CH-32: Honoring The Bet

Ye Tian entered the auditorium and all attention was on him. With my Pseudo-Divine Sense I felt the instructor stumble, he had probably sensed Ye Tian's cultivation base. I would love to try that as well, but my Divine Sense couldn't sense the cultivation realm yet. Maybe I should've focused on it more. Even if it's half-baked, I could be able to do that too.

"That's impossible, how can you be Second Stage!"

-"What? Ye Tian is Second Stage already?"

-"How can this be? I am yet to reach Peak First Stage, and you are telling me this quintuple roots trash breakthrough before me?"

-"He must've cheated! There is no other way."

-"Yeah! You cheater, don't you feel shame? Just for a bet…"

The chatter made the Instructor's face more grim. How could someone cheat their cultivation? Even if he had taken something to raise his cultivation realm, wasn't he still Qi Refining Second Stage? Not to mention that there were already Peak First Stage and Second Stage students in the auditorium. One was even on the verge of breaking through to Third Stage! If nothing went wrong, she would probably breakthrough during the rest of the week. Ye Tian wasn't even the most accomplished in cultivation speed, but being a quintuple root and still managing to advance this fast… 

"Damn it…" The Instructor mumbled under his breath. "I see you have managed to reach the Second Stage of Qi Refining, it's my loss. I will transfer the points to you once I have them at the end of the week." Then he threw Ye Tian a jade plaque and two jade bottles. "Come see me with this, and these are the Breakthrough Pills. Take them during your breakthrough and the bottlenecks will mellow out."

Ye Tian caught the bottles and the plaque, and holding his hands together in front of him, he thanked the Instructor. Then, he took his place amongst the others and started to cultivate. Seeing this, the instructor turned to me and gave me his permission. I left the auditorium to go to the training grounds. 

—

"Haap!" 

As the sun was setting, I finished my training slowly. I hadn't attended the beast taming lecture. 

"She didn't sleep through that as well, right?" 

Although Instructor Fiery Blade had let her be, Azure Claw Fiend likely wouldn't. At this point, she shouldn't attend the lectures if all she was going to do is sleep. 

"Why do I even care, she already knows all of this. Haah, until we are allowed to do more things in the Institute it will be quite boring."

I had forgotten that school life was indeed, boring. The past 7 years of strict education I had made through wasn't as boring because it was my first time learning about the cultivation world, but now that I knew, I sought more action. During my 12 years of life here, I met many cultivators from my clan. At first, I thought I wouldn't be able to cultivate, but then learned it was just my old man's dementia. I would only start my Qi cultivation later, which was alright. I could catch up with my talent. As I got older, I had the chance to learn how strong my soul was. I had a strong memory, rivaling the cultivators with Divine Sense. I could faintly sense when someone was watching me, and was more aware of my surroundings than my peers. 

If we could quantify a normal cultivator's soul, it would be assigned a value of 1. In contrast, a Lin Clan descendant of the same cultivation level would typically have a soul measurement of at least 4 or 5. My father, Reagan Lin, would possess an impressive value of 7. As for me, my soul would have an astounding value of 10. This doesn't mean that my soul is ten times that of a cultivator at the same level as me, but rather that, when considering factors like quantity and purity, my soul is indeed ten times more powerful than theirs.

I wiped my sweat with the towel, and went to my Cave Adobe. I could feel my mastery with the Starry Descending Palm rising, but a qualitative change was hard to achieve without a higher cultivation. 

"Everything you need, you just have to have a high enough cultivation… Master the combat art? Cultivation. Make stronger weapons? Cultivation. Defeat foes? Cultivation. Travel the world? Cultivation again."

"It's good you have that down."

"Aah! Since when were you there?"

"Since you cursed 'That old man with dementia' and mumbled to yourself."

"I said that aloud? Anyway, why are you here?"

"Can't I train? Does your name on the door or what?"

"Sigh, this is going nowhere… You answer with questions and so do I. Alright, I was leaving anyway, you can train all you want."

Surprisingly, Iyana had come to the training grounds. I thought she would be in her cave cultivating already. 

"Why are you following me?"

"I'm not."

"But you are."

"It's your misconception. It's just that there is someone that is bothering me, so I'm using you as a shield."

'She is using me as a shield? Who could bother this demoness? She would've pummeled them down long ago.'

"HEYO! Are you Axel Lin? I didn't see you in the lecture today. Oh, I heard you were engaged, you already know Iyana, right?"

Suddenly, a blonde, tall girl with a slight tan jumped in front of me. I haven't seen her before, so who was she? 

"Ah, right. You humans are not keen on talking with strangers. You can call me Melly, short for Melliafausirolen."

'What kind of name is that?'

"Ah right, grandpa said to introduce myself as a Gleam Shard Leopard, otherwise you humans are confused too much."

"Uhh, nice to meet you? I'm Axel Lin, the 7th Young Master of the Prominent Lin Clan."

"I know! I can smell granduncle Tiger from you! I haven't seen any humans with such a thick scent before, are you really human?"

'She was the person she had been trying to avoid…'