Kenja thought of slipping away before they noticed him, but it was already too late. Yoshie had locked eyes with his, waving at him with a sweet smile. She even turned to Shizuka and pointed at him in an attempt to distract her from her sullen mood.

He returned an awkward smile and waved back while making his way to them.

Even if he wanted to run away, there was no way he could escape the notorious Vice Elder Shirou and the illustrious Tributary Akiyoshi Hideaki. He still had bumps on his head leftover from the several years of target practice with Vice Elder Shirou, and his memory of how Hirose Hide lifted the gigantic battle arena with a wave of her finger was still recent.

Disregarding the fact that they were both at the Core Crystallization stage or higher, he could not properly utilise Qi techniques at the Qi Flourishing level.

At best, he was a stronger-than-average mortal who knew a couple of magic tricks with a talking snail that offered more problems than solutions. His only true and reliable trump card would be Sakura, but he was not keen on using her unless he had no other choice.

The pillars had warned him about her mysterious abilities that was unusual amongst weapons and could attract dangers to him if word got out. Plus, the sword was incapable of verbally communicating anything to him nor would Snail elaborate on her capabilities further than calling her names such as ‘hollow hoe’ or ‘tin tart’.

Kenja was secretly impressed with Snail’s ability to come up with a new adjective or noun to describe her every time.

“Senior Sister Hirai! You’ve left your cave! Did you see the elders?” Yoshie walked ahead of the group and greeted Kenja in a rush.

Shizuka who was walking with Vice Elder Shirou and Hideaki Akiyoshi followed after her and gave her a nudge.

“Don’t forget your manners!” She then bowed to Kenja. “Kobayashi Shizuka greets Senior Sister Hirai. Is your health well?”

Realizing her mistake, Yoshie copied her elder twin and bowed respectfully. “K-Kobayashi Yoshie greets Senior Sister Hirai. Are you feeling better?”

“Junior greets Vice Elder Shirou. Junior sister greets Senior Brother Hideaki,” Kenja replied with a bow directed first to Vice Elder Shirou and then Hideaki Akiyoshi while he pondered over their inquiries concerning her well-being.

Vice Elder Shirou returned the greeting with a nod, mildly taken aback that this new initiate he had yet to meet could identify him with a mere glance. “Junior should take better care of herself.”

It was not hard to determine his status as a vice elder due to his robes, and the recent additions to the sect had learned of his existence and appearance at the orientation…except for this specific disciple who had not gone to the orientation because she was ill.

Hideaki Akiyoshi gave Kenja a respectful bow without saying anything.

Through Kenja’s words, Akiyoshi determined that Hirai Hikaru desired to be treated as his ‘junior sister’, but after remembering their previous interaction at the treasury, he was reluctant to gamble on a single greeting.

That and something about Hirai Hikaru’s appearance had changed somehow while still being the same.

She exuded a more austere and enchanting aura than before to the point that he could not avert his eyes after having noticed her. Yet, he failed to discern any visible difference in her cultivation from their first meeting. But if she were, indeed, one of the empress’ bodyguards, an Odalisque, disguised as a disciple to protect the princess, and she happened to relax her mask in front of them, then his initial conjecture was right on the money.

Thus, he refrained from speaking to avoid unintentionally offending her.

“Sisters, we are disciples of the same master, so don’t fret over the formalities. My health is well. Why do you ask?”

Kenja could not figure out why they thought his alter ego was sick.

In confusion, Shizuka and Yoshie tilted their heads simultaneously, but in opposite directions. If it weren’t for their different colored ribbons and pearl earrings as well as Kenja’s wanted poster that Shizuka was still tightly clutching, he would be unable to tell them apart.

“Princess Ryu informed us that your stomach was feeling unwell. We were concerned because of all the fruit you had eaten for our sakes,” reported Shizuka with a sad glimmer reflecting off the iris of her eyes.

“Zuki, she told us to call her big sister, not princess. Remember? Even Big Sister Hikaru told us to stop being so formal!” Yoshie used that special nickname for Shizuka on the rare occasions that she was the one correcting her.

Shizuka glared at her younger twin.

Kenja and Baba had raised Shizuka into a proper and well-mannered girl. Unlike her twin, she did not allow others to get closer to her so easily. More than that, she stubbornly refused to acknowledge anyone other than Kenja as her elder sibling. She did not want his role to be taken by others so easily nor was she willing to give them the chance.

For her, Kenja was the only older sibling she would accept.

On the other hand, this older brother of hers was in the middle of mentally scolding himself. He finally remembered the little fib he told the princess to get out of going with them to the sect’s orientation. That white lie spread far enough to reach the ears of not just his sisters, but Vice Elder Shirou as well, and they brought it up several days later.

“Ah, that. Yes, I am much better now. Thank you for asking.”

Truly, it was never good to lie.

Unsure of how long their exchange would last, the vice elder interrupted their conversation.

“We still have business to attend to. Let us continue, junior,” he told them before instructing Hideaki Akiyoshi to follow him. As an authority figure speaking to the direct disciples of the elders, he was neither servile nor overbearing, maintaining a strict decorum between them.

Shizuka broke away from Yoshie and approached the vice elder while clutching the crumpled paper even tighter.

“Vice Elder…”

Shirou paused once more and sighed.

“I assure you, you’re overthinking things. Don’t worry. It cannot be him.”

He wore a light and tired smile on his face that contrasted heavily with his sharp eyes and pointed beard. His slicked-back, jet-black hair and thick, furrowed eyebrows coupled with the greying bristles on the sides of his head produced the image of a stringent, yet confident man who had experienced the many vicissitudes of life.

“The criminal is said to be at the Qi Flourishing stage with his Fog already formed. There’s no way he had reached such a stage in less than a week unless he was the son of Heaven, and you and your sister know better than most of your brother’s capabilities…”

“Moreover, a single Qi Flourishing cultivator cannot sneak into the sect on his own and steal so brazenly on his own.”

Shizuka’s nails dug into her palms, and Kenja looked away from the vice elder with a heart full of resentment.

While he did not state it explicitly, he had pointed out that their Kenja with zero talent in becoming an Immortal had no way of reaching that cultivation stage in such a short time while simultaneously breaking into the sect’s underground location that had never been invaded before and getting away with multiple counts of larceny.

“We believe the man has an accomplice who has evaded our detection, most likely one of our own sect disciples who has been plotting this for a while. He will suffer the brunt of the punishment while this scapegoat will likely be punished with a lifetime of servitude in the sect with no chance for promotion.”

Kenja disliked Vice Elder Shirou after the many years of being pelted by his seemingly-infinite stash of spirit stones, but he had to admit that his judgment on the situation was better than he thought.

Even though a week had passed since he had broken through to the Qi Flourishing stage, he, the boy in question, still could not believe it. Plus, he had already formed his Fog that would usually take years to form, or at least a few months if one was extremely gifted.

Although the group was stressing over the current topic, one of them seemed to be unperturbed by the solemn atmosphere.

“H-h-hello. Can your h-hear me, senior sister? Am I doing this right?”

As Shizuka and Shirou continued to exchange words with one another, Kenja was surprised to hear Yoshie speaking to him telepathically.

Stunned, Kenja examined the twins more closely.

Because their hair was held up by their pink and purple ribbons, he overlooked the increased length of their hair. Their skin was clear and glossier than before, and their complexions were brighter. He discerned that their bodies were naturally breathing and expelling Qi as if they were breathing air, a clear sign that they had completely opened their initial meridians and reached the Qi Flourishing stage.

They must have completed the Body Tempering process and practiced the Wind Whispering technique within the three days he had not seen them.

“I can hear you, Yoshie. Congratulations on officially becoming cultivators.” It was difficult, but at this close distance, Kenja was able to manipulate the small amount of Qi within his body to communicate without Snail or Sakura’s help.

The Wind Whisper technique did not require as much skill or practice as one would speculate after hearing the word ‘technique’. It was more apt to say that everyone was born with a second mouth for talking, but you could not notice the mouth nor control its muscles until you had opened your meridians. Then it would become as natural as learning to talk a second time.

Kenja had no issues with learning the technique nor with executing it, but the minuscule amount of Qi he could utilize on his own was as if his lungs could draw in only a tenth of what an average person could. The number of words and distance for communication were hampered tremendously.

Yoshie blushed after hearing Kenja’s congratulations.

While the technique itself did not share the same properties as sound when traveling through air, the whispers would give off a signature feeling for each person, and Kenja’s message had a somewhat deeper and more masculine inflection compared to what she had expected.

Snail could disguise Kenja’s appearance and voice, yet his influence did not extend to telepathic whispers. But they were essentially genderless thoughts with different frequencies planted in a target audience, so while it was possible to differentiate who was speaking after hearing them once or twice, the image of the sender one obtained from hearing the message was usually out of the involved parties’ control.

Moreover, they had not known each other for a long time, and their interactions were few, but Kenja had dropped all pretension and formalities to address her by name directly while congratulating her.

This short exchange with Hirai Hikaru produced a strange familiarity that instilled in her a feeling of security that she could not comprehend.

“Thank you, senior sister. And c-c-congratulations to you as well!”

Kenja stared at her dumbly for a moment stumped as to why he was being congratulated. He had not achieved any breakthrough in his cultivation; in fact, he had not progressed at all since the last time he had seen her.

It was not until he noticed Hideaki Akiyoshi sneaking glances at him that he realized what was going on in Yoshie’s head.

Yoshie had still been at the Body Tempering stage when they last hung out, so she could not properly gauge Kenja’s cultivation stage. After having experienced her first breakthrough and the benefits that came from it, she had associated Kenja’s sudden transformation from the friendly and moderate beauty that helped them out into an inexplicably beguiling and bewitching force of nature with no identifiable physical change as ‘Hirai Hikaru much have advanced her cultivation’.

Truthfully, Kenja was impressed with Yoshie’s unusual display of rational thinking and problem solving even though she was wrong. He was not sure if this was a testament to her body’s improved brain function or how different his current appearance was to the previous one.

“Thank you, Yoshie. Is something wrong with your sister?”

Yoshie flashed a complicated smile. “Shizuka and I left our cave to um…clean ourselves up when we came across that poster.” Her blush deepened when she remembered the earlier events.

After they both completely opened their meridians, their pores expelled many of their bodies’ impurities, covering themselves from head-to-toe with black muck. Thankfully, the ‘Lunar Reflection’ cultivation technique Fifth Elder Kazane had bestowed them required that they have a large amount of skin contact with each other, forcing them to cultivate with no clothes. This small miracle allowed their robes to escape the ordeal, but since they had not prepared any water beforehand and they did not want to defile their cave’s inner pool, they had no choice but to go to the bath house a short distance away from the pillar’s fifth face.

Such a situation would have been much less embarrassing if they did not have hundreds of people standing outside their cave…

The only silver lining was that the elders and nearly all of the disciples standing outside were so focused on their meditation that they missed the white-robed, gunk-covered, inner-sect twins as they rushed past them, Shizuka keeping her head down and Yoshie clinging to her back.

That was where they found his poster plastered on many walls and signboards throughout the sect, including the one that Shizuka was currently clutching which had been nailed to the women’s bath house.

“My sister thought the thief resembled our elder brother a bit, so she got worried. We found vice elder who set her mind at ease.”

“Ah…and you? Aren’t your worried about your brother?” It was a loaded question, but Kenja could not resist taking advantage of the situation to hear his foster sister’s thoughts toward him.

The ever-reddening Yoshie tilted her head downward in an attempt to avert her eyes from Kenja.

“E-e-elder brother is the most amazing person in the world. He would never steal so many things. He’s not that t-type of person…” Her message trailed off near the end. Her habitual stuttering did not stop even though she had communicated her thoughts directly.

A warm, fuzzy feeling pervaded Kenja’s chest. It was not everyday that the timid Yoshie would share her true thoughts so openly, and she thought her elder brother was the ‘most amazing’. Such a great sister!

Worried that her new senior sister would dismiss her statement as the obsessed ravings of a little girl, Yoshie provided proof for her case, “I’m n-n-not exaggerating, senior sister. Elder brother failed to pass this sect’s entrance exams two d-d-dozen times, but he never quit! He kept playing cards with us even though he almost never won. If we asked him for something, he would find a way to bribe or b-b-blackmail our neighbor Frederick and old man Satoshi into getting it for us…”

Kenja was stunned by the rare rant Yoshie expelled from her mind.

“Yoshie, stop, please. I understand…” Kenja was forced to interrupt her since she kept going without any sign of stopping. The warm and fuzzy feeling was replaced with a painful pang of hurt and betrayal.

What two dozen times? It was only twenty! Why did she add more failures as if they were medals to show off?

And why would she brag about his repeated losses in their card games or the fact that he had to blackmail their neighbors for his sisters’ gifts. Kenja sounded less of an amazing person and more of a good-for-nothing. In fact, this kind of history was what you would expect from a failure who had resorted to crime!

Yoshie forgot herself and bowed while verbally apologizing. “I’m sorry, senior sister. I just wanted you to know that elder brother…he would n-never…”

He could not correlate the deeds Yoshie mentioned to someone amazing or trustworthy, but he decided not to push her any further. Yoshie had never excelled with sharing her inner thoughts and she usually relied on Shizuka to act as her representative and mediator.

Kenja patted the brunette’s head and assured her with his altered voice, “I understand. Your brother is lucky to have you as his sister. What about Shizuka? Does she not feel the same about your brother?”

Yoshie realized her blunder and corrected herself quickly with a blush that shifted from one of shyness to one of embarrassment, “Shizuka is the same as me! We both trust Elder Brother Kenja a lot. It’s just…she is worried because of elder brother’s curse—”

“Yoshie!”