Rosie and I were both miserable. It was wet and it was cold. Despite the shelter I had constructed, it was barely enough to keep us protected from the elements. Our daily routine consisted of Rosie gathering berries and other edible plants while I went out hunting for food. When we weren't busy foraging or cooking, we would seek refuge in the shallow cave where I had piled up furs from my hunts and snuggled up inside them to keep warm.
One month after we started roughing it Li Kai came to visit. "You're still alive I see and you even managed to find a cave to shelter in." That's where the compliments ended, "These planks would collapse in a light wind. Who taught you how to tie knots? Why is your fire outside your shelter? I've seen clumsy baby caribou that left fewer tracks than you did!"
After the beratement, the teaching began. In less than an afternoon, my camp went from something you might see in a bootleg survival game to something you may actually want to camp out in. The drafty openings in my shelter were all sealed up. A chimney was added to the roof of my shelter while the fireplace was moved inside. And the fence around my shelter was reinforced. Li Kai even helped me make a proper bed out of the fur pelts. After the camp was renewed, I was taught how to track and how to avoid being tracked. My shortcomings were all quickly addressed.
That night Li Kai stayed in our camp. Sadly he took the only bed. Rosie and I were forced to sleep on the ground under a ragged strip of fur that hadn't made it into the construction of the bed.
After a cold and miserable night, Li Kai woke us promptly at dawn and pointed out colorful strips of cloth he had tied to some tree branches. He said they formed an obstacle course. He wanted me to run it as quickly as I could.
My muscles were very sore after sleeping on rocks and I could still feel needless in my right arm, but I did a quick warmup and then started jogging. The air was thin here, it took considerably more effort to supply my body with oxygen while exercising. At first, the course seemed simple, but then the ribbons would go straight up a cliff face or over a stream. Soon I was seeing double and my jogging was very wobbly, but I persisted.
The first trap nearly gave me a heart attack again. It was just a shallow pitfall, but it was a warning. Soon traps of a wide variety were being triggered from spike traps to log traps. Li Kai had weaponized the forest. I had minor injuries everywhere after returning to camp. Li Kai was nowhere to be seen, but he left me a note to run the course daily. I ignored it and dove headfirst into the fur pelt bed that Li Kai had hogged the previous night. It was much warmer than a pile of loose pelts.
The next several months progressed in much the same manner. I would go out to hunt, put some meat on the fire, and leave Rosie to protect while I ran the course. I rarely saw Li Kai, but the obstacle course kept changing even without seeing him. Some days the course would take a new route, other days there would be new traps, and every day the traps reset.
A couple of times Li Kai planted mortal beasts on the course. Just like the first trap, the first beast gave me a shock too. Other than the surprise factor of the first beast, they were all easily dispatched by me. Li Kai had made sure I would kill all of them instead of sparing them. Every beast carried the scent of human blood. None of them were innocent. I almost lost myself to rage again at the first beast but managed to suppress it. It became easier and easier to control my anger with each beast I killed. This was useful training.
Winter gave way to Spring. Spring turned into summer. And Summer fell to Autumn. The seasons changed, but my regimen stayed the same. Li Kao occasionally visited me to instruct me in martial arts, but his visits were rare. I was to the point in my training where my gains would come from daily practice rather than instruction. There was certainly more for me to learn, but not while I was a mortal. Li Kai had given me all the tools needed to pass the tests to get into his sect, it was up to me to refine them.
Finally, the day came to return home. It wasn't quite a year since I had set out into the wilderness, but it turned out that somewhere very, very deep inside Li Kai possessed a heart. I was allowed to return a week before my birthday. The robes I had left with had practically disintegrated under the harsh training. I had given up on decency while in the wilderness but repaired my robes as best I could with fur pelts for my return journey. It looked hideous, but it would protect my modesty long enough to slip inside the villa and grab a new set of robes.
As I neared the old sight of the Villa, I saw Li Kai waiting. He tossed me the ring he had stolen along with another purification pill. I stuck my tongue out at Li Kai and ran inside. I didn't immediately set to using the pill. I wanted to recover from the wilderness for a couple of days first before dealing with that stinky ritual. The very first thing I did was rush to my room to take my first bath in a year. Sure I washed in the creek near my camp to keep a basic level of cleanliness, but it was shallow and cold, not exactly the ideal bath.
The maidservants had practically had a year off in my and Vivian's absence. Nikol wasn't as demanding as we were. None of the staff were let go, even though duties had dropped drastically with only the two obsessed knowledge Seekers in the household. So instead they had gotten used to doing almost nothing. My head maidservant moved lethargically while she prepared my bath, she had gotten a little plump while I was away. The remaining servants failed to answer the summons. While I submerged myself in the now foreign hell waters of my bath, I decided then and there that the servants would need to be whipped into shape. I started plotting what tasks I would have them do to get them back into peak shape. If I recall, they had worked quite hard to get me the tiger-rabbit bracelet, maybe I needed a new charm for my bracelet.
After the bath, I put on a brand new set of robes that continued to be ordered for me while I was gone. They were still using my measurements from a year ago, so they were a little small, but sadly I hadn't grown as much as I hoped, so no one except me even noticed the problem. Why was I so short?! I inwardly cried for my failed growth. It was official, I now had a height complex.
Vivian had returned a few days before I did. I half-expected her to be at the warehouse already. But Tobias had listened to my instructions admirably and forced Vivian to stay home for a few days and rest. I found Vivian in her room and hug-tackled her. I nearly forgot to hold back my strength and received an "oomph!" In response.
"Viviiiiiiii! Li Kai was so mean ... " I told Vivian of the rough life I had led for the last year. I made sure to not skimp on one detail of the villain Li Kai's misdeeds. Vivian found it hard to stifle her laughter.
"Viviiiiii!" I pouted, "How can you laugh at your poor, unfortunate sister?" Vivian couldn't hold back her laughter anymore and cackled until her face turned red. The Zoey Seeker was poor and unfortunate. If that was the case, everyone else was a pauper!
When Vivian regained her composure she told me of her own adventures. It was a rough start at first. The new mercantile was plagued with supply issues with cargo getting lost en route and though the Seeker family was still relatively famous in Snowbreak, nobody was big on trying something new, even if their current method of acquiring goods was convoluted. Vivian solved the first problem by deploying guards with the caravans. Immediately missing goods became less of a problem and in early summer the guards caught the culprit. It was an insider of one of the caravan groups which is why the thefts were so hard to detect and prevent. The second problem just took time and advertising. Gradually the people of Snowbreak came to rely on the Seeker Mercantile just as much as the people of Market Town. I fell asleep with my head in Vivian's lap, listening to her talk excitedly about statistics and sales.