"I'm sorry. Refining just this single cup of mine, albeit fast, was also very taxing on me. While I might have some other skills to compensate for it, my general power is… low. According to the test, I'm still at the novice level, so I hope you can forgive me my lack of cooperation caused by nothing but lack of skill of mine."
It was that easy. Instead of rising with one's pride, instead of trying to come up with some creative ways to hide what I did, all I had to do was to pretend to be weak!
Not humble. This kind of trait was good only for naive idiots and people who actually had some morals in their life. One had to know his worth perfectly well, and being humble was a simple road to underestimate oneself. Only by knowing one's limits would one be able to make the maximum out of each situation, knowing how far one can go with his actions without facing challenges greater than he could tackle.
"A pity. I will do my best, but I can't guarantee anything. Come back tomorrow and I will show you the results… my dear junior."
After saying his piece, the old man hesitated for a moment before adding the official name that this female was most likely bearing towards him. This was yet another stupid point that I couldn't fathom. What was the use of calling everyone junior, senior, master or patriarch? While this last title could be warranted by the position of social respect that such a person wielded, all the other names were simply stupid.
Because what? Calling other seniors was supposed to force one to learn his place in the line? Then what was with calling other juniors? A way to get back at those who lagged behind or were just unlucky to start later? And what if someone who was junior to someone else, turned out to be stronger, wiser, more talented and generally better? Would that person still have to swallow his well-deserved pride and lower himself before those worse of him?
For me, this was just another way to brew conflict and rivalry within the society. What's more, once someone swallowed up the mentioned negative sides of this approach, one still had to face another inevitable aspect.
For any social form that grew out of strictly ancient and medievalistic times, this one was absolutely the worst, because it took basically a random aspect that had nothing to do with one's achievements or power, and forced entire society to use it. Additionally, this kind of naming would quickly lead to people following their seniors and their seniors alone, while automatically enclosing themselves from the interactions of groups of other seniors.
While it would be stupid and naive to say that this alone was the sole reason behind faction conflicts and generally the entire pile of shit that human nature was surfacing, it didn't mean that this archaic form of referring to each other only served as a catalyst to those ugly sides of men.
"Let's go then."
After the long time of hesitation that my teacher presented and which allowed me to waste so much time just thinking how useless the naming sense is in this world, the female finally came to some kind of conclusion before decisively moving out.
At first, the next part of our journey seemed to be perfectly fine, but the more time I spent nearly chasing after the woman instead of walking beside… or even behind her, the stronger I felt that she really held the fact that I didn't show the content of the cup to herself.
"We will be checking out the smithing guild. The rules here are… slightly different, so just try to stay silent… And for the gods' sake, do not touch anything as you did back in the shared guild!"
From those few sentences of her, I could tell that the events at the guild managed to either traumatize my teacher or at least create a strong impression of me in her mind. Either way, while I couldn't tell how I would react to whatever I would see in that next guild, I could at least claim that I didn't wish to stand out even more.
Only at this point did I understood all the worries that the stupid main characters of the novels I read would always pretend to be weaker than they were in the reality. While I was doing the same, for now, I at least knew that this was only a countermeasure against being exploited by those stronger by me.
As it turned out, something that I took for the tool of the authors to make sure the situation would be tense and enemies clueless about what was coming for them now turned into a real risk of someone finding out about how different I seemed to be from all the other cultivators of this world.
At this point, I couldn't help but even go as far in my mind projection as to start thinking whether I'm not the main character in some trashy cultivation novel as well… But at least I could diminish this thought rather quickly. After all, to write a story about someone possessing a cleaning system? No author would be as mad as to do something as stupid as this, as just the effort required to properly write such story would instantly reduce the enthusiasm to write something stupid into smithereens. Unless I was the main character of some novel that only started and would never be finished by its amateurish author?
Dropping all those useless and stupid thoughts aside, I had to shake my head clean from other matters as the teacher's words about our next stop during the guide being quite… specific, came true even before we actually reach the building.
Contrary to all the others around him that had some semblance of art-sense embedded in its walls, the place where we were heading looked like some industrial monster from the depths of the mind of someone who spent his entire life in the deepest part of early industrial cities of the earth!
It was a damned, square block!