Chapter 5: Natural Cultivator

Chapter 5: Natural Cultivator

Guan Li and Kong Paike ended up picking a house of middling size. The male and female housing each formed a circle around the inner workings of the sects, where the market, library, archive, and various other administrative buildings and training halls were located. The wilds below the tree line and the icy peak of the mountain were outside the compound.

Of the five rings of housing, they were in the third. It was a nice enough building, having a living area with a kitchen, two bedrooms, and a cultivation chamber. If they were any lower, they would either have to give up on a cultivation chamber or individual bedrooms.

He was uncomfortable picking anything higher as, with his lacking talent, he expected to fall behind eventually. However, given his time getting up the stairs, he felt that he had earned a decent place.

Paike didn’t feel the need to speak much, and neither did Guan Li, as they mostly held quick conversations. This suited Paike just fine as it gave him time to study his new roommate. Guan Li moved with a strange pattern. It wasn’t like the trained fighters he’d grown up around, nor the nobility who had people to do their fighting for them and didn’t cultivate combat arts. No, it was as if someone had no training at all. How he had managed to make it up the stairs at all was a mystery.

As they settled into their rooms, Paike finished and walked out into the common room, finding his new roommate sitting at the kitchen table. He stood in the doorway and watched for a second as the boy sat there, tracing something on the table with his finger. After a moment, he cleared his throat.

The boy shot up, turned around, and gave a polite bow. “Kong Paike. Is there something I can help you with?”

“No, just wondering what you were doing,” Paike replied.

“I was just contemplating,” Guan Li said, his words coming slowly as if he was picking each one with care.

Paike nodded, allowing the boy his privacy. “I’m going to the sect market to stock up on supplies. Would you like to come with me?”

He spoke a bit more casually than was perhaps acceptable to a stranger. Still, hopefully, it would allow their relationship to soften a little and put the other boy at ease.

The formal sect robe the boy wore was indistinguishable from the others. He wore them mostly correctly, but the sash was tied wrong. Paike debated if he should correct him. He had the feeling that if he had met the boy before he came through the test and received robes like all of the scholarship students, he would likely have found him just like the other disciples he passed. Raggedy clothes that barely held together were the norm.

Paike and his sister had received their robes at home, so naturally, they wore them through the test.

The boy nodded. “Yes. I would also like to pick up my allowance?”

The statement came out slightly more as a question, and Paike nodded. Certainly, if he remembered correctly, all outer sect disciples received five Ruby cultivation stones once a week when they were in the first stage. Of course, the sect wouldn’t deliver them, so they had to pick them up at the administration building.

This was fine for the first week during orientation, but once things became a little more combative, you had to be strong enough to hold on to them. He had certain funds provided by his local sect and family, but the stipend would be nice to supplement them as well. He really didn’t know what he needed for cultivation, as doing it the traditional way didn’t seem to be working for him.

The two of them left the house and marked the door as theirs. Hopefully, they wouldn’t find any squatters when they came back.

—

With Guan Li now wearing his sash correctly, the two boys carried their grocery haul into their house with no fanfare. They stored their food in the pantry and sat in the kitchen, wondering what to do. They had tried to stop by the archive and the library, neither of which were open without special permission. However, on the central bulletin board, it was announced that there would be two classes available for students. Each class was offered in the morning and afternoon.

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The first was the basics of cultivation, where students were instructed on the fundamentals and given the possibility to earn rewards based on their progress. The second was martial combat and physical cultivation, where students would learn how to fight. Neither were mandatory, but that didn’t mean they weren’t useful.