As the Sect Master opened his mouth to say something, another whistling sound filled the air, but this time, it was at a range able to be heard by human ears.
The sect master then went to look up at the origin of the sound, so I urged the Qi in the arrow to propel it through the air even faster. As I thought of this, the sound grew even louder all of a sudden as an arrow flying almost faster than the eye could see zipped past me toward the Sect Master.
Because he was not anticipating a strike, he had lowered his guard, but regardless of this, he was still able to mostly twist out of the way of the arrow so that only his shoulder was struck.
This Strike, unlike the other one, impacted with a lot of force, but it seemed to be an entirely blunt force and not the penetrative one you would normally give to an arrow. It was enough to cause him to take a step back.
He then looked at me and was about to do something, but Mom, putting a hand on his shoulder, stopped him. Turning around to face her, he then said, "Why are you stopping me? I was just going to teach this ignorant junior a lesson. You never stopped any of us from doing that before."
Mom, on the other hand, looked at him like he was an idiot before explaining, "To answer your first question, that kid is Vale, and she is very sensitive to certain topics right now, and you should know those after being hit by some of her arrows. As for your second question, I would like you to tell me if you would allow a bunch of kids saying they wanted to become the best martial artist to fight each other and then allow them to fight a bunch of children that only ever wanted to read and explore without any fighting?"
In response to this, the Sect Master scoffed and acted like Mom was naive for asking this question before responding, "What is the use for seeking immorality if not to stand on top of the world."
The righteousness with which he said this was almost sickening to me. Why would someone want to ascend to immortality solely for the sake of standing above everyone else? Would they not be forever alone with no one around them? How about lost and listless with no goal or reason to continue living because they achieved their goal and now stand above everyone else? Are those people really so self-centered and foolish as to believe that?
I then looked back at both Mom and the Sect Master, only to see them looking back at me stunned. It was at this point that I understood I had accidentally fallen into an old habit that I rarely paid any attention to anymore by thinking outlloud.
I only ever really did this around the workshop, which caused Mom to glance at me from the corner of her eye while we were working more than once. However, I had a descent amount of control over it at this point that I would rarely think out loud outside of research unless I was deep in thought.
Like I was right now.
Pulling myself back, I could see that Mom and the Sect Master's expressions changed again, with Mom now appearing excited and the Sect Master looking like he wanted to tear me apart.
Both of them then went to say something, but Mom was slightly faster, so she was able to get her word in quicker, making the sect master have to hold his. "It's good that you already understand this, so I don't have to try and teach it to you like my other students."
When she finished speaking, she gave a hard glare to the Sect Master, who was standing next to her, causing him to freeze.
This series of actions made me feel both happy for receiving praise and also regretful for not paying attention to what I said and getting the sect master scolded. Normally, I would be happy about the poor guy getting his due scolding, but if what mom was insinuating was right, then he was more pittyable and jealous than downright mean just to be mean.
After all, who would want to live forever if it meant living through nothing else than self-induced torture for the rest of eternity? I know I would not.
Choosing that it would be better to ignore this and not show any feelings at all I turn to the house and quickly walk inside to tell Yuki to make some tea. That was when I remembered that we did not have any tea, at least to my knowledge.
I still walked through the door and toward where I heard sounds being made to find Yuki. When I did find her, I quickly asked to see if we had any tea in the house, upon which she guided me to the kitchen and opened one of the cabinets where A bunch of loose-leaf tea was located.
She then pulled some of it out and started walking to another part of the kitchen, where a teapot was sitting next to a few other utensils that I did not know anything about.
Grabbing them, she then went to walk over to the sink when I stopped her and pointed to a swivel facet that I had installed above the stove. It was meant to be used for filling pots, pans, or whatever else was on the stove that needed water.
I pointed that out to her because I thought she would use the stove for heating the water, but I was very wrong. Instead, she only shrugged before walking to the facet and filling the teapot with water, then walking back to the utensils that were next to the pot originally and placing it on a metal stand.
Beneath this metal stand was an orange rock with what looked to be a formation placed on top of it. I assumed this was some sort of heating formation meant to keep the tea warm. However, in the next moment, I watched the rock emit a burst of light and the teapot now had steam coming out of it.
The water had apparently been heated past its boiling point instantly. This completely defeats the purpose of boiling the water in the first place.
She then grabbed a tray from the side of the room and started placing all the things needed for making tea on it. I wanted to stop her and have her boil the water properly, but instead, I kept my mouth shut and just let her do as she wanted.
Following her actions first with my eyes and trying to figure out what she was doing, I then trailed her out of the kitchen as she walked over to the main room of the house.
Walking into the room, I saw that everything had changed, and instead of the couches and coffee table I had placed in here, there were two lines of chairs on either end of the room with small tables in between them and two chairs sitting side by side at the back of the room.
This looked like some sort of meeting hall from those cultivation mangas, manhuas, comics? What ever they are called! That is what it looked like.
Quickly pulling myself out of my thoughts I realized I had been standing there for to lomng and went to sit down on the row of chairs opposite from the sect master. I was fairly certin that this is where I was supposedd to be sitting based off of what I had read in my past life but I was still unsure.
Thankfully their expressions did not change after they glanced at me signaling that they either did not care or that I had gotten my guess correct.
Yuki then began to serve some tea to everyone in the room as Mom engaged the sect master in small talk.
They were mainly discussing about the running of the sect, things that happened while Mom was in seclusion, and the current situation of the sect itself.
The information that I could at least understand from this appeared to be very valuable in nature but it was also not the reason behind the ssect massters visit today.
I was at least able to partly figure out why Kaya wanted to know about Elinaria so much.
It turned out that she was not only the elder in charge of the glacial peak, but that she also came from a family of priestesses near the core of the empire.
This made me want to go and talk to her about these sorts of things, but I also did not want to be a nuisance and decided to wait until we had a reason to see each other again.
It was at this point I was pulled from my thoughts by Mom asking the Sect Master, "Now that we have that out of the way. Why did you come to visit us today?"