Rapping on Mu Lin’s door, I stood back a bit and waited while some commotion came from inside.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me,” I said.

“Chun? W-what are you doing here?”

What am I doing here? “What kind of question is that? I came to check up on you. See how you were doing. Bought you something too. Come on, open up.”

“Um…”

There was a pause and then a curse came from behind the door.

“Mu Lin?”

I could sense fear coming from her as well. What the hell was going on?

I was just about to start banging on the door again when slowly it opened and Mu Lin poked her head outside.

“Hey,” she said somewhat sheepishly. Her face was flushed and it looked like she had just climbed out of bed. She didn’t look too thrilled to see me either. I was just about to ask her what was wrong, when slowly she swung the door open fully and then let out a sigh.

There standing timidly behind her was another girl.

She looked close to Mu Lin’s age or perhaps a bit older, but she wasn’t Terran like us. She was a cultivator and from a well to do family by the looks of her robes, which were black and trimmed with copper. She was fair skinned, Asian with bright green eyes and had a pretty if not nervous smile.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I gave an apologetic bow. “I didn’t realize you had company. I could just drop these off and come back—”

“No need,” the girl said quickly, performing a small bow of her own. “I was just leaving. You must be Chun. Mu Lin has told me much about you. It’s quite amazing what happened to you both… with those Raplers.”

“Raplings,” Mu Lin corrected her.

“Yes Raplings.” The girl smiled. “Mu Lin said you carried her back to the city while wounded. That was very heroic of you. Especially as a mortal. Impressive.”

I raised a brow at Mu Lin. How much had she told this girl? And who the hell was she anyway? But Mu Lin kept her gaze between her feet as she stood to the side to let me in.

“I’m Xi Xha, by the way,” she said introducing herself. “I’m pleased to meet you. You look much older than Mu Lin said.”

“Yeah…” I didn’t know quite what to say to that. I brushed it off with a laugh. “Must be the beard growing in. I’ve been stuck in bed healing up, so I haven’t shaved in a few days.”

It was the truth. My face was now covered in a light stubble from studying and cultivating constantly.

She smiled again, studying me with her green eyes. “I like it. It suits you well, I think.”

“Thanks…” I said as another awkward pause took hold.

“Thanks for coming,” Mu Lin said to Xi Xha. “…to check on me. I’ll see you again… sometime?”

“Yes, of course,” Xi Xha said, bowing again. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Chun.”

With that she left, leaving Mu Lin and I in another strange and awkward silence.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Mu Lin said with an eye roll as she limped to close the door.

“What?” I said. “What am I thinking?”

“I know what you’re thinking!”

“What, that you had a friend over?”

“She’s not a friend.”

I thought back to how flustered or perhaps embarrassed she looked when she opened the door just now. I’d never taken Mu Lin for being attracted to girls, but maybe it kind of made sense. As pretty as she was, I’d never seen her with any guys before. “So, is she your girlfriend then?”

Mu Lin huffed out a sigh. “See, I knew it was going to look weird like that to you.”

“Look weird like what?” I said. “And why ‘to me’? It’s okay if you like girls. I don’t care.”

“It’s not that,” she said with another sigh. “Look, I’m comfortable with who I am. And yes, as much as I’d love for someone as gorgeous as Xi Xha to be my girlfriend; one, she was clearly more into you than into me just now; two, she’s not even a girl.”

Okay, that was two shocking pieces of information all at once, I thought. But I took it in stride. “What do you mean, not a girl?”

“I mean she’s older than you are. Like almost forty or something. She’s an inner disciple from the Sacred Scroll Sect and works at the Academy.”

“Oh… no shit?” I handed Mu Lin the bag of persimmons. “I brought those for you, by the way. I know how you love ‘em.”

“Oh! Thanks, Chun!” she said, sounding genuinely appreciative as she looked inside the bag. She pulled one out and bit into it right away. “Mhmm, so good… anyway…she’s not really supposed to be here and having contact with me and stuff.”

“Why not?”

“She’s kind of coaching me to pass the academy entrance exam. If I manage to score high enough to get in, her family is willing to sponsor me for citizenship. Then I can get free tuition. She may even be able to get me into her sect as an initiate.”

As much as I couldn’t get with the idea of joining a sect or becoming a citizen, I honestly felt happy for her and it sounded halfway normal as well. No martial tournament or cooking with wood and rocks. Like real civilization again. “That sounds like a pretty good opportunity actually.”

“It is, but it’s also one I shouldn’t have.”

“What do you mean?”

“Xi Xha works for the academy so if anyone found out she was even friendly with me, much less tutoring me, it could mean her losing everything. Normally I’d go to meet her somewhere more discretely in the artisan district. But with my leg she decided to come here. I told her not to, because she’d just stick out like a sore thumb around here, but whatever, she came anyway.”

“Don’t you stick out like a sore thumb over there?”

“Hell no,” she said lowering her brows at me. “I do have proper clothes, you know. I don’t dress like a bum like you and Lee all the time. But anyway, she insisted to still come because the exams are only a few weeks away. I just didn’t want anyone to see us together around here. It would look way too conspicuous her being in these parts. If word might get back to the academy, I’d never forgive myself. So that’s why I was acting kind of nervous at the door.”

“I see,” I said nodding, but something else didn’t quite make sense to me either. “Why’s she doing all this?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… it would probably make more sense if she actually was your girlfriend or something, but why’s Xi Xha taking such a risk to do this? To help you. Are you paying her or something?”

Mu Lin laughed with a mouth full of persimmon. “With what money?”

I shrugged. “Just finding it a bit hard to believe, that’s all. Cultivators aren’t usually known for looking out for their fellow man.”

She scrunched her brows together, looking almost offended. “Xi Xha’s not like that.”

“How do you know? How long have you even known her? And how’d you even meet anyway?”

“Look,” she said with huff of agitation. “She came to teach a special class in Foundation school one day, like a year ago. I talked to her afterwards, told her I would love to do what she did and she said she could help me. And about six months ago she started doing just that. Helping me. That’s it.” She then rolled her eyes at me. “Not everyone’s a money grubbing ahole like Sumatra, y’know?”

“Okay, okay, fine.” I raised my hands in surrender. “I just want you to be careful is all. Speaking of Sumatra though,” I said eager to change the subject. “Have you heard anything from him lately?”

“Yeah, Lee popped by and said he’s acting really stressed out because there are enforcers there every day now. Not like before with just the spot checks every other month. He said Sumatra wants us back to work pronto because things are starting to get hectic. I told him I was going to need another week to rest. You seem to be doing okay though? Hells, you look even better than before you got beat up.”

“Yeah.” I stretched a bit. “Guess I’m a quick healer. Another week and I should be good to go too. Give old Lee a break.”

Mu Lin chuckled. “I’m sure he’d be glad to hear that.”

“Hey, there’s something else I was wondering if you could help me with,” I said.

“What’s that?”

I explained to her the issue I was having understanding the different tiers of the Foundation level and what it took to break through them. She responded by raising one of her thick brows at me.

“Since when do you care about this stuff?”

“I’m trying to help a friend,” I said honestly, thinking of Yu Li.

She shrugged. “Okay,” she said while adjusting her glasses. “First you need to understand there is a major difference between advancing between realms and advancing between tiers.”

“All right…”

“Realms are limited by breakthroughs. You physically can’t do anything of a higher realm until you reach that breakthrough point. But Tiers are more fluid. You can essentially attempt to do anything within the 9 tiers of each realm, but you just might not be that successful at it until your gain experience, or enough Qi, or strengthen your body enough or whatever. But you can still do it. Or try to do it, anyway. Some people have been known to almost kill themselves trying something way too advanced for them.”

“So why did people keep saying I was stuck on the 7th tier?”

“Because you still are,” she said, and her tense made me realized that I had used the past tense by accident. “That’s as high as your natural ability took you. Here let me show you.” She then hopped up and grabbed a well-thumbed text from a small bookshelf on her wall. She flipped through the pages to some tables and showed them to me.

Realm

Level/stage/Tier

Qi Cultivator

Body Refinement

1st

Breathing Mastery

2nd

Muscle Refinement

3rd

Bone Strengthening

4th

Skin Hardening

5th

Organs Refinement

6th

Focus of Mind

7th

Meridian Opening

8th

Meridian Channeling

9th

Qi perception

Foundation Establishment

1st

Qi Gathering

2nd

Qi Channeling

3rd

Qi Body Refinement

4th

Qi Mental Refinement

5th

Qi concentration

6th

Qi Manifestation (internal)

7th

Qi Manifestation (external)

8th

Qi Condensing

9th

Qi Hardening

Core Formation

1st

Core formation

2nd

Core Body Refinement

3rd

Core Mental Refinement

4th

Core Density Refinement

5th

Inner Soul detection

6th

Inner Soul Focus

7th

Inner Soul Refinement

8th

Inner Soul Projection

9th

Secondary Soul germination

“These are all the realms and tiers up to the Core formation realm,” she said while running over her finger over the tables. “Once you have a breakthrough and advance to the next realm, you have access to the abilities within that realm and can start training in any or all them. They call it breakthrough when you master one of the tiers but that’s just nomenclature. There is nothing physically separating them like how it is with the realms, so you don’t go through them sequentially.”

“Wait… so I could master 8th tier before 2nd tier?”

“Technically yes, but not really in practice. Not because you couldn’t attempt it. It’s because to do anything of the tier above above, you usually need the skills of the tiers below it.”

I thought on that some more. “So, hypothetically, if my friend were to say just have broken into the Foundation realm. They could start Qi Body Refinement right away?”

“Well sure,” she said and then added with air quotes in a stupid voice, “‘your friend’ could do that but it just wouldn’t be very efficient, because to refine your body with Qi, you first need to a) gather it—” She pointed to the First Tier “—and then b) channel it.” She pointed to the Second Tier. “But in practice that’s what your supposed to do anyway. You focus on the actions of the highest tier function you can manage, which naturally encompasses the actions of all the tiers below it. That way you progress faster with everything.”

I thought about that for a moment.

Shit, she was right, I realized. I had been frenzy body refining all along just by healing my arm using the [Pain soothes the Frenzied Flame] Technique. I was gathering Frenzy, channeling it to where I wanted it to go and then using it to enhance my physical form.

I couldn’t contain the smile on my face, so much so that it made Mu Lin frown.

“Why are you grinning like that?” she said, eyeing me warily.

“Hey, you mind if I borrow this for a bit?” I pointed to the text book. “To help my friend?”

She rolled her eyes again. “You’re lucky you brought me persimmons. Go ahead. Just don’t lose it. It’s worth a lot.”

“I know.”

“And hey,” she said as she got up to let me out. “Xi Xha stays between us, okay?”

I smiled at her. “We got bigger secrets to keep than that.”

“Don’t remind me,” she said with a sigh. “See you later, Chun.”

I laughed at her joke and we said our goodbyes.

As I walked out of her apartment building I was feeling like I was on cloud nine. I was already there. I was already doing it. I was strengthening my body with my Frenzy. I just needed to find a bigger source of frenzy so I could do more of it. I knew there was a whole section on Body Refinement in the orb too, that I had skipped over earlier. But I could go back to it and focus on it in earnest now.

I was so caught up in my own head that only when I felt the huge wall of rage coming from ahead of me, did I stop to look up. I had been wondering how to find more Frenzy, but it seemed the Frenzied Flame had already put some in my path. A smile came to my lips as I picked up my pace to meet my destiny. There, waiting for me at the end of the block was Master Hein.

And about a dozen armed men.