Li looked at Sylvie. Her face looked down, and her hair, untied now that she wasn't out fighting or getting ready to fight, fell like silvery curtains that shrouded her expression. He gave her a few seconds to process the news before continuing. 

"I know your dream was to visit the east, but there is no east anymore."

Sylvie looked up again with a smile delicate with sadness gracing her lips. She hugged the worn leather bag containing the scrolls to her even tighter. "Then that is all the more reason for me to cherish these. An entire continent's hopes that they will be remembered lie in them, after all."

Li nodded. She was idealistic, but she was not a delicate little branch either. Years of fighting for her life had definitely tempered her ideals. "You know, you took that a lot better than I thought you would."

"Well, my dream is to travel the world, not just the east." Sylvie looked westward, her pale red eyes widening as she looked not at the grassy horizon, but beyond, to lands never before seen. "Perhaps I will go west, beyond the demonic furnacelands, or perhaps far north where they say the world ends, its waters spilling off into a great void of stars."

"I was expecting you to feel a little more down." Li motioned to Sylvie's bag. "There were pretty interesting and useful things in there that I was going to let you know to cheer you up."

"And to think I thought you once quite cold," she remarked.

"I like to think myself as reasonable, not cruel. Most of the time, at least. If I'm the one that's going to be bringing you bad news, might as well balance it out with some good, and here it is: most of the information in those scrolls, you can pretty easily learn. It's all detailing the requirements for spells, skills, and classes."

"I thought so. I could glean through most of the scrolls, and it did seem to me that they were all martial texts devoted to different paths of combat. Unfortunately, only one of the scrolls dedicates itself to Assassins."

"That will end up being a blessing for you," said Li. "Based on how much of that scroll you can read, I can probably write out a translation in an hour or two. If you needed all three scrolls translated, then I'm not sure I'd have had the time to do it."

"Truly?" She sounded happy like a child given gifts on Christmas.

"Consider this the minimum of what I'm willing to do to ensure you don't go dying on Old Thane."

Li knew he could do far more for them. Have invincible summons just tail them, never letting them ever face real danger, but then what would be the point of their lives, their struggles? It would also bring unnecessary attention to him, and in general, it did not sit well with him to just baby the people around him.

He could guide them, but he would not hold their hands. 

He saw as Sylvie drew back a little, somewhat intimidated by the bare honesty of his words, but he did not want to give her any false expectations. 

"Now, the scrolls are the easy part. It's the manuals that are rather interesting, even to me," he said, pressing the conversation forwards. He was sure the next part would pique her curiosity enough to ease her mind. 

The scrolls contained information Li was highly familiar with. All of it was game knowledge from Elden World. Many classes and skills required some level of roleplaying to acquire, and for a veteran expert like Li, it was not uncommon to be familiar with the requirements.

Usually, It involved mundane mini quests. Learning an assassination skill, for example, might require landing the killing blow on five particular creatures at night time or something of that sort.

In this world, the requirements were the same, yet there were also philosophical elements added about having the right mindset to learn these abilities, though he was not sure how much that actually mattered.

An interesting thing to note was that there were guides for subclasses like Sword Saint or Asura in there, and those were pretty high level, limited to those who were level 70 warriors. But of course, that was not the part that had truly interested Li. 

"The manuals," he said. "They talk about something entirely new. Something I'm not even sure you can learn."

"Oh?" Sylvie started to learn forwards, her curiosity flaring up and washing away all her reservations.

"There's an entirely new power system detailed in there. It's not the magic you know about. Let me give you a rundown."

Li explained.

The manuals were incomplete, but they gave a good idea of their content. It laid out a power system extremely similar to the kinds he knew about in Wuxia literature.

It talked of cultivating qi and ascending realms to reach peerless strength and immortal refinement. This must have been where Sylvie had gotten all the misconceptions about flying immortals who could shatter mountains.

Like the superpowers the heroes held and the strangely advanced technology the elves commanded, it seemed the east had its own brand of unique strength completely unrelated to Elden World. 

Li gave Sylvie a general explanation of the powers, but he did not go into detail.

"In essence, the goal is to continually cultivate this resource called 'qi' to grow more and more powerful. Think of it like a kind of super mana. Where for us, having more mana doesn't necessarily mean we're stronger, having more qi is a direct indicator of strength, among many other benefits."

Sylve nodded her head as her eyes narrowed in focus. "This does align with what few records we have of Xia. The empire only ever graced us with one visit, when their admiral Zheng came with a small fleet filled with riches and eastern culture. Clearly, they wished to trade, but alas, after that single visit, Xia never came back.

But from what little we do know, it was known that the admiral remained youthful even at eighty, held immense might and prowess in a strange magic that none now can fathom."

"That's interesting," said Li. So just a hundred years ago, Xia was still doing well enough to send an envoy halfway across the world. He shelved that information for later, when he would try to contextualize it with what he knew about the empire's demise. 

For now, he would try an experiment of his own. 

"Knowing your curiosity, I'm assuming nothing will stop you from wanting to learn this cultivation?" said Li. 

Sylvie nodded instinctively, but then said, "The manuals hold so very many pages. It would be impossible for you to translate them for me. I could not burden you with such a workload."

"Take it easy. For this, I'm not going to be translating. I'll offer to teach you directly."

Sylvie sat still in numb shock for a few seconds. "But...surely that will steal too much of your time?"

"You're not expecting me to drop everything I'm doing to teach you full time, are you?" Li pointed back to the main roads where the herbalist's stall was. "I have that thing to run and the farm to manage, though Old Thane helps me out quite a bit.

No, if I am going to teach you, it'll be taken slow, over a long period of time. Little lessons here and there when you're in town and when my work is slow."

"Even for that, I would be eternally grateful." Sylvie trembled in happiness as she bowed her head up and down. "To be able to learn something new, something that may make me stronger, would fulfill all my wishes."

"This isn't exactly wish fulfillment. Everything is done in my spare time. It will take you a very long time to get through the manuals, and realistically speaking, all the effort is on you to learn.

Functionally, I'm just a translator, not a teacher. Now, let me get all the texts back so I can refresh my memory until you leave town."

__________________

When Sylvie left practically skipping for joy, Li looked down at the manuals in his hands. They were thick paperbound books wrapped in faded gold string, and in surprisingly good condition. Unlike the scrolls, their pages were pristine and preserved, obviously enhanced with magic in some capacity. 

Li had not told her the full truth about what was in these manuals. He had told her they spoke of the east's destruction, sure, and, as was his intention, it did sway her from wanting to visit the continent. What he had not told her was that the destruction was not a phenomenon, it was a person.

A single cultivator who had risen to the top at any means possible, toppling warlords, dragon kings, and, eventually, the divine emperor. The manual even spoke about how the admiral had been called back to assist his emperor against the threat, and his lack of return to the west indicated how thoroughly the east had been razed.

Though, considering this mystery individual hadn't crossed the ocean in near a century, it was likely they weren't an immediate threat or perhaps not even alive. 

Li was still absolutely confident that he was the strongest existence in this entire world. He had power to level most of it, after all, and, judging from context, the east was not that much stronger than the west.

There were two distinct cultures and factions warring in the east, one utilizing Elden World abilities and the other cultivation, and they were seemingly rather evenly matched. 

Considering the scrolls spoke of the sword saint class as the pinnacle of might, it stood to reason that nothing in the east would far exceed that realm of strength, and that realm was laughably below Li.

But it was still good to be cautious. Li took a more laidback approach to the heroes here because he knew he far outclassed the strongest hero they had, and if the duchess did truly have a convenient way of mobilizing a hero that could harm or incapacitate him, then she would have done so. 

He did not concern himself too much with the squabbles and scurrying of ants beneath him. 

But the east was still a little more unknown. He would see if Sylvie could cultivate and observe how the powers worked. How they interacted with magic. Mostly out of curiosity, really, not to mention it did not hurt to help her. And unlike Azhar who had wished for Li to wave his hand and grant them everything they needed, Sylvie had put in real effort to both obtain, translate, and train with the texts. 

Li stood from the fields, glancing at Zagan's sleeping form. He was reminded of the potentially approaching demon king from the west.

So a potential enemy from the west and from the east, huh?

Li shrugged before he made his way back to the cottage. He did not worry, nor did he think much. The way he saw it, he would live his daily, peaceful life, and if either demon king or top cultivator wished dearly to die, then all they had to do was make their way to the farm where they would hopefully make for some good fertilizer.