Louis

Before even the first ray of sun dispelled the darkness, Louis leaned to his left as his right hand reached to his left, to his wife. Although he felt a body, it was far too small to be his wife. When he opened his eyes, he saw Amber, her mouth open, drool spewing down the sides, while her entire body was wrapped around an unicorn body pillow. She had long kicked her blanket to the edge of the bed.

Louis shook his head a few times. He grabbed the blanket and properly covered her. Although the nights were fairly warm, there were the no heaters in the house for they never needed and Louis questioned if they existed at all around these parts. He properly wrapped her in a blanket before looking to Amelia, who was sleeping spread out like a five legged starfish. She was covered in a blanket, but not her own. Hers was by her left foot while his blanket was half crunched up into a ball for her to hold and half covered he body.

He sighed. That must have been why he was a bit cold last night. He grabbed her blanket and covered the rest of her body with it.

Amber wasn't his wife and Amelia was no Qing Meixue, no matter how much he desired his old life. They were his new family. He knew it, but, somewhere deep inside, he wished he could find his old family, the ones that knew his struggles and understood his pain. It wasn't the first time he had thought so. Old habits were hard to drop, and seven years did little to change a habit he had developed for decades.

Amber was only his fiancee for now, but he was both thankful that she, as well as Amelia, were always by his side. It grounded him in a world that otherwise would feel surreal. At the same time, he felt he couldn't have the same relationship he did with both of them as he had with his wife, Luo Xuemei, and his younger sister, Qing Meixue, in his past life. He was older now, with a full's life experience under his belt while they were even younger than Luo Xuemei when he first met, at ten.

They may question the world but they never questioned their relationship with him and always stood with him, never against him. He couldn't count how many times their unspoken kindness saved him in this world. He stared at Amber's face, barely lit by the moon, before clapping his face a few times. He stepped over her body and sat on the windowsill.

Louis shook his head. He had to put away his sentimentality away for now, he had something more pressing to do. He closed his eyes and looked within the meridians that circuited throughout his body. Two hair-thin strands, one silver and one turquoise, ran parallel through his meridians. They contained most of his qi and cultivation, but he could not use it, lest he wanted to restart cultivating from the beginning. Nine more hair-thin strands - six silver and three turquoise - surrounded these two hair-thin strands, looking much more transparent. The two strands each held the qi for the first realm of his cultivation, one for the water element and one for the wind element. Each strand surrounding them meant a layer in the second realm for that element. Much like the two hair-thin strands, while they carried a fair bit of qi in their own right, using that qi would regress his own cultivation. Instead, the qi that filled his meridians, making the bulk of the volume of qi in his meridians, was his daily limit of qi. (perhaps write this part as looking at the three layers, the qi making the bulk of the meridians, the outer ring of hair-thin qi strands, then the two strands of qi).

Louis took a deep breath, then held it before exhaling for the same duration. The outer layer of water elemental qi, which had finally reached the necessary purity, were brimming and bubbling within his meridians. He gathered his soul into his middle dantian and pushed the water elemental qi through the opening on the right, flowed up to the brain, down to his right arm, then his legs, going up through his organs before reaching his left arm and returning back to the middle dantian.

Once the water elemental qi reach his dantian, it stopped there, building up pressure until a vast amount of purer water elemental qi finally burst through the opening of the middle dantian. Elementless qi swirled around the middle dantian, ejected away from the opening. Once the middle dantian regained its calm, the elementless qi began to fill the remaining gaps of qi within the meridians. A giant strand of water qi, bigger than all of the rest combined, pushed the other strands to the side.

Louis exhaled slowly before smiling. He finally reached the middle rank of the second realm in the water element. He needed to reach the sixth layer in the water element before he could cultivate anymore of his wind element.

The sun had just risen just above the horizon. Louis closed his eyes once more and began to use his elementless qi to strengthen his meridians. Although his meridians were pure and strong, with each added element had strained them immensely. Adding a water element itself was not so bad, but once he had two complete strands of elemental qi within his meridians, they threatened to tear at any moment. Although his elementless qi was overall a poorer grade of his qi, he could use his qi to slowly vibrate his meridians and slowly strengthen them.

When Louis opened his eyes, Amelia was rolling on the bed moaning while Amber had put on ear muffs while she was reading over some study notes.

"Sis, you know if you don't properly cultivate, Amber will surpass you soon right? She has already caught up to you already." Louis said, flicking her forehead.

Amelia covered her forehead with both hands and tears in her eyes. "Only for now. I broke through to the middle rank of the second realm now, one whole layer above little sis now."

"She's two years younger than you know."

"But I'm better right now." Amelia said, jumping off the bed and running off. "The tests are going to start soon, so I'll show you my skills then."

Once Amelia left, Amber took off her ear muffs then her shirt. Louis placed his hands on her back and slowly circulated his qi through her body. Although she had already opened her upper and middle dantians, she had yet to open her lower dantian. While other cultivation techniques, at least the ones his knew, merely required a person to open their lower dantian to hold their qi and cultivation, like Amelia's, Amber's flame body and the Nine Yang Sun Emperor technique that he gave her required her to start from her upper dantian down, for it prioritized control above all else in the earlier realms. Every morning Louis would check her body to make sure her body, which was some type of fire constitution, could handle the strain. Although she had not hit puberty yet, girls always started before boys and Louis could only hope that her mental strength would be strong enough by the time it started, since her strength would skyrocket then, but so would the pain, for her body would burn itself up like a phoenix, getting stronger each time its flames erupted. However, she was no phoenix, burning herself up just once, if she couldn't endure it, would kill her.

Once he removed his hands, Amber wore her shirt again and got off the bed, grabbing and tossing the blankets off the floor and throwing it to the other side of the room. A giant one star array was inscribed into the marble floor. It simply kept low levels of qi fluctuations from exiting its perimeter. Louis followed and sat across her. The instant he did so, Amber created two orbs of fire, her limit, above her palms. A spear of fire erupted from the orb, speeding towards Louis, who only smiled as he used his water elemental qi to gather the water in the air to stop the fire from reaching him, while he increased his senses to the max, searching for any chance of a mishap.

The entire array was filled with mist and fog, preventing Louis from seeing Amber, but he could sense her just fine, just like she could sense him. She had already formed another two orbs of fire, a few inches beyond her arms reach this time and fired a flame spear from each. This time, they came from different directions, one aimed for his foot while the other aimed for his shoulder.

Then two more orbs of fire appeared before Louis, a few inches in front of his face. As he brought his hands to cover his face, two spears of flame erupted from each of the orb, each aiming for one of his limbs. This time, Louis formed a single orb of water and a single orb of wind, using the wind to suck the spears towards it while the orb of water shot two geysers towards the two fire orbs and quickly neutralized the flame spears energy source, making the rest of them consumed and extinguished by the wind.

Amber puffed her cheeks when things were all over and ran out of the room to the dining room. Louis laughed seeing her and quickly calmed the qi within the array before dispersing it and covering it with the blankets, just like how it was before they started.

Breakfast, like usual, only had the ten kids eating at the long. The adults of the family were long gone for their jobs, leaving the kids to be supervised by the maids and butlers. At the far end of the table, Jack faced against Calvin, with their fiancees, Cecilia and Tina sitting to their right respectively. Carla, Shea and Nia sat to the right of Cecilia while Amelia and Amber faced them, with them leaving a space between them for him to sit.

The moment Louis sat down, Shea turned from talking to Amelia to looking at him. "Are you ready for the exams?" She asked, smiling. "Did you sleep well last night? Have butterflies in your stomach?"

"I slept just fine." Louis said, smiling. "Were you up all night worrying about graduation?"

Shea leaned back, with her hands on the table, stretching. "Yeah. Mother will kill me if I screw this thing up, with how much work she has been putting in to help." She paused for a moment and gave him a giant smile, one that would seal his fate. "Since you have been helping me too, you can't leave me alone when I take this test by myself, can you?"

Louis could feel a headache coming. "The test will be so easy for you. You already are almost at the third realm, vastly surpassing the requirements and you're no slouch for the healings arts, music and religion."

"Doesn't matter. I'm your big sister, and you got to cheer me on, right? Fourth mother even said you would." Shea said.

Louis smiled one of those smiles that was more a look of surprise and fake admiration than an actual smile. "Of course, I would go. You're my big sister, after all."

Amber patted Louis on the head with her left hand as she slowly ate with her right hand. Amelia leaned over to him and said, "If you are looking at big sister's test, you have to look at mine too."

Louis sighed as he started eating. He avoided going all the other entrance exams days because he didn't want to spend the entire time watching them pass tests they could easily pass, for he much rather spending that time in the library, but, this year, he too had to enter school. After all, he was already seven.