"Does any one of you have the ability to fly? Please save Senior Bai before he looses his life by dying from such altitude!" one of Bai Xun's fans exclaimed at the flying Senior Bai.
Dorothy immediately dashed into the air. It was only then that I realised that she was still at Transient Mortal realm pinnacle stage, a whole realm below me.
"Tsk, tsk." I clicked my tongue in disappointment.
While I was still ruminating over my own thoughts, Dorothy had already covered the distance in no time. She displayed her thaumaturgy ability by making her spiritual essence visibly pump out of her body, overshadowing Bai Xun into something one could likened to a "force field". After balancing the latter into the barrier, Dorothy flew down with him floating beside her.
Everyone gave way as Dorothy landed.
The elder from before, stepped forward and thanked her, before turning to look at the pale-faced Bai Xun. After pumping some of his spiritual energy into the latter till he was satisfied with the results, he turned around and looked at me in complete difference.
"How can you have so much strength despite being only at Transcendent Mortal realm primary stage?"
'You kidding? You basically read out the question I'd been trying to unravel!'
"Umm... hardwork?" I said with an embarrassed face.
The elder nodded. Dorothy coughed.
He turned around to look at the juniors and seniors all around us.
"Did you hear that? Instead of this miss to go about looking for ways to flaunt her strength from place to place, she normally spends most of her time cultivaing! If not for Bai Xun asking her to display her strength, would any of you ever have known that such a low profile fellow had such strength? No! Learn from this!"
Everyone nodded. I scratched my head. Dorothy's eyes and lips twitched in disbelief.
Unable to hold his curiosity any longer, the elder asked in awe, "I'm curious to know how long you've been cultivaing."
"Me?" I held my right arm, sheepishly, as I began to make a rough calculation in my head. Seeing this, the elder was even the more filled with reverence for me.
"I think, that should be..."
Everyone pricked their ears up.
"I reached Unleashed-talent (Cultivation Deciphering) realm earlier this week, yes, earlier this week."
Expecting to receive praises, what I received made me almost just out from my skin.
"Pu!" The already abashed Bai Xun, upon hearing this, puked a mouthful of blood in astonishment. The other students, on the other hand, fell to the ground as though invisible arrows had been shot through their hearts, simultaneously.
The elder's eyes also widened. It was obvious he had lots, more of questions, but on looking at my sincere, innocent eyes, he held himself back.
Silence ruled.
A short moment after, he finally asked, "Could it be, by any chance, that you're also planning on applying for the Junior Academy of the Gifted?"
Dorothy and I nodded.
"Ahh, no wonder."
"No wonder what?" I asked.
"Ah, no, it's nothing. By the way, what clan do you both come from?"
Dorothy stepped forward, this time.
"We're actually unaffiliated cultivators."
"Unaffiliated cultivators," repeated the elder, stroking his flowing beards.
We nodded.
As though reading through my mind, Dorothy quickly engulfed me in her force field and soared into the sky, before the man could ask further questions.
"I didn't even get to know your names," he cried out from the distance, but my cousin and I played oblivion.
* * *
"Did you see that? We were awesome!" I jumped around, punching fists into the air which, in turn, caused ripples in the stable space.
In a pink, bikini bottom, in our living room, I jumped around the stone-like astounded figure of Dorothy.
"All the while you've been earnestly cultivating while I thought you'd been messing around?" she asked, more like a statement. Looking at me, once more, she asked, "How did you even learn to cultivate?"
"Haaa, d'you live under a rock, coz?" I asked sarcastically, still feeling the hour of fame in the air.
"I..." She just couldn't put out the right words she was feeling at the moment. She was typically flabbergasted, dumbfounded, astonished, perplexed, awe-stricken, confounded, bewildered and... umm... which one follows?
Just to put her at ease, I said, "I learnt some basic things from the Beast Hall's Book Collection Vault."
She nodded, slowly, definitely not buying my excuse... but that was the least of my problems. I definitely do not owe her an excuse, and besides... nobody must know about Teacher Kira who I could summon just by drawing my attention to any book I hold in my hand.
My abilities and my new life were now under two words which somewhat sounded cool in my ears... Top secret.
* * *
Strolling outside, later in the evening, to "catch some fresh air", as I told Dorothy, I began to enjoy the liveliness of the city. On both sides of me were Roy and Little Wolfy, the copper-fur wolf. On my chest was pinned a 1-star beast tamer emblem.
In truth, the reason I came out was to find a way that I could raise my tamed beasts' cultivations. After realising that my cultivation soared at a neck breaking speed, it was only normal for me to be concerned about my beasts. They just have to keep up with my pace. Despite not knowing how the academy would be like, there was still one clear thing. And that's that there would be lots of competitions — and with competition comes hostility and jealousy.
Of course I wasn't thinking of wandering into the marketplace for a solution. If there was any place I doted the most, right now, it was the Beast Hall. It was where I actually gained my first feeling of accomplishment, and, hence, there was a subconscious feeling of reverence for that name: Beast Hall.
I sat on Little Wolfy and ordered him to run at full speed, to the Beast Hall.
As a top-notch, Transient Mortal realm pinnacle stage beast, it was extremely difficult for even Roy to keep up with its speed, despite the fact that the latter covered the aerial space. Roy was only just a Cultivation Deciphering realm primary stage beast, so how could it possibly meet up with the copper-fur wolf?
Thinking deeper, I realised how much I needed to help Roy improve its cultivation.
Since we'd be leaving for the City of the Gifted in two days' time for the examination for applying candidates of the Junior Academy of the Gifted, I really didn't want to spend my time doing nothing before then.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, on my way back from the Beast Hall...
"You mean to say that an unaffiliated cultivator actually sent the Bai clan's Bai Xun flying over thirty metres in the air by just a punch despite the both of them being at the same cultivation level?"
My lips curved up into a smile as the wind of the sentence blew into my ears on the speedy copper-fur wolf's back. I tilted my head up in pride. I could sense the excitement from the speaker's voice, but only shuddered unperturbed.