The remainder of the week passes by like a silkworm’s cocoon, fleeting, yet ever flowing freely in the wind, nothing impeding its glorious progress. “No that just sounds stupid, why does this Eastern style of writing sound so flowery and stupid” I complain to myself. I went a whole week blazing through the majority of my reading and studying, not a single problem, yet with only a week left I still have to deal with the writing and confucianesque style of thinking.

“At least back on Earth, the poetry, the Shakespeare, the listless menagerie of words could at least be translated to something understandable.” I continue, “Next thing I know I am going to be preaching about the Huaxia people and spend whole hour monologuing with meaningless words and bore my audience to death”. The troubles with this learning roadblock was annoying me, but the fact that a whole week of reading dozens of books and learning what some require months, only gained me a single rank in the Path of Knowledge.

Deciding that I am not getting anywhere, I decide to do some “extracurricular” reading. Pulling out a couple stories about some of the more fantastical stories. I begin reading about a warrior of such renown with the blade, his sword so sharp, that nothing can block his blade. There was even an account where someone bet he could not cut a river in half with his sword. As I read the story, I thought perhaps he had some magic skill that would leave a huge gash in the river, maybe divert it, but even I was stupefied. The warrior had a Technique, [Peerless Cut], that quite literally cut anything, so when he decided to “cut” the river, he did not destroy the land. No no no, with the swing of his sword, it left a dimensional gash in the middle of the river, the water freely flowing into the cut and disappeared. The man who made the bet, who had gone so far as to question his manhood if he did not attempt the act, turned out to be the local leader of a village the warrior was passing through. After the water stopped flowing down the river, the village’s crops withered and died, the village nearly starved to death, until the warrior, out of pity, made one more cut, but only after the village head was ousted from the village. The warrior CUT the misfortunes of the village away, like a diseased limb needing amputation.

I thought this story was crazy right, like how much can you turn a Technique into a pun, but no, it got even weirder. This event only encouraged more people to test his manhood. Women loudly claimed that if he wished to have their fancy, he must first gain the attention of the most unliked women of the local elites. This woman was so awkward, so untenable to be around, that men fled from any conversation with her. The warrior as at first troubled upon hearing the rumors about the challenge, but then knew his path to success. He simply CUT to the chase, he CUT the awkwardness away, blasting right past any potential conversational pitfall that arose. That night, the entire house rocked with noises that any women who was nearby blushed the brightest of reds. In fact, the woman became so entranced by his skills in bed, that a whole fortnight passed of their lovemaking, day and night passing without a moment of silence. After the warrior left the town, a new custom arose in that village, where every teenage boy honed his swordsmanship, sharpened his blade before his peers, and a testing of one’s ability to cut became a ritual for marital ability.

“Wait a minute..” I reread key parts the story again “this guy was just a fuckboy with a super sharp sword who knew how to pun the life out of a Technique”. I spend the next couple hours reading through weird accounts like this, noting where a more western, more Earth-like, translation of the events could be understood. An idea takes shape in my head, pulling out the scrolls and texts that I couldn’t understand due to cultural differences and reexamining them once more. Finally pulling out a poem that about how a young lady was like a chrysanthemum flower, and how her love was eternal. I then noticed a couple more innuendos in there that had seemed out of place given the seemingly innocuous language. Finally coming across a mention about how the flower has to do with duration and long life, I realize this poem was about how this girl could just keep on going, her sexual desire never waning. The last straw was when I saw that this girl had a Technique [Let our Lovemaking Never End]. I began to blitz my way through poem after poem, listless Confucian argument after another, and began to write down what I believed these to actually mean in a way I could understand it. After I had written down a dozen such “translation” I asked to meet with Lady Zhou to confirm my suspicions.

All I hear was laughter, an hour passed as she read through each translation, comparing them to the originals. At one point she even gave one of them to Baohu, the eternal shadow companion, who laughed when he read the translation. “Yes, you are right, although it is tragic that some of our finer works be stripped away to such smaller meanings” she replies to me, but happy that I passed through roadblock on my own.

“I had been tempted to come myself and tutor you myself if you kept having troubles but decided to wait for another day” she said before sending me off, forcing me to gulp down another cup of tea before leaving. Upon arriving back at my room, I spent the next couple hours sweating, affixed to the toilet. When I wiped off the sweat, I saw black streaked on the towel, but that was not as bad as the black stained toilet. The events of the night tiring me out so much I decided to get some rest early, which was only when I learned of just how potent the tea I drank was, and the noticeable improvement it provided me.

[Path of Knowledge Rank seven]

[Technique: Cultural Translation obtained]

[Cultivation increased: Mortal Realm, Low Stage]