King sat and Nick stood in a silence for almost half an hour. Nick knew the king was very smart and at this point probably was already thinking of the nuances of this project. Then king wrote something on a paper and called a guard.

“Pass this to the prime minister personally.” He said, then looked at Nick and smiled, “Impressive. What reward do you want?”

“Your majesty.” Nick smiled, “I already told you I have everything I need. And I’m not trying to sound modest. You saw the item on my leg back then and understand that although I don’t carry the treasury of that sect, I do have some valuables that can support me for dozens of years. By the way, thank you for letting me keep it.”

“Do you think I would rob a child?” King theatrically snorted, “All right, if you don’t want anything specific, then I will reward you on my own. Zia came to me two days ago and pestered for a permission to enter royal treasury and yesterday she already brought you to look around that place.”

“Your majesty, please don’t worry. I have no intention to repeat such mistake anymore.” Nick waved his hands in protest.

“In know. But I still have to give you a reward for the services you provided to the kingdom. Therefore I am giving you a task!” King grinned.

‘What? I am being rewarded by doing more work? What kind of logic is that?’ Nick was stupefied and what came next made him almost blank out.

“I want you to break into my royal treasury! This is a secret mission and only three people – you, me and Ling will know about it. Ah, right, since Ling knows, queen Hua also will know, so four people. You will keep this mission secret from Zia, but will pretend to agree to her whim and break in. All the guards and Qi masters around the palace will still be there and the security measures won’t be changed.” King instructed.

“So you want me to find the weak spots in your security?” Nick finally understood.

“Hahaha, you are not a fool after all.” King laughed, “You are only eight, mischievous and have creative thinking. I want to see how two beginner level Qi practitioners below age of ten can fool palace guards and even patrolling and monitoring Qi masters to sneak into the treasury and out without getting caught. How much time do you need to prepare?”

Although Nick got the idea and reasoning, it still seemed an impossible task. After thinking for a long while, he finally answered, “From what I saw, the security is very tight and that does not even include the Qi masters you mentioned which I have never seen around. A puny Qi practitioner like me can’t notice them if they don’t want me to, right? It is not a child’s play like getting into the royal study.”

While Nick talked being deep in thoughts, king’s face twitched upon hearing his words, ‘Child’s play to get in here? If there was no Ling present and you were professional assassins, my son would be the king already!’

“But I do have some ideas – I think I will need at least half a year. We could set a second month of the next year as a deadline.” Nick finally smiled again.

“Alright, but Zia has to think you are sneaking in without permission. It might be a lot of fun for you both anyway, so enjoy, but don’t forget the importance of this task. Palace security seems to be lacking lately and we even need to use unorthodox ways to improve.”

Nick was surprised, “Are there any serious threats?”

It was obvious that there are always some random threats like an occasional assassin or a thief. But it would be unlikely that the king would be more as usual bothered by that.

“There are a few.” King nodded, “First, the documentation you provided on Holy Order allowed us to eliminate dozens of their hideouts throughout the country, but despite that it looks like lately they are preparing some activities. Second, there is an old alliance between Sand and Lori kingdoms that now is supported by the Nestri empire. Even though we fought for centuries in the south, now they might come directly here – Nestri continent has a viscous fighting style. Third, besides the old heritage of the Sun kingdom, we have acquired multiple precious and unique items that could be targeted.”

“I have one more question, your majesty.” Seeing king nod, Nick continued, “Why are you even bothering with an eight year old like me. I’m sure you have much stronger and smarter people.”

The king silently looked back at him and after a longer pause said, “What do you know about the first king of our Sun kingdom? Most likely you haven’t even heard of him, right? He was the one who overthrew the previous rule and we follow his teachings and Qi techniques up to this day. In fact, this is known to many people, but not the common populace, of course. What even informed people don’t know is – he became Qi master at the age of seven!”

This time Nick almost lost his footing. This was too unbelievable! He knew how hard it was to gather and manipulate Qi, but to liquefy it and become Qi master was basically a different universe!

“From the day I learned it, I never underestimated even a toddler. Alright, off with you! I don’t have all day to play around!” King shooed Nick away.

While slowly strolling back to his cottage, Nick was barely able to think. He had this steroid enhanced and Qi modified body with a consciousness of a twenty year old with a 21st century’s experience, but the genius who created the largest and strongest country in the world, was a regular child and still managed to became a Qi master at seven years of age. He didn’t feel competitive, but thought about how many implications this information brought.

‘It seems that clearing the pathways and getting started to cultivate at the age around ten is only one way to go and may be even not the best, possibly only the most convenient. There might be other systems or may be one needs some specific lucky encounters to do that? Or maybe … wait! May be he was similar to me!’ Nick stopped in his footsteps, ‘If someone can transfer my consciousness, may be someone has done it before as well. The Holy Order had the history of hundreds of years and even the Sun kingdom might not be as old! And may be there were other forces similar to the Holy Order centuries ago!’

There were many things that went through his mind, but there was no way to figure ‘everything’ out by just trying. Anyway, it was fruitless to worry about the stuff he could not influence or change.

Nick decided to put that all aside and concentrate on the task he received. First thing, he informed Zia that he had changed his mind. The princess hugged him in excitement and almost squeezed to death. Then he set some rules for her: no one else can know, she will follow his instructions without questioning and this time she will swear on her mother’s life she won’t take anything.

Zia’s excitement deflated quite a bit when she heard that they will execute the sneak-in only in few months, but then again fired up when he told they were too weak and needed to get stronger to succeed.

For Nick to formulate his plan, the first thing he needed was to observe the royal treasury more closely and understand the pattern of the guards. During the next five days, they ‘played’ with Zia somewhere around the treasury for an hour or two a day but at the different times each day.

Slowly a plan started to form in his mind.

There were three main problems: first, it was impossible to enter through the only entrance at the front. There were multiple guards stationed and only two of them were changed every hour, so there was always a fresh force present. Nick, of course, had long thrown out the silly idea of knocking out the guards like the last time. Second problem was the invisible Qi masters who were present in some spots of the palace, possibly patrolling around. And the third – there were no seemingly inconspicuous ways to scale the treasury building and no trees or other buildings close by.

This all meant, that they had to evade the perception of the Qi masters, enter from the roof while somehow getting up there.

Although both were quite talented, there was no way for them to become Qi masters in such short period of time to gain ability to quickly scale the walls. Judging from the thin fog in his Dantian and Qi pathways, Nick expected him to pass the Qi master threshold not sooner than in the next five-six years if he was lucky.

For anyone else it would be an incredible achievement to become Qi master before turning fifteen years old, but Nick saw that as obvious result because of the amount of practice he was doing – he was performing one of the three Qi techniques almost non-stop while being awake! And even with all of that, he started to create a theory, that it should be beneficial for the future Qi master to postpone his Qi condensation into a liquid form and increase the amount of Qi as well as strengthen his pathways while remaining at the stage of Qi practitioner.

With all that being said, they had to hide from Qi masters in some way and Nick already had a hunch how. This was a situation where he could apply the practical alchemy. He needed to do more research and tests, but there was a way.

But to solve the rest of the hurdles, they had to improve their physical condition and skills – there was no way around it.

To Zia’s surprise their seemingly boring training gained a couple of new fun exercises – they started to practice climbing trees and do hundred meter dashes. Although she lost every time, her competitive nature drove her to practice more.

Later Nick increased the difficulty and they had to dash while trying to bend as close to the ground as possible and it was even more fun for the princess since this unusual activity was not normally seen. The downside of this harsh, but effective training was that Nick made her practice Qi techniques the whole day, and even after lunch when he shooed her off she had to practice on her own.

While pouting, Zia followed Nick’s instructions. She was moody, but not stupid – she saw the progress herself and intended to soon challenge Steven again.

Ben also received a surprise – suddenly Nick wanted to learn archery. Up until now he only enjoyed the morning walks, learned tracking, placing, recovering and fixing of traps and some general knowledge about the animals and hunting traditions. Ben also knew that usually during their morning hunts Nick mostly just ran and practiced his Qi.

Ben wasn’t stingy when it came to share his experience. They constructed a small shooting range near the cottage and every day for two hours after the morning hunt he taught Nick everything he knew about the archery. Nick even managed to borrow few books from the royal library to increase his knowledge.

Unfortunately Qi practitioners couldn’t realistically infuse their bows and arrows with Qi to increase the firepower, but Nick still read up few techniques and tried to apply those in his training.

His idea was simple – if even Paul could do an impossible task for a Qi practitioner and gain ability to see under water – Nick should be able to do so as well. It all came down to the Qi control, therefore it soon became the main point of practice.