Hopeful for the Future
Huo Chen didn't dare let the Duchess become her idiot nephew's guide, so he quickly grabbed the boy and went off.
He swore to give Huo Long the best guide in history as he flew off. Whether or not he would accomplish the feat was unknown.
Xue Bai ignored the comically fleeing Huo Chen and looked back at his mother. He hadn't forgotten the reason why he had left home in the first place.
"Mother, has Father returned yet?" Xue Bai asked. He could not wait to start using the sword!
"Yes, he has returned. He's not in the office, though. He's in our courtyard right now cultivating." Li Rou nodded.
Earlier, Li Rou and Xue Feng would only cultivate every few days. After all, they were in high positions making fighting extremely rare, and they were also at the very end of their potential. Therefore, cultivating diligently to the point of forgoing sleep and eating would be pointless.
But now, ever since Xue Bai gave them the Yggdrasil fruit, the two of them had spent every moment they could cultivating. They were even more addicted than the Wang twins.
"Alright, I'll go find him." Xue Bai nodded back and turned around, and ran off to find him.
Xue Bai gave his mother a simple goodbye and then proceeded to run off and find. Thankfully, unlike Xue Feng's office and Li Rou's herb garden, his parent's courtyard was right door to his, so it was relatively easy to find.
Once Xue Bai entered the courtyard, the first thing he noticed was his parents' contrasting tastes severely affecting the environment.
His parent's courtyard was nowhere the size of his own, and just the garden alone was almost a mile in diameter, showing just how much the couple needed more than him.
One half of the courtyard was a garden filled with beautiful shrubbery and scenic plant life, while the other half was barren except for a few weapons stands. The rest of Xue Feng's courtyard was built like a training field.
Even if Xue Bai didn't know the personalities, he would've figured it out the second that he walked into their courtyard.
A few hundred meters away, in the center of the training field side, Xue Feng sat in a lotus position cultivating. However, Xue Feng opened his eyes after Xue Bai entered the courtyard, apparently sensing his son.
"Bai'er, you've returned. How was your trip out to Frontier City?" Xue Feng asked.
While he didn't like that his son left, Xue Feng still felt like it was fine. Since cultivators would awaken their Martial Veins at the young age of 11, it was customary for young kids to gain theoretical and worldly knowledge before that.
This way, they could focus on cultivation during their teenage and young adult years.
"It was rather boring, but I did bring over their Young Master. Commander Huo thought he was a good talent, so I thought it would be good to bring him here." Xue Bai explained his time over at the clan.
Xue Feng nodded approvingly after he heard that. Since the boy wanted to become a commander under him at such a young age, it was obvious he had a lot of drive.
Bringing him to the dukedom earlier in his life might instill some early loyalty while also further igniting the boy's drive.
However, Xue Feng didn't comment on that part, but he chose to instead comment on something else he remembered.
"That's nice and all, but I heard that you took some things from our treasury before you left. Why did you do that?" Xue Feng questioned.
Xue Bai knew that he couldn't hide this, so he answered with the response he had prepared earlier.
"I had taken only some low-tier things to help the poor Huo Clan. They were things that are easily replaceable, so nothing important was lost." Xue Bai replied. He then told his father all the things he had brought over.
A smile appeared on Xue Feng's face after he heard this. By only using easily replaceable and cheap items he didn't care about, Xue Bai managed to repair the relationship between the two clans.
Huge rewards for almost no risk. How could Xue Feng get angry at such a move?
After explaining the rest of his trip to his father, Xue Bai finally revealed what he came for. "Father, I'm pretty sure that mother told you. So when are we going to start training?"
"We can start tomorrow. You must be tired from your trip here. Go and check on the kids you brought over and make sure they are adjusting well today." Xue Feng told his son.
Though Xue Bai was a little disappointed at not starting today, what his father said was reasonable, so after nodding, he left the courtyard.
After leaving, he first went to his own courtyard. Since he couldn't do anything today, Xue Bai decided to go and practice some archery.
When Xue Bai first started to learn archery, he only thought of it as a small side skill he would only use occasionally.
But the better he got at it, the more he enjoyed it. Though he shot very accurately in the beginning, it wasn't very fun. However, after his mother introduced running, sliding, and jumping shots was when he started to actually enjoy archery.
It gave Xue Bai a refreshing new taste to the bland archery he once thought of.
Since it was close by, it didn't take long for him to reach his courtyard. And when he entered, he saw his cheerful maid sweeping the ground outside.
"Young Master, you're back!" Xiao'er spoke excitedly.
Most of her day was spent with Xue Bai, and when he left, her days became very dull. So his return excited the young maid.
"Yes, I have returned. But I'm not staying in my courtyard yet. I'm just here to get a quick change of clothes. I'm going to the archery range now." Xue Bai explained as he went into his room.
"Oh, let me help you change, Young Master." The eyes of Xiao'er gained an odd glint once she said those words, however.
And Xue Bai caught that.
"No, Xiao'er! I don't like your eyes when you watch me change. So you stay outside my room while I do so." Xue Bai quickly ordered.
Xiao'er was like his mother in the aspect that she loved to change and dress him up.
Hearing that, Xiao'er backed away with her head down like a sad puppy. He was right. She had gotten that habit from Li Rou. But how could she not? The Young Duke was too cute. He looked just like a real doll!
In the room, Xue Bai quickly changed out of his robes and went into his training outfit. His normal robe attire was just a smaller version of Xue Feng's Duke robe.
The clothing itself was very similar to the Earth's Hanfu. The robe was made from a comfortable and silky light blue fabric and represented Duke Xue and his nickname.
Along with the light blue fabric, the chest area of the robe had snowflakes dotted over them, representing the Xue name.
And while Xue Bai loved the aesthetic look of it, it was way too baggy to do any physical activity in it, so he had to take it off.
His usual training wear was a tight black shirt along with some slightly loose pants that resembled Earth's sweatpants.
Xue Bai on Earth didn't know anything about clothing, but since Li Rou was so good at making clothes, she managed to mimic the clothing after Xue Bai explained it to her. And after the third attempt, it came out just fine.
Moreover, in the Baishen Plane, fabrics felt much better than on Earth, so he told her to make a few more for him in different colors for different outfits.
Having more clothes didn't hurt.
After he changed, he picked up his bow and a few arrows and left the courtyard, leaving the droopy-eared Xiao'er along the way.
His walk to the archery field was uneventful, as the Core Region was empty.
When Xue Bai first started archery with his mother, the field was barren except for the wooden pillars made for his stability training. But after Xue Bai would get better at archery, Li Rou implemented more obstacles for Xue Bai to navigate around to get to the target.
First, it was the unbalanced wooden pillars that he would have to stand on and shoot. Then it moved onto tall trees and thick shrubbery, where he was forced to act like a hunter and use the surroundings to his advantage.
But Li Rou had gotten too reckless with agriculture, and now, the once dirt-covered training field resembled a miniature forest.
However, Xue Bai liked the change. Rather than a cluttered mess of a forest, thanks to Li Rou's skills, it was more like a parkour field that he could adventure through while taking shots whenever he felt like it.
After gaining a new healthy body after four years of lying in a bed and crippled, doing all these flashy and fun exercises made Xue Bai thrilled.
Xue Bai loved this world and all the changes it had from his miserable and bleak life back on Earth. There were so many things he could do here that he couldn't do on Earth, and he wanted to try them all.
All the feelings he wrote down in a dream journal, all the daydreams that he was forced to suppress, Xue Bai wanted to do them all.
And while the tree hopping and arrow shooting certainly didn't enter his bucket list, it was all he could do for now.
He didn't have any cultivation, after all.
How could he tramble genius or fight Immortals if he couldn't walk two miles without getting exhausted?
It was also this thought process that made Xue Bai more and more excited for his future.
Though he was still a child, Xue Bai was strong thanks to the environment he lived in, the surplus of Spiritual Qi that nourished his body from birth, and the medicinal herb baths, at least by Earth's standards.
His weak child body was already strong enough that he could climb trees faster than monkeys and shoot arrows better than Olympians.
How much stronger would he become once he started cultivating?
His future was bright, and he couldn't wait for it.
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