After dinner, I retreated to my room and took another hell bath to wash away the day's grime. Vivian didn't appear as she had last night. Well, that wouldn't do. I had just acquired the best heavy blanket in the world, I wasn't about to let her get away. She would need to force me away or start dating.
Wait, Vivian, dating? Was that possible? I'm not even sure how Dad ended up getting married, it's not like an extrovert came by and dragged him into marriage, his wife was worse than him. Even with all the recent events, she still paid more attention to her gadgets than the changes occurring with her daughters. Was Vivian likely to take her attention off the family business long enough to start dating some bloke? Nope. It was safe to say, that my heavy blanket was secured.
I grabbed a large pile of blankets and navigated to Vivi's room. I entered without knocking, just like she had, and headed straight for her bed, then made myself comfortable. Vivian smiled helplessly, then joined me shortly after. I knew she wouldn't turn me away. Soon, I drifted into a warm, soft sleep.
The next day, the tutor came. I dressed in a pretty blue dress since I wouldn't be doing anything physical until after the tutor left. As expected he droned on and on about the politics of the world. He also went over the characteristics of a few towns connected to our trade routes, such as what they exported and what they consumed. All of this would be very useful information for Vivian, but for me, I was bored out of my mind.
I did glean that Eternia wasn't the only nation in this world or even on this continent. There were 3 nations on this continent. Eternia occupied the majority of the Northern portion of the continent. The Republic of Han had roughly a third of the Southeast portion of the continent. The Ignis Confederacy only occupied a fifth of the continent in the Southwest. At the center of this continent was a great mountain where the environmental qi was exceptionally high. All 3 nations disputed the claim of this territory. The mountain range the mountain was in ran from the West and then turned to the Northeast. The Ignis confederacy bordered Eternia at the mountains, while the Republic of Han had lost territory in the last few wars, and now Eternia owned the plains at the foot of the mountains on the Republic's side. Market town was in the mountains Northeast of the disputed mountain, very close to the border and much of its trade occurred between Eternia and The Republic of Han.
If you looked at a map and imagined the continent as a cookie, it looked like a giant bite was being taken out of the top of the continent. Although the Eternians didn't have enough science to know that this was due to 2 continents smashing into each other millions of years ago, I knew from my past life.
Wait, geology wasn't on my skill list, was it? I checked, and a newly added GEOLOGY* LVL 1 appeared. Now I knew why my skills from my past life were so lacking, I needed to use them first to gain them.
The continent itself was in the shape of an irregular, fat, ice cream cone. Another food analogy, why is my mind stuck on food? *gurgle* oh, I forgot breakfast! Bacon! How did I forget the heavenly bacon?! My mind was now fully on food while the tutor continued to drone on.
When it came to math, I just went up and answered all the questions the tutor had put on the board previously. We skipped math for today.
Then it came to language. I gathered my willpower to pay attention to this segment. I always wanted to be bilingual. And now I had my foot in the door to being trilingual, even if it was unlikely I'd use English ever again. The Eternian section of the tutoring focused on advanced subjects such as metaphors, allegories, alliteration, and so on. While the Centaurian section focused on expanding my knowledge of characters and common phrases. I eagerly consumed the characters, however, many were very similar with only a single stroke separating very different words. A minor mistake could change "hello my friend" into "die traitor." My brain was throbbing in pain after adding a dozen characters to my memory.
As I lay flat on my desk, my brain throbbing, my ears ringing, and spots swimming in my vision, the tutor finally wrapped up. Zoey's body definitely preferred physical activity to learning. No wait, that's not right, she preferred leisure.
I continued to lay on the desk after the tutor left, waiting for my ears to stop ringing. Then I changed into a pair of black pants, a white tunic, and lilac robes with the Seeker crest embroidered on them. I had also acquired some low-rise boots with leather that was more supple than typical boots. These wouldn't be as good as the athletic shoes from my previous life, but they'd have to do.
I quickly completed my exercises, the reps were now mostly 15. The stretches went much better now that I had clothes that could handle the movements. With no need to jog into town, I jogged around a track that had been made around the training yard. I felt the qi once again invade my pores and reinvigorate my muscles. This time I managed to take my bath before dinner and appeared at the dinner table as a proper lady instead of a sweaty swamp gremlin.
The next day, I had waffles and an octuple serving of bacon. I had to make up for the loss from yesterday. While still munching on the mound of bacon, grease covering my face, the butler came in and announced a visitor: Li Kai. Before I even had a chance to wipe my face or swallow the bacon in my mouth, Li Kai came striding in. He had a perfect military march. His royal purple sect robes were in perfect condition, not a single tear or crease. Not even a stray fleck of lint. His black hair was tied tightly in a top knot, and his beard was trimmed short and neat. He was intimidating even before his aura washed over me. "So this is the brat that wants to join my sect?"
*gulp*
I quickly wiped the grease off my face with a cloth napkin. "Yes ..."
He cut me off, "Quiet, nothing matters except talent." He pulled out a rough opaque sphere that looked like milky glass. He put the sphere on the table and asked me to place my hand on it. For a moment, nothing happened, and then the qi within my body began to move and an image appeared within the orb. It was a faceless humanoid figure that was practicing some sort of martial art. When the figure punched, its arms would grow larger and become covered in fur. Initially, that was all, however, eventually the figure took on other partial and complete bestial forms. Around the edges of the sphere, several colorful wisps floated: red, green, blue, brown, gold, and an almost white glacial blue. Finally, the edge of the orb was changing colors. It started as white, then changed to green, then to blue, purple, and orange, and it finally settled on a parchment-like yellow.
The image represented my physique. The wisps were the elements in my spiritual root. And the color on the edge of the orb was the grade of my root. I now knew why the testing of physiques was so rough, they had to interpret the image. They could only interpret what had already been seen in the past and similar physiques were hard to distinguish. As for the grade of the physique, that wasn't displayed by the orb at all.
"Ape fist, no, lunar beast form. Not half bad." Li Kai muttered, "The spiritual root on the other hand ... it's supreme grade, but it has so many elements. Girl! Mister Seeker mentioned you had a technique that suited your root."
I snapped to attention when he shouted girl! "Eh uh, yes sir!"
"Let me see it." He demanded.
I hid my hands and, for the first time, summoned the technique out of my system. A thick, leather-bound book appeared in my hands. I handed it to Li Kai.
Li Kai glanced at the title, perused the introduction, and scanned through the next few pages. "This will do. It's equivalent to the best techniques available to core disciples in the sect. Only a few disciples, selected by elders or the sect leader himself would be able to obtain better. But it's useless to anyone without a 5-element root and either yin, yang, or both. You were fortuitous to acquire this book." He seemed to contemplate for a moment. "There are a few applicants each year who are in a similar situation to you. They aren't bad, but we don't possess a technique to cultivate their root, and we turn them away. Would you mind if we copied this technique and added it to our library for these few recruits?"
He was trying to appeal to my decency and the naivety of a 5-year-old child to acquire a highly valuable technique for free. Unfortunately for him, even before I transmigrated, Zoey was the perpetrator of such schemes. Both the original Zoey and I were highly alert to such a manipulation. But we couldn't blame him, we would do the same in his shoes. I made the most adorable smile I could muster. "Let's talk benefits."
Li Kai watching that smile suddenly felt as if he had entered the lair of a dangerous demonic beast. But it was just a mortal girl, wasn't it? Why did he feel like one wrong step in this negotiation and he wouldn't even know how he died? This girl wasn't as simple as a Supreme root and a Superior physique. He knew he had found a valuable new recruit.
A tense, half hour later, and a deal had been worked out. The Dancing Sword Sect could make a limited number of copies of my technique, however, they wouldn't be able to distribute the copies for 10 years. This would give me a 1-year head-start in using the technique before my peers could use it. In return, I would be given a number of sect contribution points equivalent to 5 Supreme techniques if I entered the sect. If I didn't enter the sect I would be given spirit stones equivalent to 5 times the market value of a Supreme technique. The payout would be held until either I entered the sect or failed to enter it. Soon the book would be taken for copies and the copies would then be sealed by a heavenly oath that would only lift after I had been paid and the ten years had passed. I would observe this entire process.
Li Kai happily tucked his copy of the agreement into his robes. "You are indeed a Seeker. I was briefly reminded of old Gregory, he was just as intense in negotiations. Back to the matter of joining the sect. As you can't cultivate yet, you can't join. And I don't dare employ a Seeker as a common servant as we do most mortals before they can cultivate. Instead, I will come to train you; as Phineas may have mentioned. We'll make sure your foundation is as solid as possible even before you cultivate. This will also be a test, if you can't endure the training, then you'll no longer be eligible to join the sect. Your training begins now!"