She was woken up by a loud knocking outside - immediately she jumped up, her disoriented gaze darting back and forth between the walls, to see the intruder, her face tense - it took a few seconds for the events from yesterday to register - but she calmed down, leaving the bedroom she carefully approached the house door staring at it in wonder for a bit - before actually opening it, as she did- her yellow eyes stared up suspiciously. It was the woman from yesterday, wearing a wide gown with large sleeves, she carried some books and other things with her, her pretty face was as stern as yesterday - Kou immediately felt overwhelmed, and lowered her head submissively out of reflex, staying silent as she stood there half frozen. But the woman simply stepped past her into the room - looking around for a moment she let out a sigh “We will have to work on your manners too I guess, for now, you will call me Miss Hei - go wash your face and come back quickly.”

Her soft and pleasant voice did not mask the order at all and so Kou quickly did was she was told entering the bath to wash her face before returning to find the woman sitting in one of the chairs having spread numerous books on the table as well as a few other things. “Come sit Yun Kou.” following this order as well Kou sat down but kept her head down and stayed silent, in front of powerful people not doing anything was the best decision most of the time, it would not give them anything to get angry about after all. “Good, well I said I would explain things to you, so you listen closely now - the things I’m telling you now will be important for your future here.”

“This is Ancient Cloud Sect, we are one of 4 sect’s in this great empire, while we are mostly a free organization, we mostly serve as training grounds for future soldiers as well as noble children. Every few years we take everyone with the proper status or cultivation in to train them for the future of the sect and empire.”

“Usually, this involves a fee but for commoners like you, that fee will be worked off in the army once you mature. The other children will be here beginning next year so in about 3 months - they are going to be 6 to 8 years old and you will stay at least a year with them here in the outer sect. But this is not important for now… what is important, is that you are able to properly interact with people before the time comes.”

And from that point onwards Miss Hei selected a training schedule for Yun Kou, Miss Hei would come here every other day to teach her the basics, leaving her with textbooks and simple learning material for the free day - this would go on for the next one and a half month. This work would include passive mannerism - writing and reading, as well as some basic knowledge.

For the remaining time, Miss Hei would teach her all about cultivation, weirdly enough Kou did not feel too bad about all of this, learning new things seemed rather fun! Even if Miss Hei was a bit strict and scary sometimes. The first day was thus spent scheduling the rest of the time before the other students showed up, a date that frightened Kou a lot more then lessons with Miss Hei, she had never been good in interacting with other children. Miss Hei had spent some time teaching her the meaning of a few characters and gave her ink and a pencil to copy all of them 20 times by tomorrow.

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And thus 2 weeks went by in a fly - Miss Hei would show up each morning with sunrise - spend about 4 hours teaching and controlling homework. Kou would’ve assumed that her head would be hurting by all this information, but everything went in easy enough - Miss Hei had explained this to her - apparently her “Awakening” made it easier for her to take in information, but she would explain that in more detail later.

In these two weeks Kou also spend some time exploring her surroundings, this outer sect mountain area on its own was almost as big as Dongzhou, each stone house had some free space around it, there were also a lot of different sized houses - some were even mansion like while others were even smaller than her own house. There was also a few other buildings - for one a large hall with many chairs and a podium - apparently this was the teaching hall.

A big roundhouse with walls around it was the medical ward and the only place in the outer sect were there are actually people at the moment, inner sect disciples and some other people were working here on there on projects while they had no injuries to tend to, her sniffing around was met with amusement - the people here seemed to be more relaxed. There was also a sect archive and a technique pavilion, the first held large amounts of books, While the technique pavilion held beginner and intermediate techniques for those that qualify. Of course, right now she was not allowed to enter any of these two.

There was also the snowy mountain top and forest, but Miss Hei had forbidden her from venturing out too much explaining that the sect lands hold spirits, some friendly some hostile and that she would have to be able to defeat them to actually enter.

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Today’s lesson was a bit of a strange one, Miss Hei had brought some clippers, ribbons - hairpins and strange smelling liquids. Over the last few weeks Kou had made good progress she was actually able to talk, understood basic characters and could write simple sentences, but it was not just that - the good food and conditions here had done wonders for her appearance - while her skin was still a bit yellow and she still looked more like a 4-year-old then someone soon to approach 7 due to malnourishment - her bloated belly was gone - her dirty gray hair that she usually just cut with a dagger was now reaching over her shoulders and had taken on a more white then gray color. “Today’s lessons are about appearances, as a girl, these things are important or everyone will look down on you, now sit down and hold still.” What followed was almost half an hour off Miss Hui treating her hair, clipping, and washing and brushing away constantly while explaining each and every step slowly - somehow Kou felt that this lesson was a lot more …Intense then others.

In the end, she had learned how to do her hair up in a bun and how to make a simple braid, but the hairstyle she liked best was a simple pony-tail with some bangs falling into her face - and Miss Hei seemed to be reluctantly alright with that. Leaving Kou for the day not with characters to write or things to remember but with a bottle of “Champoowh.” Instructing her to use it from now on when washing her hair - mumbling something about getting that hair white while at it. ___________________________________________________________________________

Another 2 weeks went by without any hitches, Kou was now able to understand most characters as well as write them - her final test for this was to write a letter to Hei Tian, which apparently was the name of the boy. “Hello, this letter is from Yun Kou - Miss Hei has been taken great care of me and I’m learning more each day, there are still many things that I don’t understand. I’m thankful for you giving me a name and I look forward to meeting you soon when the Outersect opens up.”

It was simple enough but Miss Hei seemed to be satisfied “Good Good, I will give him this letter he has been asking about you from time to time but he will only be able to come here with everyone else, From tomorrow on we will go into cultivation, I do however strongly advise that you keep your studies up, work on your calligraphy if you have time and read, you will need these things - for today you won’t get any homework - but see to it that you are rested in the morning.”