Ryuga was Kenja’s home and the prosperous capital city of the Ryu Empire.

Calling it the ‘capital city’ might be a bit misleading, for it was the only city in the entire Freezing Desert, a sandy expanse known for its harsh environment that extended hundreds of kilometers outward from Ryuga and past the empire’s borders. Aside from this singular city, only a few small tribes and villages were strewn about the desert, many of them serving as outposts or checkpoints for travelling to and from Ryuga.

Due to its perilous nature, traversing the desert required one had a lot of strength or a lot of wealth, but the safest expeditions comprised of both.

The city itself spanned forty kilometers from one end to the other with a giant wall circling its perimeter. Considering the natural defense offered by the encompassing desert, the wall served to keep out gusts of sand and the occasional monster more than foreign invaders.

Kenja carried a basket containing food as he walked along the western arc of Ryuga’s perimeter until he spotted an incomplete gate and the opposing line of buildings parallel to it. This side initially had a road that led to the center of the city as well, but homes and stores were built on top of the road, making it inconvenient to get from the unfinished gate to anywhere else and vice versa.

As a result, living here was significantly cheaper than anywhere else in the city.

Unlike this side, there were official entrances to the city from the northern, southern and eastern gates with marked pathways leading all the way to the Central Square in front of the palace’s gates.

The city's layout could be divided roughly into three concentric rings.

The outer ring housed a large percentage of the city's population with a few shops here and there for living necessities and inexpensive goods.

The central ring dealt with farms and plantations as well as a few suppliers that shipped raw goods such as cloth and metals to both the inner and outer circle. The Flowing River Sect was located in the middle ring as it utilized a large plot of unusable land in the form of a steep hill.

The inner ring sheltered the upper class, palace servants and high-class shops. Naturally, those with money, respect, power or a combination of the three were destined to live here, near the palace and the royal family to whom they pledged their loyalty.

Of course, at Ryuga’s core, Emperor Ryu's palace grandly towered over everything and everyone. It was tall enough to be seen from a dozen kilometers outside the city. With four tall spires serving as the corners enshrining a central tower that was shorter than them but several magnitudes wider. Any that gazed upon this sight would imagine a solitary king sitting down on his throne while his denizens eagerly stood guard over their liege.

As the palace and other buildings in the city were constructed with varying heights in mind, nearly every roof was dome-shaped with their centers pulled upwards into a tip. Although many considered this design beautiful and aesthetically-pleasing to the eye, its primary purpose was a practical one.

Despite the perimeter wall’s best efforts to keep sand out, flat roofs would eventually accumulate enough sand to collapse buildings under the added weight. The ‘dome shape with a tip’ prevented sand from piling onto the roofs and jeapordizing any buildings' structural integrity.

All this didn’t really matter to Kenja though. His small and modest home with a flat roof was located on the western-most edge of Ryuga opposite of the unfinished gate.

This side was originally meant to have an entrance like the other cardinal directions, but its construction was postponed indefinitely halfway through its construction. Even though the reason for the delay was never publicly revealed, everyone knew why.

It was because of the Lost Forest just outside the city.

Half a kilometer away from the western side of the city lay a thick and lush forest. Ignorant tourists and the like believed its name came from the fact that a vigorous patch of green stranded in the sandy wasteland was out of place, similar to a royal eunuch lost in his king's harem, but the natives knew better.

In the past few centuries, multiple attempts had been made to domesticate and clear the forest all of which ended in failure.

Of the dozens assigned with the task of assessing the estimated workload for removing the forest, all were lost shortly after entering the forest, including one member of the royal family who had disbelieved in the rumors.

Since then, any endeavor to recover those lost or explore the forest’s mysteries had ended with similar results. Even attemps to burn the forest from a distance led to a seemingly-random gust of wind blowing the flaming projectiles off course or snuffing them out completely.

Therefore, the emperor halted all progress on the west gate and sealed it so that curious citizens would be less tempted to venture into the nearby death trap. Such measures weren’t perfect though, as the fatal forest attracted martial practitioners and cultivators who believed it guarded a hidden secret or powerful treasure and that the forest was an obstacle one must overcome.

Those unable to resist its temptation were never heard from again.

-----

Kenja entered one of the buildings in front of the gate and peeked into the kitchen.

The kitchen had a table with three chairs next to it. Off to the side, an old woman was looking outside the window as she rocked back and forth in her chair. Her snow-white hair reached past her shoulders. Her hands were wrinkled and her feet were swinging faintly with the chair.

"I'm home, Baba-san." Kenja placed the basket on the ground and the brown bag on the table before approaching the old woman. He kneeled next to the chair and waited for the old woman to respond.

The woman turned to him and smiled, placing her hand gently on the top of his head.

"You grow more and more with each passing day, Kenja. When are you going to get married and introduce me to your kids?" She joked with him.

Kenja lifted his head and let the old woman's hand caress his cheek.

"Who needs a wife when I have you?" Kenja gave the old woman a toothy grin.

The old woman chuckled. "Such a smooth talker. Perhaps I should worry that you'll bring back too many wives."

Kenja nodded his head. "Of course! One to cook for you; one to clean for you; one to massage your feet..." Kenja continued with no apparent end in sight.

The old woman shook her head joyfully. "The twins are upstairs getting ready. I'll ready their food, so go make sure their nerves are steeled." She curled her fist and shook it as a gesture for strength.

Kenja nodded and got up. He placed some money next to the bag of food before leaving the kitchen.

This old woman was his landlady Baba-san who had looked after Kenja and the twins since they were young.

Kenja and the twins had been orphans living in the streets when Kenja was able to strike a deal with Baba-san. He had scrounged up nine copper coins over the course of a month as he took care of the 3-year-old twins. He ran into the first house he could find with a spare room and negotiated with the old woman.

In the end, he successfully rented one room for a month with his nine copper coins.

It was not until much later that he had found out nine copper coins couldn't pay for a single day at a normal inn and that the old woman had let this slide for their sakes. If that wasn’t enough, she also introduced him to the nearby elderly and shopkeepers who gave him odd jobs despite his very young age.

He headed upstairs and walked to the end of the hall where two doors faced each other. As he approached them, he heard a pair of voices breathing in deeply behind the door to the right. Kenja rolled his eyes as he pushed the door open and entered the room.

"Why are you girls practicing in my room?" Kenja scolded the intruders.

A whole head and a half shorter than him, two 15-year-old girls stood in the center of the room. With short brown hair that curled at their shoulders and light brown eyes to match, their identical, immature faces held an innocent countenance along with an expression of surprise and guilt.

Their modest physiques donned white robes that female cultivators would wear. One twin had a pink ribbon on the top-right side of her head, and the other had a purple ribbon on the left.

Truthfully, the ribbons were gifts from Kenja that helped him differentiate between the two twins. When they were on the street scraping by, he could easily tell the two apart due to the various dirt spots and tears on their clothes, but now that they were clean all the time and wore the same clothes everyday, the ribbons became a necessity for him and many others, except for Baba-san. She could tell them apart without the ribbons.

Without turning away from Kenja, the girls' pupils rolled to the side and met one another. Coming to a complicit understanding, they maintained their silence as they seemed to struggle for an excuse.

A few seconds passed in silence, but Kenja's stare became increasingly unbearable to the point that one of the twins began stammering.

"K-K-Kenja-niisan, we didn't mean to intrude," the pink-ribboned girl declared.

Because she would often stutter when she was nervous, Kobayashi Yoshie would let her older sister speak for her. It was also due to her weak nerves that compelled her to speak first this time; her sister could hold out in silence longer than her under Kenja’s heavy gaze.

The purple-ribboned sister closed her eyes and sighed in defeat.

"Yes! We didn't mean to intrude. Please, forgive us Kenja-niisan," Kobayashi Shizuka supported her younger sister’s words.

Kenja did not soften with their apology. Girls should not casually be intruding into a boy’s room, regardless of their relation to the boy; he would lecture them here and now if he must since there might be no time later.

"Then why are you in here?"

The sisters’ pupils met once more while still facing Kenja. Again, they began looking for a proper excuse. It was only after a minute of contemplation before Shizuka broke the silence.

"It is easier to practice if we can smell something familiar and calming. Because of that, we believed practicing in here could relax us before the test." Her ambiguous admission caused her to look away with closed eyes and a slight blush.

The pink-ribboned girl nodded her head in agreement while bowing her head in shame with a darker shade of pink on her cheeks.

Kenja stared blankly for a moment before nodding in agreement. "I see. But you will have to get used to doing it without me being around; otherwise, your progress will be quite slow. Also, you should not carelessly enter a boy’s room in the future. You two are no longer kids.”

The twins jerked up at this.

“We would never do such things, Kenja-niisan! It was only because it was you!” Shizuka asserted with a knitted eyebrows and a serious expression.

Yoshie nodded vigorously in agreement with a sad frown and misty eyes. “Yes! Only because it was you!”

Kenja chuckled at their reactions.

“Alright, I understand. For now, let’s resume practicing so that I can evaluate you both,” he decided to drop the matter.

The breathing exercise was the same one he did this morning as well as the first part of the entrance exam. The more relaxed one was, the greater the benefits during this exercise. Because the twins grew alongside him all their lives, it was natural for them to achieve a more serene state when he was nearby.

The two girls smiled gleefully at each other before getting back into position and breathing in deeply. Perfectly in sync with each other, they slowly revolved their hands in front of them as they breathed in and out. If the ribbons had been the same color, it would look like one person was practicing beside a mirror.

The air in the room had a discernible ebb and flow from their bodies. They were clearly capable of pulling Qi into their bodies and cycling it through their meridians with each breath, something Kenja had never felt in his practice.

After a minute of practicing, Kenja was satisfied. They were successfully breathing the Qi in and regulating it back out at a steady pace. With this, they should have no problem with the entrance exam.

"Good, good." Kenja nodded his head in approval. "You will definitely succeed in the examination."

The girls smiled at each other with excitement in their eyes.

"Regardless of what happens, Shizuka, take care of your younger sister."

The purple-ribboned girl accepted her brother's command with a nod.

"And Yoshie, make sure to stick with your sister. Never separate from her and lean on each other in your times of need."

The pink-ribboned girl nodded as well before giving her brother a look of deep gratitude.

"Now go downstairs and eat some food. We have a long walk ahead of us."

The two girls grasped their hands and bowed to their brother before scurrying down the stairs.