me, at least in part, and was probably looking forward to the excursion after the competition. "Don't be nervous--just go out and have fun! Show to everyone what you've learned so far!"

  "--Oh? So we can just have fun?" Long Tao immediately said, his smile... strange.

  "That only applies to Dai Xiu," I quickly said. "You're not allowed to have fun. Just go out and take care of business."

  "Tsk."

  "Khm," pretending to not hear the click of the tongue, I continued. "Most importantly, you can never, ever reveal a realm beyond the second stage, no matter what! Even if the other disciples take artifacts that will defeat you, just admit defeat! Promise me!"

  "..."

  "If you don't promise me, we simply won't go."

  "... I promise," Dai Xiu said, seeming unwilling.

  "I already said--if the sect learns of your true strengths, they will take you away from me. Now, if you don't want me as your Master anymore, just say so, and I will arrange for the transfer; there is no need to draw attention to us during the competition."

  "..." Seeing them (but mostly the girl) remain silent, I nodded and smiled.

  I especially bought them a pair of matching robes for today--Long Tao wore gold-embroidered black robes with swirling motifs, while Dai Xiu wore the exact same one, except its stitching was silver instead of gold. Having eaten normally for the past half a year or so, both had put on quite a lot of weight--especially Dai Xiu--and now looked like proper kids, baby fat in cheeks and all.

  "Very well," I declared. "Let us go down the mountain."

  Thus, my first (not really) true (not really) hurdle (is it?) is about to begin.