Chapter 16

"I was just planning on heading back to my room to cultivate honestly," Shin Long shrugged, "Plus, I've got a ton of blood from all these demon beasts I've been killing, I want to use it to make an inscription or two on my blade."

"Oh," Ning'er replied blankly, disappointed, "I suppose we'll part ways here then?" she was also quite surprised Shin Long could make inscriptions already, but then, she really shouldn't, should she? Not after all the amazing things he'd shown her he was capable of already.

"Why?" Shin Long looked at her blankly for a moment, befuddled why she'd have to leave, "My dorm room is pretty spacious, you can come back and hang out if you want."

Ning'er didn't mind, actually, she felt a sudden jolt of excitement at getting to enter his room, but, "Won't it be improper?" she asked, "As much as I hate him, your older brother is my fiance, it could cause problems for you."

At that, Shin Long barked a laugh, "Don't worry about that tool," he shook his head, "If he thinks I'm cucking him and comes to make trouble, I'll crush him like the weakling he is." he grinned fiercely, curling one hand into a fist.

"Alright then," Ning'er agreed, "I'll come hang out and cultivate with you." Shen Fei might have been a one star gold rank, with an incredibly powerful Scarlet Black Tiger demon spirit, but after seeing what Shin Long was capable of earlier, she couldn't imagine him losing to his brother who had never earned his strength at all, just guzzling elixirs and popping soul pills since he was young.

And honestly, she would quite gladly cuck Shen Fei with him someday. It might have been petty of her, but Ning'er was sure she'd relish the look on his face when she rubbed in his arrogant mug that his younger, bastard brother was ten times the man he could ever hope to be in his wildest dreams.

Minutes later, Shin Long led Ning'er into the boys dorm area. And the orange haired girl was kind of disappointed. It looked no different from the female section.

"Over here." Shin Long beckoned her to follow him, and made his way over to the dorm at the dorm at the very end, with the most space around it and a large tree growing in the garden at the side.

He stepped up to the door and to her surprise, instead of using a key, he pressed his hand against the door and channelled his qi into it. A circle of letters appeared suddenly, chained together and glowing red, before fading away a moment later and the doors swung open themselves.

"Wow, was that an inscription?" Ning'er wondered.

"Yep," Shin Long grinned proudly, stepping in and gesturing again for her to come in, kicking his boots off as he did so, "A simple locking array keyed into my qi. Much safer than a simple key, and if anyone tried to get in without my unique qi, the array would zap them with enough lightning to bring down a Spotted Tiger."

Wow, she didn't even think her own clan compound had a locking array as good as that. And he had put one up on his dorm room when they hadn't even been at the institute for an entire week yet.

"I'm just going to assume if something can be done with qi, you can do it until proven otherwise." the orange haired girl laughed, taking his invitation and walking inside, kicking her own shoes off beside his boots and closing the doors behind her.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," he chuckled, "But generally, I'm pretty well informed about any subject when it comes to cultivating. Cultivation techniques, alchemy, demon spirit creation, inscriptions, languages, you name it I've probably read up on it and taught myself how to do it."

"So you're jut confirming I'm right then." Ning'er teased. She looked around his dorm room, and had to admit, it was cozy. The wooden floors were clean, the fire place was already burning somehow making the temperature nice and warm. The decorations weren't too bad either.

The skin of a Spotted Tiger lay out at the foot of his bed which had a large pillow and duvet made of Fanged Panda fur. While the stuffed head of one hung over his bed, and just below it hung a pair of dao blades. Above the door was the stuffed head of a Fanged Panda, and over opposite his bed sat a desk filled with neatly lined up vials and a pestle and mortar. Above the desk, was the stuffed head of a Horned Sheep and to the side of it, there was a pair of large bookshelves filled to the brim with books, there must have been easily over a hundred of them.

Interestingly, there was a large open box underneath the desk, filled to the brim with large rocks.

All in all, it was surprisingly nice. And much more inviting than her own barren dorm room that she'd only been using to sleep and rest in.

"And you apparently have a talent for decorating as well." Ning'er raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well I had the remains of a few Spotted Tigers and Fanged Panda's that I got while I was hunting Horned Sheep, and figured since I was going to be at this school for the foreseeable future, why not spruce it up a bit?" he shrugged, making his way over to sit at his desk, "Feel free to make yourself at home, if you want anything to eat or drink, just let me know, I keep my supplies in my spatial ring." he told her, waving his hand and releasing four different vials filled with blood onto his desk, alongside a common curved blade with a curious purple tint to the edge, and a silver inscription pen.

"Thanks, but I'm okay for now," she replied. The orange haired girl took him up on his other offer though and letting her curiosity get the better of her, made her way over to his bed, sitting down on it. "Wow, this is so soft." she gasped as she sunk into it. So comfortable! Maybe even more so than her own bed back at her clan compound.

"You like it?" Shin Long grinned again, "I stuffed the mattress with fur from Horned Sheep and made under felt to cushion below it with it as well. I had so much fur from Horned Sheep I had no idea what to do with it all."

"It's great," Ning'er replied, dropping down onto her back on the bed and luxuriating as her body sunk into the bed. It was like laying on a cloud. "I could get used to this."

"Well, feel free," Shin Long teased, "You can crawl into my bed any time."

Ning'ers face flushed at the insinuation, but continued smiling, "Careful, I might just take you up on that offer someday." she teased back.

Shin Long blinked and then gaped at her stupidly for a moment, for once unable to come up with a witty retort. It seemed he wasn't used to having his teasing turned around on him.

She basked in the silence between the two of them for a few moments before cracking her eyes open and looking at him from her position laying on his bed, "So what kind of inscriptions are you going to do?" she asked as he dabbed his pen into one of the vials of water.

"War Prime ones," he replied. Hmm, she didn't know much about them, they were the most complicated and least used ones in the entirety of Glory City. The most she knew about them was that they didn't have attributes, "I'm going to use the blood of a Horned Sheep to double the physical parameters of the blade. Enhance its receptiveness to my qi and its cutting power with blood from a Spotted Tiger. Enhance its overall toughness with the blood of an Earth Eater, and then imbue it with the Thunder Strike ability of a Fanged Panda with ones blood to finish it up."

...What? Just what? Ning'er once again gaped at the boy, which he didn't notice since his back was now turned to her and he began inscribing the blood upon the blade.

He could do all that? Multiple four different abilities from the blood of four different demon beasts, and he could imbue a common cheap blade, not even made out of demon beast materials, with all that?

Something like that could easily go for over a hundred thousand demon spirit coins. And if he put all that on a blade made from the materials of black gold demon spirit? It'd be worth millions with ease.

"What an insane guy." Ning'er couldn't help but shake her head.

"Did you say something?" Shin Long looked over his shoulder at her inquisitively. And in the end, all Ning'er could do was laugh.

__________

Nie Li frowned as he looked around his classroom. Something was off, and had been off for the past week since he'd arrived back in this timeline. Du Ze and Lu Paio were already fast asleep sitting against the wall at the back of the class they'd been assigned to for the week, rather, he was, and the both of them as supporting friends joined him.

Shen Xiu at the front of the class lectured on, explaining the intricacies of the Sacred Flame cultivation technique. For all of her unpleasant attitude towards commoners, he couldn't deny she was a good teacher. Granted, she was teaching an incredibly bad cultivation technique, but that wasn't really her fault despite how much he'd like to mock her for it.

No, the thing that was off, was the fact that Shin Long wasn't in class. And hadn't been since the first day, and neither was Xaio Ning'er.

'Not a coincidence.' the orange haired boy thought to himself. Ning'er was his sworn brothers lover in the original timeline. He didn't really know what drew them together, only that around this time he vaguely remembered her hanging around him and making him lunches that she handed to him in class. He remembered specifically because he still got a good chuckle out of the way Shin Long had mocked his brother Shen Yue when the idiot got all affronted on behalf of their older brother.

The last he saw of Xaio Ning'er was when she was helping the escapees from Glory City alongside him, rushing away from the then cataclysmic battle between who or whatever Shin Long and Ye Mo had been fighting when they felt the massive soul force of Shin Long that had blanketed the mountain range dip massively before disappearing altogether.

Honestly, he had to be dragged away himself. Not because he had rushed off to face whatever it was like Ning'er in a rage, but the near soul crushing despair of feeling his friends soul force that had felt like a massive protective barrier between him and any danger for years was just gone, and he knew he was dead, and he'd never see his brother ever again. Just like his family.

He'd been despondent for days, and it was only due to Ye Ziyun smacking him around back then that he came back to his senses. He'd latched on to her like a rock after that, and her comforting him in his despair, even when she herself must have been in despair herself with her father and grandfather dying, was when he started moving on from crushing on the girl to truly falling in love with her.

Not to mention, he'd clearly sensed Shin Long and another familiar soul force that he just couldn't pinpoint within his dorm. Nie Li's dorm was the one closest to Shin Longs. He couldn't get an accurate measure on how strong their soul force was either because Shin Long at this point was already well versed in War Prime inscriptions, and the array he had on his dorm blocked him his senses quite a bit.

'Did I do something that changed things?' Nie Li wondered to himself. Zoysia grass had started to massively rise in price over the past week, rising from one demon spirit coin for a pound, all the way up to fifty eight. But he knew this wasn't due to happen for another month or so originally.

He'd become friends with Shin Long by then, and the boy had explained his plans using the zoysia grass to him when he took him out to hunt Earth Eaters one day. His friend had noticed his slow cultivation speed and took him aside, promised to help him out, and got him an Earth Eater while giving him a modified version of the original cultivation technique he had been using. Together, they had increased his cultivation massively at the time, to the point where he'd been the strongest in class behind Xaio Ning'er and Shin Long.

What could have happened to force Shin Long to put his plans forward? He knew around this time in the original timeline he'd been hunting lots of demon beasts alone in the training area to increase his money so he could buy common demon spirits from the street vendors.

The only real differences Nie Li had made so far was speaking out against Shen Xiu on the first day, and hunting Horned Sheep for the past week. Granted, together with the paralytic poison he'd learned from Shin Long in his past life, it had been incredibly easy, and together with his two friends he'd managed to hunt a total of eight hundred and fifty four Horned Sheep, two of which that had been Spirit Grade beasts. Earning them a total of of just over thirty thousand demon spirit coins. Another week of hunting and he'd have enough capital toe start his plan with the Purple Haze Grass.

'I don't think that's it though.' Nie Li shook his head. At this point, Shin Long would have already moved on to hunting Fanged Pandas since they were usually bunched up in much larger groups and were worth more.

Only one other difference came to mind. He'd started cultivating using the Heavenly God technique, a technique he'd found that rivalled Shin Longs War God cultivation in potential. It was slow going right now, but it would show more soon. He really wanted to go grab an Earth Eater demon spirit, since they didn't have an attribute one would help his cultivation immensely. And he was very fond of the species as a whole too, he'd kept the Earth Eater demon spirit he had gotten from Shin Long originally for years and it had served him well.

Could it simply be that Nie Li hadn't made friends with him in this timeline yet? He remembered he hung around Shin Long a lot during the first week and thinking back on it now, he might have been impeding his friends initial progress.

It was disappointing either way. He'd not had a chance to talk to his old best friend yet since coming back. It made his heart hurt to see him and Ye Ziyun alive once more, yet unable to even converse with them.

'Just a little longer.' he consoled himself, leaving the classroom behind and sinking into his soul realm, beginning to cultivate again.