Entering the library to ask for the manual Elder Thane gave permission for was harder than Siu had expected. It wasn't because he wasn't at that level or anything like that, so he would be barred from getting it, even with permission... Nobody cared about that as long as he could pay the fee... In every sect, it was up to the cultivator to set his own boundaries and limits, and if they cripple themselves? So be it. The issue came from Arya sitting on his head. More precisely, the problem came from the older disciple who was present that day, acting as the librarian, sitting inside, someone Siu had never seen before, but he was sure to make a big fuss about his arrival with a beast.

  "Don't bring animals into here! What if it damages the scrolls?!"

  "She won't." Siu answered calmly after he was stopped by him right at the entrance, "She is a spirit beast, she can understand us well, not just an animal."

  "And I should believe that nonsense?!" He snorted, fixing his robes, and just by looking at his face, he was at least forty if not more, still stuck amongst the outer disciples, "Even if you got one, I never heard of any outer disciples having a smart beast; the best I saw was the mounts they ride when going into the forest."

  "I'm not here to explain anything to you," Siu shrugged, wanting to press past him, but the disciple raised a hand, touching his chest and pushing him back. Just from the force and the way he did, Siu already asserted his strength, which was high... but only about on par with Nue Toah's powers.

  "Out. You aren't bringing an animal in that may defecate on priceless knowledge!"

  "Master, I can defecate on his head. Do you want me to? I can do it from here, I have a great aim!"

  "Don't feed the fire!" Siu grunted, way too annoyed to be taken aback by her sudden comment. He was simply happy that only he could hear her. "As I said, she is my contracted beast, and I had read the Sect rules," He said again, looking down at the hand still touching his chest, then back at the disciple's face, "If you aren't going to let me in, then go get an Elder to inspect us."

  "An Elder?" He scoffed, "They aren't going to trouble themselves with us when it's something mundane! Are you a newbie? They have better things to do than to come and arbitrate our problems, the issues of outer disciples! Bah!"

  "Then call Dui." Siu shrugged, finally having had enough, grabbing the wrist of the disciple, squeezing it with his full strength as he pulled it off his chest, showing him that he wasn't going to just back down. "Because you won't be able to throw me out."

  And with that, he walked past him, intentionally bumping shoulders, rattling the older disciple a little more to make sure he understood his message.

  "Heh! Master, you know how to stand up to bullies! You are great!"

  "In the past, I decided that after I can begin my journey, I will always meet every force with equal or greater measure... depending on its intent. If someone tries to put me down, I will not go down quietly."

  "Um... I wish I had the courage to do it, too..."

  "You do have a big mouth," Siu countered her, smiling to himself.

  "But they can't understand me..." Arya murmured, making Siu simply shrug, gently shaking his head. What a little imp, not even a fox.

  "You are something else..." He whispered and began searching, without the annoying librarian's help, taking him half an hour to finally find what he was looking for.

  It was thinner than he expected, but that didn't really matter, so he brought it to one of the empty tables and sat down. Curious, Arya climbed down from the top of his head, onto his shoulders, holding onto his neck with her tail like a monkey, examining the papers from there.

  “Hmm…” Siu murmured something Arya didn't catch while he was scanning the opening lines again.

  "Master, what does it say?"

  "The fox wins by deciding which truth the enemy is allowed to see." Siu told her, shrugging, "That's the opening line, which..." he stopped as he exhaled slowly through his nose. “That’s already irritating,” he muttered aloud.

  “Why?” Arya asked immediately.

  “Because,” Siu replied, tapping the page lightly with a finger, “it means the form isn’t about doing something correctly. It’s about doing it badly and convincingly, which means I will have to learn to produce mistakes and faulty movements to present openings in my own style, to draw my enemy right into a trap. But I need to make mistakes in a way that are not really mistakes... No wonder it's an advanced part of the form, because if I don't have the Crane to counter or the Wild Cat to dodge, I can't take advantage of baiting my enemies...”

  "Err..." Arya blinked her mismatched eyes, trying to understand, “I don't get it...”

  “…Right.” Siu agreed, because the idea itself felt contradictory, so he wasn't surprised. It was all about how to do something well and, at the same time, do it wrong. In the end, he read it through multiple times, checked the included diagrams of basic movements, before he leaned back slightly, glancing at her. “Before we go any further... can you read this?” He asked suddenly, because apparently, this form should also help Arya.

  "Those squiggly lines?" She leaned forward, peering at the page as she scanned the lines carefully. First, she tilted her head left, her ears twitching... Then the other way. Another twitch... A nose wrinkle. "No, I can't. They look ugly.”

  “Well,” he chuckled to himself, “It makes sense, I would have been surprised if you knew how to read human writing.”

  “Oh! Writing! Yeah, never heard of it,” she chirped, ears lifting, yawning a little.

  “Then what did you think we were here for? In a library?” he asked, now indeed a bit surprised.

  “Dunno. That man said it's about defecating or something. I thought you needed to poop, and this is a toilet or something, you just can't get it going.”

  "You are taking the piss out of me, aren't you?" Siu asked, audibly groaning and feeling as if she was indeed messing with him.

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  "If it's a toilet, you can do that too, Master! It is a good idea, marking our territory!"

  "..."

  "Master?"

  "..."

  "So..." She sat back on his shoulder, her tail swinging behind her, apparently very pleased with herself, ignoring Siu's silence. “So... What does it say?”

  "Haaaah..." Siu looked back at the manual, ignoring her, “This may take a while.”

  “Why?” Arya asked, actually interested. “I’m very patient. Tell me!”

  "Telling you alone won't work in the long run, you need to learn how to read... I hadn't even thought about it until now, but you must. We will do it, but not now. I will have to memorize this first... If you are really patient, stay put until then."

  Of course... She lasted approximately seven seconds.

  “What’s that thing?” she asked, pointing at a character in the margin with her tail.

  “A word.”

  “What’s a word?” She asked immediately.

  “Well, it's a collection of symbols that represent a sound.”

  “What’s a sound?”

  "Haaaah..." Siu closed his eyes, trying not to get frustrated, “Okay,” he said, inhaling slowly, “We’re starting earlier than I thought.”

  With that, he shifted the book aside slightly and picked up a scrap of practice parchment from the side of the table, along with a charcoal stick meant for taking notes.

  “This,” he said, writing a single, clean character, “is the word for fox.”

  "Um, um!" Arya leaned in instantly, “That’s me!”

  “Yes.”

  "But," She stared at it with a twitching nose and then frowned. “It doesn’t look like me.”

  “It’s not a picture.”

  “Why not?” She asked, confused... if it was a fox, why didn't it look like one?

  “Because writing would be very inconvenient if every word were a drawing.”

  “...” This time, it was Arya who fell silent for a moment, "But drawings are nice."

  “They are,” he agreed, “But they’re slow and take up a lot of space.”

  "Hm..." She considered that, tilting her head left and right, making her ears flop to the side every time, “Okay. So that’s ‘fox’. And this?” She pointed to the manual again.

  “That’s the word for deception. Here, it means control of perception.”

  "Weird..." She murmured, trying to wrap her head around it, but every time Siu thought, she had enough questions, a new one burst out from her.

  Teaching her to read turned out to be… unexpectedly fast, and Siu only realized it after her endless questions that spiraled into other questions and occasionally looped back to more questions... But once she understood what symbols meant, something always clicked for her. More than that, she never asked the same question twice, and Siu had to realize that her eyes tracked patterns fast, way too fast in fact.

  “Wait,” Siu said after they were on the third page, “Slow down! You skipped two characters.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You did.” He warned her, pointing them out.

  "Hm...?" She squinted at the paper, “Oh... They look similar.”

  “They’re different, though. You can't rush reading, Arya, or you may misunderstand critical information in the future.”

  “They shouldn’t be this similar... And every word should mean something different!” She protested at once, as if she were pouting.

  “That’s… not how language works.”

  “Well, it should.”

  "Start over!" he snorted, despite himself. "Don't make that mistake again!"

  Even as she was complaining... she still managed to improve once again. Although she struggled with abstract terms, especially those that described intent, feints, and misdirection, once he explained them through imagining their sequences, letting Arya feel his thoughts rather than expressing them in his own words, her understanding was almost immediate.

  “Oh!” she said suddenly, her tail flicking back and forth, slapping Siu in the back of the head. “So this book is trying to tell me, to fight like me... It’s like when I pretend to run left but actually jump right?”

  “Um... Yes?”

  “And then pretend I’m scared so they chase me to push me down?”

  “…" For a moment, Siu began frowning at where this was going, "Yes?”

  “And then wiggle?”

  “Wiggle...? Wiggle what?”

  "My butt!" She beamed at him, jumping onto the table and already doing it, “I’m very good at this form already.”

  Siu was about to say something or even scold her... but then, as she was swinging her waist and swiping the air with her tail, he swore that he saw illusions of the little fox appear around her, as if there were suddenly two. For now, they were very much transparent versions, not convincing from this up close, overlapping with her original, but... they were there.

  “Indeed, you are...” he muttered out loud, trying to get a feel for it, especially because, watching her do it, he could see how Arya moved towards the left, just to appear on the right, her illusions being very much selling the feint if he let it affect his eyes. "But I can't do the same, especially in a battle." He added, imagining himself twisting his waist the same way. Ugh.

  "There!" he heard the older disciple's voice approaching, bringing him out of his weird thoughts and also stopping Arya from showcasing her talent, stopping her dance, and dispelling the illusory images of herself as she quickly hopped back onto Siu's head, ears twitching, looking towards the source of the yell.

  "Why you?" Dui asked, with a soft moan, after noticing Siu and the fox on his head, already grimacing.

  "Senior." Siu nodded as he closed the manual and stood up to greet him, as was the custom.

  "You saw it do that weird thing, Senior! Who knows what damage the manual received?!" The disciple grunted, swiping it from the desk and looking through it with great annoyance. "This warrants a punishment!"

  "Fuck off."

  "You..?! Eh?!" The older disciple flinched, but then realized it wasn't Siu who said it, but Dui.

  "Idiot," Dui added, slapping the back of the man's head, "Spirit Beasts are the extension of the cultivators. They have the right to accompany their masters when bonded under a Mutual Contract. Or are you saying half of the disciples within the sect can't go anywhere?! No wonder you are still not an Inner Disciple! Call me away again for some fucking nonsense, and I am cripling you for good!" he snorted, scaring the man, turning his face deathly white, surprising Siu with how aggravated Dui felt... or was that part jealousy? Only he couldn't show it towards him, so it landed on the easiest target? It was hard to tell.

  "I told him that," Siu said in the end, making Dui shrug, and inclining his head so he would follow him as they began walking.

  "I bet. Well, the news will still need to spread, but those who amount to anything already know you got yourself a very valuable pet. She is priceless, even amongst the inner disciples."

  "Really? Is it that weird for me to have her?" Siu shrugged, while Arya became silent as the vibes she felt coming from Dui were the type she didn't like... not one bit.

  "It's weird because of you! It's weird because you did something weird again. You weren't supposed to beat Nue, and you weren't supposed to get a Mutual Contract done at your stage. So yes, even we are taking note, because a few players amongst the Inner Disciples are convinced you will be joining us sooner rather than later."

  "I am not in a rush, Senior," Siu answered simply, making Dui shrug.

  "Sure, but you do know how competitive people are when the good stuff, simply put, can't get to everyone, only to the best of the best. You are competition, Siu. You are already counted as one... If not for resources, then because your antics may draw the attention of the Elders... And that is the only way to become a core disciple."

  "I guess," He chuckled, remembering how it was when he was young... Even when he was just a little boy, those who were ten years older than him didn't hold back at all just to put him down. Competition... was indeed fierce, no matter where. "I am more focused on myself, though, Senior Dui."

  "We all are, I'm just giving you a hint, so take it with grace!" He chuckled, elbowing him as if they were friends, "One more thing, before I go."

  "Yes?" Siu asked, stopping at the crossroad they stood at.

  "Nue is out of seclusion, and she also heard of your new pet." He said, glancing at Arya, who avoided eye contact with him, "We both know what kind of girl she is... And I would be surprised if she had learned her lesson. My instincts tell me she will simply switch her focus from your friends to your pet."

  "Well," Siu said, without flinching, only slowly crossing his arms, "That would be a very bold... and stupid move."

  "Confident, eh?" He grinned, watching Siu's blue eyes that grew a degree colder than usual, "Good. Keep at it, Siu... because if you ever join our circle, you will need that backbone or you will be crushed."