[Arrival Day + 1, 9am]

Jin knocked on the door.

There was no answer. He waited a bit.

Knocked again. Same result.

Tried opening the door. Locked. Jin shrugged.

“Maybe I’ll ask in the refinement hall” - he thought.

Refinement hall was a huge, many floored building, even more so than most other halls - it required a lot of space because it contained a lot of rooms with refining equipment for general use of the house members.

Jin entered the building.

He approached the clerk, and asked for Ma Gu, unfortunately the clerk couldn’t help.

Jin decided he’ll just come back later.

His next target - library.

He navigated there, again asking around for directions anyone who didn’t appear particularly busy.

The library building was not half of the refinement hall in terms of size.

Jin took out the slip of paper and took a look at its contents. There were 6 titles.

-Southern Continent Geography,

-Nan Liang Mountain’s Area Local Fauna and Flora

-Human Anatomy

-Cultivator’s handbook: basics of refinement and artificing

-Encyclopedia of Gusu

-Southern Continent’s Inhabitants

He entered the building, approached and greeted the clerk and handed over the slip of paper he received from Yuan Ju while asking “Can I receive these documents?”.

The clerk glanced at the paper and nodded.

“Certainly, please wait a moment.”

It didn’t take the clerk more than 5 minutes, he was back, in his hands 2 books and 4 booklets.

“Here you go, everything’s here.” - Announced clerk, handing Jin the items.

“Thank you”. “Is there any booklet containing the map of the house? I’ve just arrived yesterday.”

“No, there is not. Feel free to ask if you need directions to a specific place.” - replied the clerk.

“I need to get to the contributions hall next.”

The clerk explained the directions to him. Jin left the library building after thanking the clerk again and wishing him a good day.

Contributions Hall was his last stop. He picked the wooden gusu list, after which he went back to his room, and dropped everything on the table in the room. The room was just as he left it, Shin was still out.

First off, he decided to take a look at the rewards list and cross check the entries with gusu encyclopedia. He was curious about what gusu was available at his hand.

100x Not Gusu

1x rank 1 Blade Gusu

1x rank 1 Swift Gusu

1x rank 1 Sear Gusu

1x rank 1 Water Bath Gusu

1x rank 1 Air Bath Gusu

1x rank 1 Flash Gusu

1x rank 1 Jump Gusu

1x rank 1 Impact Gusu

1x rank 1 Vitality Gusu

1x rank 1 Voice Amplification Gusu

1x rank 1 Whisper Gusu

1x rank 1 Heat Perception Gusu

1x rank 1 Shock Gusu

1x rank 1 Gust Gusu

1x rank 1 Stoneskin Gusu

1x rank 1 Solidification Gusu

1x rank 1 Sandblast Gusu

1x rank 1 Extraction Gusu

1x rank 1 Animate Gusu

1x rank 1 Thought Gusu

1x rank 1 Eagle Eye Gusu

1x rank 1 Telekinesis Gusu

...and many more.

The list was quite long. It made sense that the sect would possess a large variety of rank 1 Gusu, the token received by the students upon becoming a rank 1 expert was the lowest grade gusu token used in the house, this was suggested by the material the token was crafted from - wood.

First thing Jin wanted to find out, what in the world is “Not Gusu”? It looks like it’s a hundred times less valuable than the wooden list’s rank 1 gusu.

He opened the encyclopedia and thankfully, managed to find the entry.

Not Gusu, as the name suggested, wasn’t really considered a Gusu, at least not a full-fledged one. Not Gusu has no abilities associated with them. They can be of many forms and shapes, and generally appear in abundance. They are effectively rank 0 gusu.

Despite not having an ability, they had their uses.

The first one is, they can be refined by an expert in the same manner normal Gusu can, there’s just little point to do so, but they are good practice dummies for beginner cultivators.

The second one is in gusu refinement. When refining a rank 1 gusu, Not Gusu is a base material which is refined into a higher rank. There are also more advanced refinement methods, which can immediately refine Not Gusu into a rank higher than 1.

“Interesting.” - thought Jin, it actually might be best for him to choose the Not Gusu, since he does not know how to refine Gusu and it’d be bad to pick rank 1 Gusu for it to die due to failure in refining it. He wasn’t going to choose anyway until he consulted with his master anyway. From the rest of the list, there were a few that looked interesting.

But it was not time to salivate over something he might not get. For now he decided to follow Ju’s guidance and seek his lifeline again.

Ju was in front of his master’s house again. Unfortunately, he was still not in the house. He simply decided to wait, having nothing better to do. He sat down cross legged, resting his back on the house’s wall.

Many hours have passed. The sun was setting. By this time, Jin’s eyes were closed, he was enjoying the current circumstance. He reviewed yesterday’s and today’s experience, the sect’s layout which he partially came to know, and the information he has received so far. He thought about how different disciples carry themselves differently within the sect. He was also thinking about the words Grom spoke to him at their brief meeting.

[Ma Gu First Encounter, Arrival Day + 1, 6pm]

At that time, he heard somebody approaching. It was a middle aged man. As Jin was standing up, the man asked the question.

“You are?” - the man’s tone was suggesting he was not amused by Jin waiting for him beside his house. His face showing more than hint of annoyance.

“Your student, Tai Zhen Jin.” - Jin answered while bowing down at the same time.

“Ah. Our new, little celebrity with subpar aptitudes to boot.“ - He said, as annoyance transformed into disdain. "Yet the youngest one amid first ranks…" - he continued, the disdain loosening a little.

Jin expected this kind of response a little, though the directness was a little surprising. He already received a forewarning from Grom. Jin did hope though that his lack of aptitude will not hold him as much as the general attitude of the house would have him believe it will.

“I will do my best to meet both the house's and your expectations.” - said Jin, after which he ended the bow.

“Your best will not be enough, boy.” - Ma Gu said. “Aptitude is not something that can be easily overcome. If you think the ones with better aptitudes will laze around just waiting for you to catch up, then you’ll be sorely disappointed.” - Ma Gu scoffed.

“Do you have anything to close the gap? Some rare Gusu? Potions? Access to some powerful enchanted space? Perhaps an affluent backer? Maybe at least a plan on how to acquire any of these?”

Jin was a little surprised.

“No.” - He said, while he shook his head. He was being made aware that his situation is more severe than he previously thought.

“Naturally. You don’t.” - Mockingly, said Gu.

“The talented students will be motivated by their timely progress. The talentless lose motivation quickly, as they are left in the dust by their peers.” - He added, his voice didn’t lack hints of annoyance and anger.

Each word was pulling and grounding Jin into his circumstance.

“Even though you come with an advantage, your rank 1 peers will not wait for you. In time, even the more talented trainees’ you arrived with will catch up and surpass you.”

A moment of pause, which prompted Jin to answer, which he quickly built.

“I can only only do my best, and trust in my mentor's skill to help his pupil.” - Jin said, handing the Ma Gu the Gusu token he had received earlier.

Ma Gu snorted, taking the token.

“Go to the Refinement Hall. Practice room 7. It should be unoccupied right now. Wait there for me.”

Jin bowed and left towards the Refinement Hall.

Inside, he asked about the practice room. The room was free, he took the room token from the clerk who had handed it to him and proceeded towards the room.

He sat down inside the room, going over the conversation with his mentor. Ma Gu made himself quite clear. Just working hard will not be enough. He’ll most certainly need to find some advantages.

The first source of such an advantage might be his mentor. But all other students have mentors too. Even if Ma Gu was the most talented and affluent out of all mentors, which is unlikely, it was even less likely to be so by a significant margin.

Another person was Bei. Bei was an enigma. Even if he did not have a good method for him, Jin was more confident in Bei’s ability to make something out of nothing than his own. No - that’s not the right approach. There are certainly things to learn from Bei, and if Bei was better at making the best of situations than him, he should be able to imbibe whatever Bei has that Jin lacks if he pays enough attention. It’d not be sensible to depend on Bei to magically come up with a solution. He said he’s going to give Bei a helping hand in whatever endeavor he sets on, not the other way around.

Finally, Kasm. Jin wasn’t doing much within his inner realm, but it will change now, as his journey begins. Even though his energy aptitudes were lacking, maybe Kasm had a solution, maybe even a trump card. At least some suggestions? Jin can find out soon.

Those three were the easiest opportunities to grasp onto right now. If he wanted more avenues, he’d need to probe for leads. Get more knowledge about the possibilities around the Nan Liang mountain. Maybe fellow krakens had some methods, orat least tips. Perhaps he should take on student jobs. Connect with the right people. Supplementing his knowledge seemed like a good idea, it was easy. Jobs and connections - that was more difficult. He had no standing within the house after all. He probably could only do initial probing and research, and perhaps be patient and vigilant for opportunities that might present themselves.

“Patient and vigilant? Maybe I should’ve picked the serpent.” - Jin laughed as he thought about this. No wonder this was his second most apt choice.

It didn’t take a long time by the time Ma Gu joined him in the room. He closed the door behind him. Jin stood up.

"Sit down." Ma Gu instructed, and approached Jin and put hand on his head. After this, he sat down himself.

"No talent" - he said, disdainfully. "Not entirely an idiot, however." He added, quietly.

"I needed to confirm if it's as bad as the report said."

"No knowledge at all…” - he continued - "Believing what I've been told?".

"Yes, mentor." - confirmed Jin.

Gu shook his head.

“I do hope you will make your best effort to fill in the blanks left by your premature graduation from the preparation phase. By now, you should already have a basic grasp over the delicate art of potioneering, and at least some theoretical grasp over the field of refinement. Since you do not, you can only blame yourself. The other subjects are of less importance for my pupils, however ” his tone sharpened “ you would be an ignorant fool to not know anything about formations, plant & fungi studies, creature studies, transformations, animations, illusions and the mind arts.” - Ma Gu said, listing the subjects with flent

“Any rank 1 expert who doesn’t have means to use his capabilities is a laughing stock - not very different from a trainee. For this reason, we'll start from gusu refinement." - he announced, after which he conjured a big squishy caterpillar, he put it on his left hand, his right hand he placed above it.

"Close your eyes." He said calmly. "And pay attention." - he said strongly, through gritted teeth. "If you don't, you’ll be applying for a new master still today.".

Jin didn't think this was an empty threat.

He relaxed, and focused on his senses, as he didn't want to miss anything.

He noticed something uncanny. His senses were getting duller and duller. He was losing them. Soon, he stopped hearing anything. He didn’t know if it was warm or cold.He didn't know whether he was seating or laying on the ground. He wouldn't be able to tell if he was hanging upside down.

He didn't even know if he was breathing or not.

A moment later, his senses were coming back. His hearing returning. His sense of touch was returning. His eyes were open and his vision was returning as well.

He started feeling his energy lazily squiggling throughout his body like never before. Calmly and powerfully pulsing, focused like a serpent, stalking its prey.

His senses have returned, but he was surprised. They were not really his senses. He saw himself in a cross legged position sitting across the table. His arms were outstretched now, his hands holding a fat, squishy caterpillar.

He could also tell that he was doing something with his energy and a number of gusu put together in a curious structure. The energy was lazily feeding the gusu, at the same time the maintaining the effect he was currently experiencing, using his and gu’s bodies as targets.

Jin tried moving his hand. He moved his body’s hand, of which he had absolutely no perception of.

Instead he felt his brows creasing and then speaking.

“Observe.” - Ma Gu said through gritted teeth, warning Jin to not do more than that.

[Gusu Refinement Lesson, Arrival Day +1, 6.30pm]

Ma Gu sent his energies into caterpillar. The caterpillar shook. It was scared. He could feel it. He flushed his energy over the whole caterpillar's energy system, which became agitated and tried to repel the incoming hostile energy.

At this point Gu closed his eyes, while maintaining the connection.

All of a sudden, the environment changed.

It was a stormy night. The rain was pouring very heavily, and the winds were strong. From time to time, a thundering sound in the distance.

There was a clearing in cloudy sky, and through it, a huge crescent moon was gaping.

He stood on a bamboo roof of a tall building. There was a sea of buildings like that in this place.

Another man stood in front. He was a young man at his prime, though he was rather lean, but also well built at the same time.

“I’m piggybacking another junior.” - Gu announced.

The man nodded in understanding.

“We’re teaching him how to refine Gusu now. I’ve already established a connection.”

The man invited Gu to drop down from the building, and jumped down himself right after.

Gu followed. They were in front of the building now. The man opened the door, Gu went inside first, and this time the man followed.

Gu looked back after . The door was glued to a huge wall covered in some sort of tree bark-like material. They themselves stood on something he could be most aptly described as a branch coming out of the wall.

They waited a little bit. Soon enough, they started hearing angry squeaking sounds which got louder and louder.

A huge, man-sized moth appeared in front of them, still squeaking angrily.

Gu and the man stood, not really giving much heed to the moth.

The moth pounced at the young man, and attempted to chew him up. The man remained unmoving.

Gu approached the moth and the man, grabbed the moth off of him, dropped it on the ground and… just sat on it. The moth couldn’t flinch under his pressure.

Then, the young man approached the moth and pierced its carapace with his hand. The man closed its eyes and began doing *something* to the moth. Moth was shaking and tried to struggle, however in the end, it was for naught.

After a couple minutes, the man withdrew his arm, There was no wound on the moth actually. It looks like the moth’s body just gave way to the man’s hand. and now that the hand no longer occupied the spot, it’s own “flesh” has filled up that spot again.

The moth was no longer making squeaking noises. It was just standing on the ground. The man then turned to the direction they originally came from, where the door was. He pointed at the door, the moth was observing him carefully.

As if understanding his meaning, it flew towards the door and proceeded to shape out some sort of door frame around it. Gu used the door again to enter the stormy town again. The man soon followed, though the moth stayed behind.

The man did a similar thing on this side of a doorway. He conjured an additional frame along with some symbols on top of it.

The man nodded to Gu, confirming the process has finished successfully.

Gu closed his eyes.

Jin felt his senses slowly dulling in a similar way as before.

Following the same series of sensations he had earlier, he finally opened his eyes.

He was sitting in front of Gu.

He tensed his muscles, making sure he could feel everything alright, and indeed everything has seemed to return to normal.

Jin looked to Ma Gu.

“Now that you have experienced refining a gusu, give me an overview of how you will refine yours.”

Jin digested what just happened shortly and started formulating his response.

“First I’ll establish a stable connection with the worm’s energy body, using my own energy resources. I’ll keep supporting this connection throughout the whole process.

Afterwards, I’ll enter my aperture and inform the Guardian of the situation, and that we need to refine the Gusu. After the guardian establishes the passage between the apertures, I’ll incapacitate the Gusu’s Guardian, so that mine can refine it. Once it is refined, the Gusu’s guardian can help establishing connection between the apertures. Once we leave the inner space of the Gusu, my Guardian should finish establishing the connection, after which the process should be completed.”

Jin went over the series of events.

Gu nodded.

“Questions?” - he slowly asked.

Jin had more than a few, acutally.

“Do you always need to bind the guardian in such a manner?”

“Of course not.” - ”It’s only natural to have at least one Gusu which can help bind another.”

“The method I used was crude, ” - he said, pausing for a second - “but it was only to better mirror your situation.” - again adding a lot of disdain to his expression.

“Anything else?” - asked Gu impatiently.

“Will the guardian know of the method to connect the inner spaces?”

“He should, and if not, he can find out not long after.”

Jin pondered over this answer. “Where does he earn the method? Should I supply him with one?”

“That’d be ridiculous. He has to create a method on his own, and the guardian has his own means of gathering information of energy structures of which lie beyound our perception. You need not do anything. Anything else?”

“My inner space looks much different that yours, mentor.”

“That is natural. Rarely two inner spaces look similar. It happens as often as finding an identical double of your own. Even rarer, as it is known that twins may have a very different inner spaces.”

“Anything else?” - the annoyance in Gu’s voice was very heavy now, it was likely not the best time to try his patience and make him fill up the huge gaps in Jin’s knowledge.

And so, Jin shook his head.

“That is all, mentor.”

Gu conjured ten squiggling Not Gusu.

“Refine all these. Once you do, find me immediately for the next steps.”

Jin bowed and thanked him. Ma Gu left immediately, Jin found a small box to put all the Not Gusu in. He put the box beside the table, and started to think, as he was observing the caterpillars. He knew Not Gusu could be of various kinds, most of these looked like they had a similar source though. A few had a different coloration and patterns on their bodies, but that’s it.

Jin was thoroughly impressed by the method employed by his master. Sense sharing, and with a powerful expert too? He felt the Gusu being used. It wasn’t a single Gusu’s ability that produced the effect. The effects of multiple carefully selected Gusu were beautifully arranged. Jin was excited, as a huge smile appeared on his face.

Jin decided he can find Bei for consultations later. It’s best to strike iron while it’s hot, and try to refine these Not Gusu.

He knew his master must still be unsure how much he should commit himself when it came to Jin, and that was an opportunity. Jin knew he must make Ma Gu believe that the return on his investment in Jin will be well worth it. Right now Gu cannot be sure whether he should invest or not. He’s willing to take a risk though, which shows that it is up to Jin to either rise up or fall short of the expectations.

With this in mind, Jin closed his eyes, in an attempt to enter his aperture. It took him a couple moments to summon the right memories and feelings, but once he did, inner light has illuminated his vision.

Well, that is, his Guardian stood there, there rest was pitch black as usual. Quite a contrast to atmospheric location Ma Gu’s aperture was impressed with.

“Greetings, Kasm.” Jin bowed. He knew his Guardian fencied etiquette and politeness for unbeknownst reasons.

The boy opposite of him nodded.

“Are we all set? You took your time, I was getting impatient.”

“I apologize. The journey took a long time, only yesterday we arrived at the sect. While travelling there was little opportunity to acquire knowledge and resources, truth be told I am quite lost when it comes to cultivation still, but it’s just a matter of time. The opportunities are there, we just need to make use of them.”

Kasm nodded again.

“Let’s start then. listen to me carefully.” - The boy looked at Jin with a penetrating gaze. - “Now that my body has developed to this degree, I will need a lot of help to refine it further. I mean your help.”

Jin momentarily didn’t know how to react to this sudden intensity and forcefulness of his guardian. He knew this was important, he just looked at the boy.

“Now, listen closely. It is important.” - he said - “From today onwards, you are to report in here daily.” - the boy’s intensity of gaze hasn’t lowered.

Jin looked at him again. The boy wasn’t asking, he was demanding.

Jin pondered for a moment. Maybe it was a good time to probe Kasm about some details. Last time the situation was too hectic, but this might be the perfect moment to clarify their relationship.

“You see, I’ve been told my energy body talent is lacking. “not unsalvageable” seems to be the most apt description people come up with. Why is that?”

The boy’s expression grew a little dark.

Jin grew a little uncomfortable. He really didn’t want to end up cannibalizing his own system.

“Can you explain how the energy body works? What exactly are the aptitudes that I’ve heard of, what are our aptitudes and what does this mean for us?”

The boy stood still for a minute.

“I just need a clear indication of your judgement being trustworthy.” - Jin broke the silence - “I can only follow my judgement after all. Only if I deem you capable can I be at ease following your instructions, suggestions, or even demands. I have no issues with it.”

Jin smiled.

“I am an easily impressed person with a total lack of knowledge. If you’re half as good as you want me to perceive you are, I’ll be yours.”

The boy loosened his expression and matched Jin’s smile.

“Good. What good is meat if it’s not hunted by yourself.”

[Aptitude Explanation]

The boy sighed.

“This will take a little to explain, so just listen for now, and ask questions later.”

Jin nodded.

“Let’s go over the aptitudes. The aptitudes concern physical, mental and energy structures.”

Let’s start with the physical structure - this determines one’s vitality and strength. Both, strength and vitality will grow when trained appropriately according to species and aptitude. Aptitude is called neutral, when the structure neither improves or detriments the growth. If it helps the growth, it’s a good aptitude, if it encumbers the growth - it is a bad aptitude.”

In our case, both the vitality and strength aptitudes are really good. You only need to put in ⅔ of the effort to match somebody with neutral talent. What they would achieve in 3 years, you could achieve in 2.

The bad news here is, Vitality and Strength are incredibly slow to train on their own, and there are plenty of methods to improve using Gusu. Additionally, Humans are no Beasts, they can’t rely on their vitality and strength the way beasts can. - That is the popular knowledge about the subject.

I have a shorter version: Useless and everybody knows it.”

The boy smiled, whilst Jin nodded pondering.

“Now let’s go over mental structure. Our base mental structure is also quite good. It again is above average, with a similar supporting ratio as the physical body. How much people mentally grow in 3 years, we can grow in 2.

What’s more impressive, our mental body is already firmly sitting on rank 6. Average adult human mental structure sits at rank 5.

For the bad news, again here comes the cultivation speed. Mental Body rank is painfully slow to cultivate, even more so than the vitality and strength. And here again, the easiest way to increase mental capabilities is to make use of Gusu and the energy body.”

Jin nodded again.

“Finally, the energy structure. There are many kinds of aptitudes associated with the energy body. The most base ones are essence efficiency usage and speed of growth. The first one decides how many times you’ll be able to use Gusu. If a neutral aptitude can use a Gusu twice, somebody with good aptitude could use it 3 or even 4 times. Similarly, if aptitude is bad, he perhaps could use the Gusu only once. Growth is basically decided by how easy or hard is to refine your own core energy structure into energies of a higher rank. This works the same way as vitality, strength or the mental aptitude.”

“Our mana efficiency is merely neutral. Our growth speed aptitude is bad, it is ⅘. What somebody with neutral aptitude could do in two years, we’ll need two and a half years to do the same. If you compare yourself with somebody talented, say having similar aptitude that we have for vitality, then what he does do in two years, it’d take three and three quarters for you to catch up.”

To be fair, Jin expected worse given his previous interactions once his aptitude was compared to the neutral one, but a talented will be able to refine his energies almost twice as fast as he can, which was quite a heavy thought.

Probably the bottom line of the sect is neutral growth speed, and these students likely struggle a lot to keep up the pace. In the long run, the better aptitudes increase their advantage, while people like him would fall further and further back, as Ma Gu said.

“There is more subtlety to the energy body than just those two attributes. The subtler energies refer to various paths. Now, the only reason why the base aptitudes are weak is the attention I’ve paid to those subtler energies. It’ll pay in abundance, but the pay out will be postponed. All kinds of fools get great aptitude, only later to be locked in a single path and forever limited without any options out of their predicament.”

“I see, if it’s not very difficult, can’t you fix the base attributes now? To be fair, both, essence efficiency and growth speed seem like very important metrics.”

The boy sneered.

“No. I could work on the energy structures until they matured. Once they mature, they lose their flexibility. And if it was possible to still work on it, I’d just continue working on the subtler structures anyway. There’s a million ways to refine your energies into higher rank or how to become more essence efficient. Just use your brain. Things will merely be a little less convenient or take a little more time than they would otherwise. I’m in it for a long game, and I won’t sacrifice an ounce of potential I can muster.” - The boy sneered disdainfully - “Same goes for the subtler energy structures. You’ll see later, than many of your so called talented friends will get stuck more and more often, while you’ll always have a number of options for any situation.”

“I see… how can we make use of these subtler energy structures then?”

The boy looked at Jin for a couple seconds and burst out laughing.

“Hahaha, apologies. I shouldn’t laugh like that. You don’t even know much about aptitudes, why would you know anything about this.”

The boy calmed down again after a minute.

“We can’t make use of them… yet. First the energy body must mature to rank 4. Only then we’ll be able to refine the subtler energies as well, and weave them into the main energy body. At that time you’ll witness the full visage of my prowess. If only you could see it now, I wouldn’t have to play these charades with you.” - said the boy.

Jin smiled. “Thank you, Kasm. These explanations were quite enlightening.”

“I do wonder though, where do you get all this information from?” - asked Jin expressing his curiosity - “When it comes to information, I certainly am no match.”.

“Similar to how you have access to physical reality, I do have access to a sphere of my own. I’m sure all this information is accessible in your sphere too, perhaps you had no chance to acquire it before.”

The boy folded his hands.

“I imagine this should be enough to show who has a better grasp on our internal situation” - the boy said with a smile - “And how to improve it.”.

Jin nodded.

“I will be seeing you every day with reports on the progress.” - Jin bowed, assuring the boy he had won him over. At least for the time being.

“Good.” - said the boy. “Now, please give your first report”.

“We’ve arrived at the cultivation house yesterday. We have been assigned a particular sort - I’ve been sorted into a krakensort. You can think of it as a clan within the house. I have been assigned to a master who is to guide me. As a first lesson, master has showed me process of refining Gusu from his own perspective, by sharing his senses with me.

As an assignment, I’ve been given 10 Not Gusu to attempt and refine them for use.

I have come here to seek your help, as there are steps which I do not know how to follow. The first thing is how to use the energies to establish a connection with Not Gusu.”

The boy thought for a moment.

“Sharing senses?”

“Yes, mentor used effects of multiple Gusu to achieve that. The method was incredibly impressive. It was used to a great effect. I could even perceive the master's inner realm.”

The boy raised his eyebrows.

“Good. Very good. Since such a useful piece has taken some interest in us, we shall make best use of him.”

Jin smiled. If Gu heard this, he’d be in a world of pain. He could only hope there’s no sort of inner realm spying going on between master and pupil.

Kasm proceeded to explain and show Jin how to mold the energies into specific shapes.

It was a mental process. Using his attention and volition, the energies would act upon that.

After a couple hours of familiarizing himself and building more and more complex shapes, the boy interrupted.

“This should be enough for now. On your end, the first challenge is establishing the connection with the Gusu. It’s best if you have physical contact with it. Another challenge is, maintaining this connection, you need to be able to enter the aperture and move freely within it.”

Jin nodded. This was something he didn’t know how to do yet.

“Let’s practice this.” - the boy said with a shrug.

Jin found himself outside his aperture. The boy kicked him out, not waiting for him to leave on his own.

Jin took one Not Gusu onto his palm, and placed another over it, enclosing it and not letting it escape.

Then he tried establishing the connection. It took a few tries, but he finally succeeded. It was much harder to shape his energies here than in aperture. It felt like the further the energies got outside his body, the stronger they were pushed back into it. This required him to hold his attention tighter, and move his energies more aggressively and firmly using his volition.

He continued the process, at first the connection was breaking after a couple seconds. Once he practiced a bit more, it turned into minutes. He started feeling a little weak. It seems like he needed some rest.

Jin didn’t need to sleep much. After his aperture had opened, 3h of sleep was enough for him to feel well rested.

Jin went outside the room and went ahead to talk with the clerk.

Most of the important facilities in the sect operated all the time, 24 hours 7 days a week. Refinement hall was no exception. There were plenty of students who didn’t sleep much, or slept during the daytime hours for various reasons.

Jin returned the room token.

“Is there any space where I can leave this box? I’ll be coming back soon, I was wondering if I can avoid dragging it around with me.”

“I’m afraid not. There are storage rooms available, but renting one out for your purpose wouldn’t make much sense.” - the clerk answered. “Usually juniors leave their things in their master’s practice rooms, since there’s little chance that any of their fellow juniors will claim their things. The practice room 7 is assigned to Ma Gu.”

“I see. I’ll do that. Thank you.” - Jin ran back to the room and left the box there. He let the clerk know that he’s leaving. Clerk just nodded in response.

Jin went back to his lodgings.

Shin was there. It was dark, he still managed to navigate to the bathroom. He ran a couple buckets of cold water over him, and immediately after hit the sack.

[Arrival Day + 2]

Jin woke up around 3.30 in the morning. He poured a couple buckets of cold water over him again in the bathroom, after which he dressed and moved out towards the refinement hall again.

Jin greeted the clerk and asked for room 7.

The clerk checked for it, and found it. The room was currently unused. That was good news though, not unexpected given the current time. Despite that, he was a little anxious about having the room occupied. Now that he left his box in the practice room, he had no Not Gusu to practice with. He actually didn’t know a different spot where he could try to refine Gusu, his lodgings didn’t seem like the best place due to the possibility of disturbance.

He returned to the room. The box was there. He placed the box near the table, sat down, took out a Not Gusu and tried establishing connection again.

The weakness he felt before wasn’t troubling him this time. He managed to connect with the Gusu.

After the rest, the process was more natural to him. after he crossed 7 minutes of maintaining the connection, he felt that he doesn’t need to struggle much now. If he had enough energy, he could likely maintain it for hours. The process was exhausting his reserves quite quickly though. After the initial practice was over, he already felt his energies were significantly less vibrant.

Jin decided to try the multitasking now.

He established a connection with the Gusu again. Once it was stable, he kept his awareness and kept supporting the connection, but took away his focus from it. He has pinned his focus to his breathing process. The whole process was of a similar difficulty to breathing consciously while having a conversation. The only thing is, when the breathing has unknowingly eaten up all his attention, the connection with Gusu would break. At times he noticed it was going the other way around, his attention has totally shifted towards the connection, his breathing becoming involuntary.

As his energies fell to around 50% he decided to stop. It was barely an hour since he started the practice again. This was wasting his energy too much. It’d be better to practice this without actually keeping the connection.

He decided to replace maintaining connection with visualizing increasing numbers. Whenever he’d lose the image, or stuck on a particular image for a longer period of time , that’s the spot where the connection would likely be severed as well. The main chunk of his focus was going to still be pinned to his breathing.

The first time he managed to increase the numbers to 108. Then he lost his focus, and had to consciously try to remember where he was, what the image was showing just before. That was the signal that he failed to smoothly maintain his focus.

He decided to leave the room. He was aware that it’d take a while before he was satisfied with the results. And he might as well try the exercise in a less isolated environment.

His first stop was at a familiar bench in front of his lodgings building. He sat there and began exercising.

Initially, it was hard to maintain his focus, but both his mental aptitude and rank were high, he was making quick progress.

He changed the spot a couple of times, taking a walk, giving some relief to his exhausted mind. A few hours has passed like this.

[8am, Arrival Day + 2]

It was 8am.

Jin was quite hungry so he found his way to the canteen. It was quite busy, so he needed to wait for a while for his food, but that was nothing if not an opportunity to initiate another attempt at his exercise.

While carrying his plate of food, he noticed a few familiar faces from the caravan. The canteen’s seating area had five different sections, each colored after a particular sort. Jin looked at the sections with mayuras, and to his enjoyment he noticed Bei happily chatting with his new fellow sortmates.

Jin decided to intrude on this peacock party.

“Hello hatchlings, how was your meal?” - Jin asked as he unceremoniously sat down at their table. Hatchlings was a term used for trainee mayuras. Trainees of all sorts have specific names, which highlights their unique status within the house. They have a little different responsibilities and privileges from the rest. It’s the same as Grom calling Jin and other newly sorted krakens as ‘kraklings’.

The boys looked at each other, Bei didn’t respond in any specific way either.

“It was pretty good, you won’t catch me complaining about free food. You must be pretty hungry, I can see you managed to fit a minature of Nan Liang mountain on it.”

“You have seen through me.” Jin smiled, as he started eating his food.

“You’re Jin right? I had no idea you were rank 1 when we traveled together.” - said another boy, Jin knew his face because he was one of his fellow caravaneers. He hadn’t talked with him before though.

“I’d say you’re very lucky, but to be fair I have no idea what it takes to reach rank 1. We’ll probably know soon enough. Though, 120 credits is quite a lot from what I’ve been told, for trainees it’s a small fortune. The krakens also must be happy that they received such an early lead in the league.”

“Haha, I’m as new to all this as you guys are. Don’t spoil my surprise just yet. You guys have classes and some organized training if I remember correctly?”

“That’s correct. It starts soon, are you not coming?”

Jin shook his head.

“Not today, at the very least. I’m afraid I’ve been put on a fasttrack and have a lot of catching up to do. I’m expected to fill up the blanks from trainee period between other tasks.” - Jin replied, a little sour.

“But does anyone have a schedule? I might pop in from time to time, at least making sure that I’m somewhat on track.”

“Here.” - Bei took out a schedule and placed it on the table.

“Thanks.” - said Jin, as he was reaching it.

*swoosh*

Just before Jin took the schedule, Bei swiped it.

“So how come you come here instead of joining your sortmates?” - one of the boys asked in the meantime, making a motion with his head pointing the kraken section of the canteen.

Jin tried again to pick up the schedule again, alas same thing happened.

“No particular reason, wanted to make sure my friend here doesn’t cry himself to sleep because of lack of my attention for him, now that we’re separated.” - Jin replied somewhat sharply, as the tempo and struggle for the schedule increased.

“You see, he’s grown awfully attached to me during our journey here. We were sharing the same wagon after all.” - Jin said as he continued to try and snatch the paper

“I’m distancing myself slowly, so he doesn’t have an emotional breakdown due to separation. He’s a very fragile man on the inside, despite how he can act.” - the fight over the piece of paper transformed into one mess of a scramble.

Jin finally clutched the schedule, but Bei did not let go.

“How about I give you this schedule, and you give me the 120 credits you earned. It’s a fair deal.” - finally Bei proposed

Jin raised his eyebrows, and there was a moment of pause.

“Now now, don’t jo…” - one of the boy started laughing - “Deal.” - and Jin interrupted him

Bei has let go of the schedule.

The boys had their mouths open.

“How can you transfer credits anyway?” -Jin asked. He didn't even know how to check his balance and confirm he received his due.

“Just use your kraken broach. There’s a button underneath it, press it and say the recipient name and the amount.” - Bei answered as he shrugged.

Jin followed the instruction, took of his broach, found the button and said “Transfer Tai Bei 120 credits.”

The broach made a sound.

“120 credits towards Tai Bei. Please confirm.”

“I’m confirming, send it.” - Jin said, not really being sure if that’s how he’s supposed to confirm.

“The transfer is completed. Your current balance is: 0 credits.” - a voice announced.

Jin let go of the button now.

“Even the broach is not a simple device. I had no idea it was such a marvelous tool.” - said Jin - “What else can it do?”

“Who knows? Maybe we’ll find out later.” - replied Bei.

Jin pinned the broach again to his waist.

“So, where have you guys been so far? Where is the Mayuras home base?”

“Breezy Peak, it’s not too far from the here, actually.” - one of the boys replied - “Aside from the the Mayursort lodgings, we’re participating in activities in the training hall. There’s many lecture rooms there, as well as a combat practice space outdoors.”

“I see, how were yesterday’s classes?”

The boys looked at themselves, putting on an awkward smile.

“Hard to put into words…” - one boy started.

“Let’s just say most of all, they were motivating… or tone-setting...” - another added.

Jin raised his eyebrows.

“Looks like I missed something interesting. What exactly happened?”

“Well for one, introduction to combat training was held, and we were one by one pitched against various rank 1 creatures… almost everybody got beaten badly.”

“In beast studies we were studying the creatures that beat us up…”

“Test first and lesson later. Tried and true method.” - one boy jeered.

“In the potioneering we had to recognize potions… and drink the one that we thought was *not harmful*. This ended up with various side effects for some.”

“And in herbology we were handling the plants that were used as ingredients for the potions we were recognizing.”

“Haha, that’s rough.“ - Jin understood the mixed feelings of the hatchlings.

“The theoretical classes were fine though.”

Jin also shared his experience with the Gusu refinement, and his current task. The boys listened attentively, as ultimately this is what they were working towards as trainees - opening apertures and using Gusu.

“It was nice talking with you gentlebirds, if you need money you can hit on Bei now, he must be the richest man among trainees! But I need to continue to work on my assignment now, I’m sure I’ll see you around.” - Jin said as he was leaving, the boys gave him the wave. Bei seemed to be quite satisfied with his gains as well. Jin didn’t know what he needs the money for, but he doubted it’s just to hold onto it. He’ll likely get to know sooner or later.

He needed to restart his count exercise a lot during the whole conversation, and a conversation is not even half as attention demanding as wrestling with a human sized moth, so Jin knew he still needs to improve quite a bit before even attempting refining Not Gusu.

[9am, Arrival Day + 2]

Jin continued to practice for the rest of the day, doing a reconnaissance of the Mountain while at it. The Nan Liang Mountain was huge - it had 21 peaks in total. Each peak had its own role in the house, and they were thoroughly developed to contribute to the overall health of the house.

The day has soon come to an end.

[8pm, Arrival Day + 2]

Jin was currently sitting cross legged on a little hill, a short distance away from the refinement hall. Nobody would pass the place from time to time, but the pathway was far enough that it didn't disturb him the least.

It was time to enter the aperture again.

He closed his eyes.

Then opened them. It was pitch black. Jin knew he was successful. The only thing is, the lean boy wasn't there.

"Reporting In" - Jin said, announcing his entrance.

He wait for a few minutes. Then, out of nowhere, he got smacked.

"Reporting in? I was under impression we'll be refining gusu." The boy sneered, as Jin started to massage his head.

"What took you so long?"

"I was not able to maintain connection with the gusu and enter the aperture at the same time. The energy shaping outside the body is much more difficult. I needed to adjust. I also needed to practice being active while maintaining a stable link. My energies also were being exhausted. I needed to regain it, so I slept."

"I see." The boy said, starting to massage his temple. "Can you do it now?"

"I could enter the aperture with a connection maintained" - Jin said, being quite sure of that. He might need a couple attempts. But maintaining it long enough for it to subdue the Not Gusu, I'm quite sure will be impossible."

The boy furrowed his brows.

"When will you gain the confidence in an attempt?"

Jin shrugged.

"It depends. How quickly can we subdue the Not Gusu."

The boy frawned, thinking.

"I am not sure. I am not strong, so I will need you to bind the gusu. I have no peers when it comes to shaping and meddling with energy structures, so once it's bound, it shouldn't take long."

Jin thought for the moment.

"The biggest struggle will be attempting to bind it while maintaining a link. What happens if the link is broken while we're in gusu's inner space?"

"We retreat. I'm always connected to our aperture. The risk is mostly concerning the Gusu. If we try to retreat while connection is breaking, there's a chance that gusu:s energy structure will collapse onto itself, and the gusu will die. If the link is broken unexpectedly while I work on the Gusu, it's finished ninety nine out of a hundred times."

Jin nodded. In that case we can start attempting sooner rather than later. I don't think it's paramount to successfully refine all the Not Gusu. We can gather experience as we go. This will allow for faster progress."

The boy nodded in agreement.

"Good."

"Anything else to report?"

"No, nothing."

The boy smiled.

"I'll be waiting for you tomorrow then." He said, and kicked Jin out of the space.

The sun has set already. He decided to practice on Not Gusu now, so he makes full use of his energy before it gets restored by sleep.

He went towards the refinement hall, fortunately the room seemed clear.

*SWOOP*

As soon as he entered the door, he heard a sound.

“Anybody here? The clerk said the room should be free.”

Jin still surprised, asked aloud, as he turned on the lights.

He didn’t see anybody on the first glance.

“Hello?” - he repeated the question.

No answer.

“Maybe some equipment hasn’t been secured properly.” - Jin thought as he checked around the corner and… he suddenly got pounced by something, and the *thing* immidiately tried to jump of him towards the exit.

Jin had good reflexes though, so he caught what seemed to be a fairly small creature by a tail.

*hisss*

The creature clearly didn’t like that, but it’s better to secure it than to let it run rampant among the refinement rooms, who knows how much damage it could do? The critter didn’t look strong, though it was covered with scales. It also had some sort of robe around it”

“Easy easy, I’m not going to hurt you…” - Jin was saying as he wasl wrestling the creature into immobility.

Soon before he would succeed, the critter stopped struggling. Jin didn’t let go though, he rather inspected the creature. To his suprise, the critter had a broach - it belonged to krakensort - same as him. And then it struck him. It wouldn’t be surprised if familiars received some kind of broaches as to mark them to whom they belong, but they’d definitely not have the same broach as students. Which means…

He searched the robe, and fair enough, he found three Not Gusu within it.

“A thief huh?”

The critter glared at him.

“Transformation? What sort of creature is it anyway?”

The critter just continued glaring at him.

“Why not end the transformation? Or would you rather I bring you to my master, so he can punish you for stealing supplies he personally has assigned me?” - Jin drilled at the creature. He looked it straight into eyes. He noticed the creature for sure understands him, and so this confirmed his former conjecture.

The student didn’t do anything just continued to glare. It looked like it’s not going to give in. He likely didn’t want to be recognized, nor did he believe any of Jin’s threats were real.

“You think I won’t do it?”

The other student just pointed at his broach.

Jin didn’t know what’s the punishment for stealing. Probably depended on what you were trying to steal, and 3 Not Gusu, which were a worth a hundredth of a wood list rank 1 Gusu… the offence wasn’t really that big, probably just some house credits? But then again, perhaps for catching a thief, Jin would get some in return?

One way or another, it was an interesting opportunity to find out first hand. Before that, it’s best to confirm that the other Not Gusu are safe and sound.

“...”

Jin looked at his box with Not Gusu. Aside from the 3 in the robes of the thief, there were was one squashed Not Gusu inside the box, and only 3 other left untouched. There was no sign of the remainder.

“...where are the others?” - asked Jin, not amused at all.

The mistdwel only glared at him, and it looked it’s finally given up.

It pointed to let it down on the floor.

The critter spat on the floor and drawn two symbols.

“Compensation, Later.”

“So you’ll compensate me if I let you go?”

Jin thought for a moment.

“Alright. I want 14 Not Gusu from you tomorrow, double what your actions have cost me.” - Jin said, and he grabbed the critter by the neck again. “And we’re from the same sort, so don’t think I’ll not find you. I won’t be very nice if I don’t receive my due.”

Jin took the creature to the door and kicked it outside, after which it dropped with a loud thud. It looked back with a contemptful look and scrambled towards the entrance of the hall.

After all, Jin had no reassurance of retrieving his goods, so at least he took a small down payment in the form of kicking the thieves’ ass.

Jin tried to engrave the looks of the creature in his mind. It looked like a dragon whelp, but it’s attributes were extremely weak for any kind of dragon - though, he had to admit, he had little idea of what kinds of dragons are out there in the wild.

Is such a transformation an easy effect to achieve? He didn’t know either. The student for one reason or another didn’t want to expose his identity, and so it stands to reason that one of the useful effects of such transformation is identity hiding.

Jin shrugged. It was impossible for him to know everything from the get go. It is only his third day inside the house. He proceeded to practice with Not Gusu.

[9pm, Arrival Day + 2]

After exhausting his energies, Jin was quite satisfied.

He could maintain the connection without problem in the background for 15 minutes. He felt himself on a cusp of a threshold, where only intense action or lack of energy will be an obstacle.

Before he left the room, he thought of something.

He took the Not Gusu he was practicing, and put it into his robe’s pocket, similarly to the student that lifted his Not Gusu before.

He laughed out loud. It felt very weird, and he did also feel like a huge weirdo having a pet caterpillar with him. But, if it’s just one Not Gusu, he can practice with it whenever, wherever, which made him assured. And where anything to happen to the rest of the stash, he at least had one left.

He returned to his lodgings. He entered, and noticed that Shin was there. They greeted each other.

“Seems like you’ve been busy.” - Jin said smiling. Shin looked quite tired, he was probably about to hit the bed.

“Who dares not to be. There’s not many folk around who can afford some leisure.”

“So, who did you end up with?”

“Ma Gu, if you mean the instructor.”

“Ma Gu... “ - Shin was thinking for a few seconds.

“I remember. He's a refinement expert isn’t he?”

“So they say. He didn’t introduce himself as such.” said Jin with a smile.

“That’s pretty good. There’s a lot of refinement missions available. It’s easy to earn contributions using refinement, and you have better chances at getting good at it if your master is an expert.”

“Who is yours?”

“Zu Bin. You probably don’t know him. Or anybody besides your master really, since you’ve just arrived. Zu Bin is an elemental expert.”

Jin nodded.

“Do you know any transformation students from our sort from the lower ranks?”

“Hmm… I don’t know anybody personally. Transformation is not that popular here, so unless you have an instructor, it’d be hard to get much progress.”

Jin explained the encounter he had with Shin, who started to dig up his memories.

“Based on what you’re saying, the creature should be one of the small dragons, and it likely is the Navy Mistdwel transformation. Also, this particular student must’ve just started practicing the form, or otherwise severely inhibited. I don’t see how it could lose to you, who didn’t even need to use any methods. I think naturally they are rank 2 up to rank 3 critters, so the student was not necessarily somebody I’d be acquaintanced with.”

“I see. Thanks for the info. By the way, what are house rules regarding these kind of transgressions?”

“The rules are pretty simple and I don’t think they vary much from any clan rules. Though the severity of punishments can vary and is up to staff. Things like thievery, attacking other students, be it physically or otherwise is punishable. Small transgressions end up with a loss of credits, for both you and the sort. Usually that’s a repeller enough, as resources are not easy to come by, especially by lower ranks like us.”

“Makes sense. By the way, is it publically known who earns and who wastes the sort credits?”

“No it’s not. Unless it’s publically announced, as it was in your case. The leadership has access to that information and can act on it.”

Jin nodded.

“I’m going to rest now. I am too tired. I guess I just wanted to chit chat for a second.” - said Shin, giving himself a self-mocking smile.

“Rest well.” Jin replied, and moved into the bathroom to refresh himself and finally get some sleep as well.

[Arrival Day + 3, 4am]

When Jin woke up, he immediately freshened himself up. He noticed that Shin was still sleeping like a log. He must’ve been really tired.

Jin went outside his lodgings. It was still dark outside. The weather was cool, but it wasn’t cold.

He sat on a bench and tried his mental exercise. He stopped after around half an hour. He didn’t miss a single beat, and decided to stop as there was little point in continuing.

He’s mind seemed a little sharper than a few days ago, before he started the exercises. It’s not like he got smarter than anything, it just felt that his mind was warmed-up by the recent work. He’s never really done any sort of mental exercises, so it’s not that weird that the effect was quite noticeable.

His main priority now was to make sure he can keep his background activity steady even when performing intense actions.

He continued practicing until later in the morning.

[Arrival Day + 3, 8am]

Perhaps it was time to pay a visit to the trainee classes. - Jin thought and smiled. Their first session today was sparring, and that is something that’d help him in his exercises.

He went in the direction of the Training Hall. He looked around, but couldn’t find a familiar face, there was still some time before the session, so most people either did light warming up, or simply conversed with their peers.

This sparring session was joint between the sorts, it included dragons and mayuras. Most of the people seemed to keep to their own.

“Jin?” - he heard a voice as he was glancing over the faces of trainees.

Jin looked over.

It was Kai Yuan.

Jin smiled and approached Kai Yuan.

“Hey Kai. I’m looking for Bei, have you seen him?”

“Ah.” - Yuan said understandingly.

“Bei tends to skip some of the classes. I’m not sure where he usually spends this time either. It looks like he’s not joining today’s sparring either, he skipped yesterday’s too.”

“I see, thank you. How’s the trainee’s schedule so far?”

“It’s a little on a rougher side but still manageable.” - said Kai

“A lot of it is just getting accustomed to a new environment and filling up the blanks on the knowledge, especially for those who aren’t from a family of experts. They are slowly ramping things up. I’ve been told by some other trainees that the pain begins after you want to start attempting to open up the aperture.” - Yuan said, with complex feelings on his face. Mixed excitement of becoming an actual expert, and a little beat of dread associated with stories he has heard so far from fellow trainees.

“How about you?”

“I’m in a lot of trouble.” - said Jin with a sour smile, after which he explained to Yuan his current predicament, main point being, he needs to refine the Not Gusu as soon as possible, and he needs somebody’s help for his exercises.

“I see… why don’t I help you then? It’s not like I paired up with anybody for this session yet.”

“That’d be great!”

Soon, the sparring started.

Jin took out a Not Gusu from his pocket.

Yuan looked at it with a questioning look.

“This is a Not Gusu. The purpose of this exercise is for me to maintain a link with it, while handling my own against an enemy.” - explained Jin.

“I’ll have only one hand available, and the Gusu is quite fragile, so please do your best to avoid putting any pressure on my left hand.”

Yuan nodded.

“I will ask you to stop occasionally, that likely means I failed to maintain the connection”.

Yuan nodded again.

Jin held his left arm close to his body, Not Gusu lightly clutched in his hand, imprisoned between his waist and the palm. He established a connection with the Not Gusu.

“Begin.” - he announced.

Yuan ran and pounced on Jin. Jin tried to side step but Yuan clearly had a plan ready at go, as he confidently ankle swept his opponent.

Jin lost his balance and fell on the ground. Jin tried his best to maintain the connection, but the moment he hit the ground, he lost it, as he flinched a little bit.

This might be harder than he thought. He needs to suppress his involuntary actions when getting hit.

Yuan was actually well versed in hand to hand combat.

“Stop.” - Jin said for the sake of formality, but it’s not like Yuan was planning to attack him.

Jin established the link again.

“Begin.”

After an hour or so Jin was out of energy. But he also had a good overview of his weaknesses. While increasing the intensity of actions performed does make maintain the background activity harder, as long is he’s in control it’s still manageable. The main problem are involuntary mental responses which seemed to be flushing his previous mind state. The main culprits where last second impact anticipation - where he could still do something but his mental state got riled up because he needed to do something immediately, and the a flinching in the moment of impact itself.

This was a very fortuitous session.

Jin smiled.

“I’m out of the juice. We can continue the rest of the sparring normally.” - said Jin

And they did. Though it wasn’t as one sided as before, Kai still held an advantage over Jin who really lacked experience in hand-to-hand combat.

The sparring session has finished after 2 hours.

“As expected of a dragon.” - sighed Jin - “I owe you one, Yuan.”

“Pleasure was mine.” - Yuan said, as he grinned. Apparently he enjoyed beating Jin up.

“Hit me up any time for this sort of request.”

They said their farewells, Yuan was readying himself for next classes while Jin went back to solving his main assignment now.

As Jin said before, he was dry of energy, but actually he did not need it. He came up with a little exercise to get rid of one part of his involuntary reactions. The impact flinch.

He gathered a lot of stones of various sizes, then found a nice grassy spot where he could lie down and simply started throwing them up, waiting for the to fall. Sometimes they fell on him, sometimes not.

He quickly wasn’t flinching or doing anything in regards to small pebbles. He was slowly increasing the size of the rocks. Soon, he was actually getting bruised but them, but he persisted. The larger stones where also triggering his impact anticipation reactions, so he could work these out too.

The day quickly passed. Jin sighed. He probably wouldn’t need to do this if he proceeded to rank 1 as normal and went through all the sparring sessions the trainees do. The sparring with Kai also made him realize he’s going to be behind on his martial skills compared with other trainees if he doesn’t make arrangements to catch up in that field.

All that’s fine. He needs to stick to his priorities right now. Even if he’s left behind in some fields, if the field is useful it’ll come to bite him. That’s going to be a clear indicator it is worth investing his time. A man cannot prepare for everything in the world, the world is simply too big. Jin prepared to dive in rather than prepare.

It was already past sunset. He had yet to make his report.

[Arrival Day + 3, 7pm]

He closed his eyes. Entered the aperture space, and opened them.

The boy was already there.

“You are here.”

“As I promised.”

“That you did. What’s your progress?”

“The progress is good. We can make a real attempt tomorrow, before sunset.”

“Good.”

“Since we are on the topic of progression, I meant to ask. What does it take to raise our energies from rank 1 to rank 2?”

“We need to refine them. We need to refine me. To be able to do that, we need to temper the current energy body. Once the portion of energy body is tempered, I can work on refining and weaving it anew into the main energy body structure.”.

“How to do that? How to temper the energies?”

The boy grinned.

Waited a second.

And in a flash he launched a kick in Jin’s direction.

The force made Jin lose his ground and fall on his back.

He quickly tried to recover, seeing that the boy approaches again, but he was too slow, he got kicked in the stomach, and was sent tumbling ahead.

“Come on, hit me.”

Jin focused. It was a long day of him beating himself up to work on his reactions. But that part of the exercise is over. He wanted to take it a little easy, his mood has already shifted before coming here. He didn’t shift his mood consciously. It just happened, because of tiredness, exhaustion. It started in his body and energy, finally leaking into his mental state. The core of the matter is, he wasn’t doing his best. He could do better right now. And if you’re not doing your best, what are you doing?

As the next kick was coming, he grabbed the boy’s leg, he twisted his body and gave the boy a kich to the chin, letting go of the leg. The boy staggered back while Jin was standing up.

Jin put his guard up and approached the boy. The boy was strong, fast and nimble, but the same could be said of Jin. His capabilities within aperture were enhanced compared to the outside.

Both of them started exchanging moves, Jin wouldn’t let himself be surprised anymore. He kept his balance. So did the boy. 5 minutes into the spar, they were quickly becoming very sluggish, as if air started becoming denser and denser to the point where it almost seemed as if they fought underwater.

“That’s enough.” said the boy.

“We’re out of essence. There was little left already when you came here in the first place, we used up the rest of it on this little spar.”

“Usually it’s not very wise to run dry on energy like this. Regenerating will take quite a bit more time after this.” - the boy shrugged.

The boy sluggishly raised his hand.

He felt some sort of pulling power trying to work on him.

“It’s fine, relax.”

Jin relaxed and let the pulling force do its thing.

He noticed an orange fluid substance started emerging from him.

The same thing was happening to boy’s body.

After this, it settled floating above his hand.

“This is tempered energy. It’s an effect of sharpening the Guardian - me, against the Vanguard - you. You don’t need to know the nuance of how it’s created, nor how to refine it. These responsibilities are on my side.”

Jin nodded.

“The crux for you is, you must try destroying me to the best of your capabilities, while I try doing the same to you. When I damage you, the essence is wasted. When you damage me, the essence is tempered. So you cannot just stand there and take it. Nor can I stand and take it. It won’t work like that.”

Jin pondered for a moment.

“So the best result is I overwhelm you, despite you doing your best?”

“Yes. that will result in maximum energy tempered.”

“I see. Why won’t we spar from now on then? As I understand, our progress speed is thwarted by our aptitude, we shouldn’t be wasting time.”

The boy shook his head.

“This is too slow. When you came here, you probably thought you were dry of energy. However, there was a sliver left. That’s why we could use it for tempering. It took around 5 minutes. This wasn’t even a tenth of a percent of our maximum capacity. Even if we spared 20h a day like this, we could temper maybe 15% of the energy cap.”

“I see. How can we increase the speed then?”

“By using more lethal moves.” - the boy smiled.

Jin paused for a second.

“Like weapons?”

“Gusu. If you create a weapon here with a help of a Gusu, that counts as well, but there are variety of different Gusu effects which can be used instead.”

“I see.”

“Naturally, not every Gusu is supportive of this type of tempering. It’s best we get our hands on a good Gusu sooner rather than later. Rank 1 Gusu is adequate for our rank 1 energy body.”

Jin nodded again.

“Refining Gusu comes first. There’s no use in possessing one if you can’t really make it yours after all.” - noted the boy.

This made sense.

“That’s all. I’ll be taking my leave now.” - announced Jin.

This time it was the boy who nodded. He also kicked the Jin, not letting him out by himself.

Jin opened his eyes and only shook his head.

“So petty” - he whispered.

[Arrival Day + 3, 8pm]

Jin returned to his lodgings at the Stormy Peak. To his surprise, there were actually quite a few people in the common room, discussing fervently.

“The year just started, I don’t think we need to go ham from the get go. Besides, what’s the point of being the first? It doesn’t make much sense unless we can pick it up without much effort, and nobody really let’s go of that with little effort.”

“The idea comes from curators, we shouldn’t just ignore it. They say we have some heavyweights this year within, and it’ll be easy pickings so long as the rest of us at least doesn’t put up some effort. And apparently this year’s rewards are pretty special, and curator’s are eyeing them as well.”

“Did they say if they have a plan or anything?”

“No plans, no nothing. Just get the credits with whatever opportunities you get to. If you see an opportunity that you can’t make use of, either find help or notify others who can of it.”

“This will end up as every year then.”

“Maybe, but the curators may be taking the wrong kind of interest in you if you get any negative credit. I don’t want this kind of attention.”

“Nobody does…”

It seemed to Jin like the others are discussing about sort business. Jin decided to join the discussion, as he entered the room and greeted his peers.

“Hey fellows. I’m Jin, the newbie. What are you scheming this beautiful evening?”

“Haha. Hey newbie. Sit down.” - said one boy. “I’m Eru.” - the boy added. - “And this is Fin, Don, Su and Lan.” - the boys waved their hand as their names were called.

“We’re not scheming, we’re just being schemed against, as usual. Apparently this year we ought to be a little more… capable in terms of earning the house credits. The curators are going to keep a closer eye on the numbers, so it’s going to be hard to take it too easy.”

“Huh? Anybody takes it easy around here?” - Jin asked, a little surprised. He didn’t get a feeling like that.

“Yes. Lots of people do the minimum that is expected of them, and the rest of the time they do whatever strikes their fancy. Like Lan’s illusion thingamagics.” Lan sneered in response.

“While I’m the last person to look down on it, it doesn’t really earn much respect within the house. The house is all about power, in one form or another, and we haven’t been the best in… displaying our skills under that kind of light.“ - Eru continued.

“And this year suddenly, the leadership decided that the pressure is on. And we should fight for each credit with our teeth.” - Added Su.

“Is it that hard to earn the credits so everybody’s happy?” - asked Jin

“Well, your perception might be a little skewed, since you already earned quite a sum. But generally the credits are either not easy or quick to earn.”

“Is there a certain number that they want us to hit?” - Asked Jin

“Yes, they want us to get 50 credits each month. Higher ranks apparently have even more trouble.”

“What happens to people that slack off?” - Jin continued asking

Eru shrugged.

“We don’t know, and I don’t think curators know either. I don’t think they can pull off any sort of punishment based plans, since that could just backfire terribly.”

“This is just recent, they probably have not decided whether to use a stick, a carrot or both.” Eru continued.

“Anyway, don’t dwell on it, newbie, you’re good for quite some time. Tell us, rather, who did you end up with as your master?”

“Ma Gu.” - Jin answered

“Ma Gu, the refinement expert? That’s interesting. All 5 of us are under Rei Mun.

“Rei Mun?” asked Jin.

“He’s sort of a jack of all trades when it comes to mind path. Illusions, enhancements, infromation methods he is well versed with.”

“Is that so?” Jin was curious “Do you mind showing me anything?”

“Haha. Sure.” - Eru conjured a small critter onto his palm. It looked like a big ladybug with fat shiny body, long antennae and small beady eyes.

“This is Message Gusu.” - Jin was started. He heard Eru’s voice in his head, though he has seen him not opening his mouth at all.

“As you can see, it allows to send a message to somebody you know within range, without any delay.” - This time Eru spoke normally.

“Su pooped his pants the first time I tested it on him.” - Another telepathic message came in.

Jin laughed at that, and he glanced at Su.

“The hell are you telling him Eru?!” - Su was shaking his head with a palm on his face

Fin and Lan laughed, as they probably imagined what the information could contain.

“Anyway, that’s the most basic Gusu of the mind path. It’s utility is quite good, the house grounds are big and Message Gusu is one of the most utilized Gusu when it comes to short to medium distance communication. How about you, care to show us anything?”

Jin put on a sour smile and explained how he’s only practicing to even refine the Not Gusu. The boys were listening attentively when he was talking about his exercises.

“Ah no worries, you just joined the house after all. It’s strange enough that you’re rank 1 already, if you already had and could use Gusu, that’d be a little too strange.” - Eru smiled. - “Anyway, the exercises you mention sound interesting, in that they try to directly solve your inadequacies. Quick thinking on your part.” - Eru complimented.

Jin only nodded.

“Anyway, don’t be a stranger. If you need a little catch up on some subjects, you can hit me or any of these guys up. We’re all krakens after all. Good luck in your assignment newbie.” - Eru smiled as he dismissed Jin.

Jin waved his hand and went back to his room.

Shin was already sleeping and Jin joined him 3 minutes later.

[Arrival Day + 4, 6.30am]

He slept longer than usual. The sun was rising, it was around 6.30 am.

Shin must’ve already left, as Jin was alone in the room.

He quickly finished his morning routine and decided to visit Bei. He went towards the hatchling’s lodgings. To his surprise, Bei wasn’t even inside the building, he was just sitting on a bench outside, leafing through “Nan Liang Mountain’s Area Local Fauna and Flora”.

Jin approached him and waited with a grin on his face.

Bei closed his book and looked up, not at all happy.

“Bei my friend, how come you are still in trainee’s quarters? I’m starting to believe I’ll become immortal before you open your aperture. Turns out talent is not worth more than a cart of dung.”

“Looks like you think if a dog jumps on a haystack he is taller than a man.”

“If you’ll keep comparing your friends with animals, you’ll end up a lonely old grumpy man Bei. My heart would break if I live to see it.”

“Hmph. I might promote you to a monkey if what you came to me with is not just a waste of time.”

“Bei, Bei, Bei. If you’re all business like this, nobody will want to do business with you.” - Jeered Jin. Perhaps he was enjoying himself too much, as the look of annoyance on Bei was being more and more pronounced.

“Truth is, your best friend is in a little bit of trouble. He has a master now. The master doesn’t like students with low aptitude, but anyway willing to take risks. Your friend is pressured to deliver results, and was curious whether a talented genius like you could present any solution to such a predicament.”

Bei frowned.

“The things your master asks you of should not be that difficult for you. You should probably start off by Gusu Refinement, correct?”

“That is indeed so. I was, however, reminded by him that my best will not be good enough. There aren’t many leads I have to make up for my inadequacies. One is to impress the master in some manner, but it is easier said than done, I can only do my best in that regard.” - Jin sighed - “The first task was to refine Not Gusu. My hope of quickly finishing the task in a superb manner were quickly disillusioned by the difficulty of the process. This is the third day since receiving the task, and I haven’t yet even attempted refinement once. I hope to make an attempt today, perhaps I could refine the first one tomorrow. There’s 10 of them though, and I don’t know how many will I be able to refine within a single day. My essence reserves are rather low after all.“

Bei nodded.

“My second lead, believe it or not, is my chain of connections. And you are on the very top of it my friend. Perhaps the great hidden talent of the Tai clan’s branch clan can enlighten this fool as to opportunities which can be exploited.”

Bei nodded again, a smile appearing on his face.

“The opportunities are there my dearest friend, however, I don’t want to see you become an immortal before I reach rank 1, just because you decide to steal them from me.”

“I’ll need at least until the end of month to open my aperture, only then we can start executing some plans. Your master probably only wants to scare you a little bit, your initial advantage is not that small. If you really think it’s not enough, and he is not happy… well, put the court in his ball. So long as you’re willing to do what needs to be done, it is up to him to use you best, and it is his problem to solve.”

Bei slapped Jin’s back.

“Godspeed my friend. Work hard for your master, if you’re useless for my plans don’t expect me to share any of them.”

Jin nodded and pondered for a while. It actually sounded like a smart tactic to use.

“Are you skipping sparring sessions? Afraid to get your ass whooped by brutes like myself?”

“I’m not wasting my time on that. Top priority is to open the aperture, and anything that doesn’t directly contribute towards that goal for now is lower priority.”

“Fair enough. Maybe I’ll see you in some other class then.” Jin waved goodbye, and went towards the training hall, where soon a sparring session was about to start.

[Arrival Day + 4, 8.00am]

Yuan was already there, and also studying one of the books.

When Jin was approaching him, Yuan looked up.

He stood up and smiled.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?”

Jin's link to gusu was stable, his focus was strong and he never flinched or lost the link on impact. He still was mostly getting beaten up, he did notice though, that in terms of pure strength he could overpower Yuan. Experts had innate bonus to vitality and strength, so that was not surprising. Probably if they were of the same rank, there would be little difference in that aspect. Jin used his advantage best he could, but he also was partially disabled due the gusu he held in his left hand. He did need to make sure he can maintain the connection when he was handing out the beatings, not only when receiving it.

In an hour of time, he lost connection only twice, it was because of particularly nasty blows to the stomach.

They finished their session. Jin needed to recharge his essence, as maintaining the connection for an hour was his maximum right now. He simply returned to his quarters, took a bath and went to sleep.

Surprisingly he had no problems falling asleep, even though he did wake up recently. When he woke up, it was 1 pm, and his essence was fully regained.

[Arrival Day + 4, 1.00pm]

He didn't waste time, poured a couple buckets of cold water over himself as he usually did, and left for the refinement hall.

Unluckily for him, the practice room 7 was occupied. He asked the clerk if there were any other free rooms that didn't need any sort of payment, unfortunately that was not the case. Jin, not wanting to waste the time decided to go back to his lodgings and attempt to refine the gusu there. Shin was out, and the boy didn't spend much time in the dorm, so it seemed like a good place.

Finally, he was sitting in front of a table, with Not Gusu sitting gently on top on his left palm. The caterpillar seemed to be reconciled with its situation as Jin's pet. After being given food by Jin multiple times, it didn't struggle as much as it used to.

Jin established a link, closed his eyes and entered the aperture space. He opened his eyes there, but no vision greeted him, only pitch black space.

He waited half a minute, while keeping the link on. Suddenly, the lean boy materialised in front of him.

"It's setup." Said Jin simply.

"The boy closed his eyes and confirmed with a nod."

A second after that, their environment changed. The void was being replaced by forest, the floor was laid out of tree leaves. The space was not big though. One could notice the boundaries of the forest some distance from them.

Jin was a little surprised, as he remembered the doors that were used within the Ma Gu's aperture, but soon he assumed that each aperture had its own qualities and methods. He actually found teleporting into the connected aperture way more convenient.

They waited a minute, and suddenly a huge centipede has fallen down together with a massive branch with copious amount of leaves.

Jin readied himself. The centipede didn't seem as angry as the moth from Ma Gu's Not Gusu.

It was curiously moving towards Jin. The centipede was bigger than him. It didn’t look easy to pin down. But it wasn’t flying like the moth did, so this made it easier.

Jin smiled.

Approached the centipede, and hugged it’s front.

The centipede froze in his arms, seemingly curious about what he was doing.

“I’ll try to restrain it on the spot, but it is bound to wiggle quite a lot. Never the less, display your full prowess.”

The boy didn’t sneer, he approached the centipede and pushed his hands into its back. The centipede immediately became furious and tried to break out of Jin’s clutch. Jin focused on maintaining his balance and pressuring the front of the centipede into the ground, so it was firmly locked. The middle and back parts of it wiggled intensely, but the part that was pinned by Jin was quite stable.

Jin’s control over the connection the Gusu didn’t slip, and it didn’t seem to be in any sort of danger by the struggle of the centipede.

After around 10 minutes of struggle, Kasm has finished his task. At that point, the Not Gusu has stopped struggling completely.

Finally after this affair was over, the boy started conjuring a black granite obelisk in the center of the space. Jin and the centipede were observing closely. It looked as some sort of beacon. Jin assumed its purpose was similar to a door frame within Ma Gu’s aperture.

After another 10 minutes, the job was done. It was quite impressive. The boy waved at the centipede, inviting it to approach the obelisk. The centipede touched it, and the carved characters lit up in a bright pale blue color.

“We are done.” - said the boy. - “You may remove the temporary link”.

Jin did so immediately.

He was very satisfied. He was half expecting to fail the first attempt, but he knew he had a chance to succeed due to all the preparations he did beforehand.

“Can we move the real Not Gusu to the aperture now?” - asked Jin. He was aware that Gusu experts didn’t hide their Gusu inside the pockets.

“Yes. I’ll bring it in now.” - replied the boy.

The Not Gusu suddenly appeared near Jin’s hand. He caught it quickly, and placed on his arm.

The Not Gusu was surprised and started looking around. Jin felt a reliable and stable connection to it. He tried making it move in a particular way. It followed.

He tried making it roll. An attempt was made, but caterpillars cannot really roll. The link between them felt strong and firm. It almost felt as if another hand was attached to Jin’s body, and he could control the Not Gusu no differently than that. It still felt really awkward, similar to controlling the hand when it was exposed to freezing temperature too long, but he felt the longer he tried different tricks the more he caught on how to control it.

Jin smiled.

“Success. How much essence did we spend on this?”

“Around 60%” said the boy, shrugging.

“Was the refinement difficult for you?”

“It wasn’t very difficult. The system of Not Gusu is simpler than any rank 1’s Gusu. You did fine restricting it, however the Gusu was not very aggressive to begin with.”

“The remaining Not Gusu should not be a problem provided we start the refinement when the essence is full. Refinement of rank 1 Gusu will be much more difficult. It’ll cost many times more than our full energy reserves, and so we’ll need to split our work. Having to split the work will in itself introduce more inefficiency, so it’ll further increase how much essence we need to spend on refinement.”

The boy explained.

Jin nodded, he had no problem with that.

“What type of Gusu should we obtain first?”

“Either one that will make it easier to bind the next Gusu, or one that’ll help us refine our energy. If you manage to track both, then naturally we should get the binding first to help us subdue the second Gusu.”

Jin nodded. This made sense.

“Let’s go over the other Gusu as soon as possible.” - Jin said.

“How do I move between this space and the void?”

“You can just touch the obelisk. Once you do, you’ll know this space’s location and will be able to move in and out of there the same way you’re entering the main aperture space.”

“How do I move the Gusu between the aperture space and the external world?”

“Same way you enter and exit the void, you have a link to the Gusu, so instead of yourself make the Gusu to the thing, and it’ll be transferred.”

Jin nodded.

“Let’s get some rest and continue right after.” - said the boy, after which he promptly kicked Jin out.

Jin opened his eyes and checked the time. It took roughly half an hour.

The Not Gusu was gone. He tried to make it come back.

It did materialize on his left palm.

He petted the caterpillar with some affection and sent it back to the aperture.

He poured some cold water on top of his head, dried himself off and went to bed.

[Arrival Day + 4, 4.00pm]

There were a total of 2 more Not Gusu to practice his refinement on. Jin didn’t really think the transformation student will keep his word, so he should do his best to succeed with the ones he has - he really doesn’t want to show any sort of weakness to Ma Gu.

After his energies were recouped, he went back to his practice room, hoping he'll be able to get the rest of his Not Gusu there.

Thankfully, this time the place was free. He took the token from the clerk and directed himself towards the familiar corridor.

Jin entered the room, and checked whether the Not Gusu are still in the box - at this point he wouldn't be surprised if none were left. Fortunately, the two he left last time were still there, unmoving but alive. The thief, as expected, hasn't refilled the supply.

Jin sighed. It'd be nice to be pleasantly surprised from time to time.

He proceeded to refine the Not Gusu. They were angrier than the original, perhaps because he didn’t really spend any time contrary to the first one. It took some time, he had to take a nap in between to recover some of his essence too, but all 3 Not Gusu were refined.

[Arrival Day + 4, 8.00pm]

Now he had to decide whether to go back to Ma Gu and hand him the three refined Gusu, or procure more Not Gusu, as not to seem incapable.

It’s probably best to go to Ma Gu and explain. Perhaps he’d be happy with just 3 succesfully refined Not Gusu, He can still report the assignment today in that case. Otherwise, procuring and refining Not Gusu is going to take probably two more days.

As Jin was thinking, the door to the practice room had opened.

Jin got startled a bit, and craned his neck to see who opened it.

It wasn’t a human. It was a large lizard, not unlike people use ones to pull merchandise carts. Jin never really was close to any of these, and now that he was a sole target of attention from it, it was quite intimidating looking.

The lizard had a krakensort broach, so Jin quickly has figured that this must be the same person he caught red handed before.

Jin raised his brows.

“Are you here to settle the debt or steal more? Because if the second is true, I must let you know that there’s none left.” - Jin said, looking at the beast and not lowering his eyebrows.

The lizard hissed, and has started taking out Not Gusu out of it’s strapped bag. It took out 7 Not Gusu, and glared at Jin again.

“And where’s my investment return?! Another 7 you goddamn lizard! Or at least show your ugly face!”

The lizard just twirled it’s lizard tongue and made a head motion for Jin to pick the Gusu. Jin remembered though that he kicked the little whelp last time when he was saying goodbye, so he was pretty wary of the student. After all, this lizard looked like it weighted at least 6 times what Jin did, if the student had this form previously there’s no way he’d dare to do the same thing.

“Consider yourself lucky, alright you’ve given back what you owed, now go back, I’m busy.” - said Jin, and he turned around from the lizard letting it know he is no longer interested in it.

The lizard didn’t leave though, Jin knew, he’d hear the doorsteps.

Jin turned around again.

The lizard was two steps closer now, standing perfectly still. Jin got a little anxious. He stood up from the chair.

“Don’t get any funny ideas! Get out! Get out!” - Jin was pretty much screaming now.

The lizard pounced forward, whipped it’s tail, sending Jin, his chair and the table into the air, after which it ran through the door away.

This was quite a blow. Thankfully Jin didn’t feel like he got any of his ribs broken. He checked, and fortunately there was just one big sore area, which was going to bruise up soon enough.

“Just my luck.” - Jin thought, regretting his stupid idea of kicking the whelp on its way out last time.

He slowly stood up, fixed the misplaced furniture, took a look at the Not Gusu and laughed. The guy sure knew how to be generous returning a whopping, shame he wasn’t generous when it came to returning the loot. Anyway, it’s better than expected. He has his original number now. And learned that it’s probably not a good idea to take advantage of seniors, even if they are taking advantage of you. The student was a senior for sure, Jin just wasn’t entirely sure whether it was a rank 1 or rank 2 senior. He’d probably find out if he plays detective for a bit, but on the other hand he’d not really like to waste his time like that.

He sighed, as he moved all the Not Gusu into the box. It’s best he does the task as soon as possible. If he hurries up, it’s possible that he can still go back to Ma Gu with all 10 Not Gusu refined tomorrow.

[Arrival Day + 5, 8.00pm]

And so he did. After 24 hours Jin felt pretty out of it - he would fall asleep whenever his essence was low enough to recover it, however with all this sleeping he anyway felt quite out of it, even without mentioning he started to feel like some kind of hermit. Maybe he does belong to krakensort after all.

Sleeping for sure is not a perfect way to keep recovering the essence. He noted to himself to ask and research better methods.

Aside from a small break for a meal, Jin focused completely on his task, and the results were at hand. All 10 worms were currently inside his aperture. They were creeping and crawling in the void seemingly randomly. Jin couldn’t send the materials into the void, so he needed to take the Not Gusu out to make sure they are fed and don’t die on him.

It was time to visit Ma Gu.

[Arrival Day + 5, 8.30pm]

It was around 8.30pm when Jin knocked on Ma Gu’s door.

As expected, nobody was home.

He used the same strategy that succeeded previously. He sat down and waited for his Master, he summoned three of his Not Gusu and attempted to control them simultaneously. It was difficult. Controlling just one worm at a time was fairly simple, especially when he himself was focused on just doing that and his body was simply resting. But the difficulty scaled fast. It was not dissimilar to maintaining a link in the background, the only thing is, if he treated controlling the Gusu as a background activity, it was actually very limited in what it could do and was very unresponsive. It was like trying to write two different things at the same time with both hands.

What was much easier, he found out, was having the movement preplanned, and then executing the preplanned movement simultaneously, sort of like a dance sequence. Even if it was clumsy at the beginning, this way with practice he would be able to perform intense actions without using up his focus and active attention.

After a while, he sent the Gusu back, simply closed his eyes and waited.

He didn’t want to waste too much essence right now, and even controlling Not Gusu was using up some essence. Not much, but it was adding up quickly if he extended the exercise over minutes or longer.

[Arrival Day + 5, 11.00pm]

He waited nearly 3 hours, at 11 pm Ma Gu has finally approached him. It was already dark.

Jin stood up and bowed.

“I have finished the first assignment, Master.”

Ma Gu didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then said.

“Practice room 7. I’ll meet you there.” - just before he entered his house.

Jin bowed, even though the man could not see him anymore, and left for the refinement room. He asked the clerk for the token and waited there for Ma Gu.

It was another hour before Ma Gu has joined him.

“Show me the Not Gusu”

Jin summoned all ten and place them one next to another.

Ma Gu inspected them slowly.

“All ten refined.” - he started.

“But most of these are not the ones I gave you.” - continued.

“There was an incident involving a senior.” - Jin explained quickly.

“That’s fine. They were not special in any way, it doesn’t matter.”

After a short pause he started again.

“Good. Perhaps there’s a sliver of hope for you. You can put the Gusu back.”

Jin recalled all the Not Gusu.

Ma Gu sunk into his thoughts for a couple minutes, probably formulating the next steps for Jin.

Jin simply sat waiting.

“What do you know about gusu refinement?” - Ma Gu asked after a while.

“I only know of the refinement for the assignment. That it ca…”

“So nothing.” - Ma Gu interjected disdainfully.

“You’ll be upgrade-refining your first rank 1 Gusu. Your knowledge is severely lacking - to say the least.”

He took a slip of paper and made some notes on it.

“Before we continue, you’ll go over these titles.” Ma gu said. “It’s rudimentary common knowledge on refinement.” - he said, as he moved the list of titles

“I’ll see you at the same time tomorrow. And I sincerely hope there won’t be delays for any reason whatsoever. And be assured, I will check your knowledge before we start.”

Ma Gu left immediately after that.

Jin had a bad feeling about this.

He looked at the note.

“Introduction to Refinement”

“Refinement Material Guide Rank 1”

Just two titles. That’s manageable.

[Arrival Day + 6, 12.00am]

Jin went straight to the library.

The clerk brought him 2 fat volumes.

"I hope there's going to be a lot of pictures." - thought Jin, sighing.

The library had some reading desks, so he occupied one and started going over the book.

He started from "Introduction to Refinement", as the second book seemed to contain mostly supplementary knowledge.

He started reading the book and processing the information.

The first part of the book was dedicated to mortal rank refinement. It wasn’t concerning Gusu, but rather creating medicines, ointments, fertilizers, various potions and all manner of alchemical produce.

All of these mortal rank refining skills were useful in one form or another in expert rank refining.

Refining Gusu generally was used as a shortcut to "upgrade refining", that is, transforming a Gusu of lower rank into higher.

Gusu Refinement as in linking the Gusu with an expert was not in the scope of this book, as it is quite different in nature.

"No wonder" - thought Jin.

It was the Guardian who really did the core work on refining the Gusu so a link could be established. All he, the expert, needed to do was bind it so Guardian can focus on his job.

What usually was referred to as Gusu refinement was in the hands of the expert.

There were multiple steps in refining the Gusu.

The first one was about gathering the right materials. The materials were split into ranks according to their potency in the same manner as Gusu and the experts. The materials could be of any form. It could be a particular kind of soil, a particular kind of fluid or rock. It could be some kind of gas or fire as well. It could be a plant or a part of it, a mana beast or a part of it, really anything could be considered a material for refinement so long as there exist methods to process it and recipes that call for it.

The next step was processing the materials. That is, making the materials take a suitable form for the next step.

This was a little like cooking. Processed materials weren't really found in nature, and their perishability also varied, some materials needed to be processed just before the actual refinement process, otherwise they’d lose their potency and become unusable. The main point is that main materials are ingestible to an expert. It could be a substance that is supposed to be eaten, drunk or inhaled, but it also could be a balm that needs to be spread over a particular kind of a body, or a solid object that just needs to be in contact with the expert. Sometimes the processed material would need to be injected directly into a bloodstream and some recipes would call for even more intrusive methods.

The crux of the matter was, the essence of the materials must become available to the expert in his inner world in a specific form, and that’s what the third step is, the bonding.

Second to last, the bonded materials need to be tempered within the aperture. This step may vary from recipe to recipe. Sometimes it requires using specific Gusu. Sometimes the energies form a mind of their own and start running wild within the aperture, at which point they need to be subdued by the expert. Sometimes Guardian needs to form some structures so the energies self temper.

Finally, once the energy is tempered, it needs to come into contact with a target for those energies to work on. Usually it’s Gusu that is supposed to be refined. If refined Gusu is rank one, then most of the time it is refined from Not Gusu.

After explaining the basics, the book goes into most common material processing methods, as well as to which materials these methods can be applied. The processing methods varied, and they also were ranked, from mortal methods such as simply heating, brewing, using mortar, submerging things in alcohol, tempering, molding, up to expert methods, where Gusu are used to process the materials in a multitude of ways.

Normally Jin would skim over a lot of the expert methods given he has no way to use them, but the disdainful voice of his mentor announcing his lack of knowledge and spirit prevented him from doing so.

After the material processing, the book went on to going over material bonding in some more detail and popular examples of how particular processed materials are supposed to be bonded in the body, what to pay attention to and what are common mistakes during this step, these being bonding wrong amount of materials, be it too little or too much, letting the processed materials go stale and then using them anyway hoping it didn’t go stale enough or not letting them mature enough.

The crux here was, “stick to the recipe”, and don’t change it, unless you know what you’re doing.

Refinement was a skill, and it is something that a man could improve throughout his whole life, and only see more things to learn about it, rather than see the summit.

Skills or masteries are also ranked similarly to more natural metrics, such as vitality or strength for example. There is no objective way to measure somebody’s attainment in a particular skill, the intuitiveness of the subject is subtly weaved in the person’s mental form and it is not weaved in the same manner by any two people.

For this reason, the ranks are somewhat artificially assigned either officially by completing examinations, by comparison with ranked individuals in competitions, or simply refinement experts could tell their rank by knowing which recipes they could complete, which they could improvise on or what kind of recipes could come up with and how much trial and error they’d need to make it work.

Even a non-cultivator could be a highly ranked and valued refinement expert. They would be terribly limited by their methods, though, and they would not be able to do Gusu refinement with their own hands.

Cultivators who had decent skill in refinement usually had no financial problems. Refinement requests were among the most popular ones, given that a lot of cultivators have either no aptitude, patience or time to develop the skill, or perhaps the magnitude of their needs is simply too big for one person to accomplish the task, hence hired help is needed.

Needless to say, even a low ranked cultivator who was a high ranked refiner was sought after and could strike it big given he was connected with the right people.

Finally, tempering.

The book went over various methods to temper the energies, and put out examples of what methods were most efficient depending on the kind of energies were to be tempered. For example, if energies were largely attributed to fire, water and ice methods to temper them were the best. Fire would be ineffective.

If an expert does not have an appropriate Gusu that could help him tempering the energies, he could try tempering them by hand.

From the descriptions Jin knew what “tempering” really was, having fresh memories of his Guardian showing him how to temper his own energy.

Jin smiled.

He read through the rest of the book. It was a good book.

It took him 12 hours to properly go through it and ingest the contents.

[Arrival Day + 6, 12.00pm]

It was noon at this point. He was famished, so he took a break by going over to the canteen and for lunch.

Jin ordered his food and received a plate. When he was looking where to sit he noticed a familiar face. It was Chi, she was eating together with his brother and one other person he wasn't familiar with.

Jin grinned as he took his plate to the table and asked Yuan whether he could join, to which he gladly agreed.

Chi glared at him, while the other person clearly noticed the token on Jin's waist and casted a curious glance at him.

Jin noticed this and introduced himself.

"I am Tai Zhen Jin."

Yuan took over as he realized he should be handling the introductions, as he knew both parties, to make things go smoothly.

"Jin, this Tai Ma Dan, he's one of the clansmen who travelled together with us. He is also the first son of the junior clan leader. His grandfather is the head of the Tai clan." - that explained why the face felt familiar to Jin - "Dan, this is Tai Zhen Jin, we shared the same wagon on the way here. He's from one of the clan's branch settlements, deeper into the mountain."

"Nice to meet you Dan." - Jin greeted, reaching for a handshake. Dan was wearing the Serpentsort broach for trainees and wore dark green robes. He had a pretty long dark brown hair, wrapped in a thin ponytail. His build was not unlike that of Yuan, perhaps a bit thinner, though despite this, he gave off a more composed and assured feeling compared to Yuan.

"The pleasure is mine. It’s great to hear that one of ours jumped straight to first rank. Shame we didn't get to know each other earlier, even though we are of the same clan."

Jin nodded, Chi sneered, and Dan looked at her immediately with furrowed brows and a scornful look.

"Chi. He is a rank one expert, and we're within the house. You are supposed to show respect to your seniors. What do you plan to accomplish by sneering at him?"

"He's no senior of mine, he might be even younger than me. He's just a peasant from a branch, he has no talent, and got lucky during our ride, that's why he's a rank higher. In time he'll be no match either to me, or both of you." - she grumbled

Dan's scornful expression deepened.

"Haha, you are too harsh Chi, too harsh. You've seen through me, I’ve just been lucky." Jin smiled, and an involuntary smirk showed on her face.

Dan's expression stiffened.

"Really Chi? What if Jin got off on a wrong foot today, and wouldn’t take your remarks gracefully, but rather just teach you a lesson right here and now? What can you do?"

"He wouldn't dare." Chi muttered, frowning.

"I'm not asking whether he dares or not.” - Dan’s face still stiff, his voice cold - “I'm asking you what can you do?" - Dan pressed on the issue.

She was silent.

"What if he decides to bully you? Who can stand in his way? Do you know anybody who can stand up to a rank 1 expert? The house doesn’t do surveillance, and anyway small difficulties for trainees are actually a good thing in their eyes. Only from excessiveness or theft would they even consider someone for the punishment."

Pause.

“I’m waiting for an answer, little lady of Kai.”

Silence.

"You think your brother will protect you? You think martial arts alone can stand up to Gusu experts, with greater strength, vitality and who knows what kind or how many methods at their disposal?"

Silence. Chi's eyes slowly began to tear up.

"Speak up. I want to hear your answer. These were not rhetorical questions, because you are cooking yourself this sort of situation up."

Silence. Chi clearly didn't expect to suddenly be pressured like that.

“You were so quick to sneer at your senior, did the cat get your tongue when you’re speaking with me?”

Silence. Chi was red.

“We’re waiting.” - Dan said, still in a cold tone

The tears finally fell and she dashed out of the canteen.

Yuan excused himself as he wanted to go after his sister.

"Wait" - Dan halted him - "Yuan. You told me you travelled in the same wagon. You're saying you let her belittle your senior clansman throughout the whole journey?"

The scorn in Dan's eyes didn't lessen, it transferred to Yuan instead.

Yuan hung his head down.

"I failed" - confirmed yuan.

"You are too kind to her. We are not in the clan now. You should know if you don't educate her, somebody will. And just because senior Jin is amiable and friendly now, it doesn't mean tomorrow will be the same. The head start he has, even if his aptitudes were subpar - when can you really catch up?"

Yuan nodded.

"Go, console your sister, but make sure she knows this and understands the situation." - he sighed - "She's your responsibility, I beg you not to shift it to me." - Dan said, as he started massaging his temple.

Yuan was saddened a little. He knew he failed.

"My apologies. I'll do my best." Yuan promised before he left Dan and Jin alone.

Jin was still eating, enjoying both the food and the show.

Dan looked at him and smiled.

“What?” asked Jin, raising his eyebrows.

“Nothing, I just noticed you must’ve been really hungry, wolfing on food like that.”

“Ah.” Jin smiled.

“You have also seen through me. I barely ate anything yesterday, and today was very busy so far.” Simply replied JIn.

“Truth be told, I’m actually relieved she acted like that towards a clansman.” - Dan sighed.

“Compared to somebody from other clan? I can see that.” - Jin replied plainly, and continued to eat.

“You see, one of my kraken seniors is teaching me the same lesson.” - Jin put on a sour smile. - “And if it wasn’t my fellow I might’ve ended up worse than just a few bruises.”

Dan nodded.

“I’m not sure if you know, but you're the highest ranked Tai clansman in the house right now.”

Jin raised his brows.

“How come?”

Dan laughed.

“Truth is, this is the first time we have clan members sent in here. The Nan Liang House is quite far away from our clan, we never sent our clansmen here because we didn’t see much reason to. This changed recently, a few years ago Nan Liang Mountain joined the Southern Alliance. Since then, the word has spread among higher ups that the disciples sent to the Nan Liang Mountain were especially well developed, more so than the other nearby Houses. That’s why starting this year we’re going to be inviting the Nan Liang Mountain House to recruit members of our clan.”

“I see, it makes a lot of sense.”

”About the development speed, even though I haven’t been here long, I’m not surprised.”

Dan raised his eyebrows.

“How so?”

“It’s not hard to notice…. Maybe it is not so visible among the trainees, but if you pay attention to your seniors, you should.”

Jin finished eating.

“I need to finish the rest of my assignment, I have until midnight today. Good luck on advancing to Snake. I’m sure we’ll see each other again, take care until then.” - Jin smiled and waved goodbye as he started leaving the table.

“I’m sure. Good luck with the assignment.” - said Dan, Jin waved in thanks as he was already walking towards the exit and navigating towards the library.

[Arrival Day + 6, 1.00pm]

He put the second book in front of himself.

The book was of a different nature from the first. It was full of refinement materials, information about their attributes, where one can find them and how to process them.

He wasn't particularly thorough when reading it. He was quite sure that a lot of this information was going to be lost soon, as it escapes his short term memory. It was important however, that he at least knows how each material is looking and what is its name. The rest of information can be referenced from a book, when he needs it.

Going through this book took much less time than the previous one. A lot of it was a contribution of rather large illustrations of each material. The descriptions were rather short and to the point.

[Arrival Day + 6, 4.00pm]

It took Jin around 3 hours to go through it.

The sun was still pretty high up when he finished. He was tired now. There’s still around 8 hours until his meeting with his master.

Before he went to bed, he decided to talk to his Guardian.

He took the books with himself and navigated towards his room.

When he entered, Shin was there, he waved sleepily in greeting as he noticed Jin entering.

Jin waved back with a smile. Looks like they had the same idea of not chit-chatting purposelessly just to keep things less awkward, now that they got more comfortable with each other’s presence.

Jin left the books at his desk, took a quick bath and sat cross legged by his bed.

He closed his eyes.

The void welcomed him.

“Nobody’s here, I guess I’ll go.” - he said out loud.

He closed his eyes and exited the space.

Before he opened eyes in the real world, he was pulled again to the void.

The boy stood there, hands folded, with an amused look.

“Very funny.” - his tone wasn’t unamused at all though.

Jin smiled.

“My master accepted the assignment as completed. We did well, though in his words, maybe we merely might have a sliver of hope in terms of our future potential.”

The boy sneered.

“Anyway, he aims to teach me Gusu upgrade-refinement, and it seems like this is the way we might be procuring our first Gusu.”

The boy nodded. And smiled.

“That’s great then, isn’t it?”

Jin shrugged.

“If you say so.”

“The current assignment he gave me was to catch up on some theoretical basics on the topic, and get an overview of various materials. This is already completed. Next up, We’re meeting in around 7 hours for the actual lesson.”

The boy nodded again.

“Any comments?” - Jin asked

“Make sure he picks a good Gusu for us to refine.” - the boy smiled

“I’ll do my best.” Jin said, and left.

After he came back, he just dropped dead on the bed and hugged the pillow.

“I wasn’t kicked out? Hehe...” - he muttered, just before he drifted into a deep sleep.

[Arrival Day + 6, 9.00pm]

When Jin woke up he checked the time. He slept for 4 hours. He still had 3 hours until the meeting. Shin was still sleeping.

Jin moved outside the building after he poured a couple buckets of cold water on himself.

He decided to refresh his memory on both books in the time he had left. He just leafed through them. He was nodding as he was going over the pages. He felt like the information organized itself within his brain a little when he slept.

[Arrival Day + 6, 11.00pm]

At 11pm Jin moved towards the refinement hall. He asked for practice room 7, which, to his surprise, was occupied.

He thanked the clerk and went straight to the room.

Just in case he mixed up the time, he entered immediately.

Inside, there was Ma Gu, and a rank 2 Snake senior.

The senior turned her head toward Jin. Aside from snake robes, she spotted black side hair buns and pale complexion.

Ma Gu didn’t turn his head, but spoke.

“Seems like your ineptitude has worsened and you can’t even tell the time now.” - Ma Gu said through his teeth.

Jin bowed and closed the door after spotting an amused expression on his senior.

“Must be another of Ma Gu’s pupils.” - thought Jin, shrugging. He hoped Ma Gu is not going to be harder on him because of this little mistake.

He took a seat in the lobby near the clerk.

“I should’ve asked you whether he’s alone or not.” - Jin pouted to the clerk, who spotted an amused expression on his face and seeing there’s nobody currently around besides him.

The clerk smiled when he heard this.

“That you should have, little brother. You are one of Ma Gu’s pupils? Must be tough.”

“Don’t scare me, I’ve been assigned to him less than a week ago, I don’t know the full extent of his methods yet.” - Jin sighed.

“I thought I haven’t seen you before. You must’ve advanced recently.”

Jin nodded.

“I’m Tai Zhen Jin, by the way. You’ll be seeing me from time to time moving forward.”

“I’m Lu Lei.”

“Is Ma Gu the only master with a temperament like that, or are they all?

Lei pondered for half a minute.

“They all know very well how to make their pupils’ lifes difficult, but for sure Ma Gu’s temperament makes him take the cake in many ways.”

“I’m not sure if I should be reassured or not.” - said Jin dryly

They talked a little bit more, but soon some other people started so Jin stopped disturbing Lei giving him a bow for allowing him to rant a little bit.

He waited until midnight, but nobody came to fetch him, nor did he notice either Ma Gu or the senior that was with him leaving.

[Arrival Day + 7, 12.00am]

He decided to try again.

He opened the door to practice room number 7.

Slowly. Carefully. Silently.

When it was wide enough for his head to fit through the crack, he slowly pushed his head through it and peeked into the room.

This time both Ma Gu and the senior sister were looking straight at him, Ma Gu had a look of distaste on his face.

Before he said anything, Jin did a bowing expression and left the room, closing the door behind.

On second thought, he probably should have waited until he was fetched.

He didn’t return to the lobby this time, just sat cross legged by the wall across the corridor, opposite of the room.

After around an hour, Ma Gu left the room.

“Go in and wait for me there.” - he said.

Jin entered.

The senior was still inside. Their eyes met for a second.

The senior chuckled as Jin was greeting her with a slight bow. He can only imagine how awkward his previous attempts at entry had been from her perspective.

They didn’t exchange any words. Jin made himself comfortable at the table, while the senior left after sorting her things out.

After around half an hour Ma Gu entered the room again.

Jin, as usual, stood up and bowed.

“It seems like nobody has ever bothered to teach you any etiquette.” - Ma Gu sneered. - “If I’m busy with somebody else, you wait until I fetch you. Understood?”

“Yes master.” - Jin replied curtly.

“Have you studied the books?”

“Yes.”

Ma Gu asked a few basic questions about mortal rank refinement, Jin didn’t have any problems answering. He also answered smoothly regarding the basics of Gusu refinement.

Then Ma Gu jumped to questions about materials. He called some names and Jin was supposed to tell him what he knew about them. He mainly could describe how they look, he remembered some of the properties, but rarely did he know where it can be found or how it’s supposed to be processed.

“I can see that memorizing a few details about the most well known materials is beyond you.” - Ma Gu said, with disdain that started becoming familiar.

Jin didn’t reply. In his opinion, he memorized quite enough. If Ma Gu really wanted him to memorize it all perfectly, he’d need to make himself clear. Just throwing a comments will not make Jin do something so useless.

“I have a few recipes for upgrade refining Gusu with me.” Ma Gu placed a few recipes on the table.

“Tell me which do you think will be suitable for you.”

Jin glanced over the recipes.

The recipes were for the following:

Rank 1 Stoneskin Gusu

Rank 1 Sandblast Gusu

Rank 1 Water Bath Gusu

Rank 1 Beast Strength Gusu

Rank 1 Blade Gusu

Rank 1 Sticky Web Gusu

Looking at these choices, Jin got a little excited.

What caught his eye was the beast strength Gusu. Using his body, he could both bind and temper energies, killing two birds with one stone. The gusu did improve his strength, but would it be appropriate when tempering energies? He wasn’t sure, so he decided to ask.

“Would Beast Strength Gusu be of any help for tempering energy body?”

“Some help, yes. Surely not as efficient as some other choices.”

Jin didn’t want to stall. From the choices he had gotten it really came down to Beast Strength, Blade or Sticky Web. He crossed off the sticky web because he didn’t know where he'd get a chance for the second Gusu, and he wanted to start working on his energy body.

He also didn’t think pure efficiency in damage of the blade Gusu was as versatile as a simple, raw strength boost. He decided to pick the Beast Strength Gusu then.

He read through the recipe. The materials seemed alright, though among them was a corpse of a rank 1 mana beast. This was a problem, he had no means to kill a mana beast yet.

“If I had the materials, I’d pick the Beast Strength Gusu. It’s seems the most versatile, and I think that’s important. The materials also don’t require Gusu to process them.” - replied Jin plainly.

“I’d be glad if master decided for me. I have too little experience to make a good choice, it is nothing more than an educated guess.”

Ma Gu nodded.

“Though a guess it is, it is not a bad one. Very few beginner experts underestimate the value of raw strength, and for a good reason. It makes the body, the most tremendous tool at an expert’s disposal that much more useful. You’ll find your pathetic strength of a young boy enhanced and therefore much more capable, and even fully grown mortal men won’t be able to match you. The Gusu will also aid many of mundane actions, such as processing some ingredients much easier than before, and some that were impossible to process - you’ll find possible with this new strength.”

[Arrival Day + 7, 1.00am]

“All ingredients are prepared.” - Ma Gu conjured many items on one of the tables - “Now, wait for me. Don’t touch anything beside the recipe, which you shall study. You can compare your bookish knowledge about the ingredients with what you see on the table.” - Ma Gu said, after which he stood up.

“I’ll be back in two hours. Then and only then you’ll start the refinement process under my supervision. You don’t wish to find out what the consequences will be if you were not to follow my words.” - and he exited the room.

Ma Gu has left the ingredients with Jin. who was a little surprised. He thought Ma Gu will again use the shared sense and will guide him through the process, but apparently that was not necessary.

Jin looked over the recipe again, this time more carefully.

Materials Required:

Rank 1 Mana Beast Heart // mana beast

Rank 1 Mana Beast Dung //mana beast

0.5l Liquid Jungle Honey //insect

50g Bowine Horn //animal

3 Giant Sorrel leaves //plant

21 Dried Petals of Crimson Tulip //plant

5 Giant Orchids //plant

30g Dragonwood moss //plant

Not Gusu //catalyst

Processing steps:

Boil 0.5l of water.

Throw in the plant ingredients, make sure the flame is low, the water should not be boiling anymore.

Crush Bovine Horn into dust

After the first hour, throw the beast’s heart into the brew.

After the second hour, separate the brew from the solids within it.

Mix honey with the brew.

Mix dung with the horn dust.

Bonding steps:

Smear the dung with horn dust in front of your chest, between the neck and solar plexus.

Drink the honey-brew mixture.

Tempering Instruction:

Enter the Aperture space.

Wait for energies to organize into a form.

Temper the form.

Once the form is tempered, place Not Gusu into contact with the tempered energies.

The recipe seemed very complete, not leaving much space for interpretations. Furthermore, the steps were simple, even though smearing dung over his body seemed to be… weird, to say the least. Even so, it was actually hard to deny the recipe's elegance. It was simple, clear and supposedly effective. Just because some steps are messy in terms of material bonding doesn’t amount to anything really.

Jin looked at the laid out materials, matched all of them to the item from the recipe. All seemed to be measured exactly already.

[Arrival Day + 7, 2.00am]

After half an hour, the door had opened.

It was a little too soon for master to return.

Jin slowly turned out.

It was a dragon whelp, in a purple robe and Krakensort broach.

Is this guy some sort of psycho?

“This room is occupied. My master will be here any second, so I sincerely advise you to back out and not seek trouble.” - Jin announced coldly.

He really didn’t want to deal with this right now. Weren’t their issues settled by now?

The whelp didn’t look as much at Jin, but rather at the ingredients that were placed on the table.

Jin noticed that. A horrible jolt ran through his spine, realizing in how much trouble he’d be if any of the materials were to disappear.

Jin felt genuinely terrified at this point. He stood up and moved directly inbetween the door and the table.

“Don’t even think about it, you psycho.” - Jin warned, hawking the little dragon with his eyes.

The whelp gave a sniff.

And lurched into Jin.

Jin was ready, and decided to catch and pin down the whelp similarly to how he did last time - unfortunately for him, the impact has been quite a bit stronger than he anticipated, so he only managed to be pushed back as the whelp rebounded from his chest up in the air and from there with a swirling motion and an unreasonably powerful flap of small pair of wings it lurched again, but this time for the table.

When Jin looked at it again, it already had the beast heart in it’s maw.

“Oh no no no no no NO!”

The small beast looked at the other materials, Jin had no choice but to make a mess at this point and pin the beast down somehow. He flipped a table with a kick. The whelp backjumped elegantly and just looked at him as if that was an idiotic thing to do.

Jin didn’t waste any time, he pounced at the whelp, but it was simply too small and fast for him. It could navigate the room much better than he ever could hope to, but this was anyway better than just letting it grab more of Ma Gu’s materials.

It was still quite some time until Ma Gu comes back, so the situation was grim one way or another.

The little whelp didn’t give up, so it seemed as if there was still something it wanted in here. Needless to say, it had to be over Jin’s grave, or, at the very least, it had to do well enough so it can both avoid and grab what it wants at the same time.

The whelp didn’t manage to get its target. Jin concluded that it is the jar of honey, but fortunately the beast didn’t really want to make a mess out of it, but take it into it’s sash. It was luring Jin by targeting other items, so they never really stopped moving, but Jin never really gave it enough time to grab the jar as the creature was too clumsy to do the correct motions with it’s paws precisely and quickly. After another attempt, it was Jin that had the jar in his hands, and the situation became a little awkward.

Jin couldn’t really catch the critter when he was handling the jar, nor did he have a place where he could safely place it at the moment.

A pause.

“Here, take it.” - Jin placed the jar right in front of himself, and positioned himself in a manner which he thought was impossible for him to not catch the thief if he were to get in range to even smudge it.

The fellow kraken was confident in himself though, he started approaching slowly, looking Jin straight into eyes.

Jin tensed his body, ready to do the deed.

The moment came. The transformed student was close enough. They both saw in their eyes what was going to happen next instant. The whelp turned whipped the honey jar with its tail, at the same time, Jin’s hands and body sprang and clutched the beast.

Jin’s body was pumping adrenaline like crazy.

He blinked.

“What happened?” - he thought. He was sure there was no way for the creature to escape, but he didn’t get it. It somehow squeezed through him as if it was made of water.

“Crap!”

Jin lurched after the jar not thinking about the impossibility of what just happened, the whelp was scrambling to put it inside the sash and it almost managed to complete the task, while Jin was already throwing his leg into the biggest kick he could muster.

*Clunk*

The whelp noticed Jin’s leg at the last moment and again deformed in a weird. Instead, he ended up kicking the honey jar, which unfortunately broke, covering Jin’s foot in honey and leaking quickly on the room’s floor.

Jin looked at what just happened. The whelp just looked at the honey on the floor, seemingly thinking whether it should gobble as much as it can before escaping.

Jin was frozen.

“Crap, crap, crap.” - he started muttering, thinking about the next course of action.

He thought for a minute, not moving an inch, churning in his mind.

All the adrenaline slowly was dissipating from his bloodstream.

Finally, he sighed, and started gathering materials on the ground.

In the meantime, whelp decided to help itself to the honey. Jin wasn’t in the mood to even look at it. He’d rather it was licking up the already wasted honey than go after other ingredients.

By the time Jin secured everything and fixed up the furniture back to the placement it originally was in, the other student already shown himself to the exit.

“Just my crappy luck.” - Jin was thinking, as he was washing down the floor of the honey. He sat down in the spot he was originally seated in, and awaited his fate, which was tightly glued to Ma Gu. He could only hope for his master’s understanding.

Thankfully, he didn’t need to wait long. After he cleaned up, it was already quarter to Ma Gu’s expected return. Although he did dread the moment quite a bit, he’d rather get it over with rather than keep dreading what will come to be.

[Arrival Day + 7, 3.00am]

The door opened and Ma Gu entered the room. Jin stood up immediately.

“Where is the beast’s heart?” - Ma Gu asked sharply, immediately realizing it was gone.

“And the honey?” - as added as he realized it’s missing a second after.

Jin hung his head down, not wanting to look Ma Gu in the eyes.

“Master, a transformed student has come, ate the heart and consumed the honey. Your student was unable to stop him.”

Ma Gu raised his brows.

“Transformed student?” - The sharpness seemed to dissipate as he probed Jin for more information.

“Yes. He was from Krakensort. He took on a form of what looked like a dragon whelp, it was dark blue in color and could avoid my grasp by an ability that made it fluid-like. I have seen him twice before already in this very room, but I don’t know his identity, as each time he was transformed.”

Ma Gu sighed.

“It’s fine then. Let me use a method to confirm everything, and I’ll settle this myself.”

Ma Gu waved his hand, once, twice, thrice. Soon, an illusory image of Jin and the whelp has appeared, and the illusions reenacted exactly what transpired, except, in fast forward.

“These rooms are equipped with Gusu that can record anyone entering them.” - Ma Gu explained dryly.

“You can be at ease, I will not hold you accountable.” - he added.

Jin couldn’t help but show a nasty grin as he heard this. He couldn’t believe he’d go from this unscathed the way he did. Maybe his luck was not so bad after all.

Ma Gu conjured the missing ingredients ingredients in a similar fashion he did it for the first batch.

“We’re in luck that I do have more of proper ingredients in my stash, though the heart is of a different beast. Much rarer, and more… expensive - not that it concerns you much.” - Ma Gu said, and Jin could swear he almost chuckled saying this. He probably has no way of knowing what could Ma Gu find funny in the situation.

“You may start processing the ingredients.” - Ma Gu announced, before he took his seat.

Jin nodded.

He followed the instructions to the letter as he was processing materials. Everything seemed to be going quite smoothly, as Ma Gu didn’t raise any problems during the process.

He was waiting now for the pot mixture to stop cooking, he already prepared for filtering stage. Jin removed the pot and went over to the sink, in which there already was another pot with a sieve over it.

After he finished sieving, he poured the mixture slowly into the honey jar and mixed it together.

Finally he mixed the dung with dusted horn.

All the materials were processed, Jin assembled them all in one empty spot in the room where he could sit cross legged facing Ma Gu.

Now it was the show time. Jin smiled a little nervously.

He looked at Ma Gu, who only nodded to proceed.

Jin drank a thick honey mixture in one go.

After which he looked at the container with dung and hesitated for a second.

“Don’t dawdle.” - Ma Gu immediately reprimanded.

Jin immediately started spreading the dung mixture over his chest. It didn’t take long, though his expression must’ve been interesting right now. He didn’t really know how to feel about spreading dung over himself. He was sure there were more unconventional methods of bonding the ingredients, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t bat an eyelid at covering himself with some dung.

Who knows, it might end up being one of the least weird procedures.

The whole chest area which he was supposed to cover was now thickly covered in brown substance. There was quite a bit more of dung left in the container, and so Jin hesitated again.

“Use the whole thing.” - Ma Gu reprimanded impatiently.

Jin proceeded to stack another layer of the substance on himself, and soon after he was done.

Finally, Jin proceeded to close his eyes. There was no notice from Ma Gu, so he only assumed he was free to continue. He entered his aperture space.

Jin opened his eyes. The Guardian was already there, Jin wasn’t sure whether Kasm was anxious or simply excited, as he definitely didn’t have his usual suppressing attitude on.

There were streams of colors ranging from green through yellow to orange, quite brutally invading into the aperture, ultimately focusing in one spot where it was whirling around in an ellipsoid like pattern.

“Nothing seems out of order so far, we just need to wait a little.” - Jin said, to calm down Kasm, he didn’t want him to do anything inappropriate.

“So this is Gusu refinement.” - the boy changed countenance a little.

“Yes. Master is watching the procedure. He found a good recipe for me. Now we’re on the second to last step, the tempering.”

The boy nodded, and waited patiently.

After a couple minutes, the energies stopped seeping in.

The ellipsoid now was quite smooth and unmoving. After a few seconds though, in an instant, the whole ellipsoid was unmade, as if a powerful gust attacked it from the inside.

In place of the ellipsoid, there stood a huge warthog with a powerful build and long, sharp looking tusks. The warthog was sporting quite an unusual orange color and golden mane.

It didn’t charge into both of them, but rather was investigating its new surroundings with interest. Jin swallowed his saliva audibly.

“I have to beat that without any help?!” - He was a little shocked by the size of the animal. His survival instincts were telling him not to approach it, but part of it might be because he’s not exactly used to having an additional boost of strength and vitality inside the aperture.

The warthog was inspecting the place strutting along, it started becoming quite confident and lively, enjoying the first minutes of its existence.

“I don’t think you should be helping me.” - said Jin

The Guardian nodded.

“I’ll try my best.” Jin said, as his fists clenched.

He slowly approached the hog.

Then seeing how it doesn’t pay attention to him, he started speeding up.

The hog turned to him finally, casting him a curious glance.

Jin didn’t really have time to make friends. He didn’t know how much time does he actually have to temper this pig. Another question to ask Ma Gu once the job is done.

The warthog was huge, and it was hard to see any specific weak spot. Its frontal side was equipped with intimidating looking tusks, so it was way more dangerous than the backside.

He started circling the creature while throwing some punches and kicks at it, sometimes changing direction in how he’s circling it.

The hog was fuming very soon and went on full rampage mode, snorting loudly. It seemed suicide for Jin to try to score hits when the pig was in this mode, as dodging it was already taking all his focus and strength.

Once the hog got a bit tired, he continued to hit it, and time by time, the pig’s rage outbursts got weaker and weaker, while Jin kept his composure and agility.

Finally, after an hour or so, which to Jin seemed like forever, the pig was too weak to move. It just fell on the ground.

“Is it tempered?”

Jin called out to the lean boy.

“Fully tempered.” The boy replied.

Jin summoned Not Gusu, approached the warthog, and placed it on top of the hog’s back.

He stepped back after doing this, and waited.

The energies slowly started to unweave the form of a warthog and the strands were entering the Not Gusu. The process was speeding up, the Not Gusu started convulsing terribly, as foreign energies were reaping it from inside and outside. The Not Gusu stopped being visible at all, as it was behind a thick veil of circulating strands of energy.

Finally, all the energy dissipated. What was left looked like a big orange Hercules Beetle.

It was the rank 1 Beast Strength Gusu.

Jin tried to control the Gusu’s movement, the same way he did with the Not Gusu. It worked, the Gusu started approaching him. Jin made it step on his hand, and ceased to control the gusu as he was picking it up to take a closer look.

“You, my new friend, are fabolous.” Jin said with a smile, and petted the beetle with his other hand. The gusu seemed pleased by the action, and rubbed it’s face against Jin’s hand.

Jin’s smile only widened.

He finally got his first Gusu. He was very excited.

[Arrival Day + 7, 4.00am]

“Guardian! Look! We succeeded!”

The boy approached curiously. He looked at the gusu. The gusu looked at him.

The Guardian copied Jin’s action and pet it too, and so the beetle returned the gesture by rubbing its face against the boy’s hand.

The Guardian’s face almost flushed, and he raised the Gusu with both hands up.

“Hahaha!” - Kasm started laughing.

A big grin appeared on Jin’s face.

He was very tired after the whole ordeal, and this made him a little loose, almost as if he drank alcohol.

The Guardian started playing with the Gusu.

“I’ll start sending invitations for the marriage ceremony.” - Jin jeered.

“Marriage?” Kasm turned to Jin, a little dumbfounded for a second, but he didn’t even wait for an answer and was occupied by a beetle right again.

“Isn’t it cute. Isn’t it the best little beetle in the world.” - he said, giving it a couple more pets, which were quickly reciprocated.

Jin copied Kasm’s motions, and beetle did the same thing again.

Jin just did a pirouette and has fallen onto the ground.

After a quarter, Guardian recovered a little.

“Since we’re done, you should go back to report to your master. You said he iswith you.”

Jin froze. He totally forgot. Now he only sincerely hoped his teacher had no method to peek into his aperture.

“I’m leaving! Take care of our new friend. I’ll probably need to summon it to show to the master, but I’ll send it back right after.”

“Right” - said the boy with a grin.

Jin left the aperture space. He opened his eyes and stood up.

“The refinement was a success.” - he announced.

“I know. I sensed it 20 minutes ago. I was about to slap you out of your little trance.”

Jin knew it was better not to answer.

“I apologize.” - he said, as he summoned the beetle and handed it to Ma Gu for inspection, to move the focus away from the current topic.

The beetle was clearly unhappy in Ma Gu’s hands. Jin praised the beetle internally for being reasonably composed in hands of a devil.

Ma Gu nodded.

“What did you think of the process?”

“Simple clear and elegant.” - Jin said as he bowed - “I wouldn’t be able to procure neither the recipe nor the ingredients by myself, thank you master.”

Ma Gu nodded again, and he handed the beetle to Jin, who immediately recalled it to the aperture.

“Master, I have a couple questions regarding the process.”

“Speak.”

“Is there a time limit to the tempering step of the process?”

“If the form has stabilized properly, it’ll usually last at least 3 hours before dissipating. It varies.”

“Can the Guardian support in tempering the energy?”

“No, it would only lead to unexpected results and complications in the process. Sometimes Guardian’s support is needed in the last step of the refinement, it was not so for this recipe though, and whenever Guardian’s help is supposed to be used, the recipe will specifically call for it.”

Jin bowed after each answer he received.

“These were all my questions. Please assign me a new task.” - Jin said. He was really happy with how Ma Gu’s lesson went today. Furthermore, he didn’t remember seeing Beast Strength Gusu on the wooden gusu token list, which means it’s probably a little more valuable or rare, which also made him a little giggly.

“Take a bath. And clean the place. Find me tomorrow for the new assignment.”

Jin bowed and smiled. He indeed needed to take a bath. He still had dung smeared all over him.

After taking a bath and cleaning up the place he returned to his lodgings.