In the end, he did not get much from the armoury this time around, it had mostly been a trip to check what it had to offer, not to mention that very few weapon were adapted to his particular morphology, the way his arms were positioned and their length meant that an ideally made sword or spear for example, was much different for than it would for someone of the same height but with a more typical body structure.
Indeed, Elder Gang had been right to recommend cultivation technique centered around apes, weapon cultivation would be impractical without weapons adapted to him, so he had settled on some throwing weapons for practice, picked up a training sword and dagger for his wives as well as an actual dagger for Fanqia, although, he wasn't letting practice with the real deal for now.
As even she hadn't adapted to all that extra meat on her chest and would often strike her jiggly hills whilst attempting to perform some movements described in the book, Anoteros would try to correct her posture but she was just too much of a rookie to get anywhere in little time.
Linmin meanwhile, was doing better, he had already received some sword guidance in the past to be able to serve as a proper bodyguard to Zixuan Elt, and although he didn't seem like it at a glance, Edrick had since long confirmed that his servant-wife's body was pretty well trained despite looking so delicate, he was absorbing the manuals provided pretty well, and thanks to the crest of domination, Anoteros knew that Linmin enjoyed swinging a sword.
Although Edrick was pretty good at reading others, and particularly women, the crest was really invaluable in how much it allowed him to know about his wives, there was little room for him to be mistaken about anything they liked or disliked, although they would surely pretend to be satisfied with anything he could do, keeping his properties happy kept them in good shape also.
Elder Gang passed by recently, not to check on their progress or anything, although he had seemed very pleased to see them already training, but to tell Edrick that as a special disciple, he would be entitled to some personal guidance from the elders of the sect, normally, this would also count in the leader of the sect, but he apparently was in seclusion at the moment and was unlikely to come out for a while.
"Not everyone agreed with my rapid decision to make you a special disciple, but they all relented eventually, now, we just need to agree on who will get to offer you guidance first, that should take about a week or two" he had said, casually implying that they were all incapable of coming to good terms in a small window of time.
"Does it really matter who it is that speaks with me first?" Edrick could understand that they all wanted to get to know the special disciple to see if they could take him under their wing, after all, a master could share into their disciple's exploits and all these old fogeys surely wanted to know what Anoteros was made of, but it wasn't like first come first served.
"Mmh, honestly, not really… But who knows if one of those idiots could try to rope you into their nonsensical cultivation ideas and squander your talent! Yes, they are all fools except for me" with these words, Elder Gang had left, the sect leader was most definitely not the concerned kind to leave this bunch to handle everything in his absence.
It was like entrusting command of a ship to a bunch of intellectuals who spent their time throwing jabs at one another instead of doing their job.
In any case, Edrick was mostly focusing on his quest relating to Hui, having been abusing that throat of hers everyday since last time, and on perfecting his energy circulation, circulating energy wasn't just useful when cultivating, but was in use in a bunch of other techniques as well, such as injecting energy into an object or projecting it outside of the body.
Quite a few techniques wanted the practitioner to pull ambient energies into their body, which was a totally different beast than manipulation of inner energy, one's energies were attuned to themselves, they were a part of you.
Ambient energy however, was doing its own thing and wouldn't let itself be manipulated nearly as easily, one could project some of their inner energy outside and use that to take control of that which was ambient, but controlling your inner energy outside was also harder.
But that was considered as a way to train until you knew how to at least pull external energies toward you, it seemed like a simple skill to acquire but it actually was amongst the ceilings that would separate one who would go far and one who would just stagnate as it was awfully difficult to pull off consistently and with precision.
Edrick sighed, prolonged practice of it all gave him a headache and being that he could not help but multitask, he would typically be reading at the same time, which would only worsen the ache, he closed the book he was reading, which was merely an history book written by a very biased author, he had already read the version of this written by another author biased in the other direction, so he was getting a pretty good idea of how it had actually went down.
"A headache again, Lord Edrick?" as though sensing his lord-husband's discomfort, Linmin stopped massaging Anotero's shoulder and began gently rubbing his temples instead, the servant's hand remained soft even with all his trainings as he made sure to keep himself as attractive as possible.
"Linmin, come over here" he beckoned his wife to move to the side, wrapping one arm around Linmin's waist and pulling him onto his lap.
The foppoof squealed a bit as Edrick also took this occasion to fondle his backside.
"It's been a while since I took care of you, one on one, hasn't it?" pulling Linmin right up against him, he whispered into the servant's ear.
Simply nodding in response, face already flushed as while not minding having to share his lord as he had to begrudgingly admit that he couldn't take care of all of Edrick on his own, the experience when Anoteros was solely focused on one partner was totally different, a different kind of excitement.
"You got yourself multiple sets of this dress and tights, didn't you?"
"Yes… I noticed that you liked them so-"
"Good thinking" slowly crawled up Linmin's leg with one hand, until he hooked the tights which were embracing the curvature of the servant's hips, pulling at them with frightening ease as he leaned forward for a kiss.
The servant really excited now, kisses on the lips were one of the rarer forms of affection the lord used, it was a true treat.
Then a knock echoed from the front door Edrick felt Linmin's grasp on his cloth tighten out of sheer frustration.
"Easy there, I'll honour you later"
"Thank you, My Lord" against his will, Linmin moved away from Edrick, fixed his clothes, breathed in and out to get rid of his flushed face and moved toward the front door with poised and elegant steps.
"Hello, are you here to see Lord Edrick?"